Compare 576 Travel Destinations

Korea's museum without walls — capital of the Silla Kingdom for nearly a thousand years (57 BC to 935 AD) and home to a UNESCO Historic Areas inscription that bundles together Bulguksa Temple, the Seokguram Grotto on the slopes of Toham Mountain, the royal tumuli rising like grass-covered hills in the city centre, and Cheomseongdae, the small bottle-shaped observatory built in the 7th century and considered the oldest surviving in East Asia. Anapji Pond mirrors its restored pavilions after dark, cherry blossoms line the tomb park in early April, and the Gyeongju National Museum houses the Silla gold crowns. Two hours by KTX from Seoul or one from Busan.

Hạ Long Bay is the postcard image of northern Vietnam — roughly 1,600 jungle-topped limestone karst islands rising sheer out of jade-green water across 1,553 km² of the Gulf of Tonkin. UNESCO listed it in 1994 (and again in 2000 for geology) and it became one of the New 7 Natural Wonders in 2012. Most visitors arrive on overnight junk-boat cruises out of Tuần Châu or Hạ Long City, threading between karsts to caves like Sửng Sốt and Thiên Cung, kayaking into hidden lagoons, and climbing the 427 steps up Ti Tốp Island for the iconic aerial view. The neighbouring Lan Hạ Bay (south of Cát Bà Island) has fewer boats and arguably better swimming.

Mount Fuji's onsen escape — a mountain hot-spring resort 90km southwest of Tokyo inside Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. The iconic shot is Lake Ashi's pirate-ship cruise framed by Hakone Shrine's red torii in the water with Fuji behind on a clear day. Owakudani's volcanic valley sells black eggs cured in sulfur springs. The Hakone Open-Air Museum mixes Picasso with mountain views, and traditional ryokans deliver the kaiseki + onsen night. Hakone Free Pass covers the Tozan switchback train, ropeway, cable car, and ship loop.

Hallstatt is the postcard — a single 800-person village clinging to a sliver of land between Lake Hallstatt and the vertical Salzberg, with pastel houses stacked five-deep and a Lutheran church spire rising over a wooden boathouse for the photograph everyone has already seen. The salt mine above the village has been operated continuously for 7,000 years (the oldest active mine in the world), the Iron Age Hallstatt culture is named after this exact valley, and the entire Salzkammergut region is UNESCO listed. The trick is that 10,000 day-trippers arrive between 11:00 and 15:00 and the village empties by 17:00 — so stay overnight, walk at dawn, and you have one of Europe's most beautiful places almost to yourself.

Germany's second-largest city and largest port — a Hanseatic League trading capital that has more bridges than Venice, Amsterdam, and London combined, with Europe's largest contiguous warehouse complex (the UNESCO Speicherstadt) and the wave-roofed €866M Elbphilharmonie concert hall on top of an old harbour warehouse. The Reeperbahn in St. Pauli is Europe's most famous red-light district where The Beatles played 281 nights 1960–1962, the Sunday Fischmarkt has been operating for 320 years (05:00–09:30, with a live band), and the Inner and Outer Alster lakes give central Hamburg a sailing-club energy unique among major European cities.

The ruined capital of the Vijayanagara Empire (14th-16th century) scattered across a surreal landscape of 500 million-year-old granite boulders in northern Karnataka. UNESCO since 1986. The Virupaksha Temple still functions as an active Hindu shrine; the Vittala Temple's musical pillars and Stone Chariot are the postcard images. The Tungabhadra River divides the bazaar-and-temple side from the Hippie Island (Virupapur Gaddi) backpacker scene. Reached via overnight sleeper bus from Bangalore or Goa.

The southern terminus of the Grand Canal and the city Marco Polo called the most beautiful in the world — West Lake (UNESCO 2011) is the cultural template every classical Chinese garden has imitated for a thousand years. The Su Causeway, Broken Bridge, Leifeng Pagoda, and the Tang-era Lingyin Temple anchor the lake. Longjing Village's tea terraces produce China's most prized green tea (Dragon Well, harvested before Qingming). Hangzhou is also Alibaba's home and the country's high-tech showpiece — the bullet train from Shanghai is just 45 minutes.

Hanoi is one of Asia's most atmospheric capitals — a thousand years of history layered into chaotic, charming streets. The Old Quarter buzzes with motorbikes and street food vendors, French colonial architecture stands alongside ancient temples, and Hoan Kiem Lake offers a tranquil escape. Pho for breakfast, egg coffee for lunch, bun cha for dinner.

Heilongjiang's northeastern capital, built up by Russian engineers around the Chinese Eastern Railway at the turn of the 20th century — the result is a Mandarin city with onion-domed cathedrals, Art Nouveau facades, and a Russian-bakery street culture you find nowhere else in China. Saint Sophia Cathedral anchors Daoli district, Central Avenue (Zhongyang Dajie) runs 1.4km of restored European stone storefronts to the Songhua River, and every January the Ice and Snow World turns the riverbank into 600,000 square metres of illuminated ice sculptures up to 50m tall. Pack a parka — January averages around -19C.

The fourth-longest fjord in the world at 179km — the Queen of the Fjords — softer and more agricultural than Sognefjord or Geirangerfjord, with apple and pear orchards on the slopes and Norway's only DOP cider. Trolltunga, the rock tongue jutting 700m above Lake Ringedalsvatnet, is the headline hike (10–12 hours round-trip from Skjeggedal, safe mid-June to mid-September). Vøringsfossen thunders 182m near Eidfjord. Europe's largest mountain plateau, Hardangervidda, is just beyond.

Havana is a city frozen in time — 1950s American cars cruise past crumbling colonial palaces, salsa music drifts from open doorways, and the Malecon seafront promenade is the world's longest open-air living room. Habana Vieja's restored squares contrast with raw, ungentrified neighborhoods. Mojitos, cigars, and a sense of place unlike anywhere else.

Germany's most romantic university town — the half-ruined red-sandstone Schloss looking down on the Neckar River, the cobbled Hauptstrasse threading through a pristine Old Town that was spared Allied bombing, and Ruperto Carola, the country's oldest university (1386). The Karl-Theodor-Brücke arches across to the Philosophenweg, where Hegel and Goethe both walked. Day-trippers from Frankfurt outnumber overnight stays, but the early-morning and late-evening hours when the tour buses leave are when Heidelberg becomes itself.

Finland's Baltic capital is a design capital, a sauna capital, and the European jumping-off point for Tallinn by 2-hour ferry. Löyly harborside sauna, Suomenlinna sea fortress, Temppeliaukio rock church, Senate Square's Lutheran white, and 19-hour June daylight. Finnish is Finno-Ugric — closer to Estonian than Swedish.

A 12-mile crescent-shaped Lowcountry barrier island off the southern coast of South Carolina, master-planned in the 1950s by developer Charles Fraser around the principle that buildings should never overshadow the trees. The result is a quietly affluent island of 33-plus golf courses (host of the RBC Heritage PGA tournament every April at Harbour Town Links, played around the candy-striped 1969 lighthouse on the 18th hole), 60 miles of paved bike paths threading the maritime forest, and the 605-acre Sea Pines Forest Preserve. Charleston is two hours north on US-17; Savannah is 45 minutes south across the Talmadge Bridge.

A city of resilience and peace. The Peace Memorial and Museum are profound, while nearby Miyajima Island's floating torii gate is iconic. Famous for okonomiyaki and oysters.

A 35km fjord in the Sunnmøre Alps — one of Norway's most spectacular fjords and somehow still one of its least visited. No cruise ships call. The mountains rise nearly sheer from the water to 1,500m peaks: Slogen, Kolåstinden, Saksa. In April–May this is arguably the world's best summit-to-sea ski touring; in summer the Sagafjord ferry still links Sæbø, Urke and Øye, where historic Hotel Union Øye hosted Kaiser Wilhelm II. If you want the fjords without the crowds of Geiranger, this is it.

Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by locals) is Vietnam's energetic southern hub — a city of roaring motorbikes, French colonial landmarks, and some of the best street food on earth. The War Remnants Museum is sobering, the Ben Thanh Market is overwhelming, and the coffee culture is addictive. Always evolving, always buzzing.

Hobart is the capital of Tasmania and Australia's second-oldest city — a working deep-water port at the foot of 1,271-metre kunanyi/Mount Wellington, with sandstone Georgian warehouses on Salamanca Place that fill every Saturday with Tasmania's best produce market. MONA (the Museum of Old and New Art) is the reason most visitors come now: a private subterranean museum funded by a professional gambler, reached by ferry from the city centre, and consistently ranked among the world's most provocative contemporary collections. Beyond Hobart proper lie Bruny Island oysters, the Tasman Peninsula's sea cliffs, and the Tasmanian wilderness.

A working langoustine port on a flat tongue of land that pokes into the Hornafjörður lagoon, with the white wall of Vatnajökull — Europe's largest ice cap — filling the entire western horizon. Höfn (the name just means "harbour") is the obvious base for the Glacier Lagoon (Jökulsárlón), the Diamond Beach, and ice-cave excursions onto Vatnajökull's outlet glaciers. 459 km / 6 hours from Reykjavík on the Ring Road; the eastern fjords begin 30 minutes north.

Vietnam's most charming town — a UNESCO-listed ancient trading port where lantern-lit streets meet world-class tailoring, extraordinary cuisine, and bicycle-friendly riverside life.

A dazzling vertical city where bamboo-scaffolded skyscrapers meet ancient temples, dim sum parlors, and one of the world's most spectacular harbors. East meets West at every turn.

Houston is the fourth-largest US city (2.3M in the city, 7.3M in the metro) and the most diverse — more than 145 languages spoken, world-class Vietnamese, Indian, and Tex-Mex food scenes side by side. NASA Johnson Space Center sits 25 miles south, the Museum District packs 19 institutions into 1.5 square miles (the Menil Collection alone justifies the trip), and Buffalo Bayou Park has reshaped downtown with 160 acres of trail along the water. The catch: Houston is sprawling, hot from June through September, and exposed to Atlantic hurricanes in late summer.

Hua Hin is the original Thai royal beach town, picked by King Rama VII for the Klai Kangwon summer palace in 1926 and treated ever since as Bangkok’s long-weekend coast. It sits 200 kilometres south of the capital on the Gulf of Thailand, a 3-hour drive or train ride that ends at a teakwood station with red and yellow gables. The five-kilometre town beach runs south to a clifftop temple at Khao Takiab, and the Cicada and Tamarind night markets on weekends draw the crowd that flies in for golf. Phraya Nakhon Cave, an hour south, hides the Kuha Karuhas pavilion built for King Rama V in 1890. Thailand’s golf capital, eight courses inside city limits.

A 110,000-person Pacific-coast city wedged between the Central Mountain Range and the open ocean — the working gateway to Taroko Gorge 15 kilometres north. Qixingtan Beach is a long arc of black pebbles facing whale-shaped bays, the Dongdamen Night Market sprawls across a former harbour, and the morning fishing-port market sells the day's bonito within an hour of landing. Two to three hours from Taipei on the eastern TRA line, and the home base of the Tzu Chi Buddhist Foundation and its enormous hospital and university campus.