Italy
Cinque Terre
Five villages clamped to sea cliffs, connected by footpaths through terraced vineyards above surf.
The train bursts from a tunnel and there it is — Riomaggiore's houses stacked like coloured blocks against a cliff, the Ligurian Sea foaming white at its base. The air tastes of basil and sea salt. Fishing boats bob in coves barely wider than a living room, and the terraced vineyards above drop at angles that seem impossible to farm.
Cinque Terre is a cluster of five fishing villages on the Ligurian coast of Italy, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 for its cultural landscape of dry-stone terracing. Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore are linked by the Sentiero Azzurro coastal trail and a regional rail line that threads through the headlands. The terraces were built over a millennium to cultivate grapes and olives on near-vertical slopes, creating more walled acreage than the Great Wall of China. Sciacchetrà, a sweet wine made from grapes dried on the terraces, has been produced here since the Middle Ages. The harbour at Vernazza remains one of the most photographed in the Mediterranean.
Couple
The trail between Manarola and Corniglia at golden hour, a bottle of local Vermentino on a harbourside table, the train back to your village as the lights come on — Cinque Terre is built for two.
Friends
Village-hopping by train, competing over who finds the best anchovy plate, splitting a bottle of Sciacchetrà on a terrace at dusk — the format is tailor-made for a group.
- The five villages are connected by local train — village-hopping in a day without a car or a tour.
- Each village has its own swimming cove reachable by the regular ferry along the coast.
- The terraced vineyards were cut into the cliffs by hand over centuries — the wine they produce, Sciacchetrà, is made nowhere else.
- The Via dell'Amore path, reopened after earthquake repairs, runs along the cliff face between Riomaggiore and Manarola.
Pesto ground in a marble mortar, spooned over trofie pasta still warm from the pot.
Anchovies fried whole and eaten with your fingers at a harbourside table in Vernazza.
Sciacchetrà dessert wine sipped on a terrace overlooking the darkening Mediterranean.
Niagara Falls
United States
Six million cubic feet of water per minute plunging into mist you feel a mile away.
Santa Maria
Portugal
The Azores' oldest island hides a red clay desert and golden beaches the other islands lack.
Santa Maria
Cape Verde
Trade winds blast a long golden beach where kitesurfers trace arcs above turquoise Atlantic rollers.
Jericoacoara
Brazil
Windswept dunes where the sun melts into the sea from a natural stone arch.
Venice
Italy
Dawn light on a silent canal where only your footsteps echo on wet stone.
Lake Como
Italy
Cypress-lined shores where water mirrors snow-capped peaks and silk merchants built their palaces.
Florence
Italy
Terracotta rooftops from Brunelleschi's dome, the Arno gold at sunset, gelato in every piazza.
Rome
Italy
Twenty-seven centuries layered underfoot, every wrong turn revealing another empire's ruins.