Italy
Terme di Saturnia
Hot sulphur springs cascading over travertine terraces into pools the water itself carved.
Warm sulphur water slides over white travertine shelves into pools that glow pale against the dark Maremma night. Steam curls off the surface in slow columns with a faint mineral bite. This is bathing as it existed before the Romans arrived, shaped by the mineral flow alone.
The Cascate del Mulino at Saturnia are fed by a spring that arrives at about 37 degrees all year, spilling terrace to terrace over travertine the water itself laid down. Bathers have come since Etruscan days, and the falls remain wild ground, unfenced and unbuilt. A separate spa resort above the falls sells the managed version. Around it all rolls the emptier Maremma, low hills, olive rows and stone farmhouses that see a fraction of central Tuscany's traffic.
Couple
Steam rising off the terraces, the Maremma's quiet all round and a farmhouse bed nearby make a weekend feel longer than it is.
Friends
The terraces are big enough to claim a basin each, with a boar feast and Morellino waiting up the road.
Family
Warm mineral water spilling terrace to terrace, over travertine that stays slippery underfoot.
- At the Cascate del Mulino, the spring has built its own staircase of travertine basins.
- The spring arrives at about 37 degrees, warm enough to steam in midwinter air.
- Terraced travertine basins hold the water at slightly different heats across the site.
- The Maremma around the falls stays rural: olive rows, stone farmhouses and low wooded hills.
Acquacotta with an egg cracked into it turns the Maremma's field lunch into proper comfort.
Morellino di Scansano, the local red, pairs with slow-cooked boar in farmhouse trattorias.
Laguna Cejar
Chile
Salt paths cross an Atacama wetland where one controlled lagoon allows floating.
Diani Beach
Kenya
Colobus monkeys leap through the canopy above white sand so fine it squeaks underfoot.
Marsa Alam
Egypt
Dugongs grazing on seagrass in shallows so clear you watch from the surface, desert silent behind.
Savaia Giant Clam Sanctuary
Samoa
Swim to the flag: around eighty giant clams, the largest a metre across, wait below.
Taormina
Italy
A Greek theatre where Etna smoulders behind the stage, the sea glittering far below.
Altopiano del Renon
Italy
Boulder-capped clay towers spike out of the pines, the tallest earth pyramids in Europe.
Alpe di Siusi
Italy
Europe's largest high-altitude meadow, wildflowers to the horizon beneath Dolomite spires.
Siena
Italy
A shell-shaped piazza where twice a year the city erupts into bareback horse chaos.