The New York Times Explorer. City & Towns

Urban Adventures. Journeys of discovery into the heart of the city

Whether you choose an itinerary-free ramble through Lisbon’s cobblestoned streets or an eye-opening bike tour of Tokyo’s diverse neighborhoods, pack your bags and share in the discoveries of the Cities & Towns edition of The New York Times Explorer. Join the writers and photographers of the Times as they guide you to dream destinations where the past and the present collide, and even the most familiar locales never cease to surprise.

Whether you choose an itinerary-free ramble through Lisbon’s cobblestoned streets or an eye-opening bike tour of Tokyo’s diverse neighborhoods, pack your bags and share in the discoveries of The New York Times Explorer: Cities & Towns. This volume of the paper’s Explorer series with TASCHEN tells the stories of dream destinations where the past and the present collide and even the most familiar locales never cease to surprise.

Fall under the spell of Sarajevo with Reif Larsen, sip mezcal in a revived Mexico City with Luisita López Torregrosa, or dare to pilot a boat through the Venice lagoon with Tony Perrottet. The Times writers are your guides, and the wealth of color photographs that accompany their writing capture thriving urban centers and less-traveled towns, places where culture reigns and life is lived out loud.

The Explorer series takes travel beyond the obvious with adventures in exotic places and new perspectives in familiar ones, all based on the distinguished travel journalism in The New York Times. Each journey features a first-person narrative and postcard-perfect photography that capture the unique personality of the destination — as well as practical information to help get you on your way. Edited by Barbara Ireland, whose 36 Hours travel series has been a TASCHEN best seller, the Explorer series is available in four volumes: Beaches, Islands & Coasts; Mountains, Deserts & Plains; Cities & Towns; and Road, Rail & Trail.

The editor

Barbara Ireland, a writer and editor based in upstate New York, is a former deputy Travel editor and deputy Op-Ed page editor at The New York Times. While on the Times staff, she commissioned and edited many travel articles and wrote a few herself. She is a graduate of Cornell University and was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University.