What's your next adventure?

Discover remarkable destinations & the best time to visit. Detailed guides to what to do, when to go, and where to stay.

Showing 20 of 20 popular places in the grid · 361 in the atlas

The year at a glance Popular places to start

Cards coloured by Verified verdictAvoidGreatFiltered out
AntiguaCentral Highlands · GuatemalaFeatured
OsakaKansai · JapanFeatured
Abu DhabiUnited Arab Emirates
AmsterdamNetherlands
Angel Falls (Canaima)Canaima National Park · Venezuela
AntalyaTurquoise Coast · Turkey
AthensGreece
BaganMyanmar
BaliIndonesia
BanffCanadian Rockies · Canada
BangkokThailand
BeijingChina
BerlinGermany
Bora BoraSociety Islands · French Polynesia
BoracayPhilippines
BrugesFlanders · Belgium
Buenos AiresArgentina

All destinations

361 places
Central Highlands · GuatemalaFeatured

Antigua

The ruined baroque capital of colonial Central America, with an erupting volcano close enough to watch from a tent.

✓ Best Nov-Apr-/day
historyculture artsfood
Kansai · JapanFeatured

Osaka

Japan's kitchen: a blunt, neon-lit merchant city where the eating is the itinerary, not the interval between sights.

✓ Best Nov-/day
foodnightlife musicshopping
ItalyFeatured

Dolomites (Cortina d'Ampezzo)

The most theatrical rock in the Alps, with cable cars, staffed huts and wartime iron ladders that put you inside it without a rope.

✓ Best May, Sep-/day
scenicadventure
United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi

The Gulf's cultural capital: a marble mosque that stops traffic, a Louvre of its own on the beach, and the Empty Quarter a morning's drive inland.

✓ Best Nov-Mar-/day
culture artsshopping
Maine · United States

Acadia National Park (Bar Harbor)

New England's only national park, where granite mountains drop straight into the North Atlantic above forty-five miles of car-free carriage roads.

✓ Best May-Jun, Sep-/day
scenicnature wildlife
South Australia · Australia

Adelaide

The only Australian capital where serious wine country starts in the suburbs.

✓ Best all year-/day
foodculture arts
New York · United States

Adirondacks (Lake Placid)

The largest protected area in the contiguous United States, with no gate, no entry booth and towns living inside the line.

✓ Best May, Sep-Oct-/day
nature wildlifescenicadventure
Cook Islands

Aitutaki

Home to what many travellers rate the most beautiful lagoon on Earth.

✓ Best Jun-Sep$246/day
scenicnature wildlifeoff beaten path
Costa Blanca · Spain

Alicante

A medieval castle on a sea rock, with a real Spanish city and the Costa Blanca's best tapas streets at its feet.

✓ Best all year-/day
historyfoodnightlife music
Kerala · India

Alleppey

The Kerala backwaters at their most complete, and the one place where sleeping on the water is the point rather than a gimmick.

✓ Best Dec-Mar-/day
scenicnature wildlifewellness
Punjab · India

Amritsar

The spiritual heart of the Sikh world: the Golden Temple in its marble tank, a free kitchen feeding tens of thousands a day, and the Pakistan border 30 km away.

✓ Best Feb-Mar-/day
historyculture artsfood
Netherlands

Amsterdam

A Golden Age port preserved almost whole - canal houses, bikes and world-class museums packed into a city you can walk across in an afternoon.

✓ Best Apr-Oct-/day
culture artsnightlife musichistory
California · United States

Anaheim

The town Disneyland built, with a citrus-warehouse downtown and Orange County's beaches half an hour away.

✓ Best all year-/day
food
Alaska · United States

Anchorage

Alaska's front door - a plain-spoken city with a mountain range at the end of the bus line and moose on the bike path.

✓ Best May-Sep-/day
nature wildlifeadventurescenic
India

Andaman Islands

The best diving in India and its emptiest beaches, on islands that were a prison colony long before they were a holiday.

✓ Best Jan-Apr-/day
nature wildlifehistoryadventure
Canaima National Park · Venezuela

Angel Falls (Canaima)

The tallest waterfall on earth, falling off a lost world of a mountain into jungle no road reaches.

✓ Best Sep-Apr-/day
scenicnature wildlifeoff beaten path
Cambodia

Angkor Wat (Siem Reap)

The largest religious monument ever built, at the heart of a lost capital you can spend three days getting lost in.

✓ Best Nov-Feb-/day
historyculture arts
Turquoise Coast · Turkey

Antalya

A Roman harbour town under snow-capped mountains, with a beach at either end and the best-preserved theatre in the Mediterranean an hour up the road.

✓ Best Mar-Jun, Sep-Oct-/day
historyscenicadventure
Flanders · Belgium

Antwerp

Rubens's home town, the world's diamond counter and the birthplace of Belgian fashion, all inside one walkable Flemish port.

✓ Best Apr-Oct-/day
shoppingculture artsfood
Wallonia · Belgium

Ardennes (Bastogne)

Belgium's forested south: kayak rivers and castle villages wrapped around the town the 101st Airborne refused to give up.

✓ Best May-Jul, Sep-/day
historynature wildlifescenic
North Carolina · United States

Asheville

A Gilded Age mountain resort that went broke, kept its Art Deco downtown, and reopened as the craft capital of the southern Appalachians.

✓ Best Mar, Oct-Nov-/day
foodculture artsnature wildlife
Colorado · United States

Aspen

A silver-boom grid with four ski mountains around it and a wall of 14,000-ft peaks at the end of the road.

✓ Best Jun-Sep-/day
scenicadventureculture arts
Umbria · Italy

Assisi

A hill town whose Basilica di San Francesco holds one of Europe's greatest fresco cycles, because the man who owned nothing is buried underneath it.

✓ Best Mar-Oct-/day
historyculture arts
Greece

Athens

The Acropolis is only the opening act: Athens is three thousand years of layered city, and some of the best eating in the Mediterranean.

✓ Best Mar-Jun, Sep-Oct-/day
historyfoodculture arts
24 of 35 shown · narrow it down with the filters above

Verified, not vibes

Every guide carries its sources and a last-verified date. Climate figures are cross-checked against NASA POWER satellite data.

When-first planning

Most sites tell you where. The month you travel changes everything: weather, hazards and prices sit side by side here.

The honest verdicts

Burning season, monsoon peaks, power cuts: the things brochures skip are exactly what we map first.