10 Best Lakes & Lagoons (Costs & Tips, 2026)

Tradition says the wishing bell inside the island church only works if you ring it yourself — letting a friend do it to save a few euros reportedly doesn't count. The shoreline walk around the lake is free; getting to the island and actually ringing that bell costs about €32 all in (€20 round-trip pletna boat, €12 to enter the church).

Sixteen lakes, each sitting at a slightly lower elevation than the last, connected by travertine dams that have been growing millimetre by millimetre for thousands of years and are still actively building today. Every lake in the chain reads a different shade of turquoise or green depending on mineral content and the angle of the light. Peak summer entry is €40; the same ticket drops to roughly €10 in the November-March off-season.

The turquoise color is real, not a filter — glacial rock flour suspended in the water does that. The lake itself is free to view once you're in the park, though you'll need Banff National Park's own day pass to get there (about $12.25 CAD per adult), and parking in peak season is its own small ordeal — arrive before 7am or take the shuttle.

The world's highest navigable lake, and the Uros people still live on floating reed islands you can visit for a few dollars' boat fare. Bring altitude sickness tablets — you're above 3,800m before you even reach the water.

Lake Baikal alone holds roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen fresh water — more than all five Great Lakes combined. It's free to visit and, outside a short peak season, genuinely uncrowded; in winter it freezes clear enough to see the lakebed straight through the ice.

No rivers feed it and none drain out — the water is purely rain and snowmelt, filtered over centuries to an almost unnervingly pure blue with nothing washing sediment in to cloud it. Peak-season park entry is $30 per vehicle, valid for 7 days.

Free to walk the lakeside towns; the ferry between Bellagio and Varenna is under €10 and is honestly a better view than most of the villas you're not allowed into anyway.

Not glamorous, genuinely stunning — this is the view on the old $20 Canadian banknote. Private cars have been permanently banned on the access road since 2023, not just restricted in peak season, so a Parks Canada shuttle ($8 CAD, reservation required) is now the only way in — no amount of arriving early gets you a parking spot that no longer exists. You'll also need Banff National Park's own day pass (~$12.25 CAD per adult) to be in the area at all, same as at Lake Louise nearby.

So clear you can see submerged tree trunks from centuries ago standing upright underwater. Entry is ¥190, but the park also requires a ¥90 shuttle bus ticket on top of that during peak season (April-November) since walking the full valley isn't practical — budget ¥280 total, not just the headline entrance price. Go early; the light through the water is best before midday crowds churn it up.

Home to "That Wanaka Tree," one of the most photographed lone trees on Earth, growing straight out of the shallows. Free to visit, and the surrounding walking trails are some of the least crowded alpine lake views in the country.