London, England

Few cities balance the old and the new quite like London. Double-decker buses rumble past buildings that have stood since before the printing press. The changing of the guard still unfolds outside Buckingham Palace with the same ceremony it has for centuries, while a few Tube stops away, Shoreditch's street art and pop-up restaurants define what's next in food and culture. The Thames winds through the middle of it all, dividing a city of endlessly distinct neighborhoods — the polished elegance of Kensington, the literary hush of Bloomsbury, the market chaos of Camden, the financial glass towers of Canary Wharf. London is a city built by empire and immigration alike, and that mix shows in everything: in its world-class museums (most of them free), in its food scene, borrowed and reinvented from every corner of the globe, and in the sheer number of languages you'll hear on a single Tube ride. It rains more than it doesn't, the sun sets early in winter, and none of that seems to slow the city down for a second.