Photo: Yahoo! News

A colonial jewel of Ecuador, spilling over with cobblestoned streets, well-preserved churches and attractive leafy plazas—all tucked into a verdant Andean valley traversed by four winding rivers—Cuenca wins out as the country’s most idyllic urban locale. From the Inca to the Spanish to the most recent wave of foreign settlers—this time, in the form of thousands of American retirees—it’s little wonder that outsiders have long descended on Cuenca in droves.

Source: Cuenca, Ecuador attracting visitors who don’t want to leave