
Travel guides · Curated for 2026
Where to go next
Twelve countries, chosen because our own explorers have been to them in numbers - and because they are the ones the big guidebooks skim. Each guide says what the place is actually like, and what the data behind it says.
Kotor and the Bay of Kotor · Pudelek (Marcin Szala) CC BY-SA 3.0
Curated travel guides
Updated September 2026Numbers read from our database on 24 September 2026. They count explorers with public maps, never individuals.
Curated for 2026SloveniaAlps, karst and 47 km of coast, all within a two-hour drive
Also went to Croatia (82% of them)
Curated for 2026EstoniaA medieval capital, 2,000 islands and forest in every direction
Also went to Finland (88% of them)
Curated for 2026MontenegroThe Bay of Kotor, then mountains almost nobody drives into
Also went to Croatia (91% of them)
Curated for 2026AlbaniaOttoman towns, an empty Riviera and the Accursed Mountains
Also went to Montenegro (63% of them)
Curated for 2026RomaniaSaxon Transylvania, the Carpathians and Europe's best road
Also went to Bulgaria (61% of them)
Curated for 2026BulgariaMonasteries, Black Sea beaches and mountains all winter
Also went to Romania (74% of them)
Curated for 2026IcelandOne ring road, and every landscape on it is the reason you came
Also went to Ireland (71% of them)
Curated for 2026NorwayFjords, Lofoten and trains that are the point of the trip
Also went to Denmark (87% of them)
Curated for 2026MaltaThree islands, 7,000 years of building, and winter that never bites
Also went to Greece (89% of them)
Curated for 2026MoroccoMedinas, Atlas passes and the edge of the Sahara
Also went to Egypt (52% of them)
Curated for 2026Vietnam1,650 km end to end, and the middle is the part people skip
Also went to Thailand (79% of them)
Curated for 2026South KoreaSeoul, then mountains, temples and islands an hour out
Also went to Japan (96% of them)
Why these twelve and not fifty? Because a guide is only worth reading if there is something behind it. These are countries 19 to 33 of our explorers have marked - deep enough in our data to say something true, and far enough off the Paris-Rome-Barcelona circuit that we are not just repeating what everyone else already wrote. More will follow, slowly, as the data gets deeper.
Curated culinary guides
The dishes worth the trip, and where we would send a friend to eat them. Every restaurant checked by hand, and dated.
Culinary · 2026PortugalFrancesinha, bacalhau, leitão and a pastel de nata still warm
Culinary · 2026SloveniaŠtruklji, orange wine, Karst ham and a three-star kitchen in the Alps
A few countries at a time, on purpose. A food guide is only as good as its restaurant list, and ours are checked one by one. More are coming.