Barely two years after Hurricane Katrina, the city welcomes visitors with streetcar rides and impromptu parades, riverboat calliopes and sidewalk tap dancers.

  In a single afternoon, you can take care of your last-minute shopping in just one loop through the city?s holiday markets.

  A copper-country cleanup brings new life to a town whose reputation for blight has kept prices lower than in nearby areas.

  From Lisbon to Libya, an interactive graphic of the travel hot spots for the new year.

  The second Cartagena International Festival of Music, directed by Charles Wadsworth, will take over the Colombian tourist destination from Jan. 5 to 12.

  The American Dance Festival ?an international celebration of modern dance ?will celebrate its 75th anniversary this summer.

  Paso Robles, with nearly 170 wineries, has become the newest prime destination for meandering wine tasters living out their ?Sideways?fantasies.

  A Jewish family makes a tradition of a bracing holiday hike.

  Roberta McCain and Rowena Willis, identical twins and the mother and aunt of Senator John McCain, have wandered the world together.

  US Airways, Midwest Airlines and Delta are among the first carriers to shift their menus in a more nutritional and flavorful direction.

  Today?s food scene in Istanbul is international but local, forward-thinking but deeply rooted and, above all, delicious.

  Argentina?s economic recovery has brought a bevy of new hotels and restaurants, but the country is still surprisingly inexpensive for American visitors.

  West Berlin?s glamour is slowly returning in the form of new galleries and revitalized Bowie-era restaurants and hotels.

  Few cities have sloughed off as much leaden history to reinvent themselves. But the Russian taste for Old World opulence clearly didn?t perish with the Romanovs.