Explore
Handpicked destinations. Every one worth the flight.
80 destinations
Best: May–June, September
The Amalfi Coast rewards those who accept its chaos: hairpin roads, impossible parking, and towns that cling to cliffs l…
Best: April–May, September
Amsterdam is a city best understood by bicycle — the canal rings, the Jordaan's brown cafés, the Rijksmuseum on a weekda…
Best: April–October
Past the tourist noise of Kuta, Bali offers something rarer: genuine spiritual atmosphere in Ubud's valleys, volcanic la…
Best: November–February
Bangkok is overwhelming in the best way — a megacity of golden temples, chaotic street markets, rooftop bars with absurd…
Best: May–June, September–October
Barcelona is Spain's most architecturally adventurous city — Gaudí's unfinished Sagrada Família still shocks after multi…
Best: March–May, September–November
Buenos Aires is grand, melancholic, and delicious. The city's European-style boulevards, world-class steakhouses, and ta…
Best: October–April
The Great Pyramid of Giza is 4,500 years old and still the largest stone structure ever built by human hands. Standing a…
Best: October–April
Cape Town stacks experiences on top of each other — Table Mountain at sunrise, a drive through the Winelands at noon, pe…
Best: April–June, September–November
Cappadocia is legitimately otherworldly — the volcanic tufa landscape of Göreme has been carved into cave dwellings, und…
Best: May–August
Copenhagen is where the New Nordic food movement was born — Noma changed global cooking from here, and the ripple effect…
Best: May–June, September–October
Dubrovnik's old city walls are a 2km walkable circuit offering the finest urban panorama in the Mediterranean. The crowd…
Best: May–September (Fringe: August)
Edinburgh's Old Town is dramatic in all seasons, but August during the Fringe Festival transforms it into the world's gr…
Best: April–May, September–October
Florence is an outdoor museum that also happens to have extraordinary food. The Uffizi holds Botticelli's Birth of Venus…
Best: December–May (warm), June–November (cool, better diving)
The Galápagos Islands are the only place on earth where you can swim with sea lions, snorkel alongside penguins and mari…
Best: February–May
Hoi An's Ancient Town is a UNESCO-listed trading port preserved in amber — Chinese merchant houses, Japanese covered bri…
Best: June–August, November–February
Iceland rewards visitors who leave Reykjavik. The Ring Road circles a country that looks like another planet — black lav…
Best: April–May, September–October
Istanbul is the only city in the world that straddles two continents, and it wears that ambiguity well — Byzantine mosai…
Best: March–May, October–November
Kyoto is Japan preserved — 1,600 temples, wooden machiya townhouses, and a food culture so refined it makes Tokyo feel r…
Best: March–May, September–October
Lisbon moves at a slower pace than its European neighbors — trams creak up cobblestone hills, neighborhood tascas serve …
Best: May–September
Machu Picchu genuinely earns its fame — the 15th-century Inca citadel, built on a mountain ridge above the Sacred Valley…
Best: November–April
The Maldives is the destination that invented the overwater bungalow and still does it best. The atolls sit so low in th…
Best: March–May, October–November
Marrakech is a city that grabs you by the collar. The medina is a living maze of spice merchants, leather tanneries, and…
Best: March–May, October–December
Mexico City is having its decade. The food scene has quietly become one of the world's best — Enrique Olvera, Jorge Vall…
Best: April–June, September–November
New York is still the most thrilling city in the world to arrive in for the first time — the skyline, the energy, the sh…
Best: May–September
The fjords of western Norway — Geirangerfjord, Nærøyfjord, Hardangerfjord — are among the most dramatic landscapes on ea…
Best: April–June, September–October
Paris is almost unfairly beautiful — Haussmann boulevards, candlelit bistros, museums that would be the best in any othe…
Best: November–March
Patagonia is one of the last genuinely wild places — granite towers, teal glacial lakes, and winds that make you reasses…
Best: March–May, October–November
Petra's Treasury — the façade carved directly into rose-red sandstone cliff — is the image. But Petra is vast: a full da…
Best: May–June, September–October
Porto is everything Lisbon is but rougher, cheaper, and somehow more charming. The Ribeira waterfront is a UNESCO World …
Best: May–June, September–October
Prague's Old Town and castle district are among the most physically beautiful urban environments in the world — spires, …
Best: December–February (summer), June–August (skiing)
Queenstown sits on the edge of Lake Wakatipu beneath the Remarkables mountain range and offers more adrenaline per squar…
Best: October–March
Rajasthan is India distilled — Jaipur's pink city, Udaipur's lake palaces, Jodhpur's blue-washed houses beneath a clifft…
Best: December–March (Carnival in Feb/Mar), May–September
Rio is baroque in its beauty — the combination of granite mountains, Atlantic beaches, and tropical forest packed into a…
Best: April–May, October
Rome works on you slowly. The Colosseum and Vatican are mandatory, but the city reveals itself in quieter moments — a gl…
Best: May–June, September
Yes, everyone goes. Go anyway. The caldera views from Oia and Imerovigli are as extraordinary as photographed. Stay in a…
Best: April–May, September–November
Seoul moves fast and eats even faster. The Han River palaces and Bukchon Hanok village are beautiful; the real Seoul is …
Best: June–October (migration), January–February (calving)
The Serengeti's Great Migration is the world's greatest wildlife event — two million wildebeest and hundreds of thousand…
Best: February–April
Singapore shouldn't exist as it does — a tiny island with no natural resources that became one of the world's wealthiest…
Best: September–November, March–May
Sydney's physical setting — harbour, ocean beaches, national parks flanking the suburbs — makes it among the most beauti…
Best: March–May, October–November
Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any city on earth. It also has 24-hour convenience stores with better f…
Best: April–June, September–October
Vienna is the most underrated major European city. The Kunsthistorisches Museum alone is worth the flight; add the Belve…
Best: November–March
Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world and the surviving centerpiece of a 12th-century Khmer empire t…
Best: April–May, September–October
Athens is messier and more alive than its ancient reputation suggests. The Acropolis at sunrise is genuinely moving; the…
Best: May–October
The Azores are nine Portuguese islands in the middle of the Atlantic, each with a completely different character. São Mi…
Best: March–May, September–November
Bhutan is the only country in the world that measures Gross National Happiness instead of GDP. The Tiger's Nest monaster…
Best: March–May, October–November
Bruges is one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Europe — the canal system, guild halls, and Flemish Gothic archit…
Best: April–June, September–October
Budapest is two cities — Buda's hilly castle district and Pest's flat, cafe-dense boulevards — split by the Danube and c…
Best: December–April
Cartagena's walled old city is one of the most beautiful in the Americas — bougainvillea spills over balconies, colonial…
Best: March–May, September–November
Chefchaouen is one of Morocco's most photogenic towns — the entire medina is painted in shades of blue and white, climbi…
Best: November–February
Chiang Mai is Northern Thailand's cultural capital — the walled old city has over 30 temples, the Sunday Walking Street …
Best: May–June, September
Cinque Terre's five cliff-hung villages — Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore — are connected by hiki…
Best: November–March
Dubai is architecturally audacious — the Burj Khalifa, the Palm, the Museum of the Future — and the city delivers experi…
Best: March–May, September–November
Essaouira is the antidote to Marrakech — a fortified coastal city on Morocco's Atlantic coast where the medina is relaxe…
Best: May–August
The Faroe Islands feel genuinely remote — 18 volcanic islands in the North Atlantic, connected by tunnels and ferries, w…
Best: May–October
Fiji isn't just one destination — the Mamanuca and Yasawa island chains each offer different experiences, from surf brea…
Best: June–October
The Great Barrier Reef stretches 2,300 kilometers along Australia's Queensland coast and contains more species of marine…
Best: October–April
Ha Long Bay's karst landscape is unlike anything else on earth — thousands of limestone pillars and islands covered in j…
Best: May–June, September–October
Hallstatt is genuinely one of the most beautiful villages in the world — Alpine lake, salt mine history, a church spire …
Best: December–April
Havana is a city in vivid decay — crumbling colonial facades painted in faded yellows and greens, 1950s American cars dr…
Best: May–June, September–October
Kotor is the Adriatic's hidden masterpiece: a Venetian-era walled city tucked inside a bay so enclosed it looks like a l…
Best: May–June, September
Lake Como is the most cinematic lake in the world — the reason it keeps appearing in films is that the combination of Al…
Best: December–April
Lima doesn't look like a food capital but it is — Central, Maido, and Astrid y Gastón are regularly ranked among the wor…
Best: November–March
Luang Prabang is one of the most serene places in Southeast Asia — a UNESCO-listed royal capital where saffron-robed mon…
Best: April–June, September–October
Malta is small enough to cover in a week but dense with history — Valletta, the world's smallest capital, is a Baroque m…
Best: December–March, July–August
Medellín's transformation from the world's most dangerous city to a model of urban innovation is one of travel's great s…
Best: October–April
Melbourne is what happens when a city takes culture seriously — the laneway coffee scene, the NGV art gallery, the food …
Best: May–September
Namibia is Africa's most dramatic landscape destination — the Sossusvlei dunes, rising 300 meters in shades of red and o…
Best: April–May, October
Nashville has outgrown its country music clichés and become one of America's most dynamic cities — a genuine food scene …
Best: February–May, October–November
New Orleans is America's most European city, its most Caribbean city, and its most itself city — all at once. The food a…
Best: October–May
Oaxaca is Mexico's spiritual and culinary center — seven types of mole, tlayudas the size of hubcaps, and mezcal made by…
Best: June–September, December–February
Mountain gorilla trekking in Volcanoes National Park is one of travel's most profound experiences — spending an hour wit…
Best: September–November
San Francisco is physically one of the most beautiful cities in America — the fog rolling through the Golden Gate, Victo…
Best: March–May, October–November
Seville is Spain's most Spanish city — the Real Alcázar palace, the world's largest Gothic cathedral, and a tapas cultur…
Best: December–March (ski), June–September (hiking)
The Swiss Alps set the template for mountain travel — Zermatt beneath the Matterhorn, Grindelwald facing the Eiger's nor…
Best: October–April
Taipei is Asia's most underrated city — it has the energy of Tokyo at a fraction of the cost, extraordinary street food …
Best: April–June, September–November
Tbilisi is the most exciting emerging destination in Europe — a city where orthodox churches and Soviet-era brutalism co…
Best: December–April
Tulum has become overrun but still delivers on its original promise: Mayan ruins on a cliff above the clearest Caribbean…
Best: April–June, September–October
The Val d'Orcia valley looks exactly like every Renaissance painting you've ever seen because Renaissance painters paint…
Best: November–March
Valparaíso is Chile's most creative city — 42 hills covered in street art, funicular elevadores connecting the port to t…
Best: June–October, December–February
Zanzibar earns its mythical status — the powder-white beaches of Nungwi and Paje, the labyrinthine Stone Town (a UNESCO …