Canada
Churchill
Polar bears walk into town so often it runs a 24-hour bear hotline.
The train arrives where the road never did, between tundra and tidal flats. In season, white shapes move along the coast that everyone in town can name.
Churchill's calendar rotates the Arctic's great spectacles: bear season on the autumn tundra, thousands of belugas in the summer estuary, aurora through the long winter. Guided buggies, boats and dog teams run each season's access. Town kitchens fold char, elk and northern berries into the week, and one operator even sets a seven-course dinner on the frozen river.
Solo
Guided buggies and small-town scale make the subarctic navigable alone.
Couple
Pick a season's spectacle together, bears, belugas or aurora, and build the week around it.
Family
Summer's beluga boats give children thousands of white whales at safe distance.
- Churchill rotates polar bears, belugas and aurora through one accessible town.
- Rail and air are the only ways in; the road never arrived.
- Buggies, boats and dog teams open each season in turn.
The Tundra Pub cooks home-style meals with a subarctic twist: char, elk and northern berries cross the menus.
Dan's Diner sets a seasonal seven-course dinner aboard a buggy on the frozen Churchill River.
Undara Lava Tubes
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Step through a collapsed roof into tubes hollowed by a vanished river of fire.
Agiofarango Gorge
Greece
Three hundred hermits once lived this gorge — a cave chapel and the Libyan Sea remain.
Wai-O-Tapu
New Zealand
Champagne-fizzing pools and sulphur-green water in a landscape that smells of hell.
Québec City
Canada
North America's only walled city folds four centuries of French life into cliff-top stone lanes.
Bay of Fundy
Canada
The world's highest tides drain whole bays twice daily, uncovering sea caves and flowerpot rocks.
Twillingate
Canada
Iceberg Alley delivers its giants past cliff paths, lighthouses and harbour villages.
Percé
Canada
A pierced limestone rock the size of a cathedral stands offshore from a Gaspésian fishing town.