There is a particular ease that settles over you in a city that has nothing to prove. You feel it before you can name it — in the unhurried pace of a midmorning coffee, in the way strangers meet your eye without calculation. Valencia is that kind of place. It does not announce its welcome or ask to be admired for it. It simply lives the way it has always lived, in warm light and easy company, and invites you to do the same.

Britain has long been synonymous with one kind of glass — the amber kind, raised in a stone-walled distillery somewhere north of Inverness. That heritage is real, and we've written about it in depth. But Britain's drinks story has grown well beyond amber-colored glasses, and the experiences now available to travelers in England and Wales are worth a journey of their own.

Some roads take you somewhere. Some roads take you back. A Route 66 road trip does both at once — 2,448 miles of American myth, still drivable, still neon-lit, and turning 100 this November.