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Fab Four Tours: INDULGENCE

It's a little known secret of jetsetters, but calories don't count when traveling. It's true! If you don't believe us, ask Dr. Oz. And if you do, well, welcome to the lush life. When hitting up the Fab Four, there's practically an unending buffet of options for getting your eat and drink on whether you're craving haute cuisine, a divey hideout, plush cocktail bars, or megaclubs that romp till dawn.

Start off your culinary love affair in Copenhagen, when the Copenhagen Cooking Festival takes to the streets August 19–28. Part expo, part food fair, part restaurant week, and all kinds of delicious, you have the opportunity to taste the city's white-hot gastronomic landscape, especially its Michelin-starred headliners. But whatever time of the year, for our money, nothing beats a stop at Kiin Kiin, one of only two Thai restaurants in the world with a Michelin star (check out star chef Henrik Yde-Anderson's picks of his city here), and Noma, two-time "Best Restaurant in the World" winner for its innovative riffs on authentic Nordic cuisine (sweet shrimp with ground starfish "sand," anyone?). After your 12-course tasting menu, start with an Absolutely Fabulous cocktail (vodka, cranberry, and champagne, natch) at multipurpose, queer, hipster haunt Karriere or catch a live show at intimate Rust before dancing off the calories at the underground Dunkel, where the city's best electronic DJs keep things moving till late into the morn'. If you're looking to gay it up proper, weekend hop at Be Proud, the clubby anchor to the downtown Pisserenden area, famous for its hygge (Danish for "cozy") in all senses of the word.

Continue your carnival of consumption south across the Baltic in Berlin, where the once-bifurcated capital of Germany has bounced back as Europe's queer bohemian paradise, boasting not one but four gay nabes—Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, and Schöneberg—with a party for pretty much every pink proclivity. In Schöneberg, local produce and local talent are on display at the Winterfeldplatz Weekly Market, a good introduction to the current scene (often compared to Manhattan's West Village), while nearby Raststätte Gnadenbrot is a good intro to both Berlin's past (the restaurant dishes up former GDR faves) and its hipster future (it's modeled after a truck-stop diner on the autobahn). Come for the homoerotic gimmickry, stay for the home-cooked gastronomy! Meanwhile, Cookies Cream melds nightlife and noshing into quite possibly the hippest herbivore canteen on the planet (parmesan dumplings, mmm…) and, like ultra-now club Cookies, it adheres to the if-you-can't-find-it-you-weren't-meant-to-be-here entrance policy. Post-dinner, if it's Tuesday or Thursday, head next door to the separate-entranced club. If it's the second Saturday, head to Propaganda @ Goya, where a tasty mass of boy candy dances hard before finishing the night (a.k.a. starting the day at the acclaimed Berghain). For a more chill scene, Kreuzberg's latest haunt Südblock offers up a solid—and neighborhood-appropriately eclectic—slate of daily parties.

Across in Amsterdam, the nation's maritime history brings a rich stew of culinary influences, as well as that famous Dutch tolerance, readily evident in its inclusive nightlife. While there's still time, it's worth a detour to one of the city's famous "coffee houses"—tourists will be prohibited from entering by year's end—if only to unleash an even bigger appetite at De Kas. Dutch for "greenhouse," it takes farm-to-table dining to its logical end: meals served in an actual greenhouse with a rotating set menu featuring the freshest harvest of its own organic veggies. Seafood lovers can't miss Stork in the city's industrial north, where a former steel plant (one wall open to the vast Het IJ canal) is reclaimed as a restaurant dishing up simple but stunning preparations of the freshest North Sea catch, like toothsome soft shell crab. Scenesters flock to Lion Noir, where its French-Asian fusion cuisine and quality cocktail menu (a trendlet just taking hold) keep the place pumping. It doesn't hurt that it's smack in the middle of the gayest street in town: the bar-lined de Reguliersdwarsstraat. After the post-meal bar crawl, check the calendar and head to Club Up (first Saturday) or M.U.L.T.I.S.E.X.I., where trendy young polysexual thangs get their underground wild on. If it's old-school Amsterdam cruising you crave, the Cockring has been reborn at Fuxxx. ‘Nuff said.

By this time, you'll probably be in need of some new duds—that tight feeling? Your clothes shrunk in the wash, of course—and Zurich has just the place: Companys Outlet im Viadukt, a discounted fashion emporium at the hip new collection of restaurants, shops, and lounges set under reclaimed railway arches. If you've started this adventure earlier in the summer, pick up a Speedo or teasing pair of trunks for the Folies au Lac, a big open-air dance party right on the lovely lakeside. Otherwise, your best bet for action is to head to the banks of the River Limmat, where the terrace of the Rathaus Café fills with local gay rainmakers plotting their next move, which likely is to Cranberry Bar, where it seems the entire city congregates to find out what's on next. If you need some food to soak up that umpteenth "Schlampe" (a house specialty of vodka, peach, and passion fruit), you can't go wrong at Hiltl, the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Europe (since 1898). Another old-timer that still pulls them in with wisps of that "old Banker's Zurich" civility is Kronenhalle. Once a haunt for musicians, actors, and artists who paid for their Zürcher Geschnetzeltes (sliced veal in gravy) with artwork, it does indeed house a Picasso gazing down on your peas and a Miro meditating over your meal. If the wines by the glass are too lush, there's always November, when the Expovina Zürich Wine Fair rolls into town with 4,000 wines from 22 countries and five continents, all available for your tasting pleasure. Pröschtli to the Fab Four!