10 Best Scenic Viewpoints (Costs & Tips, 2026)

No hike required — Mather Point is a short walk from the main visitor centre car park, which makes it one of the easiest genuinely great views on Earth to reach. Park entry is $35 per vehicle for a full week. Sunrise and sunset pull the most colour out of the canyon's layers, if you can time it.

Free, but not easy — an 8km round trip, roughly 4 hours, over well-marked but genuinely tiring terrain. The payoff is a flat-topped cliff dropping 604m straight down to the Lysefjord with no barrier at the edge, which is either thrilling or terrifying depending on how you feel about edges. May to September only, when the trail clears of snow.

Take the Peak Tram (~HK$88, ~$11) if you want the historic experience, or walk up the Old Peak Road for free if you don't mind the climb. Either way, the view over Hong Kong's skyline and Victoria Harbour at dusk is one of the most recognisable cityscapes anywhere, and it doesn't photograph any worse for having been photographed a million times.

Park entry runs about ZAR 220 (~$12). Skip the funicular and take the 20-minute walk up to the old lighthouse instead — it's free and arguably more dramatic, given you're standing where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are popularly said to meet, with the wind doing its best to remind you of it.

Free, from the public viewing mounds around the plain — many of the temple platforms themselves are now restricted, but the hills still work just as well. Watching hot air balloons drift over 2,000-plus ancient temples at dawn is the kind of scene that looks digitally composited even when you're standing right there.

Entry costs about ¥65 (~$9), and unlike most gorge views, you don't need to commit to a multi-day trek to see it — the main platform is a short walk from the car park. The Jinsha River roars nearly 4,000m below snow-capped peaks, which is a genuinely strange thing to take in from a paved viewpoint.

Park entry is AUD $38 for three days, and the dedicated sunset car park is worth timing your visit around — Uluru shifts through deep reds and purples as the sun drops, a colour change photographed so often it's become shorthand for the entire country.

Free from the roadside pull-offs between monasteries; entering an individual monastery costs a few euros each if you want to go inside. Six active monasteries balanced on sheer sandstone pillars make this one of the more surreal landscapes in Europe, and you don't need to pay a cent to just look at them.

A day tour from Uyuni town runs about $25. During the wet season (Dec–Apr), a thin sheet of water turns the world's largest salt flat into a perfect mirror of the sky, and the resulting photos look faked even when they're not — this is one of the most widely shared, least widely believed landscapes on Earth.

The official cog train costs around $30 return; the van from Cosme Velho is a cheaper official alternative if you'd rather skip the queue for the train instead. From the statue's base, the 360° view takes in Sugarloaf, Copacabana, and the whole of Guanabara Bay — arrive early, before both the crowds and the clouds roll in.