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Traveler and Photo District News are currently hosting our annual World in Focus Photo Contest, and this year we’re letting readers preview the submissions and vote for their favorites.
Each week, we’re putting a new batch of images up on our website.
Here’s today’s pic:

This photo, “She Dreams of Riding Horses,” was submitted by Elizabeth Griffin. The caption reads that the little girl is “riding her grandmother’s pony at Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico.” That’s one massive pony, and we can’t help but think it calls for a caption contest. Ready? Go!

Sziasztok, City Lovers!

The city that stole our heart today is Budapest, Hungary, shared with us by Carolyn Bánfalvi, a travel writer and award-winning culinary guidebook author (Food Wine Budapest and The Food and Wine Lover’s Guide to Hungary are her titles), who writes about the city at Chew.hu, a Hungarian food blog. And remarkably, when she’s not doing all that, she’s giving culinary tours of the city with her husband.

Want to see your city on IT? Copy and paste our list of fill-in-the-blank questions
into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to
IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if you’re still waiting for us to
feature yours, fear not! We’re going to keep posting as long as we keep getting them (please include photos and links!). You can find the entire collection of city-lovers here.

Budapest is My City

When I crave Chinese food I always go Wang Mester Konyhája.

To escape the summer heat I head to Margit Island to swim or picnic in the shade.

If I want to find hidden treasure I go to the Ecseri flea market and browse the antiques/junk/kitsch.

For complete quiet, I can hide away at the beautiful Ervin Szabó Public Library in the eighth district.

If you have to order one thing off the menu from Horgásztanya it has to be Halászlé (a fisherman’s soup).

Bortársaság is my one-stop shop for great wine.
Locals know to skip the touristy Váci utca shopping street and check
the monthly WAMP market (which features local designers) instead.

When I’m feeling cash-strapped I go for lunch at an étkezde (Hungarian diner).

For a huge splurge I go Bock Bisztró.

Photo ops in my city include the Danube panorama and the best vantage points are from up high, like Castle Hill or the Citadel.

If my city were a celebrity it’d be Elizabeth Taylor .

The most random thing about my city is that the mummified hand of Saint
István (an important relic of Hungarian Christianity) is paraded around
the basilica every year on August 20th to celebrate his feast day, a
national holiday.

In my city, an active day outdoors involves hiking, swimming, or kayaking.

My city’s best museum is The Museum of Fine Arts at Heroes Square.

My favorite jogging/walking route is around Margit Island.

For a night of folk dancing, go to Fonó. Or, for live music, check out A38 or Gödör.

To find out what’s going on at night and on the weekends, read Time Out, Funzine, or www.caboodle.hu.

You can tell a lot about my city from hanging out at the food markets.

You can tell if someone is from my city if they scowl at you on the street, but then open up when you attempt to talk to them in Hungarian.

In the spring you should stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables at the market.

In the summer you should ride the BKV boat along the Danube and get off at Romaifürdo to have dinner before heading back to town.

In the fall you should take the chairlift (libego) up and explore the Buda hills.

In the winter you should soak in the hot outdoor pool at the Szécheny thermal bath house, preferably when the snow is falling.

A hidden gem in my city is the Kerepesi cemetery.

For a great breakfast joint try the strudel, still warm from the over, at the Central Market (along with a strong presszó coffee) .

Don’t miss the wine festival in the Castle in September.

Just outside my city, you can visit vineyards in Etyek.  

The best way to see my city is on foot.

If my city were a pet it would be a Hungarian Vizsla: an excellent companion who is lively and fearless, yet affectionate and gentle mannered.

If I didn’t live in a city, I’d live in a restored old peasant house in the Tokaj wine region.

The best book about my city is The Paul Street Boys by Ferenc Molnár.

When I think about my city, the song that comes to mind is anything by Zoltan Kodály and Béla Bartók.

If you have kids, you won’t want to miss the puppet theater or the Palace of Miracles at Millenáris.

Airplanes flying under the Danube bridges at the Red Bull Air Race could only happen in my city.

My city should be featured on your cover or website because there is no other riverfront view like it in the world. Combine the green hills in Buda with the gritty downtown neighborhoods, throw in some elegant Parisian-style architecture and some big city buzz, and you’ve got Budapest.

Photos: Catherine Karnow for National Geographic Traveler. To see more images from this Budapest gallery, click here.

The Swedes are ahead of the game when it comes to exploring the outdoors and taking advantage of their natural surroundings. In the northern city of Sundsvall where I’ve been staying the past few weeks, I have yet to meet a locals who don’t know how to pick their own berries and mushrooms from the surrounding forests to prepare into jams, wines, or butters in their own homes. And when I say everyone, I mean even the city-dwellers (although the younger generation may not admit it).

But it makes sense: In Sweden, all are encouraged to maximize usage of the outdoors under a common law privilege called the “right of public access,” or as the Swedes call it, “Allemansrätten.” You won’t find a “No Trespassing” sign anywhere around here: Even as a tourist I can wander from the main trail onto someone else’s property to pick blueberries, or if I’m driving the country roads I can pull over wherever I see fit to pitch a tent for the night, so long as I follow the few simple guidelines.  For example, I can only use branches lying on the ground for a fire and cannot break a live limb, and I should maintain a distance of 70 meters from any house in view – it’s really just common sense stuff.

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For many people, Southeast Asia conjures up images of ancient stone temples, vibrant colors, spicy cuisine and warm, musky rains breathing life into lotus ponds.

But imagine instead hiking for miles shin-deep in mud, fending off bloodsucking leeches and existing on a diet of tarantulas and cockroaches, while risking infection, heatstroke and malaria. Not exactly your typical camping trip. For most people, such an excursion would sound treacherous and even insane, but for young herpetologist Perry Wood Jr.  it’s simply a passionate pursuit of knowledge in the name of science.

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[The Gray family's] station wagon odyssey from sea to sea totaled 17,000 miles, counting side trips. Near the village of State Road, Delaware, the author’s family chats with a State trooper. From the July 1961 issue of National Geographic Magazine, by Ralph Gray/NGS.

Cross-country road trips are often seen as a rite of passage for young travelers. Since our September issue covers the shorter Drives of a Lifetime, we delved into the NG archives to see if an article had been written on the cross-country experience–and we struck gold. Back in 1961, Ralph Gray wrote a 60+ page article for National Geographic on his family’s road trip across the United States, from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California, along Route 40. Here’s an excerpt from the article, titled “From Sea to Shining Sea”:

Ahead of us a continent of geography and an epic of mankind awaited exploration. U.S. 40, a concrete cummerbund girding America’s sleek midriff, would be our guide.

Driving from sea to shining sea, we would rub elbows and perhaps bumpers with people in four of the most populous states–California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio–and in the second smallest, Delaware.

We would relive history in Maryland, see steel mills in West Virginia, and visit fat farms in Indiana. Missouri’s cities would rise above her rivers, and horizontal Kansas would end in vertical Colorado. From the vast emptiness of Utah and Nevada we would plunge into the anthill activity of Pacific coast cities.

U.S. Route 40 was an extension of the first federally funded national road, which led from Cumberland over the Alleghenies to Ohio; at the time, it was the only road leading over the mountains. Congress appropriated money for the project in 1806, and the highway was completed in 1852, ending in Vandalia, Illinois. It traversed 609 miles and cost $7 million. According to Gray, “when the Bureau of Public Roads set up the Federal system of numbered highways in the mid-1920′s, the National Road became a part of U.S. 40. By coincidence, this coast-to-coast route now crosses and recrosses the 40th parallel.” Today, Route 40 ends near Park City, Utah, at Interstate 80.

Have you been on a cross-country road trip? What route did you take?