If you’ve been reading for a little while, you will already have come across the first 50 parts of our journey around the world. If you haven’t, you can catch up here:
- 100 Most Beautiful Places in the World (Part A)
- 100 Most Beautiful Places in the World (Part B)
We are now coming into the third part of our series, and what an exciting adventure it is sure going to be! We’ve already seen great burning holes in the ground, beautiful waterfalls, amazing Indian palaces and shining lights in the sky… What else could our amazing earth possibly have to throw at us?
Well… Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
51 – Great Blue Hole, Belize
*provided by Lonely Planet
The Great Blue Hole is a beautiful sight to see either from high in the air or deep below the crystal clear and beautiful blue waters. It’s basically a huge sinkhole just a little way of the Belizean coast and is part of the Belize Barrier Reef System in the Lighthouse Reef, which you can actually see from space. Just so you know!
If you like water and diving, you definitely need to check this place out – many people actually believe this should be known as one of the wonders of the world. It even became a National Heritage site back in 1997.
Diving into this amazing freak of nature has been called terrifyingly beautiful and is something any adrenaline junkie or lover of water should check out! Have you guys ever been here? Did it look as good as it does in our heads?
52 – Hotel la Montana Magica, Huilo Chile
Mireya Peters Martinez / flickr.com
Check this place out! Doesn’t it look just like something out of Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit? Cute and back to nature are definitely two ways to describe this pretty amazing landmark, and it’s definitely intriguing!
A hotel set in a pointed mound, you can see windows poking out from beneath a deep green flurry of plants, with tree top canopies for you to brave yourself up against, and a pretty interesting idea of interior design!
You have choices from different styles of rooms and there is even a “bunk-bed” suite which we were pretty impressed by – who didn’t love bunk beds when they were younger?
53 – Venice
Rhys A. / flickr.com
The whole of Venice is a beautiful sight to see and is definitely one that deserves it’s place on the 100 Most Beautiful Places in the World.
It’s the city of love – who doesn’t want to come here and fall in love on the scenic and peaceful gondolas or enjoy wandering around aimlessly, looking those amazing street views and indulging in a bit of shopping? It’s an interesting place and a beautiful one too and is the perfect setting for a romantic mini-break.
*Hint hint boys!
There’s a couple of places that you should check out if you ever get the chance – the Rialto Bridge on San Polo is a beautifully designed bridge, and you’ve also got the Basilica di San Marco if you want to see something religious and truly breathtaking. There’s plenty of museums and other activities to do while you’re here so technically, you’ve got a little something for everyone.
54 – Great Barrier Reef
MNatividad / flickr.com
If you want to see something truly beautiful offered by our little gem of a planet, you should definitely check out the Great Barrier Reef for your next vacation. Just like the Great Blue Hole in Belize (number 51 on this list) you can enjoy amazing views from the air or even under the water with activities such as snorkeling, diving, fishing and boating here – who knows what weird and wonderful sea life you could spot here?
Did you know that the Great Barrier Reef is actually the world’s largest coral reef system? There are 900 islands scattered around here as well as almost three thousand individual reefs, and when you spot the out-of-this-world sights that you can see here, you will soon understand why this place has also made it as a National Heritage Site.
There are so many beautiful sea creatures here that snorkeling and diving is a must-do activity! You can take cruises in glass bottom boats if you aren’t a fan of being in the water, and if you want something a bit higher up, you can always take a helicopter flight.
55 – Cathedral Cove, New Zealand
Vendin / flickr.com
New Zealand is such a beautiful place full stop and if you are going to come to this picturesque country, you simply must visit Cathedral Cove in the Coromandel Peninsula. There is a naturally formed archway hidden in the Cliffside and this gives a beautiful view of a standalone rock that sits in the crystal clear waters. The white sandy beaches certainly help things along nicely and it is the perfect spot for a romantic mid-afternoon picnic and a cheeky dip in the balmy waters.
56 – Shifen Waterfall, Taiwan
Jennifer Turek / flickr.com
Situated in the Pingxi District of Taiwan, you will find twenty-meter high waterfalls called the Shifen Waterfalls, which not only spans the 20 meters or so wide, but also has a width of around 40 meters, making it a pretty impressive waterfall!
You can get pretty close to the waterfalls for great photo opportunities, especially if you follow the specifically laid out pathways that encompass it. It has naturally formed itself into a horseshoe style design and because of this, it has been nicknamed “Little Niagara”. It might be much smaller than the real thing but it does look fairly similar.
It’ll take you around four hours to complete the entire tour of the Shifen Waterfall, but it is well worth doing so if you come, make sure that you have enough battery in your camera, enough memory cards for the many photos you are guaranteed to want to take and also have a pair of rather comfortable shoes on!
57 – Flower Fields, Holland
M. Snodgress / flickr.com
If you have nothing planned from the end of March through to early May, you should definitely head to the Netherlands for an explosion of color that you simply won’t find anywhere else. You’ve got pinks, blues, yellows, greens, purples, reds…. You name it – you will find it here and the views are simply incredible!
It all kicks off with the crocuses that bloom at the end of March. The smaller tulips and daffodils will generally come next in April, the hyacinths and larger daffodils will follow from the middle of April to the end of the month, and the larger tulips burst into an explosion of color for the rest of the season.
There are a couple of places that you should head towards to get this view in all its glory. There’s a place called the North Sea Dunes and you will find some amazingly colored fields in this area in the middle few weeks of April. The province of Flevoland is also a well known hotspot for the flower festival.
58 – Antelope Canyon, USA
Alaskan Dude / flickr.com
If you want something big, bold and beautiful then you need to head back to the United States of America. To be more specific, you are going to need to head towards the Navajo near Page in Arizona.
Antelope Canyon is the most photographed slot-canyon in the whole of the American Southwest and just one peek at this amazing place will show you what kinda thing we are looking at here.
Years of flash-flooding and erosion has caused the beautiful markings in the magnificently colored stone and at certain times of the year the area is still prone to flash-flooding so always make sure in advance that it is a good idea to come here. August has been a bad month for tourists before – the Lower Antelope Canyon sadly took the lives of 11 tourists in a crazy flash flood.
59 – Eiffel Tower, France
House of Hall / flickr.com
Everyone knows that Paris is the city of Love and if you are going to visit the city where passion is all around you, there is no way that you can leave before you have had the chance to visit one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world – the magnificent Eiffel Tower.
It stands at around 325 meters tall and you go up it if you are willing to pay the price! It is known to be the world’s most-visited paid monument! All you need to do is take a look at the romantic films, stories, backdrops, music videos, etc. have been including this famous landmark in France and you can understand its romantic appeal with many men and women choosing to propose to their loved ones either in front of it, or on one of the tower’s three levels.
60 – Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia
enjosmith / flickr.com
You can find this amazing National Park in Lika-Senj County in Croatia and it’s not like you could miss it – not only is it the largest national park in Croatia, it’s also the oldest national park in Southeast Europe.
You’ve got so much stuff going on here from the stunning waterfalls to the beautiful scenery, the crazy wildlife that seems to be all around you and plants that you have never before seen in your life. You know all those kids books that you read about adventures in woods with cliffs and caves? Well they could all be set right here at this amazing backdrop in the Plitvice National Park.
61 – Tianzi Mountains, China
explorehangjiajie.com / flickr.com
These majestic mountains in the Tianzi Mountain Nature Reserve re so high, they are often covered in a c loud of fog which gives them a rather eery appeal. They odd shapes of mini-mountains and stunning valleys, their 1,260 meter high peaks (at the highest peak) has plenty of photo opportunities, and with the odd scattering of waterfalls, caves, small forests and a variation of wildlife, not only does it look mysterious but there’s plenty of things to do while you’re here.
For those of you that want to do a something a little scarier than trek through a mysterious set of mountains with scary looking caves and forests, there’s the cable-cars that you can take to the tops of some of the mountains. Are you ready for the view?
62 – Petra, Jordan
Eric Borda / flickr.com
Also known as the Rose City because of the colors of the rock that the entire city seems to have been founded from, Petra is one of the most amazing sights to see on this planet, and also has a lot of history and religion surrounding it, meaning that it will be a significant place that you would have viewed in your life.
It could have been started as early as 312 BCE. This could be the oldest place on earth that you will visit. How cool would that be?
As you can see from the picture, the city is literally built into the rock with ornate entrances that it must feel so scary to walk through! The narrow passages that you get to walk down are outweighed by the beauty and significance of the place, and your camera must have enough battery to get you all the way around this beautiful yet large place.
63 – Twelve Apostles, Australia
Sergio Lordao / flickr.com
If you’re ever in Australia, try to head to Victoria to a set of limestone stacks called the Twelve Apostles. Originally created out of sea erosion, there are many myths surrounding their existence also, making them a fun and interesting place to visit and on top of that, there is a danger element at the same time.
Back in 2005, one of the stacks collapsed and out of the twelve original stacks, still stands eight of the odd columns. It’s okay when this happens though as the clever people have predicted that the current cliffs could easily be eroded in the same way as the original limestone stacks, so it is likely that the same formation of rocks will continue to occur, and hopefully will continue to make the Australia landmark as popular to tourists as it is today.
64 – Great Wall of China
Francisco Diez / flickr.com
Running along the old and historical Northern borders of the country of China runs a wall that was painstakingly made out of stone, wood and rocks, some sections of which were initially created in as early as the seventh century BC, and were first believed to be protecting an empire.
As time went on, the individual walls starting meeting together and this is where the wall as we know it today was starting to form. Now it’s just collectively as the Great Wall of China and is a landmark that not only can be seen from space, but also has visitors to flocking to it on a yearly basis from every other part of the globe.
As you can expect from its age, some of the wall is starting to fall into disrepair but for the most part, it is still in pretty good condition when you consider how long it has been standing there for!
65 – Devils Pool, Victoria Falls, Australia
joepyrek / flickr.com
If you really want to feel the thrill of swimming on what feels like a pool set right on the edge of the earth, Devils Pool is Australia is definitely the place for you, and you can see the magnificent Victoria Falls while you are there!
This natural pool of water which basically acts as a swimming pool can be dangerous for those that choose to swim outside of the designated safe swimming areas which are simply and easily sign-posted. Since 1959, 17 deaths have been reported here and although there are common sense issues to bear in mind here such as the fast flowing water over volatile rock passages, there are also ancient curse stories that it is always fun to find out about. For example, the ancient Aborigines suggested that the pool would disrespect those that disrespected the pool. Various incidences that have happened here seem to suggest that this could be the case with a story of one man kicked the plaque within the pool and then being sucked in and drowning at the exact same place that a body had literally just been recovered. It’s a chilling story – would you be brave enough to swim in the Devils Pool?
66 – Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
magdy29 / flickr.com
Another manmade creation that has made the list of the 100 Most Beautiful Places in the World and we come to the most magnificent creations that are the Pyramids of Giza. It is only when you are stood at the foot of these enormous rock formations that you can really get a sense of their vast size and in comparison, it can make you feel like a very small part of the world at that precise moment in time.
You can find the pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo, and as well as having the luxury of being next to the three great pyramids, but you can also check out that Great Sphinx cat that you see every now and again on the internet.
There are many conspiracy theories as to how these pyramids and formations created from work were places and built, but no one will really know for sure how these great landmarks came to exist. You must also bear in mind that there are actual pharaohs buried within these great sights, brining a great sense of history to the occasion.
67 – The Dead Sea
Seetheholyland.net / flickr.com
The Dead Sea or “Sea of Salt” as it is otherwise known is a very special sea and although it might not look like much in some of the pictures that you will see from here, it has some pretty super-cool properties.
The high salt content in this water means that you will literally just happy float, bobbing away on the water; unable to sink because the salt wouldn’t let you.
Situated in the Jordan Rift Valley, there are a couple of causes that may have been the cause behind the pretty super-cool properties, but as for what really happened to create it, no one really knows. The good thing about it is that it has now been known for its many health boosting properties that it offers. It doesn’t matter what your problems is whether it’s a skin condition, a nasal problem, a bone issue… whatever it is, this place can apparently help fix it.
To be honest, we are just as excited as floating in that salty water as we are to experience the healing properties. That’s just an extra bonus, right?
68 – Meteor Crater, Arizona, USA
Steve Jurvetson / flickr.com
Time for something really out of this world now and we come to an actual massive meteor crater not far from Flagstaff in the northern part of the Arizona desert. This cool place is home to the largest meteor crater ever discovered on our crazy planet, and is meant to be around fifty thousand years old. That’s pretty impressive, right? Also, scientists have dated the soil and stuff in the earth that far down in the meteor crater and have found evidence of rocks that would have been formed over 265 million years ago!
You’ll need to pay a small entrance fee if you want to go and see this massive sight, but it has been turned into a tourist attraction with the American Astronaut Hall of Fame, a gift shop, movie theatre, and even observation areas. You can even go on a guided tour!
69 – Loch Ness, Scotland
Dave Stokes / flickr.com
There is something going on in the waters of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It’s a big lake – it’s very deep (almost 300 meters at some points) and spans 2.7km at its widest point too. It might not look like much but there is something legendary about this lake… Apparently it has a monster!
The Loch Ness monster is what has made the place as famous as it is all around the world – the second largest loch in Scotland which could actually comfortably hold the BT Tower in London standing up and you still wouldn’t see it, contains more fresh water than all of the rest of the lakes in Wales and England put together. Could it also be home to a monster?
It was in 1933 that the monster of Loch Ness was first “spotted”. Since then there have been numerous reports of people seeing strange things in the water. The description of the monster seems to change with every report that is made of a sighting and even though people have looked, nothing has ever been found in there apart from some pretty impressive species of fish. There have even been films made about this supposed monster too!
70 – Crescent Lake, China
sandandtsunamis / flickr.com
This beautiful lake is actually a desert oasis, situated just 6km south of the city of Dunhuang, Gansu Province. It’s a truly beautiful sight, especially if you have been travelling all day in the hot sun, and really stands out from its desert background.
Unfortunately, over the years, the lake has shrunk. Back in the 60’s it was around 7 and a half meters deep but at the last count in the 90s, this has shrunk to around 1.3 meters. The government have thankfully taken matters into their own hands and are refilling the lake in a bid to keep its true beauty alive. If you want to see this beautiful place in the world, you might want to head there soon before global warming takes it away completely!
71 – Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy
irene. / flickr.com
If you are ever in Europe, you really must come to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, just to laugh at the odd construction behind the leaning landmark. The building of this beautiful bell tower took part over 199 years and they still couldn’t fix the leaning problems! It was actually built in three stages and because the ground was too soft on one side of the tower, the foundations couldn’t support the rest of the weight. Over the years it kept tilting and although it has been partially fixed and stabilized to make it safe for visitors and tourists to travel up the almost-300 steps to the top.
72 – Ayers Rock, Australia
DuReMi / flickr.com
The real name of this massive landmark is Uluru but most of us will know the Australian place of beauty as Ayers Rock, situated in central Australia. The closest town is Alice Springs so if you head towards this way, you will be heading in the right direction but you should bear in mind that the town is still 450km away by the road.
You’ll need to buy a pass to come to this massive rock formation but once you’re here, there are plenty of things to do. You can go climbing which is one of the attractions most popular activity, but the locals request that you don’t as the place is said to have significant spiritual undertones. They won’t climb the formation but they won’t stop you from doing it. The government that owned the massive rock gave it back to the people but agreed on a lease so that they could keep it as a visitor attraction and agreed upon a deal so that people could still enjoy climbing around it.
73 – Sistine Chapel, Vatican City
Colin Tsoi / flickr.com
This chapel is not only one of the most breathtakingly painted places on the planet but it also holds so much in the form of religious history that you can just feel the buzz about this place as soon as you get in the vicinity of it. It’s the official residence of the Pop so, as you can expect, the place is incredibly luxurious and using the word exuberant would be an understatement!
It’s been painted by some of the most famous artists in our history including Michaelangelo, Pinturicchio, and Sandro Botticelli, making it a place that you definitely need to put on your bucket list!
74 – Monument Valley, USA
Moyan Brenn / flickr.com
If you head to the state lines of Utah and Arizona you will find a part of the Colorado Plateau that looks pretty impressive in the horizon. You will find Monument Valley, a cluster of butts made from sandstone that have made an odd sky-scraper-looking piles that you will have seen in many movies.
The National Park that the Monument Valley is set in is called the Navajo National Park and as long as you pay a small access fee, you can go on a drive that spans over 17 miles that will take you a good two or three hours to complete. There are guided tours that you can take as well to see things like Hunts Mesa and Mystery Valley…
75 – Vasco da Gama Bridge, Portugal
FH Mira / flickr.com
In the capital city of Portugal, Lisbon, you will find a bridge that looks as if it were too bit to have ever been created by men. It’s a cable-stayed bridge that goes across the River Tagus, and has been open since 1998, making it one of the newer places that we have incorporate into this list of beautiful places on earth.
Although not especially beautiful in nature, you definitely need to marvel at its greatness – the size of it is actually scary to look at whether you are on it, looking at it from the side, or even scarier than that – looking at the great expanse it covers from above!
So there you have the third section of our 100 Most Beautiful Places in the World! Just in case you missed Part A and Part B, you can find them in just a second and keep your eyes out for the final section of our exploration around the world.
Who knows where we will end up next?
Check out the first two parts of the series here:
- 100 Most Beautiful Places in the World (Part A)
- 100 Most Beautiful Places in the World (Part B)
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