In the 1960s, Mayor Gaston Defferre proposed a plan to give Marseille a beach that was worthy of the Mediterranean port. Despite the city’s 26 miles of coastline, there were very few public beaches at the time. One of them, Prado, was so narrow that waves would flood the coastal road beside it each time the mistral wind blew. In 1977, the Parc Balnéaire du Prado opened on an artificial embankment, cleverly built with leftover fill from the construction of the Marseille metro. With its gravel beaches and grassy lawns, the sprawling, 64-acre seaside park was an instant hit. Now, the beaches – known as Prado Sud and Prado Nord – are two of the most popular for Marseillais and tourists alike.

At first glance, Berbena, a restaurant in Gràcia, resembles a small, pretty tree with dazzling foliage – it offers a sophisticated and complex dining experience. But the restaurant’s delicate attributes, those pretty leaves, wouldn’t be possible without a carefully tended trunk and roots. In short, the basics matter, something that its creator, chef Carles Pérez de Rozas, decided after years spent in high-end kitchens. Carles had a culinary education par excellence: After studying at the prestigious Hofmann School, a culinary institution in Barcelona, he worked at several Michelin-starred restaurants in Catalonia, such as Drolma, Saüc, and Carmen Ruscalleda’s iconic Sant Pau. A job in the restaurant at the Hotel de Ville de Crissier brought him to Switzerland; he then spent a short and intense period in France with the great chef Michel Bras. In Japan, he trained alongside Seiji Yamamoto, in his Tokyo restaurant Nihonryori RyuGin, adding more notches of refined knowledge to his belt.

New York City has many Chinatowns; how many is a matter for dispute. While the oldest and most famous is in Manhattan, southern Brooklyn now boasts two such neighborhoods – or maybe three, depending on who's counting. Without a doubt, however, the city's largest and fastest-changing Chinatown surrounds the eastern terminus of the 7 train in Flushing, Queens. One measure of Flushing's vibrancy is the variety of spoken languages. Flushing is home to speakers of Mandarin, Shanghainese, Fujianese, Cantonese, Taiwanese and many other Chinese languages and dialects. The neighborhoods immediately to the east are densely populated with Korean speakers; in much smaller numbers, we also find speakers of other East, South and Southeast Asian languages.

Rua das Portas de Santo Antão is probably the most touristy food street in Lisbon. This pedestrian road is full of restaurants with guys outside hawking their specials and menus offering out-of-season sardines and frozen pizzas. But there’s more to this downtown thoroughfare than just luring American vacationers to overpriced mediocrity. Located on this road, buzzing even before the tourist boom thanks to its central location, musical theaters and local commerce, is one of the city’s timeless classics, O Churrasco. This restaurant looks different from the usual chicken restaurant, with impressionistic paintings hanging from its wooden walls and waiters in bow ties, and has been a camouflaged gem for many years, a particular favorite of middle-class families and theater lovers.

Japanese trains have garnered worldwide admiration and praise for their punctuality, efficiency and cleanliness. The country’s railway network is supported by a strong surrounding infrastructure, and some stations have become tourist spots in themselves. And whereas eating at a train station might be a last resort in other countries, in Japan, you might find yourself at a gourmet destination. In 2005, JR East, the largest of the Japan Railways corporations, began to push the concept of ekinaka – literally “inside station” – as a way to expand their business in the face of a declining and ageing population. Previously, stations might have had small kiosks selling magazines and snacks inside the ticket gates, and perhaps a standing soba noodle shop, cheap bowls purchased by a ticket vending machine at the door.