1 . From Milan to Riyadh, these culture-packed cities offer creative experiences, whether through interesting street arts, innovative exhibitions or award-winning architectures.

Milan

Milan’s fashion heritage dates back to its days as an important trading center, when rich businessmen would bring luxurious clothes to the city and improve their bartering (以物易物) skills in its streets. The area’s fashion-forward reputation was later strengthened by design masters such as Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Versace, all of whom grew their brands here.

Shanghai

Shanghai has a long history in the fields of art and architecture, and has long attracted creative professionals both domestically and internationally. But today, the integration of traditional temples into the surrounding modern metropolis (大都市) continues to attract tourists. Begin with a wander through the streets of the original Old City, taking in the 600-year-old City God Temple and the nine-bend Jiu Qu Qiao. Then, make for the Shanghai Museum, where more than a million artifacts — including ancient sculptures, china and calligraphy — are on display.

Copenhagen

Copenhagen’s architecture has been awarded many honors over the years, including UNESCO World Capital of Architecture 2023. Today, many of the city’s most popular tour routes centre on these eye-catching aspects. The harbour-front Copenhagen Opera House presents a neo-futuristic style while the Black Diamond Royal Library and the Bicycle Bridge dot the skyline with their distinctive designs.

Riyadh

Saudi Arabia’s largest city Riyadh has actively positioned itself as a global destination for creative travellers and to this end, it has established the Riyadh Art initiative. The first public art project of its kind in the country, Riyadh Art aims to transform the city into a “gallery without walls” through public art installations, festivals and workshops.

2 . Combining a vertical (竖的，直立的) farm and office space into a single 51-storey idea out of Chinese tales, an Italian architect is completing the Shenzhen skyline with a shocking farmscraper (农场摩天楼).

Jian Mu Tower was designed for a leading Chinese supermarket to be a place where renter can grow, sell, buy, or consume produce in the same place they work.

Lying in the south Chinese city of Shenzhen, the Turin-based Carlo Ratti Associati Company has showed plans to build a 650-foot tower in which 100,000 square feet of the glass outside (外墙) is used to produce food — 590,000 pounds of it per year, which would also contain around a million square feet for office space, a supermarket, gardens, and food court (美食街).

Hydroponic (水栽法的) gardening involves using nutrient-rich water rather than soil, and allows plants to be grown in tubes piled up vertically. Working with ZERO, an Italian-based company that specializes in new approaches to agriculture, Jian Mu’s farm is made full use of to produce everything from salad greens to fruits, while remaining efficient and sustainable. An AI scientist would watch most of the hydroponic systems, water and nutrients, planning planting and harvest cycles, and other matters.

“Small-scale urban farming is happening in cities all over the world — from Paris to New York to Singapore. Jian Mu Tower, however, takes it to the next level,” writes Ratti, who is also a professor at MIT. “Such approach has the potential to play a major role in the design of future cities, as it engages in one of today’s most urgent architectural challenges: How to integrate the natural world into building design.”

3 . Day 1 Kuitun-Huocheng

Drive to Huocheng for about 6 hours, where 29 minority groups live. After checking in at the hotel, drive to the Sayram Lake, which is also praised as “the last drop of the Atlantic tears”. The best time to visit it is from June to August, when the water is extremely clear and blue and many unknown flowers are in the full blossom (盛开).

Day 2 Huocheng-Yining

In the morning, visit the Khorgos Port between China and Kazakhstan. Have a brief visit to the border cooperation area. Then visit the lavender flora (薰衣草植物群) park. It is the third largest lavender park in the word, only after Provence and Furano. At last, drive to Yining and check in at the hotel.

Day 3 Yining-Nalati Grassland

The Nalati Grassland is a famous pasture (牧场) since ancient times. This is also a famous tourism and holiday resort in Xinjiang which is well-known for beautiful grassland scenery. You could join in the horse riding on the boundless grassland and get close to the local KaZak culture. It is much colder here than in the city especially in the morning and evening, so please take some warm clothes with you.

Day 4 Nalati-Bayanbulak

Today’s private tour will cover the Bayanbulak Grassland and the Swan Lake Natural Reserve. The Bayanbulak Grassland is the second largest grassland in China being known for rich grass, numerous flocks of sheep and varied plants. The Swan Lake is located in this grassland. Actually, it is made of a group of small lakes. You could go up to the Bird Watch Platform built there to appreciate the splendid scenery of the swans, lakes, mountains, clouds, and blue sky.

4 . Southeast Asia is well-known for its colorful natural and historical attractions. Check out these four man-made impressive sites that are always attracting large tourists.

Golden Bridge, Vietnam

High up on Ba Na hills near Da Nang in Vietnam sits a pair of giant hands designed to look like the hands of God pulling out a strip of gold from the land. The 150-metre Golden Bridge, just opened in June, rises more than 1,400 metres above sea level and offers spectacular views of the surrounding area.

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore

Futuristic-looking giant trees and a man-made forest under a glass dome (穹顶) are part of this multi-award winning destination that opened in 2012.The giant super trees are between 9 and 16 storeys tall and you can take a walk to enjoy the view from above. A short walk away, youll come across the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest.

Statue of Lord Murugan, Batu Caves, Malaysia

Just 12 kilometres from the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, the statue of Lord Murugan, located at the Sri Murugan Perumal Kovil at the foot of Batu Caves, was completed in 2006 and stands a little over 42 metres tall. There are three limestone (石灰岩) caves in the area. Visitors have to scale 272 steps in order to reach the entrance of the caves.

Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, Brunei

Named after the 28th sultan of Brunei, the grand mosque was completed in 1958.The impressive building is surrounded by an artificial lagoon, where a copy of a 16th century royal ship is docked at the end of a marble bridge.

6 . Holidays matter. They are a chance to step away from everyday life and reconnect with the people we love; a time to relax, to be the real us, or indeed to be whoever we want to be. And once the sand has been washed from the toes, holidays can leave us with a suitcase of life-long happy memories.

Yet today in the UK at least 1.46 million families can’t afford a single day out together, let alone a holiday night away from home. Millions of British children this year won’t get to paddle (划船) in the sea, or build a sandcastle. Nothing to report when they return to school in September. No happy memories to help them improve their learning and behaviour.

That’s why the Family Holiday Association (FHA) exists. It is the only national charity that devotes itself to helping struggling families enjoy precious time together. Many are dealing with severe illness, poverty, disability, poor mental health and so on. They are referred to the Association. This work is often done by the professionals such as teachers, social workers, and doctors.

The Family Holiday Association was founded 43 years ago by Pat and Joan Laurance, who were unemployed with a young, sick child, living in a single room. A friend offered them a week in a flat on the Essex coast in return for cat-sitting. They fed the cat. They walked on the bench. They laughed and paddled.

And guess what? After a few days of enjoying fun they came home with new-found energy to face whatever life might throw at them. The Laurances determined that other struggling families should also gain the benefits of a simple holiday and the charity was born. Since then more than 120,000 parents and children have been able to enjoy a break happily, usually a few days by the British seaside.

7 . Rumination（深思）is a sleep—blocker because it keeps your mind awakened, especially in bed, when it’s dark and quiet.     1     Your brain’s job is to strengthen information and build new synapses（突触）by digging up moments and memories from your day, even the things that upset you.

The best time to deal with worrying is during the day when you have important things to do and don’t have time to get caught up in mental cycles for hours and hours.     2    

Set aside 15 minutes during the mid—to late—afternoon just for yourself. Once the timer starts, give yourself the freedom to worry about one topic at a time. Think of it as a to—do list that you go through one by one, except what you’re checking off are topics you feel the most anxious about.

If you find yourself worrying during the day, tell yourself: “Look, I just need to put off this to the next emotional worry time.”     3     “I have this scheduled for tomorrow.” Do this two to three times a week until your rumination at night slowly starts to fade.

On a piece of paper, create two columns labeled as “Problem” and “Solution”. Come up with a short list of current problems you’re dealing with. Focus in particular on what you’re likely to ruminate about tonight.

    4     Remember, the goal is to make out a plan for how to get started with actionable steps for tomorrow, or within the next few days. You are not solving it completely.

Then fold the paper up and put it next to your bed. Say to yourself, “I have a plan.”     5     It frees your mind from puzzling over them at night.

8 . Given the extremely unpleasant heatwaves of this summer, being green and good to the planet feels more urgent than ever. The actions of our governments and cities, who have the power to make a great dent in the climate crisis, are important.

Now, there are plenty of cities that are still failing to effectively take action in the climate emergency. But others are becoming successful quickly—like, for instance, the winners of two of the European Union’s most famous green cities awards: European Green Capital and European Green Leaf.

Both of the awards recognize not just what the green—stuffed cities have already achieved, but also what they’ve got planned for the future. There’s only one European Green Capital winner per year, while the yearly European Green Leaf recognizes the environmental achievements of two smaller EU cities.

And now the winners of those two awards have finally been announced. European Green Capital in 2024 will be Valencia in southern Spain, which defeated the Sardinian city of Cagliari in the final.

Valencia says proudly Turia park—the largest urban（城市的）park in Europe—has obviously increased its green infrastructure（基础设施）polices in recent years. As well as being Green Capital 2024, Valencia will take home £350,000 to put towards green policies. (2023’s winner is Tallinn, Estonia)

The Green Leaf award, meanwhile, has been won by the Danish city of Elsinore and Velenje, the fifth—largest city in Slovenia. The two winners of the Green Leaf will get £75,000 to fund local green efforts.

For the separate awards, each city had to present their ideas to a judging group. The winners were announced at a ceremony in Grenoble (this year’s European Green Capital) last week.

So even if you don’t care about EU medals. it’s very much worth visiting all these cities to find out all the cool stuff they’re doing to save the world, hit by hit.

10 . If you need a reason to treat yourself to a short break this autumn, one of the latest exhibitions is sure to inspire you. The exhibitions follow a path of time and subject with your tastes.

Kunsthistorisches-Vienna

2 November 2022-13 January 2023

To mark the 450th anniversary of one of the greatest painters. Vienne will host the world’s first exhibition for Bruegel this autumn.

Three nights’ price from £795, saving £208 at the Grand Hotel in November and December

◆Includes entrance to the Kunsthistorisches Museum

Mauritshuis-The Hague

11 November 2022-6 January 2023

Peaking in the 18th century, British landowners enthusiastically collected Dutch paintings to display in their country houses. This unique exhibition brings together some of the finest masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age.

Three nights’ price from £876, staying at the Des Indes Hotel

◆Includes entrance to the Mauritshuis Museum

Doge’s Palace-Venice

31 September 2022-6 January 2023

Celebrating 500 years since the birth of the Venetian painter Jacopo Tintoretto, the Doge’s Palace has brought together 50 paintings from New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Vienna and Berlin here, still visible on the wall of the main hall.

Three nights’ price from £859, staying at the American Dinesen Hotel

◆Includes water taxi transfers and entrance to the Doge’s Palace.

Uffizi Gallery-Florence

December 2022-20 January 2023

To mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, his Codex Leicester ,containing sketches(素描)and notes on water and the environment, has been loaned from the personal collection of Bill Gates.

Three nights’ price from £723, saving £136 at the Deli Orafi Hotel in December

◆Includes entrance to the Uffizi Gallery