The Explora Journal

This Puglia travel guide brings these places together, and a more considered way to travel and explore them: arriving by sea, with Bari and Brindisi as gateways to the wider region beyond the port.

Across Northern Europe, the ocean has never simply framed the landscape. For generations, it has stocked the pantry. From cod drying in Arctic winds and herring resting beneath vinegar and spice to kelp pulled from tidal waters and salmon slowly transformed by smoke, the flavours of the North tell a story of ingenuity, preservation and an enduring dependence on the sea.

This Tokyo food guide moves through the markets, dishes and neighbourhoods that define the city's table, from the pre-dawn auctions at Toyosu to the wagashi counters of old Asakusa. What makes Tokyo's food culture unique is less any single dish than the ease with which centuries-old market traditions sit beside a konbini on the corner.

Carved out by ancient glaciers and hemmed by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the fjords and channels that run through Patagonia afford a serene and scenic way to experience this fabled region. From the mystical coast of Chiloé Island and the teeming waters of Puerto Madryn to the untamed landscape of Tierra del Fuego, this extraordinary region stays with you long after you leave. Explore the gateways to this extraordinary region, as detailed by Joe Mortimer, with Explora Journeys' South America sailings.

Each spring, Japan turns from green to pink over four unhurried months, the bloom tracking north from Okinawa's January flowers to Hokkaido's in early May.

Weather in Alaska rarely commits to a single mood for long, and that fact should shape every entry on your Alaska cruise packing list.

Asia rewards travellers who arrive expecting it, and an ocean Journey is arguably the most natural way to meet it: one check-in, then a sequence of entirely different worlds delivered by sea.

Rainforest reserves climb behind the coastline in St Lucia and Grenada. Coral gardens shelter off Tobago Cays and Curaçao. Humpback whales move through Samaná Bay each winter, and sea turtles graze in waters that few ocean travellers think to ask about.

History often remembers the empires and rulers that shaped the Mediterranean, each leaving behind monuments intended to endure through the ages. Yet some of the region's most enduring legacies are not found in its ruins, but in the timeless ingredients and traditions that have quietly persisted for centuries.

Winter travel tends to split into two moods: the sun-warmed hush of the Caribbean and Central America, and a serene Mediterranean most travellers have never seen before.

Ask travellers what comes to mind when they picture the Caribbean, and most will reach for the beach. But the region's deeper character lives elsewhere.

Some places reveal themselves through landmarks and others through history. Northern Europe, however, has the extraordinary power to tell its story through a harvest that barely lasts three months.