Best Places in the World to Visit
With all the great places in the world to visit, how do you choose and prioritize the best places? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself lately. A key aspect of my personal vision is to continuously explore the world. There are many locations that I want to visit, and things to experience. For example, a goal on my life list is to visit all the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. However, with over 851 sites, I’ve come to realize that the likelihood of visiting all of them is like many of the sites - remote.
To make achieving this goal a little more realistic, I’ve come up with series of posts on the Top 10 travel locations, categorized by different reasons that people travel. (I’ll focus on traveling for the purpose of recreation only - apologies to all of you LIPs!). My selection criteria is the location’s popularity and the uniqueness of the travel destination.
Here are the categories I’m using for types of travel. I’ll post on each them in the future.
- Nature. These are the unique locations in the world to see certain flora, fauna, or natural wonders. Many of them are within national parks or forests.
- History & Heritage. These sites have significant relevance to how the world and our different cultures have been shaped. The UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Sites are in this category.
- Leisure. Ahh, lying around on a beach somewhere, relaxing in a mountain cabin, or chatting it up with the owners of a bed and breakfast somewhere. These sites provide some nice scenery to look at while you sip a cold beverage of your choice.
- Sports. This type of travel is focused on a specific sport, versus the adventure travel listed below. Skiing, biking, rafting, kayaking, surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving, hiking, the list goes on. There are many sites in the world known as *the* place to do these sports.
- Food & Drink. To experience the best of world cuisine, you need to taste it in person. These are the quintessential locations for doing just that.
- Adventure. Need to be engaged in your travel experience? Getting dropped off by helicopter at the top of a mountain to go skiing in the back country more your thing? These sites are the top ones for you.
- Quirky/Strange/Unusual. The biggest ball of twine in the world? Got to see it! A nuclear fallout site? Take me there! If this sounds like you, these unusual travel locations are probably top on your list.
Honorable mention: One of the more interesting travel types is “volunteer vacations”. This is a popular type of travel, especially for recent university graduates. The idea is that you contribute your time and skills to help out somewhere in the world. One organization focused on this is Global Volunteers - their teams support projects in over 20 countries. There are many others, each one focused on improving a specific part of the world.