The Best Eight-Day Trips to Take Around the World

Spend eight days in this magical Middle Eastern land and you’ll leave with a suitcase full of once-in-a-lifetime memories, from nights spent under the stars to dipping your toes in the Dead Sea. We’ll start with wine tasting and a street food tour in Amman, before heading to the ancient city of Petra via a crowd-avoiding backdoor route. You’ll take a cooking class in a local family’s home and climb Petra’s mountaintop monastery before heading to the rusty desert expanse of Wadi Rum, made famous by countless films, from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to Dune (2021). You’ll explore the desert by 4×4 and stargaze at an overnight stay in a Bedouin-style camp. Finally it’s a tale of two seas – go for a swim and a snorkel in the Red Sea, and a float in the mineral-rich waters of the Dead Sea.

Why visit one Greek island when you can hop between a few? We’ll start on the mainland as we explore the old and new in Athens, from the ancient Acropolis to the city’s vibrant nightlife. Our first hop lands on the under-explored island of Milos, for cute cobblestone villages and untouched white-sand beaches. Then it’s on to Naxos, with its rolling hills dotted with olive groves and oak trees, where we’ll take a three-course cooking masterclass at a local family’s home. Last but definitely not least, we’ll arrive in Santorini, for some of the finest sunsets you will ever see, amid those iconic whitewashed houses and blue-domed churches.

Dense rainforests, active volcanoes and emerald lakes are only some of the natural wonders you can expect to find on this tour around Ecuador. You’ll be strolling through the colonial capital, Quito, hiking around the Limpiopungo glacial lagoon – the high, snow-capped Cotopaxi stratovolcano towering over you – swinging freely in the air from a mountaintop treehouse at the End of the World in Baños, and white-water rafting on the Jatunyacu river. A soothing soak in the hot springs of Papallacta village serves as the perfect ending to this equatorial escapade.