In October 2017, my husband, Paul, and I rented an apartment in the iconic Plaza Mayor in the oldest section of Madrid. Using this apartment as our base, we enjoyed life Madrileño-style, spending weekdays viewingGoyas and El Grecos in the city’s many top-notch museums and weekends strolling in Retiro Park and hunting for treasures in the Rastro flea market.

At night, we nibbled tapas (appetizers) in the ubiquitous tapas bars of our...

I love Venice at night, and recently, I was reminded why. The evening started at one of my favorite Venice restaurants. The chef served up a seafood bounty from the lagoon, accompanied by deliciously grilled local vegetables and polenta. After dinner, twinkling from my sprightly Venetian white wine, I wandered through the tangle of back lanes, musty with history, pausing on lonely bridges to watch gondolas glide silently by. Finally, I turned the corner onto St. Mark's Square...

Berliners joke that they don't need to travel anywhere because their city's always changing. While you could spend weeks in Berlin and not run out of things to do, even the natives like to get out of town once in a while. Recently I tried out three easy day trips from the German capital.

First I spent half a day at Frederick the Great's opulent palace playground at Potsdam. Next, for a small-town experience that packs a huge historical wallop, I headed about an...