🧭 Popular Destinations

Some places are worth a trip all on their own. Our country guides cover the whole country — these zoom in on one piece of it: an island, a city, a stretch of coast. The honest version, like always — what's worth it, what's overrated, and whether it's your kind of trip.

Albania

Berat → Stacked white Ottoman houses climbing both banks of a green river to a castle people still live inside — a thousand windows, and Albania's best wine at the foot of a holy mountain.

Gjirokastër → A hillside of grey stone and slate roofs under a vast Ottoman castle — tower-house mansions, a Cold War bunker below, and the town that raised both a dictator and a Booker-winning novelist.

The Albanian Riviera → The Mediterranean's last cheap turquoise water — pebble coves under bare mountains, four islets you can swim to, and a Roman city where the coast runs out.

Theth & the Accursed Mountains → Braided glacial rivers, a stone church under the Accursed Mountains, and the country's great hut-to-hut walk over an 1,800-metre pass.

Argentina

Bariloche & the Lake District → Glacier-blue lakes, a main street full of chocolate shops, and mountains you ski in winter and paddle in summer.

El Chaltén & El Calafate → Calving glaciers, the granite spires of Fitz Roy, and trekking that starts at the edge of town.

Mendoza → Malbec at altitude, the Andes on the skyline, and Aconcagua you watch rather than climb.

Peninsula Valdes → Southern right whales from the shore, a million penguins, and orcas that beach themselves to hunt.

Salta & the Northwest → Fourteen-colour mountains, salt flats at 4,000 metres, and empanadas worth the altitude headache.

Ushuaia → Old prison town, Antarctic gateway, and the park where the Pan-American Highway runs out of continent.

Australia

Great Ocean Road → A war-memorial road carved by returning soldiers, eight limestone Apostles, and rainforest hiding behind the cliffs.

Ningaloo Reef → A World Heritage reef you snorkel straight off the sand — plus whale sharks in season and red gorges behind the turquoise.

Red Centre → Red desert, a monolith that changes colour by the hour, and Anangu country you\'re a guest on.

Tasmania → Glacier-carved wilderness, the most provocative museum in the country, and whisky that beat Scotland.

Whitsundays → Seventy-four tropical islands, the silica sand of Whitehaven, and a reef you only reach by boat.

Austria

Bad Gastein → A faded Habsburg spa town falling down a gorge around a waterfall — half derelict, half reborn as an alpine design-hotel scene.

Hallstatt → A village of 700 people and a million visitors, wedged between a mirror lake and the oldest salt mine on earth.

Innsbruck → The city where a medieval old town sits under a 2,000-metre ridge you can ride to before your coffee's cold.

Salzburg → A baroque stage-set between Mozart and the Sound of Music — a hilltop fortress, a UNESCO old town, and monks who pour their own beer.

The Wachau → A UNESCO stretch of the Danube between two baroque abbeys — terraced Grüner Veltliner, apricot everything, and a bike path with no hills to speak of.

Zell am See – Kaprun → Swim a warm mountain lake in the morning and stand on a 3,000-metre glacier by lunch, with Austria's highest road in between.

Canada

Banff & Lake Louise → Glacier-fed turquoise lakes, golden larches in late September, and a national park you have to share.

Newfoundland → Ten-thousand-year-old icebergs, Viking ruins, and a rum you earn by kissing a cod.

Nova Scotia → Ocean-floor tides, the Cabot Trail, fiddle music in church halls, and lobster off the wharf.

Okanagan Valley → Warm swimmable lakes, a serious wine valley, and Canada\'s only desert — in one sunny interior strip.

Prince Edward Island → Red cliffs, the warmest saltwater in Canada, Anne\'s farmhouse, and oysters by the dozen.

Vancouver Island → Cold-water surf, eight-hundred-year-old rainforest, gray whales, and afternoon tea — one very long island.

China

Chengdu & Sichuan → Pandas at breakfast, numbing hotpot, slow teahouse afternoons — and a giant cliff Buddha up the road.

Guilin & Yangshuo → The limestone-tower river of every Chinese ink painting — cruise it, then cycle out the back into the rice fields.

Huangshan & the Huizhou Villages → Granite peaks in a sea of cloud, and the white-walled Ming villages at their feet — the landscape Chinese painting was copying.

Xi’an → An 8,000-strong buried clay army, a city wall you cycle, and Silk Road street food — China's old capital, still eating like it.

Yunnan → Cobbled minority old towns, a Tibetan monastery at altitude, and a two-day trek down one of earth's deepest gorges.

Zhangjiajie → A forest of sandstone pillars lost in the cloud — the peaks that floated into Avatar, made real.

Costa Rica

Arenal & Monteverde → A volcano that stopped erupting, a forest that lives in a cloud, and three hours of bad road between them.

Guanacaste & Nicoya → Dry forest that drops its leaves like an autumn, surf that works all year, and the most expensive coast in the country.

Puerto Viejo & the Caribbean Coast → Coconut rice, Jamaican-descended calypso, and the one coast where September is the sunny month.

The Osa Peninsula & Corcovado → The wildest corner of Costa Rica, four hours from anywhere, and the only place you'll be told to bring rubber boots.

Croatia

Hvar → Lavender hills, wine off vertical slopes, a yacht-set harbour — and the sunniest rock in the Adriatic.

Istria → Hilltop truffle towns, a Roman arena, and olive oil that out-scores Tuscany — Croatia that feels Italian.

Korčula → A walled medieval town, pine down to the sea, and two white wines grown nowhere else on earth.

Vis → Greek wine roots, one fishing village, and a ferry long enough to keep the crowds on Hvar.

France

Annecy → A canal old town on one of the cleanest lakes in Europe — turquoise water you can actually swim in, and a flat bike path all the way round.

Briançon → The highest town in the EU, walled by Vauban's star-forts, in the sunniest corner of the French Alps — history and 300 days of sun.

Chamonix → The birthplace of mountaineering, under the highest peak in the Alps — a cable car to 3,842 m and a glacier you can watch shrinking.

Corsica → Mountains that drop straight into the sea, Genoese watchtowers, and a kitchen that refuses to be French.

French Riviera → A coastal train linking Nice, Monaco and Menton, perched stone villages, and the most expensive stretch of sea in the Med.

Les Trois Vallées → The world's largest linked ski area — 600 km of runs across three valleys, from oligarch Courchevel to snow-sure Val Thorens, on one pass.

Megève → The elegant Alps — a Rothschild-built village of cobbled squares and horse-drawn sleighs, with Mont Blanc in the window and a food scene to match.

Provence → Lavender plateaus, Roman arenas, hilltop stone villages, and the hard clear light that pulled Van Gogh and Cézanne south.

Évian & Yvoire → The French shore of Lake Geneva — a belle-époque spa town at the source of the famous water, and a medieval flower-village on the water.

Greece

Corfu → Venetian old town, olive-green hills, and food that tastes more Italian than Greek.

Crete → Mountains, gorges, ferry-only beaches, and the food and raki that made the Cretan diet famous.

Mykonos → Beach-club glamour, a whitewashed town that parties till dawn, and ancient Delos a boat ride away.

Rhodes → A lived-in medieval walled town, Lindos on its cliff, and a history of Knights, Ottomans and Italians.

Santorini → Caldera cliffs, black volcanic beaches, basket-grown wine — and the most crowded sunset in Greece.

Iceland

Golden Circle → Two drifting continents, the geyser that named the rest, and the loop everyone drives in a day.

Iceland South Coast → Waterfall after waterfall, black sand, and glacier ice that washes up on the beach - Iceland's greatest-hits coast.

North Iceland → Volcanic north - mud pots, whale bays, and the Diamond Circle without the south-coast crowds.

Reykjanes → Lava fields, boiling mud, and a rift between two continents — 20 minutes from your gate.

Snæfellsnes → Glacier-volcano, lava caves, lifting stones on a black beach — the whole of Iceland shrunk into one drivable loop.

Westfjords → Iceland's remotest corner - gravel-road fjords, a bridal-veil waterfall, and puffins that don't fly off.

Indonesia

Bali → Rice terraces, surf breaks, temple smoke — and a south coast that forgot to stay quiet.

Lombok → An active volcano, uncrowded surf beaches, and three car-free islands a fast boat from Bali.

Italy

Amalfi Coast → Vertical lemon-terraced villages, a corkscrew coast road, and coves you climb a hundred steps down to find.

Cinque Terre → Five car-free fishing villages stitched to a cliff — pesto from the source, vineyard terraces, and crowds that vanish by evening.

Lake Como → Villa gardens above a deep Alpine lake — and ferries that beat the road every single time.

Sardinia → The Mediterranean\'s clearest water, prehistoric stone towers, and an interior that quietly outlives the rest of Europe.

Sicily → Loud markets, west-coast couscous, and cities that don\'t pretend to be tidy — Italy in name only.

The Dolomites → Pale limestone towers that glow pink at sunset, over a half-German Italy of speck, knödel and via ferrata.

Tuscany → Renaissance cities, cypress-lined hill country, blood-rare steak, and more world-famous wine than one region needs.

Japan

Fuji Five Lakes → Mt Fuji reflected in five lakes, the trail to its summit, and Yamanashi\'s pumpkin-noodle comfort food.

Hokkaido → Japan\'s far north — powder winters, a six-week green summer, and the Ainu land Tokyo renamed in 1869.

Kyoto → A thousand years of temples, tea, and tofu — quiet at dawn, shoulder-to-shoulder by ten.

Nagano & the Northern Alps → Post towns the shoguns walked, a car-free alpine valley, and monkeys who beat you to the hot spring.

Okinawa → Kerama-blue water, Ryukyu kingdom culture, pork-and-awamori cooking — tropical Japan closer to Taipei than to Tokyo.

Setouchi → Underground Ando museums, a Kusama pumpkin on a fishing pier, and six islands you cross by bike.

Jordan

Amman & Jerash → A capital with almost no old town, and a Roman city an hour north with almost nothing missing.

Petra → A city carved by traders who got rich on frankincense — and the two-day version is the only honest one.

The Dead Sea & the King\'s Highway → The lowest road on Earth, a Crusader castle, and a sea that has dropped forty metres since your parents' honeymoon.

Wadi Rum → Not a sea of dunes — a valley floor with mountains dropped onto it, and the silence is the point.

Mexico

Baja California Sur → Cactus desert dropping into two different seas — gray whales that come to you, the world's healthiest reef, and Cabo as the loud 5%.

Oaxaca Coast → Board-snapping surf at Zicatela, sea turtles at Mazunte, and mezcal straight from the palenque.

Riviera Nayarit → Boho surf towns on Banderas Bay, a hidden beach you swim into, and humpbacks every winter.

Yucatán → Flooded caves, Maya pyramids, and a cuisine locals will tell you isn\'t really "Mexican" — on a peninsula where the water runs underground.

Montenegro

Bay of Kotor → A fjord-shaped bay of walled medieval towns, a Baroque island built on sunken ships, and a mountain wall that drops straight into the Adriatic.

Durmitor → Eighteen glacial lakes under bare limestone peaks, and Europe's deepest canyon carving the park's northern edge.

Morocco

Chefchaouen & the Rif → A blue mountain town two hours from Europe, with waterfalls and a national park behind it.

Fes & Meknes → The oldest working medina in the Arab world, a quieter imperial city beside it, and Roman mosaics still lying where they were laid.

Marrakech & the High Atlas → A thousand-year-old medina, a mountain range an hour away, and a city that negotiates for a living.

Merzouga & the Sahara → A two-day drive over the Atlas past mud-brick kasbahs, ending at a 150-metre wall of orange sand.

New Zealand

Abel Tasman → Golden-sand beaches you reach on foot or by water taxi — no road to the bays in between.

Bay of Islands → Subtropical sailing among 144 islands, the treaty that founded a country, and New Zealand\'s warmest, most historic corner.

Central Otago → Pinot Noir, an 1862 gold rush, and New Zealand\'s driest, most almost-continental corner.

Fiordland & Queenstown → Two fiords, eight metres of rain, three Great Walks you book like concert tickets — and Queenstown as the door in.

Rotorua → Geysers, boiling mud, hāngī steam, and a sulphur smell the locals stopped noticing.

Norway

Bergen and the Fjords → The gateway to Norway's deepest fjords — Bryggen's wharves, the Flåm railway, and the Nærøyfjord by silent boat.

Geirangerfjord → A Unesco fjord, eleven hairpins up Trollstigen, and a cliff-farm the cruise ships never reach.

Lofoten → Arctic peaks dropping straight into the sea, red rorbuer on stilts, and the cod that built every village.

Preikestolen and Lysefjorden → Pulpit Rock from the top, the Lysefjord from below, and the wild bits in between.

Senja → Norway's wildest scenic road — Segla, Tungeneset, and Arctic beaches without Lofoten's queue.

Svalbard → The real High Arctic at 78°N — polar bears, a sealed coal mine, and months without a sunrise.

Trolltunga and Hardangerfjorden → Norway's most-photographed rock, a ten-hour hike to earn it, and a cider fjord waiting below.

Tromso → Aurora, whales up the fjord, and a cable car to the snowline - from a city that stays up late.

Peru

Arequipa & the Colca Canyon → A white volcanic city under three cones, and a canyon twice the depth of the Grand Canyon two hours north.

Cusco & the Sacred Valley → Inca stonework holding up colonial Cusco, a valley of terraces below it, and the ruin everyone flies in for.

Huaraz & the Cordillera Blanca → The highest tropical mountain range on earth, a scruffy trekking town beneath it, and glacial lakes an unreasonable shade of blue.

Paracas, Huacachina & Nazca → Desert running straight into the Pacific — sea lions, sand dunes, pisco bodegas and lines drawn for someone who was never coming.

Philippines

Bohol → Chocolate Hills, the world's smallest primate, and dive reefs off a beach that's louder than it looks.

Boracay → Four kilometres of white sand, a nightlife it has reined in, and rules that made the beach nice again.

Coron → WWII wrecks to dive, a jade lake behind a limestone wall, and a town that's pure base camp.

El Nido → Limestone islands, hidden lagoons you kayak into, and a scruffy town that's only the launchpad.

Siargao → A surf reef with a boardwalk, coconut roads on a scooter, and tidal rock pools you time to the moon.

Siquijor → Folk healers, waterfall rope swings, and a coast road you loop in an afternoon on a scooter.

Portugal

Algarve → Sandstone cliffs, sea caves, charcoal sardines, and a wild surf coast in the west.

Azores → Crater lakes, whales offshore, and a stew the volcanic earth cooks — across nine green Atlantic islands.

Douro Valley → Terraced vineyards falling to a slow river, port at the source, and one of Europe\'s great train rides.

Madeira → Volcanic peaks, water-channel trails into the laurel forest, and almost no beach to speak of.

Slovenia

Lake Bled & the Julian Alps → A glacial lake with a church on an island, rowed to by boatmen who inherit the trade — under the Alps that put a mountain on the flag.

The Soča Valley → A river too green to look real, a white-water valley, and a First World War front with a three-Michelin-star kitchen at the bend.

South Africa

Cape Winelands → Cape Dutch manor houses, French Huguenot valleys, and world-class wine at prices that feel like a mistake.

Drakensberg → Basalt cliffs, 3,000-year-old San rock paintings, the highest pub in Africa, and the tallest waterfall on the continent.

Garden Route → A forest-and-coast drive on the N2 — gorges, lagoons, oysters, and the world's highest bungee.

Kruger & Greater Kruger → Big Five bushveld done two ways — a self-drive day permit, or a private lodge with a tracker.

Wild Coast → Rondavel hills, the Hole in the Wall, and the one coast South Africa never paved over.

Zululand → Turtle beaches, the world's southernmost coral reefs, and a warm Zulu coast where hippos walk the streets after dark.

Spain

Gran Canaria → Desert dunes, pine peaks, a coffee valley, and a working Atlantic city — on one island you can cross in ninety minutes.

Ibiza → Two islands sharing one name — hippie coves up north, clubs that don't quit down south.

Mallorca → Mediterranean coast, mountain hiking, and a food scene people don't talk about enough.

Menorca → White coves to the south, a wild wind-blown north, and stone tables older than Rome.

Tenerife → Spain's highest volcano, a laurel forest in the clouds, volcanic wine, and mojo on everything.

Sri Lanka

Arugam Bay & the East Coast → The half of the island that's sunny when the rest of it isn't, and a right-hand point break that made a fishing village famous.

Galle & the South Coast → A Dutch fort with the sea on three sides, blue whales an hour offshore, and a stilt-fishing photograph that's been staged since about 2005.

Kandy, Ella & the Hill Country → A train that takes seven hours to cover 140 kilometres, and every one of them is the point.

The Cultural Triangle → A rock fortress a king built out of guilt, two abandoned capitals, and a fig tree that's been watered daily since 288 BC.

Sweden

Bohuslän → Ice-smoothed granite, langoustine off the creel, oyster banks, and cold swims chased with a wood-fired sauna.

Dalarna → Red cottages round a meteorite lake, the world's loudest maypole, and the little horse Sweden sells itself with.

Gotland → A walled medieval capital, limestone sea stacks, and food \u{2014} lamb, saffron pancake, truffle \u{2014} worth the ferry.

Stockholm Archipelago → Thirty thousand islands reached by public ferry — granite rocks, red cottages, and a sauna at the end of the jetty.

Swedish Lapland → Northern lights, midnight sun, a town moving east to dodge its own mine, and a bed of river ice.

Åre → Sweden's biggest ski mountain, Scandinavia's biggest bike park, and après-ski that runs later than the lifts.

Switzerland

Interlaken → A launchpad town between two impossibly blue lakes — where people jump out of planes in the morning and are up a glacier by lunch.

Lauterbrunnen & Grindelwald → A U-shaped valley of 72 waterfalls with car-free villages balanced on the cliff edges, under the north face of the Eiger.

Lucerne → A medieval town on a fjord-shaped lake, where the famous mountains are a paddle-steamer and a cog railway away.

St. Moritz → The valley where winter tourism was invented on a bet — champagne climate, a frozen lake you race horses on, and a quieter Engadin behind the glitz.

Ticino → The Italian side of Switzerland — palm-lined lakes, a river so clear it looks fake, and Merlot poured in a stone grotto, all still running on Swiss time.

Zermatt → The car-free village under the mountain on the Toblerone — glacier skiing in July, and electric taxis for rush hour.

Thailand

Koh Lanta → Long quiet beaches, a sea-gypsy old town, and the diving the rest of the Andaman envies — the island that never sped up.

Koh Samui → A coconut island in the Gulf — its own weather, a fishing-village heart, and 42 islands offshore.

Krabi → Limestone cliffs out of the sea, boat-only beaches, and the rock climbing the world flies in for.

Phuket → A Sino-Portuguese old town, a quiet north coast, and southern Thai food worth the heat.

Turkey

Cappadocia → Ten million years of volcanic ash, carved into churches, cellars and hotel rooms — and a sky that only sometimes holds the balloons.

Ephesus & Pamukkale → A marble city that lost its sea, and a hillside of white calcium terraces you walk on barefoot — both of them best before nine in the morning.

Istanbul & the Bosphorus → A strait with a city on both sides of it, two continents twenty minutes apart, and a ferry that costs less than the tea you drink on it.

Kaçkar Mountains & Black Sea → Two thousand millimetres of rain a year, tea terraces to the waterline, and wooden hamlets at 2,200 metres above the cloud.

Lycian Way & Antalya → 540 kilometres of red-and-white paint on limestone, a mountain that has been burning since before the Greeks named it, and a theatre with pine trees growing through the seats.

Turquoise Coast → Drowned limestone mountains, water that really is that colour, and Lycian tombs cut into the cliff above the fish restaurant.

United States

Big Island →

Florida Keys →

Grand Canyon →

Kauai →

Moab →

Napa Valley →

Sedona →

Yellowstone & Grand Teton →

Zion →

Vietnam

Ha Giang → A three-day motorbike loop to Vietnam's far north — hairpin passes above the Nho Quế gorge, and a karst plateau that blooms pink each November.

Ha Long Bay → Limestone towers you sleep among, squid cake pounded by hand, and a quieter bay behind the famous one.

Hoi An → A yellow-walled river port of lantern nights, cao lầu you can't get elsewhere, and a suit made in two days.

Ninh Bình → Karst towers over the rice fields, sampans rowed with the feet, and a tenth-century capital hidden between them.

Phú Quốc → Sunset beaches, snorkel islands off the south tip, and a forested north the building boom hasn't reached yet.

Sapa → Terraced valleys you walk down into, the Roof of Indochina by cable car, and hill-tribe villages the town forgot it was near.

More popular destinations are on the way — Spinny's out there, eating his way through the next one.

Photo by Mircea Brs on Pexels

Photo by Tobias Bjørkli on Pexels

Photo by Kampus Production on Pexels

You'll remember the trip. Not the toaster.

Ask people what they regret, and it's almost never the thing they didn't buy. It's the trip they kept pushing to “someday” — the place they meant to see for years. Things pile up at home and quietly stop mattering. A few days somewhere new tend to stay with you for the rest of your life.

So book it. Spinny will be right here when you get back — a little jealous, already wondering where you'll go next.