Canada
Banff
Turquoise glacial lakes so impossibly blue they look digitally edited.
The water in Banff's glacier-fed lakes is so impossibly blue-green that first-time visitors stop dead, convinced the photos were edited. They weren't. The colour comes from light refracting through glacial rock flour suspended in the meltwater, and it shifts with the sun from turquoise to teal to cobalt.
Banff National Park is Canada's oldest and most visited national park, established in 1885 when railway workers discovered the Cave and Basin hot springs. The park holds three of the world's most photographed lakes — Minnewanka, Moraine, and the smaller but equally vivid Vermilion Lakes. Elk wander through Banff townsite at dusk, utterly unbothered by pedestrians. The Banff Upper Hot Springs sit at 1,585 metres, steaming in the open air with Rundle Mountain filling the skyline. The Icefields Parkway connects Banff to Jasper through 230 kilometres of glacier-studded highway, passing more than 100 glaciers visible from the road. Gondola rides to Sulphur Mountain summit offer 360-degree views of six mountain ranges.
Solo
Solo hikers have over 1,600 kilometres of trail to themselves, from gentle lakeside walks to multi-day backcountry routes into the remote Skoki Valley.
Couple
Canoe on turquoise water, soak in hot springs with mountain views, dine in Banff's elevated restaurant scene — the Rockies at their most romantic.
Friends
Skiing at Sunshine Village, hiking to Lake Agnes Teahouse, mountain biking the Legacy Trail — Banff delivers group adventure at every fitness level.
Family
The gondola, the hot springs, the lakeside walks, and the near-guaranteed elk sightings give families a greatest-hits mountain experience that works for all ages.
- Lake Minnewanka, Moraine Lake, and Lake Louise all sit within an hour's drive — three of the world's most photogenic lakes.
- Elk wander through the town centre at dusk, utterly unbothered by pedestrians on Banff Avenue.
- The Banff Upper Hot Springs sit at 1,585 metres, steaming in the open air with mountain views in every direction.
- Gondola rides to Sulphur Mountain summit offer a 360-degree panorama of six mountain ranges.
Bison short ribs braised in Alberta ale at the Elk & Oarsman, snow piling against the window.
Maple-glazed elk at the Fairmont Banff Springs — fine dining inside a castle in the Rockies.
Hot chocolate thick enough to coat a spoon at Wild Flour Bakery after a dawn hike.
Pedra de Lume
Cape Verde
Float in a salt lake inside an extinct volcano, crater walls rising on every side.
Vale do Paúl
Cape Verde
Sugarcane terraces spill down a volcanic crater into the greenest valley in the archipelago.
Monastery of St. Anthony
Egypt
Earth's oldest inhabited monastery, wedged into a Red Sea mountain canyon since the fourth century.
Hoang Su Phi
Vietnam
Rice terraces so vertiginous they look like topographical maps carved directly into the sky.
Cape Dorset (Kinngait)
Canada
The print-making capital of the Arctic — Inuit artists carve stone and stories into polar silence.
Ferryland
Canada
Picnic on a headland above a 17th-century colony while icebergs drift past and puffins wheel.
Mount Robson
Canada
The Canadian Rockies' highest peak rarely reveals its summit — clouds guard it like a secret.
Thetford Mines
Canada
Open-pit asbestos mines swallowed half the town — the craters remain, eerie and vast.