Ireland

Ireland is a country that's had an outsized influence on the world relative to its size. Four Nobel Prizes in Literature, more than any country per capita. A diaspora so enormous that 70 million people worldwide claim Irish descent compared to just 5 million living in Ireland. U2, Guinness, Oscar Wilde, and the entire concept of the modern pub - all Irish exports. The island is green for a reason (it rains a lot), but that lush landscape of rolling hills, stone walls, and dramatic coastline is genuinely spectacular.

Modern Ireland is a very different place from the poverty-stricken country that exported millions of its people during the Great Famine. The Celtic Tiger boom transformed it into one of Europe's wealthiest nations, Dublin became a European tech hub hosting Google, Facebook, and Apple's European headquarters, and the country went from conservative Catholic stronghold to legalizing same-sex marriage by popular vote in 2015. But for all the modernity, the old Ireland is still right there - in the trad sessions in pubs, in the crumbling monastic ruins, in the Gaeltacht regions where Irish is still spoken daily, and in the way that telling a good story remains a genuine art form.