Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travelist: The 500 Best Places on the Planet...Ranked

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In the dry season you can visit the lake's two islands - Isla Incahuasi and Isla del Pescado - craggy husks of land sprouting with cacti. It was built almost 1,500 years ago when Byzantine Emperor Justinian I demanded a cathedral that would mimic the majesty of the heavens on earth and eclipse the wonders of Rome.

Lonely Planet says: Church, mosque and museum in one, Istanbul’s Aya Sofya defies easy categorization. It's still decades away from completion, but the Sagrada Familia is still considered one of the world's top attractions. Lonely Planet's Ultimate Australia Travel Listis the regional follow-up to the bestselling Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel Listand a must-own coffee table book for both travellers to Australia and residents who want to discover their country’s most iconic sights and activities.Rediscover the city's eternal air of mystery in the early morning or the hours before closing when it's at its most atmospheric.

Lonely Planet says: It’s a myth that it can be seen from space, but this awe-inspiring maze of walls and fortifications stretching for an astonishing 5500 miles across rugged landscape seems both infinite and indestructible. Hire a pletna (gondola), dive beneath the glass-like surface and stay over in one of many beautiful shoreside properties. Colour the world's 100 greatest places, from the Grand Canyon to the Alhambra, the Great Barrier Reef to the Acropolis and beyond. They’re so enormous, tour boats in the foaming pools below look like matchsticks to viewers from the boardwalks above.

Learn about Indigenous culture and traditions, savour local flavours at world renowned eateries, have ethical interactions with native wildlife, swim in turquoise waters at picture-perfect beaches, and explore the breathtaking beauty of natural landscapes. There are dozens of far more rewarding things to do - join a ranger-guided walk past sacred waterholes; spot kangaroos hopping through the spinifex; and learn about the Aṉangu at the cultural center, where there is a fantastic display on tjukurpa, the creation period. But generations later, after the city was abandoned, it was known only to the Bedouin who made the caves their home. This book is guaranteed to exercise your creativity, focus your mind and inspire your inner traveller.

A visit is a jaw-dropping, visceral experience, and the power and noise of the cascades - a chain of hundreds of waterfalls nearly 2 miles (3km) in extension - live forever in the memory. But for adventurous souls who can handle a 4WD and don't mind camping, there are affordable options within the delta's Moremi Game Reserve.

With a longlist of thousands, which was whittled down to a shortlist, which was then voted on by everybody in the Lonely Planet community. And so the top 20 list finds Tasmania’s Museum of Modern and Old Art and Fez’s Medina rubbing shoulders with travel titans such as the Grand Canyon and the Taj Mahal.