c all it Byzantium, Constantinople, The City on Seven Hills, The Door to Happiness – call it a history-buffed honeymooner’s dream come true. Apocryphally, the city’s location actually did come to Constantine in a prophetic dream. Legend or not, after centuries of ruling the roost as the centre of capital and culture, Istanbul bears this awesome, phantasmagoric quality. Now it’s your time to

s eychelles, like any decent tropical archipelago worth its weight in coral, thrives with havens of palm trees, splashy reefs and pristine strips of sand scant of tourist footprints. But this archipelago isn’t just one of the many, it is the many. Singlehandedly breathing sincerity into the phrase “in your dreams,” Seychelles, found east of Africa, is composed of more than one hundred reverie

b ora Bora – located in French Polynesia near Tahiti - may be one of the smallest of the Pacific islands, but it oozes with personality and love-appeal. Better known as a secluded paradise, or heaven-on-earth, Bora Bora offers a brand of deep sea romance only dreamed of in harlequin novels. Swim with the dolphins, sleep in a fish-bowl bungalow, hug a shark- or play it safe and just hug your honey

l angkawi, the ninety-nine-island archipelago off the northeast coast of Malaysia, doesn’t miss a utopian beat. Encompassing standard tropical island fair like turquoise waters, stick-free sand, lush scenery and eerie, character-giving caves, Langkawi’s going to hold you spellbound with its feet-stomping oddities: candle dances, deadly combat waltzes and storytelling sock hops. Seek escape from

c uba’s photogenic beauty can be as conventional and pamphlet-perfect as coral reefs, knockout beaches and limestone cliffs, or as offbeat and gallery-permissible as verdant tobacco fields, retro Chevy’s, and gaudy, polychromatic murals. Dip your freckled toes in both worlds, indulging in the conveyor-belted cocktails of resort-life, and the fearless pretty of a country so well-endowed with rad