The three castles I visited on my trip to Japan in October-November 2015 — Osaka, Nijo and Himeji — have much in common. Each is a spacious complex in the middle of a large city. Each is surrounded by a moat and by expansive gardens. Each displays monumental gateways, picturesque wall turrets and impressive stonework. Two of the three castles still each have their tenshu, a central tower or keep.

These castle complexes are so grand that they could be mistaken for imperial...

One hundred sixty miles north of Cape Town, South Africa, lies Bushmans Kloof, one of the most unique art galleries I’ve ever visited. It’s extraordinary both for its immense size and for the antiquity of its paintings. 

Paintings that are 2,000 to 10,000 years old are scattered among more than 130 caves and rock overhangs in the Cederberg Wilderness area of western South Africa. These rock paintings have been called one of the largest open-air art galleries in the...

(Part 2 of 3 on central Mexico)

Having just visited La Cañada de la Virgen, considered the main archaeological site in the Bajío region of central Mexico, my husband, Paul, and I decided we wanted to see more pre-Columbian sites. 

The Bajío is not generally known for its archaeological sites. In fact, most books on Mexico that I looked at skip this region of Mexico entirely when discussing Mesoamerican archaeology. Yet there are hundreds of sites — most only...