Australia

Australia is bigger than people remember and harder to do justice to in one trip. Pick a coast: Sydney + Great Ocean Road + Tasmania for the south, or Cairns + Whitsundays + Top End for the tropics. Wine country, surf, indigenous culture, and wildlife you won't see anywhere else.

Australian trips are road trips with flights stitched in. A classic fortnight: Sydney's beaches and ferries, fly north to Cairns or the Whitsundays for the reef, then Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road — or swap the tropics for Tasmania's trails and cool-climate wine. Days are outdoorsy by default: a morning swim, a flat white, a national park walk, a long drive between very good small-town bakeries. The money goes on internal flights, car hire, and accommodation, none of it cheap.

The distances are the tax. Sydney to Perth is further than London to Moscow, the flight from Europe is a full day each way, and this is simply not a one-week destination. Prices sting — city hotels, reef trips, and tours add up fast — and parts of the reef have visibly bleached. If you want dense history and old-world culture, you'll find it thin. What you get instead is space, ease, and wildlife that exists nowhere else on earth.