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Where do you want to go in 2012? We've got some ideas.This time every year, Frommer's editors, authors, and experts from around the world finally settle on a list of our top destinations after months of bickering among ourselves. Choosing was harder than ever this year, so we ended up expanding our picks to include additional selections that were notable for a certain quality or offered something special for particular types of travelers.
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Photo Caption: Ballooning over Goreme, Turkey.
For just a moment waters still in the Bay of Fundy; one hundred billion tons of seawater pause before gently reversing flow. In six hours and 13 minutes tourists will walk the sea floor some 50 feet below the spot where sea kayakers paddled. These are the highest tides in the world, best experienced at Hopewell Cape on Canada's east coast.
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Photo Caption: East Quoddy Head Lighthouse stands watch on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada. The Bay of Fundy, which it overlooks, is home to some of the world's highest tides.
You just can't keep a good city down. Or, in Beirut's case, a turbulent past of decades of civil war hasn't taken the sheen off its glossy, cosmopolitan swagger. Lebanon's capital is far from your "regular" Middle Eastern city: Nestled on the Mediterranean coast, Beirut is an enticing combination of French designer boutiques in rebuilt Downtown, chi-chi private beach clubs where bling is king, cutting-edge galleries in converted warehouses and magnificent third-century mosaics in the National Museum.
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Photo Caption: Advertisements for pop stars and politicians in the Gemmayze neighborhood in east Beirut. Photo by Paul Keller/Flickr.com.
Once thought of purely in terms of its burgeoning automobile industry and as the embarkation point for the breathtaking boat journey along China's Three Gorges, these days, the hilly city of Chongqing is earning a reputation as a destination in its own right.
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Photo Caption: Neighbors playing mah jong on the back streets of Chongqing, China. Photo by Fang Guo/Flickr.com.
Curacao is not your quintessential Caribbean island. Sure, it's got curvaceous white beaches and cerulean seas and a coral reef brimming with exotically hued marine life. But Curacao offers even more, with one of the region's most cosmopolitan cultures and a standout capital in Willemstad, a child's paintbox of giddy Caribbean colors and gabled colonial architecture.
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Photo Caption: Underwater adventures in Curacao. Photo courtesy Curacao Tourist Board
Fukuoka may not be on the international radar, but it's been in the spotlight as a model green city even before the March earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown brought energy-conserving measures throughout Japan.
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Photo Caption: The main fountain and stage at Fukuoka, Japan's Town Canal City.
Ghana provides a perfect introduction to African travel. True, this small and amiable West African nation lacks the big name draws associated with the continent's top safari destinations. But for anybody seeking a holistic experience that embraces traditional and contemporary cultures as well as beaches and safaris, Ghana's microcosmic travel circuit is the perfect African primer.
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Photo Caption: View of fishing boats from Cape Coast Castle in Cape Coast, Ghana.
Exuberant Barcelona has long hogged the limelight, but its little sister Girona is stepping out from the wings. This diminutive city in northern Catalonia packs a cultural punch that is the envy of many a larger destination, with a superb dining scene to match. Girona's historic quarter, a secretive jumble of medieval mansions and courtyards crowned by a magnificent cathedral, is piled up on the eastern bank of the River Ter. To the west of the river, elegant avenues laid out during the 19th century are lined with smart boutiques and cafés.
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Photo Caption: The colorful medieval façades on the Riu Onyar in Girona.
When Kansas City's Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts opened in September of 2011, the new building was immediately hailed as an architectural icon. Looking something like metallic nesting cups tipped on their sides, the new home of the Kansas City Ballet, the Kansas City Symphony, and the Lyric Opera of Kansas City not only looks interesting, it's one of the most technically advanced performance halls in the nation.
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Photo Caption: Claes Oldenburg sculpture on the lawn of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.
Greenwich is one of London's most historic areas with the city's lifeblood, the River Thames, running right through it. It's the river that helped Greenwich emerge as one of England's main naval centres in the 18th and 19th centuries and allows Greenwich to reinvent itself continually. Maritime Greenwich is a UNESCO heritage site and, along the waterfront, you'll see its great naval history and remarkable baroque facades by architects such as Wren, Hawksmoor, and Vanburgh.
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Photo Caption: Commissioned in 1675 by Charles II, the Royal Observatory was set up to discover an accurate method of determining longitude.
The Yucatán Peninsula is a land apart from Mexico, and not only because it sticks out from the mainland like a hitchhiker's thumb. Today's Maya, whose ancestors waged a centuries-long battle for independence, remain Yucatecans first, Mexicans second. This "otherness" is one reason the Yucatán has largely escaped the drug violence plaguing other parts of the country; it remains the safest region in Mexico, with far less crime than travelers are likely to encounter at home.
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Photo Caption: Uxmal's Mayan ruins.
Some might look at Moab, Utah, and tell you it's in the middle of nowhere. Those in the know will tell you that it in fact is in the middle of everything.
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Photo Caption: Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah
Hollywood could not have designed a more perfect beach: Nestled along the romantic North Shore of Kauai, Hanalei Bay is a near perfect, two-mile long half-moon of golden sand with a dramatic back drop of craggy volcanic cliffs laced with thousand-foot waterfalls.
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Photo Caption: Surfer at Kauai's Hanalei Bay beach.
When rapper Lupe Fiasco branded Chicago the "best city in the whole wide, wide world," he may have ruffled some feathers. Upon closer inspection, there's cred to back it up: a destination-worthy dining scene; deeply rooted music culture; and soaring, significant architecture. Throw world-class museums and a cutting edge cocktail culture into the mix, and you have the makings of a memorable jaunt.
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Photo Caption: View of the Chicago lake front, Chicago, IL.
Think that Nordic capitals are all about weeks spent indoors in front of space heaters popping vitamin D supplements to stave off seasonal affective disorder? Think again. Northern Norway is a winter (and fall, and summer, and spring) wonderland, and nowhere is better for experiencing the Call of the Wild than pulling into port in the North's coastal capital, Tromsø.
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Photo Caption: Viewing the Northern Lights in Tromso, Norway. Photo by Gunnar Hildonen/Flickr.com.
The wild and remote Aysén region of southern Chile is getting a lot of press these days
You can actually find peace and solitude in America's most-visited park. With some 520,000 acres, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, is one big, welcoming tent. You and your family can cocoon yourself in true wilderness, hike a trail in utter silence, and camp out in the hush of a hardwood forest -- all in spite of the fact that the Great Smoky National Park is visited by eight to ten million people a year.
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Photo Caption: Sunrise in Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee.
Though Lima started out as the richest and most beautiful colonial settlement in the Americas, by the 1980s and '90s it had become one of its most sprawling and disorderly cities. Travelers in a hurry to get to Cusco and Machu Picchu often landed and blitzed right past the capital. But recently this coastal city has been riding a wave of growing fame for its gustatory pleasures. Lima is now drawing a new flock of visitors who travel all the way to Peru just to eat.
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Photo Caption: A butcher and his meats in Lima, Peru
Sailing through adversity as if it was the calm blue waters of the Coral Sea, the island resorts of Australia's Whitsunday region have emerged from the devastation of 2011's Cyclone Yasi looking better than ever.
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Photo Caption: Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, Queensland.
Unsung, undeveloped and eminently affordable, the Albanian Riviera has all the natural attractions of its Croatian counterpart further north but without the crowds and considerable expense. Here you have white-sand beaches, crystal-clear waters, and Mediterranean villages barely changed since long before King Zog.
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Photo Caption: The Albanian coastline near Borsh, Albania. Photo by Godo Godaj/Flickr.com
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Photo Caption: Ballooning over Goreme, Turkey.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: East Quoddy Head Lighthouse stands watch on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada. The Bay of Fundy, which it overlooks, is home to some of the world's highest tides.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Advertisements for pop stars and politicians in the Gemmayze neighborhood in east Beirut. Photo by Paul Keller/Flickr.com.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Neighbors playing mah jong on the back streets of Chongqing, China. Photo by Fang Guo/Flickr.com.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Underwater adventures in Curacao. Photo courtesy Curacao Tourist Board
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: The main fountain and stage at Fukuoka, Japan's Town Canal City.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: View of fishing boats from Cape Coast Castle in Cape Coast, Ghana.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: The colorful medieval façades on the Riu Onyar in Girona.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Claes Oldenburg sculpture on the lawn of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Commissioned in 1675 by Charles II, the Royal Observatory was set up to discover an accurate method of determining longitude.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Uxmal's Mayan ruins.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Surfer at Kauai's Hanalei Bay beach.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: View of the Chicago lake front, Chicago, IL.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Viewing the Northern Lights in Tromso, Norway. Photo by Gunnar Hildonen/Flickr.com.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Sunrise in Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: A butcher and his meats in Lima, Peru
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, Queensland.
Read the expanded feature.
Photo Caption: The Albanian coastline near Borsh, Albania. Photo by Godo Godaj/Flickr.com