TRAVEL INSPIRATION

The gardener is out before breakfast, a shallow wooden trug on one arm, working along a row of rainbow chard while dew still beads on the box hedging. Sweet peas go into the basket last. By evening, the chard is on a dinner plate and the sweet peas are on a guest's nightstand, cut from neighboring rows of the same walled garden.

Most travelers arrive in Australia with a plan. Two weeks, three cities, the Reef, maybe Uluru if the schedule holds. They come home having seen an extraordinary amount — and quietly aware that they missed something they couldn't name. Australia doesn't reward the itinerary. It rewards the surrender.

A generation of young Czech chefs reached back past Communism to the nineteenth-century cookbooks of Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová and Marie B. Svobodová, rediscovering flavors their great-great-grandparents had known. They call the movement nová česká — Nouvelle Czech — and it is producing some of the most exciting dining in Europe.

There is a moment somewhere between Bingen and Koblenz — as the cliffs rise and the river narrows — when you understand why this valley has been inspiring poets, painters, and travelers for centuries. A castle appears on a hilltop. Then another. Then a steep slope of vines, glowing amber in the late afternoon light.