73
cape town »
SOUTH AFRICA
Cape Town lies cradled between moun-
tain and sea on what the 16th-century
English explorer Sir Francis Drake
called “the fairest Cape we saw in the
whole circumference of the earth.”
Table Mountain (3,563 ft/1,086 m)—
flat topped and often mist wreathed—
provides the cape’s crowning beauty.
Visitors can take a cableway or hike to
its various lookouts for views across
the city to the ocean beyond.
Lookouts on Table Mountain ofer
superb views of the city below.
72
washington
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
On July 16, 1790, an act was approved
to create the capital of the United
States on the banks of the Potomac
River. In the years that followed came
the memorials, wide vistas, and great
buildings of nationhood—the Capitol,
Washington Monument, Jeferson
Memorial, National Mall—that lend
Washington the gravitas and impos-
ing beauty of a national capital.The Jeferson Memorial at night,
floodlit and serene on the Tidal Basin74
mesa verde
COLORADO
Amid the remote mesas of southwest-
ern Colorado, sheltered in the steep
sandstone alcoves of the canyon
walls, are some 600 clif-cut dwell-
ings, built—and then mysteriously
abandoned—by the region’s indig-
enous Puebloan people between 500
and 1300. Rediscovered by cowboys
in 1874, the pueblos can now be vis-
ited on ranger-led guided tours.Night lights illuminate part of the
130-room Spruce Tree House.«
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