The Loen Skylift, one of the steepest aerial trams in the world, began operation on May 20 in northern Norway’s Nordfjord area. Picking up 35 to 40 people every 30 minutes, each enclosed lift takes five to seven minutes to travel 3,300 feet up from the waters’ edge to Mount Hoven. At the top is the cliffside Hoven Restaurant. The “handicap-friendly” Skylift operates daily, 9 a.m.-10 p.m., from July 1 to Aug. 20 and from 9 to 6 all other dates in the year. A round...

You can learn about more than 400 years of English gardening by visiting London’s Garden Museum (Lambeth Palace Rd., London, SE1 7LB, U.K.; phone +44 20 7401 8865, www.gardenmuseum.org.uk). Opened in 1977, the museum is housed in the formerly abandoned church St Mary-at-Lambeth, the burial place of 17th-century royal gardener John Tradescant the elder and his botanist son, John the younger. Its permanent gardening collection of 6,000 items includes tools, literature, artworks and...

The oldest-extant surgical theater, located in the attic of an 18th-century church, can be visited in London. The newly refurbished Old Operating Theatre Museum (9a St. Thomas Street, London, England, SE1 9RY, U.K.; phone +44 020 7188 2679, oldoperatingtheatre.com) dates to 1822, when it became the surgery room for the St. Thomas Church Hospital. Still present are the wooden bed where surgeries were performed (without the benefit of anesthetics or antibiotics) and the surrounding...