Your Best Place in the World

The burger thread, perhaps weirdly, made me want to travel to all those places so I could eat those burgers. I'm in a serious wanderlust phase. (Also hungry.) I'm wondering what's your single best place in the world. I don't mean "Iceland" or "the high school dance when I kissed Mary Lou in 1976." But if teleportation existed, and right now you could beam to a particular bar stool or scenic overlook or restaurant table or ballpark section, where in the world would it be?

I think my answer is a lounger beside the rooftop pool at the Parque Central hotel in Havana. It's heaven.

 

The beach at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park in Key West on a quiet late afternoon.
If you're walking from town, it's about a half mile down a long access road, so it feels like you're leaving civilization behind. You go through the parking lot and then, to get to the beach, you have to walk maybe 20 or 30 yards through a small stand of palm trees. As you clear them, it's just the beach and a thousand miles of crystal blue Gulf of Mexico in front you. There's a couple of rock jetties you can walk out onto if you're brave enough and literally feel like you're at the edge of the world.
The jetties also get some decent waves going close to shore, so you can just sit there and listen to the waves crash, sit in the shade of the palm trees, feel a tropical breeze on your face and feel like you're a million miles away from everything that matters.
It's my happy place.

 

The beach at Half Moon Bay, Roatan, Honduras.

Cheap cervezas. Brown senoritas. The most amazing sunsets you can possibly imagine. The most crystal clear water I've ever seen. No one gives a shit about anything. No one judges you.

 

A table outside the Bar Tabac L'Ecluse in Le Palais on Belle-Ile-en-Mer, a small island off the Brittany Coast of France. There is no better place to sip your coffee and watch the world go by. I have never tired of it.

 

Hotel balcony in Monaco, gazing out over the Mediterranean.

 

15 minutes outside Tahoe is fuckin' awesome.

 

Love this thread and what freaks me out somewhat is that I've been to to the places in the first 3 responses and had awesome times at each.

So many to choose from so I kind of think of the Spalding Gray "perfect day" idea from Swimming to Cambodia.

Beautiful beach in Surfers Paradise, Australia. Weather was perfect with big, gentle, slow rollers that were ideal for body surfing. Dolphins were playing in the surf.

No stress, no responsibilty.

 

I went to the British Isles last year and, since then, I've told anybody who will listen that Scotland is my new favorite place in the world.

I've never seen so much lush greenery, I loved the mix of pastoral and mountainous scenery, developed a taste for the unique architecture and layout of much of the housing, was intrigued with all the history and castles, and really liked everyone I met there. Knowing that I can take my job almost anywhere, I actually gave some thought to moving there and began asking around about housing prices and arrangements. I would go back in a heartbeat, for longer than the week that I spent knocking around Inverness, Glasgow and the surprisingly urban and modern Edinburgh.

Closer to home, in the U.S., I unexpectedly fell in love with Maine. As with Scotland, that also occurred in the course of my travels.

Of the most long-term personal significance to me and my family is Lake Nacimiento, where my parents owned a primary-residence home for 12 years, and where some other family members still do so. It is a place to which I happily escaped as often as possible for peace and quiet and regeneration.

 

An outdoor table during the afternoon, with lunch of fish tacos and a few pints, at Newport Landing on Balboa Island, California.

 

Two places:

The island of Ko Lanta in Thailand. Very remote. Two hours and two ferry rides from the Krabbi Airport. I stayed at a fantastic 13 room hotel owned by a Belgian family. The property is on a hill overlooking the sea. Is stayed in a seaside villa (about $110 a night) four feet from the cliff that overlooked the sea. I had a hot tub on the back patio.And allow me to plug the hotel. The Houben.

The Marin headlands. You can look north and see the mountains. West and you see the Pacific Ocean. Go in the afternoon and you can see the sun gleaming on downtown San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

Floating on my back in Lake Memphremagog, but here is ok in the colder months.

 

I was only there for less than 24 hours, but Zakopane, Poland is an incredible little mountain town.

Believe it or not, it's between there and the North Fork of Long Island.