Luxury United States Voyages

The combination of urban centers and cultural treasures make Palm Beach the perfect getaway. Enter the heart of Africa by visiting the Panther Ridge Conservation Center or get up close and personal with manatees at the Manatee Lagoon. If you’re more into urban sightseeing, visit CityPlace for the top-rated dining, entertainment, and shopping experiences.

The sailing capital of America gathers around the US Naval Academy's waterfront campus and a handsome colonial State House, the oldest state capitol still in legislative use in the country. Chesapeake Bay blue crab, picked from the shell at a checkered-paper table, is close to a civic religion here, while ospreys and herons work the bay's marshy tributaries in serious numbers. A handful of Maryland's emerging wineries lie a short drive inland. A small, historic town built entirely around the water.

The gateway to Acadia National Park, where Cadillac Mountain's granite summit is, for part of the year, the first place in the United States to see the sunrise. Rockbound coastline and spruce forest ring a town built originally as a Gilded Age summer retreat, its grand "cottages" still visible along Frenchman Bay. A lobster dinner on the water, a round of golf at one of the region's classic courses, and some of the best birding on the Maine coast round out New England at its most dramatic.

North Carolina's third-oldest town keeps a genuinely well-preserved colonial waterfront, and just offshore, wild horses still roam the dunes of Shackleford Banks, descendants, local lore holds, of shipwrecked Spanish mustangs. Blackbeard met his end in these waters in 1718, a history the town's maritime museum tells with real relish, while shorebirds crowd the barrier island beaches nearby. A quieter, history-rich alternative to the Outer Banks further north.

America's most walkable big-city history lesson, the Freedom Trail's red brick line connects the sites of the Revolution in a couple of unhurried hours, from the Old North Church to the USS Constitution still afloat in the harbor. Boston Harbor's islands, a short ferry from downtown, hold surprisingly rich colonies of nesting seabirds for a major East Coast city. A round of golf at one of the region's historic clubs and a plate of the city's famous chowder round out a stop as dense with things to do as it is with history.

The Lowcountry's grand old lady keeps her cobbled streets and pastel Rainbow Row houses immaculately preserved, a horse-drawn carriage tour past wrought-iron gates and walled gardens is still the classic introduction. Nearby plantations tell a fuller, harder history alongside their architecture and gardens, while championship golf at Kiawah Island and a shrimp-and-grits dining scene now ranked among the country's best round out the visit. Egrets and herons work the surrounding marsh in serious numbers. Genteel on the surface, and increasingly honest about what lies beneath it.

The city that reinvented American architecture after the Great Fire of 1871 is still best seen from the water, a boat tour past the Wrigley Building and the Marina City towers explains the skyline better than any museum. Millennium Park's Bean and a lakefront that runs for miles of sand beach and bike path show a genuinely livable side to a city of this size, while Montrose Point's Magic Hedge is one of the best migratory birding spots in the entire Midwest. A round of golf on one of the city's lakefront courses and a proper deep-dish dinner round out the visit. Big shoulders, and a genuinely great lakefront.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame anchors a lakefront that has quietly reinvented itself over the past two decades, its glass pyramid facing Lake Erie beaches busy with paddleboarders on a warm afternoon. The West Side Market, running since 1912, remains one of the best food halls in the Midwest, while migratory birds funnel through the lakefront parks each spring in serious numbers. An underrated stop that rewards anyone willing to look past its old reputation.

The birthplace of Motown tells its own story at the modest house on West Grand Boulevard where Berry Gordy built an empire, still a genuine pilgrimage for music fans. A riverfront long given over to industry has been steadily reclaimed as parkland over the past decade, while Belle Isle, a park designed by the same landscape architect behind New York's Central Park, shelters a real variety of birdlife within the city limits. A round of golf at one of the region's classic courses rounds out a city very much in the middle of its second act.

The easternmost city in the continental United States is the first place the country sees the sunrise each morning, a genuine point of local pride in a town built almost entirely around fishing and aquaculture. The Old Sow, the largest tidal whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere, churns in the bay just offshore, drawing porpoises and seabirds to the nutrient-rich water it stirs up. A small, salt-worn fishing town at the very edge of the map.

A Victorian-era shrimping town, credited as the birthplace of the modern shrimping industry, Fernandina's historic downtown of gingerbread houses sits at one end of a barrier island otherwise given over to championship golf courses and serious spa resorts. Kingsley Plantation, a short drive south, tells a fuller history of the Sea Islands, while shorebirds and wading birds crowd the marshes behind the dunes. A genuinely restorative stop, in every sense of the word.

Florida's largest city by area follows the St Johns River for miles of Riverwalk, restaurants and parks, a genuinely underrated stretch of urban waterfront. The Timucuan Preserve protects one of the largest remaining stands of undisturbed coastal marsh in the state, rich with wading birds, while Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park's beach is one of the best and least crowded stretches of sand on the First Coast. A city that rewards visitors willing to look past the interstate exits.

America's last island unwinds at yacht pace. Wander Hemingway's shuttered villa and its six-toed cats, sip a cold conch chowder on Duval Street, then join the nightly ritual at Mallory Square as fire-eaters and buskers salute the sinking sun. Because SeaDream III can linger overnight, guests catch that green-flash sunset ashore and still make Fort Zachary Taylor's reef by morning. Key lime pie, of course, is compulsory.

No cars have been allowed on this Lake Huron island since 1898, horse-drawn carriages and bicycles fill in instead, a genuine step back into the 19th century the moment you step off the ferry. The Grand Hotel's porch, the longest in the world, has hosted five sitting US presidents, while Fort Mackinac's restored ramparts tell the island's earlier military history. Fudge shops line the main street in numbers that have become something of a local joke, and a round on one of the island's golf courses is played, necessarily, without a golf cart in sight.

Lake Michigan's dune coast reaches some of its most dramatic scale here, towering sand hills backing beaches that rival anywhere on the Great Lakes for a proper summer swim. Duck Lake State Park's wetlands shelter a genuinely rich variety of migratory birds, while a round of golf on one of the area's lakefront courses takes full advantage of the dune terrain. A classic, unpretentious West Michigan beach town.

The city needs no real introduction, but a harbor arrival still delivers one of the great skyline views anywhere on earth, the Statue of Liberty and the downtown towers rising together as the ship comes in. Central Park's Ramble is, improbably, one of the best urban birding spots in North America during spring migration, while the city's wellness scene, from rooftop spas to serious longevity clinics, has become as talked-about as its restaurants. A round of golf at one of the metro area's historic courses and a dinner at virtually any table you can name round out a city that still, somehow, exceeds the hype.

America's Gilded Age built its grandest stage sets here, the Cliff Walk threads between the Atlantic and a run of Vanderbilt and Astor mansions so ostentatious they were called cottages by the families who built them. Newport's sailing pedigree runs just as deep, home to the America's Cup for more than half a century, while a handful of Rhode Island vineyards have quietly built a following well beyond the state. Beaches, birdlife along Ocean Drive and a seriously good raw bar round out one of New England's most storied small cities.

Home to the largest naval base in the world, Norfolk's harbor still moves to the rhythm of the US Atlantic Fleet, a history and a present the excellent Nauticus museum explains in full. The Chrysler Museum of Art holds a genuinely world-class glass collection, a surprise for a navy town, while the Great Dismal Swamp nearby shelters black bears and some of the richest birdlife in coastal Virginia. Beaches and golf courses along the water round out a city defined, quite literally, by its harbor.

A whimsical cluster of gingerbread cottages, painted in every color imaginable, rings the campground where 19th-century Methodist revivals once drew thousands each summer, now one of the most photographed streets in New England. The Flying Horses Carousel nearby, running since 1876, is the oldest continuously operating carousel in the country. Beaches, a round of golf and some of the island's best seafood shacks round out a stop that feels, deliberately, like summer frozen in time.

The birthplace of American independence keeps the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall exactly where the founders left them, a short walk from a food scene that has quietly become one of the country's most exciting. The Philadelphia Museum of Art's steps are, inevitably, a Rocky pilgrimage for almost everyone who climbs them, while Pennsylvania's small but serious wine country lies a scenic drive beyond the city. Egrets and herons work the wetlands along the Delaware, and a genuinely great cheesesteak rounds out a city with far more to it than its most famous export.

The gateway to Kennedy Space Center, where the launch pads that sent astronauts to the moon still stand a short drive from the pier, ready for a genuinely goosebump-inducing tour. Manatees gather in the warm water canals nearby through the cooler months, while Cocoa Beach's famously consistent surf lies just south. A round of golf on the Space Coast's flat, sunny courses rounds out a stop built as much around the future as the beach.

New England's unofficial food capital packs a genuinely serious dining and craft-brewing scene into a compact, cobblestoned Old Port, lobster rolls and oyster happy hours included. Portland Head Light, the oldest lighthouse in Maine, stands sentinel over a rocky shoreline that has changed remarkably little since it was built in 1791. A round of golf on the coastal links and some of the best birding on the Maine coast round out a small city that consistently punches above its weight.

This small Lake Erie island still marks the site of Commodore Perry's decisive 1813 naval victory over the British, commemorated by the towering Doric column of the Perry's Victory memorial, one of the tallest monuments in the country. A handful of historic wineries, some dating to the 1860s, make use of the island's mild lake-effect climate, while a round of golf and some of the best birding on Lake Erie round out a small island with an outsized place in American history.

Maine's self-proclaimed lobster capital also holds the country's densest concentration of lighthouses, several visible from the harbor on a clear day. The Farnsworth Art Museum's collection of three generations of the Wyeth family, painters who made this coast their life's subject, is a genuine draw for art lovers well beyond Maine. A dining scene built almost entirely around the day's catch rounds out a small, working harbor town.

The American twin of the two cities straddling the St Marys River, Sault Ste Marie sits beside the Soo Locks, still one of the busiest shipping chokepoints on the Great Lakes, freighters lift and lower here between Superior and Huron in full view of the public boardwalk. A round of golf on the region's forested courses takes advantage of a genuinely underrated stretch of Upper Peninsula scenery. A working border town with serious industrial history on full display.

Georgia's oldest city lays itself out around more than twenty live-oak squares, Spanish moss draped overhead, a design that has barely changed since James Oglethorpe founded it in 1733. Bonaventure Cemetery's marble angels and moss-hung avenues, made famous by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, remain one of the South's most atmospheric walks, while Tybee Island's beaches lie a short drive from downtown. A round of golf, a properly slow-cooked Lowcountry dinner and some of the best birding on the Georgia coast round out one of the South's most beautiful cities.

Self-declared cherry capital of the world, Traverse City backs its claim with an entire regional economy built around the fruit, alongside a wine industry, spread across the Old Mission and Leelanau peninsulas, that has quietly become one of the most respected in the Midwest. Sleeping Bear Dunes, a short drive along the Lake Michigan shore, rises to some of the tallest freshwater dunes on earth. A round of golf, a proper wellness spa afternoon and a genuinely good dinner round out a Great Lakes town built for exactly this kind of unhurried stop.

The second-largest of the Great Lakes by surface area holds more freshwater shoreline than almost anywhere else in North America, its eastern side scattered with the limestone islands of Manitoulin and the North Channel. Squalls can build with little warning on open water this large, and the lake has claimed its share of ships over the past two centuries. A genuinely vast, weather-shaped inland sea.

Two of the five Great Lakes meet at the Straits of Mackinac, joined so completely that they are technically a single body of water, spanned by one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. Sand dunes rise along the Michigan shore in places, an unlikely desert landscape a stone's throw from some of the coldest water in North America. A long, open-water crossing between two genuinely inland seas.

The smallest of the Great Lakes by surface area still stretches further than the eye can follow, its shoreline shifting from Toronto's skyline to quiet orchards and vineyards as the ship makes its way west. Freshwater swells can build here as quickly as on any open sea, a reminder that these are inland seas in every sense but salinity. A working lake, still busy with the freighter traffic that built the cities along its shore.

The largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area gives way, at the Straits of Mackinac, to Huron's more sheltered, island-studded waters, a transition between two very different Great Lakes personalities within a single day's sailing. Superior's cold water and open fetch can produce genuine ocean-scale swells, a fact more than one wrecked freighter has learned the hard way. A long crossing that rewards patience with real variety of scenery.

The busiest lock system by tonnage in North America lifts and lowers ships between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, a chokepoint the entire Great Lakes iron-ore and grain trade has depended on for well over a century. Twin cities, one Canadian, one American, share the riverbank on either side of the locks. A working piece of industrial history, still very much in daily use.

The Soo Locks mark the gateway to the largest and coldest of the Great Lakes, and beyond them, Superior's north shore unfolds as rugged, sparsely populated cliffs and boreal forest running for hundreds of miles with barely a town in sight. Bald eagles are a common sight along this stretch, and the lake's sheer scale, deep enough and cold enough to behave like an ocean, has produced its own body of shipwreck lore. Industrial history giving way, quickly, to genuine wilderness.

A canal first proposed in the 1760s and finally completed in 1829 still shortens the run between the Chesapeake and Delaware bays by hundreds of miles, sparing ships the long and often rough passage around the Delmarva Peninsula. Marshland and quiet waterside towns line much of the route, largely unchanged since the canal's earliest days. A short, historic shortcut linking two of the Mid-Atlantic's great estuaries.