Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Dürnstein, Austria
The Traveler: Michael Guerriero, author of the guidebook "Party Across America: 101 of the Greatest Festivals, Sporting Events, and Celebrations in the U.S." (partyacrossamericabook.com), which is currently being turned into a pilot for the Food Network.
The Place: Backed by striking mountains, Dürnstein's winding cobblestoned streets and homes with steep, red-tiled roofs and window flower boxes look plucked out of a fairy tale. Sections of the fortified walls remain intact, and the baroque church's blue-and-white clock tower is inverted in time (when it's 3 p.m., the clock reads 9).
Text by Brad Tuttle, Kate Appleton, Naomi Lindt, Laura MacNeil and Beth Collins
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Shangri-La, China
The Traveler: Christian Pucher, development director for Six Senses Resorts & Spas, a Bangkok–based hotelier known for its high-end eco-resorts in pristine locales. Pucher leaves home every other week to identify sites for future properties in remote parts of Asia and the Middle East.
The Place: Few places evoke paradise like the mythical Shangri-La, the mountainous valley depicted in James Hilton's 1933 novel, Lost Horizon. And that's just what Pucher found when he encountered the northwestern area of China's Yunnan province, which borders Tibet and was renamed Shangri-La in 2001 for its natural beauty. The Swiss native is no novice when it comes to mountains, but the snowcapped peaks, Alpine lakes, and deep gorges of the Tibetan Plateau were unlike anything he'd ever imagined. "I was in absolute awe," he says. "Mountains of up to 22,000 feet would rise and drop into valleys of 6,000 feet or more. The roads crossed some of the most beautiful landscapes I had ever seen. It created a very serene and peaceful feeling."
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Ohrid, Macedonia
The Traveler: Alex Robertson Textor, a prolific blogger (Spendthrift Shoestring) and the author of a low-budget Caribbean guide who fell in love with travel as an 11-year-old, when his family lived in Vienna for nearly a year and explored Europe together. He travels about 12 times a year on assignments for The New York Times, Budget Travel and Eurocheapo.
The Place: Despite its position on the banks of Macedonia's magnificent Lake Ohrid, and despite the fact that it just so happens to be the most popular tourist destination in Macedonia, Ohrid remains unknown to most American travelers. But it's reaching an on-the-verge moment — like Prague 20 years ago — that should grant early North American arrivals serious bragging rights. "In the height of summer, Ohrid is full of European visitors, and there's a party atmosphere," says Textor. "Lots of people rent a car or a taxi for the day and circle the lake."
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Lago Todos los Santos, Chile
The Traveler: Rupert Barrington, a producer for BBC wildlife programs who has spent 20 years traveling to places like the Namib Desert, the Komodo archipelago and the island of Corfu to document the world's most interesting reptiles and insects.
The Place: Lago Todos los Santos has steep wooded banks and, in the background, looming fantastically over the scene is a perfectly symmetrical, snowcapped, 8,730-foot volcano, Osorno, that's drawn comparisons to Mount Fuji. Barrington's verdict was nearly instantaneous: "I thought it was just the most beautiful place I'd ever been," he says. "I felt that I'd arrived at something quite special and wild."
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Binn, Switzerland
The Traveler: Greg Witt, operator of a hiking guide service, Alpenwild. He first tackled the Alps as an 18-year-old backpacker and continues to spend two months in Switzerland every summer.
The Place: After decades of canvassing the Swiss countryside (he started leading hikes in 1986), Witt still gets excited about returning to Binn, in a small, secluded Alpine valley at the base of zigzagging peaks sporting countless shades of green. Local residents uphold a pact made more than 50 years ago to resist the kind of overdevelopment that's added posh ski resorts and multilane highways to much of southwestern Switzerland. "Even today, the 16th-century stone bridge leading into the village of Binn bears the load of goats and hikers, not cars and buses," says Witt.
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Trinity, Newfoundland
The Traveler: Adam H. Graham, a food and travel freelance writer. The son of a chef, Graham worked at the New England Culinary Institute before landing a series of magazine gigs culminating with the executive editor position at Sherman's Travel magazine. He struck out on his own in 2007.
The Place: Last June, Graham convinced a publication to send him to one such underappreciated gem: Newfoundland, an island in the easternmost Canadian province and the setting of Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Shipping News. A three-hour drive north along roller coaster roads from the provincial capital of St. John's brought him to Trinity, a historic harbor town with a year-round population of 350. Lovely primary-colored wooden houses punctuate a landscape of craggy cliffs and rolling hills that immediately reminded Graham of western Ireland. "I hate to use this word, but it is magical, and there's this crystal-clear blue water that sparkles in the sunshine." Icebergs glide by, the occasional bald eagle soars overhead, and puffin penguins can be seen up close, diving right into Trinity Bay.
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Playa Koralia, Colombia
The Traveler: Marcella Echavarría, founder of SURevolution. The New York–based company connects indigenous artisan communities to fashion houses such as Donna Karan, Tory Burch, and Ralph Lauren. In the past six months, Echavarría has traveled to Cambodia, China, Botswana, Peru, Ecuador, and her native Colombia.
The Place: For at least 10 days every year, when she needs a break, Echavarría retreats to Playa Koralia, a laid-back resort named after the beach on which it's set on Colombia's Caribbean coast. There's nothing in the world she's seen like it. "Playa Koralia is the only place where you can walk on a tropical beach and see snow-peaked mountains so close," says Echavarría.
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Trémolat, France
The Traveler: Amie O'Shaughnessy, founder of ciaobambino.com, a website devoted to family-friendly lodging. She travels at least twice a month to review properties that are ideal for families with infants, toddlers, tweens and teens.
The Place: Trémolat's fortresslike Romanesque church dates back to the 11th century, but the surrounding region boasts an even longer history. The valleys are dotted with prehistoric rock dwellings, Stonehenge-like megaliths, and caves painted with haunting images of bison, horses, and traced human hands estimated to be an astounding 17,000 years old. O'Shaughnessy and her brood explored the area by bike, car, and on foot.
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Varkala, India
The Traveler: Beth Whitman, founder of Wanderlust and Lipstick, which includes a guidebook series for female travelers, a website and tours.
The Place: A self-proclaimed travel addict who's visited more than 30 countries, Beth Whitman spends about a quarter of the year on the road leading tours or scouting out new destinations. In 2008, while researching her second book, "Wanderlust and Lipstick: For Women Traveling to India," Whitman happened upon the seaside town of Varkala, located at India's southwestern tip in the state of Kerala. "I discovered Varkala the way any traveler should discover a new place," says Whitman. Upon landing late at a nearby airport, she overheard some backpackers talking about Varkala and followed her instincts. "The five of us piled into a taxi for the hour drive," she recalls. "When I got there it was dark, so it wasn't until the next day that I saw the magic of this place."
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Havelock, New Zealand
The Traveler: Leon Logothetis, a London broker who jumped ship at the chance to work for the Discovery Channel show Destination Future. The experience inspired his own show, Amazing Adventures of a Nobody, which cataloged his super-frugal adventures from New York to L.A. and from Paris to Moscow.
The Place: Havelock — with less than 500 residents — sits at the head of the wide, startlingly clear Pelorus Sound, and a boat or kayak boarded at the marina leads to winding waterways where dolphins jump from the water and dark-green mountains jut steeply into the air around every turn. First populated by gold miners and timber workers, Havelock's tiny downtown is chockablock with cute two-story colonial buildings that now house galleries and restaurants. "Both the North and South Islands of New Zealand are filled with dreamlike scenery and picturesque little towns," says Logothetis. "But of all of them, Havelock is my favorite. It's just this little slice of heaven, with great food, super-friendly people, and an amazing setting."
Best Places You've Never Heard Of: Heimaey, Iceland
The Traveler: Andrew Zimmern, host of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, a Travel Channel series devoted to exploring local cuisines that keeps Zimmern globe trotting for about 30 weeks each year.
The Place: When your specialty is bizarre food, your travels take you well beyond the world's slick capitals and posh restaurants. It's the off-the-beaten-path spots that hold the most promise for Zimmern. One of his recent favorites is the Westman Islands, off the south coast of Iceland. "Most people who go to Iceland stay in Reykjavík, and if they leave, it's to do a one-day excursion somewhere north of the city," he says. So naturally, when he set out to shoot a recent TV episode, Zimmern took his crew south. "I wanted to connect with the real Iceland," he says. When he landed on Heimaey, the only inhabited island in the wild volcanic archipelago, the first thing Zimmern noticed was the locals. "They look like they just stepped off a Norse boat!" he says. In fact, the 15 islands are named not for the Norse settlers but for the Irish they enslaved; the Norse referred to the Irish as Vestmenn, or Westmen. Heimaey's roughly 5,000 inhabitants are still mostly a mix of Norse and Celtic descendants.