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Curious about Cuba? This issue’s cover story, written by James Vlahos, will satisfy your craving by taking you deep inside this Caribbean hot spot and the salsa music (and dancing!) that has helped define its unique flavor over the years. Also in this issue: Far from flagging, Andrew Nelson shows how Detroit is motorin’ into… - Action Travel

By James Conaway It’s spitting snow in Mont-roig del Camp the day I arrive, the coldest day in living memory in Catalonia. An hour and a half south of Barcelona, this one-time home of the famous painter Joan Miró is worth a day-long distraction from the sensual intensity up the coast. Joan – pronounced sho-ahn,… - Action Travel

It should come as no surprise that technology is changing the way we travel in the 21st century. The next big wave of innovation transforming how we travel is in social media. Sites like Couchsurfing.org — a worldwide network of three million wired nomads who offer up their homes (i.e. couches) for free to other… - Action Travel

Before he became “Nomadic Matt,” traveling all around the world documenting his travels online, Matt Kempas lived in Boston, Massachusetts. Here’s his take on the best that Beantown has to offer. Boston is My City The first place I take a visitor from out of town is on the Freedom Trail, because it gives a… - Action Travel

The Radar: Top travel news, stories, trends, and ideas from across the Web. Got Radar? Follow us on Twitter @NatGeoTraveler and tag your favorite travel stories from the Web #ngtradar. Check back the next day for our daily roundup. - Action Travel

A great Valentine’s Day has as much to do with where you spend it as it does with the person you share it with. Here’s a list of a few of our favorite romantic movies of all time — and the cities that made them sing. Vienna, Austria: Before Sunrise (1995) Two strangers (one French,… - Action Travel

This story was written by National Geographic staffer Laura Wallach, who researched it in our archives. Mabel Gardiner Hubbard was only five years old when scarlet fever rendered her deaf for life. At the age of 17, she would meet a young Scottish speech therapist who was destined to shape her life. Gardiner Greene Hubbard,… - Action Travel

Happy Valentine’s Day, travelers! Our readers boast impressive travel résumés. That’s why we ask you the same question on Facebook every Friday: Where are you traveling this weekend? See photos of where you — or readers like you — went, and get inspired to plan your next trip. Want to share your photos with the National Geographic… - Action Travel

By Annie Fitzsimmons China plans to build more than 50 new airports in the next five years, and its population — with nearly 500 million Internet users and counting — is becoming more “global” each day. But to grasp what China meant and means today, you have to get out of the big cities and… - Action Travel

The Radar: Top travel news, stories, trends, and ideas from across the Web. Got Radar? Follow us on Twitter @NatGeoTraveler and tag your favorite travel stories from the Web #ngtradar. Check back the next day for our daily roundup. - Action Travel

Sorry, there’s no water here. For this week’s #FriFotos* theme (SAND), we chose this photo of a Berber guide leading a camel through the Merzouga Desert — Morocco’s share of the Sahara, the largest (hot) desert in the world. Tomas Kouba, from Cesky Krumlov, CZ, snapped this vibrant pic on an unforgettable trip to Erg… - Action Travel

The Radar: Top travel news, stories, trends, and ideas from across the Web. Got Radar? Follow us on Twitter @NatGeoTraveler and tag your favorite travel stories from the Web #ngtradar. Check back the next day for our daily roundup. - Action Travel

By Annie Fitzsimmons “Welcome to the Wild West of China,” my guide said as we touched down in Lijiang after a 4-hour flight from Shanghai. Though I didn’t yet spot any cowboy boots, I was indeed far west in the Yunnan province, at the foothills of the Himalaya; bordered by Laos, Vietnam, and Burma. For… - Action Travel

St. George Island, Fla., is in the middle of nowhere. And that’s the way they like it. Why else would they call this area, along the northeastern part of Florida’s panhandle, the “forgotten” coast? It is remote, undeveloped and, at this time of year, no one’s here. Oh, wait. I should have said, no tourists.… - Action Travel

Jennifer Garcia-Alonso is co-founder of The Purple Passport, a web-based collection of chic, one-stop-shop guides to experiencing the world’s cities in style. She is a New Yorker who has been living in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, for the past three years (which we think qualifies her as a local at… - Action Travel

The Radar: Top travel news, stories, trends, and ideas from across the Web. Got Radar? Follow us on Twitter @NatGeoTraveler and tag your favorite travel stories from the Web #ngtradar. Check back the next day for our daily roundup. - Action Travel

Our readers boast impressive travel résumés. That’s why we ask you the same question on Facebook every Friday: Where are you traveling this weekend? See photos of where you — or readers like you — went, and get inspired to plan your next trip. Want to share your photos with the National Geographic community? Upload your favorites… - Action Travel

Travel photographer Macduff Everton has been around the world to cover stories for National Geographic Traveler magazine. His most recent assignment took him to the island of Shikoku in Japan for a January/February feature story.  Our photo editor Krista Rossow asked Macduff to tell us more about his experience while photographing the island. Krista Rossow:… - Action Travel

By Megan Snedden On the corner of Broome and Crosby in SoHo, a quiet sanctuary celebrates one of India’s spiritual traditions: the Broome Street Hindu Temple. Inside, the community recites the Bhagavad Gita, practices pujas, meditates, connects with the divine. Days after September 11, Eddie Stern opened the temple, which began as a yoga studio… - Action Travel

This week’s #FriFotos* theme is VILLAGES, and Sweden boasts a lot of them – as people who have seen The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can attest. Smögen is one such place, a thriving “summer town” – like Girl’s Hedestad – that becomes a sleepy, snow-covered ghost town come winter. This photo of the bright… - Action Travel

Even thought Walt Disney World Resort offers a one-day “park hopper” pass that gives you unlimited access to Animal Kingdom, Disney Studios, Epcot and the Magic Kingdom, visiting all of them on the same day is almost impossible. But not entirely. Seeing it all requires careful planning, triathlete-like endurance and the kind of determination not… - Action Travel

Would you like to go somewhere new in 2012?  National Geographic Traveler editors deliberated on the next up-and-coming places and published the Best of the World 2012 special section in our November-December issue. Across the pond, Travel PR UK collected the bucket lists of various other travel experts, such as Frommers, Lonely Planet and World… - Action Travel

Iain used to be a warrant officer in the Royal Army Physical Training Corps — a job that took him on adventures all around the world. He tried his hand at running a public house after leaving the armed forces, but it wasn’t long before his wanderlust got the better of him, leading him to… - Action Travel

Being a National Geographic photographer for the past 30 years, Brian Skerry has some great stories about his assignments in the field, most of which have taken place under water.  Here he talks about one of his favorite characters, the manatee. If you liked that snippet, you can watch the complete video of Skerry’s half-hour… - Action Travel

I could have taken an airplane from Stockholm to St. Petersburg, but instead I find myself in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The ship lurches sometime after midnight and, abruptly wide awake, I rush to my cabin window and pull back the curtain. Outside, the sky is licorice black, and the Big Dipper hangs… - Action Travel

By Aric S. Queen It was a silly thing to think could be done, I told myself as the second and third person passed me on the steep incline. It was done for the attention – the hiking equivalent of holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa in photos. An online high-five. It shouldn’t be… - Action Travel

Do you dream of cavorting with sea lions, meditating with giant tortoises, sunbathing with scaly marine iguanas?  There’s only one place to do that: the Galápagos islands of Ecuador.  Did you know that the National Geographic Society has its own fleet of small, comfortably outfitted ships to take you there, with National Geographic experts aboard… - Action Travel

From the January/February issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine. - Action Travel

Hello city-lovers! Today we’re exploring our own backyard with an I Heart My City guide to Washington, D.C. Today’s tour comes courtesy of travel blogger Matt Long, Editor-in-Chief and creator of LandLopers.com and co-host of the D.C. Travel Tweet Up (In the D.C. area? Join the Tweet Up tomorrow night!). Get Matt’s insider’s take on the nation’s capital,… - Action Travel

The Radar: Top travel news, stories, trends, and ideas from across the Web. Got Radar? Follow us on Twitter @NatGeoTraveler and tag your favorite travel stories from the Web #ngtradar. Check back the next day for our daily roundup. - Action Travel