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The 12 Best Scenic Drives Outside the USA That Out-Road-Trip Route 66

Route 66 is mostly faded gas stations and nostalgia now. The world is hiding far better drives — coastal cliff roads, alpine passes, and one ring road around an entire volcanic island. Twelve routes ranked for the people who've maxed out the American open road.

Route 66 is a nostalgia trip, and I mean that as a gentle insult. Most of it has been swallowed by interstate, and the romance is doing a lot of heavy lifting over the reality of strip malls and shuttered diners. Meanwhile the rest of the planet is hiding genuinely jaw-dropping drives that nobody back home has heard of. If you’ve done the American open road and want more, here are twelve routes ranked by how often they made me pull over and just stare.

The drive from Te Anau into Fiordland is the best two hours of asphalt I’ve ever covered. You climb through beech forest, burst into the Eglinton Valley’s golden flats, then plunge through the one-lane Homer Tunnel and drop into a fjord wall of waterfalls. Stop at Mirror Lakes. Stop everywhere, honestly.

Two drives, one trip, because you can’t pick. Trollstigen is eleven insane hairpins up a cliff face past a thundering waterfall. The Atlantic Road is a low ribbon of bridges that hops between skerries out over open ocean, including one bridge that looks, from the right angle, like a launch ramp into the sea. Do them back to back.

The whole island in one loop: glaciers, black beaches, geothermal steam, and the iceberg lagoon at Jökulsárlón where you can watch chunks of glacier float out to sea. Give it a week, not a weekend. The south coast alone — waterfalls you can walk behind — could fill three days.

A nine-kilometre toll road carved into a sheer cliff between Hout Bay and Noordhoek, just outside Cape Town. The road clings to the rock with the Atlantic crashing far below, and the sunset from the lookouts is absurd. Short, but it earns its place by sheer drama per kilometre.

Built by a paranoid dictator across the Carpathians, this is a wild scribble of switchbacks climbing to a glacial lake at over two thousand metres. It’s only open in summer, the upper section is genuinely thrilling, and it feels gloriously empty compared to the Alpine passes everyone knows.

The cliffs, the Twelve Apostles sea stacks, and koalas in the gum trees near Kennett River. Yes, it’s busy, but for good reason. Drive it east to west so you’re on the ocean side, and do it over two days with a night in Apollo Bay rather than as a brutal day trip from Melbourne.

Forty-eight numbered hairpins stacked up a mountainside like a child’s drawing of a road. It’s the holy grail for driving enthusiasts, and from the top the view back down the switchbacks is dizzying. Go early to beat the cyclists and the motorbike convoys; the road gets crowded by mid-morning.

Two and a half thousand kilometres of Ireland’s west coast, so pick a chunk. The stretch around the Slea Head Drive on the Dingle Peninsula — stone walls, beehive huts, sheep with right of way, and the open Atlantic — is the most concentrated dose of why this coast is famous.

Terrifying and gorgeous in equal measure: a narrow cliff road where buses negotiate blind corners with millimetres to spare and the Tyrrhenian Sea glitters far below. Let someone else drive if you can, or take it slow off-season. Sorrento to Salerno, with a stop in Ravello above the crowds.

Scotland’s answer to Route 66 and a far better one: a loop from Inverness around the Highlands’ top, all single-track roads, sea lochs, empty beaches whiter than the Caribbean, and the odd castle. Passing-place etiquette is a real skill here, and the weather is part of the deal.

The James Bond Goldfinger road, climbing past the Rhône Glacier with hairpins that fall away into nothing. Pair it with the neighbouring Grimsel and Susten passes for a single perfect Alpine day of nothing but bends, glaciers, and mountain restaurants serving rösti at altitude.

Technically North American, but Nova Scotia is a different country in spirit and well outside the lower 48. The loop around Cape Breton Highlands hugs cliffs over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, blazes with colour in the autumn, and often has a whale or two breaching offshore. A quieter, wilder cousin to the famous American coastal drives.

Do I need a four-wheel drive for these? For most, no — a normal car handles all but the roughest Icelandic interior tracks. Just rent something with a bit of power for the alpine climbs, and book well ahead in summer when the good routes sell out of rentals fast.

How long should I budget for a scenic drive? Always at least double what the map says. These roads are slow by design — you’ll stop constantly, the surfaces are technical, and rushing them defeats the entire point. Plan overnight stops and treat the driving as the destination, not the commute.

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