Some places look like they were designed by someone who had never heard the word ordinary. From clifftop villages in Greece to balloon-dotted skies over Turkey, these seven destinations genuinely do not look real until you are standing in them. Here is your visual bucket list for the year ahead.

Santorini sits on the edge of a volcanic caldera in the Aegean Sea, and nothing quite prepares you for the moment you see those white-domed buildings spilling down a cliff face with the deep blue sea below. Small enough to explore in three or four days, big enough that you will keep finding new corners.

Best time: April to June    Budget: Mid to High

Imagine waking up before sunrise and watching hundreds of hot air balloons drift silently over a landscape that looks like it belongs on another planet. The fairy chimneys, ancient cave dwellings, and rose-coloured valleys make it one of the most visually unique places on earth.

Best time: April to June    Budget: Mid Range

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The water here is so clear and so impossibly turquoise that every photo looks edited. A collection of 26 coral atolls sitting just above the equator, the Maldives offers overwater bungalows, house reefs you can snorkel from the beach, and some of the best sunsets anywhere on the planet.

Best time: November to April    Budget: Mid to High

Kyoto in cherry blossom season is the kind of thing that makes you understand why people travel. Centuries-old temples surrounded by clouds of pink and white flowers, bamboo groves you can walk through at dawn before the crowds, and a food culture that permanently raises your expectations.

Best time: March to April    Budget: Mid Range

Patagonia is where the world runs out of words. Towers of granite rising over turquoise lakes, glaciers the size of cities, condors circling overhead, and almost no one around. Torres del Paine in Chile and Los Glaciares in Argentina together make one of the great overland journeys on earth.

Best time: November to March    Budget: Mid Range

Colourful villages clinging to cliffs above the Mediterranean, lemon trees everywhere, pasta that ruins all other pasta, and a coastal road so dramatic that the drive itself is a destination. The Amalfi Coast covers just 50 kilometres, but every single kilometre has something worth stopping for.

Best time: May or September    Budget: Mid to High

Bora Bora is the destination that travel posters were invented for. A volcanic peak rising from a lagoon so perfectly blue it looks painted, surrounded by a coral reef sheltering one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems in the Pacific. It is remote, it is expensive, and it is absolutely worth it at least once.

Best time: May to October    Budget: High End

Pick whichever one gave you that feeling when you were reading it. Then open a new tab and look up flights. That is how every great trip begins.