The Citadel of the Ho Dynasty comprises the remains of a late 14th-century capital of Vietnam, built in full harmony with its surroundings following the neo-Confucian tradition. Most information that you will find about the site will be accompanied by a picture of that one iconic stone gate: the South Gate of the Citadel. But there is more to this than just “walls and gates”. The WHS consists of 3 locations around the small city of Vinh Loc: the Citadel, the Nam Giao Altar and a part of the Outer Wall. At least 6 of the 7 reviewers before me seem to only have visited the Citadel and then often even just its South Gate. I knew I had to put more effort into it to prevent a short and unsatisfying visit.

Inside the citadel, approaching the North Gate

From Tam Coc where I was staying overnight, I hired a car + driver to take me to Vinh Loc. It’s only a 58km drive but it took us 1.5 hours because of the heavy traffic and the slow passages through towns of all sizes. Already some 18km before Vinh Loc the WHS is …

The Trang An Landscape in Northern Vietnam essentially is a scenic karst area with some prehistoric cave shelters thrown in. I stayed for 3 nights in the town of Tam Coc, at a homestay in the core zone next to the rice paddies and with views on the karst hills. It was pouring rain on the day that I arrived and on the third day I had planned to see another nearby WHS (the Ho Citadel), so I only had one full day in the Trang An area. In hindsight I felt that was enough, although maybe in better weather one might add more activities.

Exiting a cave

I started my day of exploration on a rented bike. I rode it for about half an hour to the docking area of the Trang An boat trips. Both Tam Coc and Trang An do have regulated boat rides which are very popular and possibly the best way of getting to know this area. At Trang An, you can choose between 3 routes. They all cost 200,000 dong (ca. 7.5 EUR) and take 2.5-3 hours. Two of them pass along the popular Kong: Skull Island …

As I am quickly approaching my 700th visited WHS, I become more and more convinced that reaching 800 or 900 WHS is entirely possible. As long as I stay in good health and have sufficient financial means, I can continue adding WHS to my tally at (almost) the same speed as I do now. But will that pattern be enough to finally conquer all of them? To answer that question, I analyzed the ‘missing’ lists of our 3 grand old men: Atila , Iain and Solivagant .

Wadi al-Hitan: too recent?

78 WHS have not been visited by any of these 3

It turns out there is a hard core of WHS that have not been reached (yet) by these 3 WH Travelers. This combined ‘missing’ list from early December 2018 includes 78 WHS. My hypothesis is that those who aim for the full coverage of the whole List, should look at these ‘leftovers’ first. These should become a priority when you statistically still have more time and money left than at later age. Looking at that list, I think there are 5 categories of reasons why these 78 have not been …

Hôtel Solvay is a late 19th century city villa in Brussels by design of the Belgian architect Victor Horta. It is 1 of his 4 Major Town Houses . I visited it two weeks ago on a special tour in Dutch. They want to keep it exclusive: the tours are only once a month and a ticket costs 40 EUR. You must also book well in advance online. In 2002 I already had been to one of the other locations (the Horta House & Atelier Museum), which has no such visitor limitations. It lies only 500m away from the Solvay and a third location (Hôtel Tassel) is also just around the corner.

Hôtel Solvay wedged in between modern office buildings

At noon, around 25 visitors gathered in front of the imposing façade of the Hotel Solvay at the Avenue Louise number 224. We were given solid plastic covers for our shoes so that we would not tarnish the interior. This is now a busy neighbourhood, with a lot of traffic, embassies, shops and restaurants. The 19th century house is wedged between two ugly office buildings. When the house was built it was free …

After the extensive review of the Cave of Pont D’Arc by Solivagant 2 months ago, I was afraid that there would be nothing left for me to write about! But I was happy to finally tick it off, as I had a painful 'near miss' last year . This time I first drove to the Cirque d’Estre where the real cave is located. At least I made it into the buffer zone (looking at the map, I suspect that the core zone starts behind the vineyards at the ridge?). Signs were all over the place to warn about wild boar hunters so I did not proceed beyond having a quick look at the Cirque and the Pont d’Arc opposite. I’ll continue this review with my experience of visiting the replica cave in late November.

Various options at the Caverne de Pont d'Arc

I bought the ticket online about a month before, but there were still tickets left on the day. I was on the first tour of Sunday morning, at 11 am. They warn you to be there at least half an hour before – that’s because the tours do not start at …

My visit to the TWHS of Nîmes seemed like such a simple plan: fly to Marseille and then drive there in an hour. In Nîmes I then would have an afternoon to see the Roman monuments. But reaching the city this particular last Saturday was hindered by people in 'yellow vests', protesting against the high fuel prices and other issues. All access roads but one had been blocked, so with a huge U-turn (which cost me over an hour extra) I had to enter the city from the north. Even there it was a slow affair. Fortunately all protests that I came across in the south of France went peacefully; I got a free passage twice on the toll roads and a banana in return for the discomfort.

Stele of Licinia Flavilla and Sextus Adgennius Macrinus at the museum

In Nîmes itself, the Musée de la Romanité was my first destination. This is a grand Roman museum that has opened this summer to reinforce the WH candidacy. For 17 EUR I got a combi-ticket that also gave access to the 3 most important Roman monuments of the city: the amphitheatre, the Magne tower …

The Raoudha nilometer in Cairo has been part of Egypt’s Tentative list since 2003. I have no idea whether the country has plans for ever nominating it, but it is an easy and worthwhile addition to any city trip of Cairo. Nilometers were used since Pharaonic times to measure the Nile River's water level during the annual flood season. On my previous trip to Egypt, I already had visited 3 of them: in Edfu, Kom Ombo and Aswan respectively. This one in Cairo however is much more elaborate and decorated. It dates back to the 8th century and was renovated a few times after.

Looking down..

After I spent 2 hours in Coptic Cairo, I left the touristy area behind me. At the other side of the Mar Girgis metro station, at the other side of the Nile even on Rhoda island, lies this Nilometer. I had to do some typical Cairene city walking to get there: from the street with the Coptic churches, I passed the military roadblock guarding the entrance, crossed the railway tracks via a walkway (with a typical dumping ground at the bottom of the walkway), walked through a …

Wadi Al-Hitan (the Whale Valley) is “the most significant site in the world to demonstrate the evolution of whales”. The valley lies 190km south of Cairo in Egypt’s Al Fayoum area, to which the Dutch foreign travel advice still applies the label “necessary travel only”. Well – it was necessary for me! There is no reason to avoid this region nowadays. Large tour groups are assigned escorts according to the Lonely Planet – and indeed we met a tourist convoy of 4x4’s accompanied by armed police. I was with a local driver (who seemed to know everybody) and we were just waved on at the only checkpoint near Lake Qarun.

Cast of the hind limbs of the whales

In the early morning I was picked up at my Cairo hotel with a 4WD jeep. Due to the busy traffic, getting out of (and into) Cairo is quite time-consuming. Once outside the city limits we hardly saw anyone anymore. The road has been completely paved up to the last 32km, but occasionally some sand hills have blown over the road and a 4WD (or just high clearance) is helpful. The final stretch is …

A lot can be said about Historic Cairo and Cairo in general, but I will focus my review on the mosques of Islamic Cairo. I was in the mood for it: just before this trip I bought the book Mosques. Splendors of Islam and I recently re-visited Istanbul – famous for its exquisite Ottoman mosques - as well. Cairo however might the best place in the world to see the architectural development of mosques: from the Samarran style to the designs favoured by the Fatimids, the Mamluks and the Ottomans.

Ibn Tulun Mosque

Beforehand I had made a list of mosques from the different periods that I wanted to see: Ibn Tulun Mosque (Samarran) + Al Hakim & Al Azhar Mosque (Fatimid) + Sultan Hassan & Aqsunqur Mosques (Mamluk) + Muhammad Ali Pasha (Ottoman). Due to the considerable walking distances between them, I ended up only visiting the ones that I have underlined.

The first of these was the oldest: the Mosque of Ibn Tulun (879). It exemplifies the early tradition of the Arab-plan or hypostyle (“many columns”) mosque, with a spacious courtyard (“to accommodate the large number of worshippers during Friday …

Due to switching to a new employer, I had some unexpected days off on my hands in late October to finish up my unused holiday allowance. Almost immediately I knew that I wanted to spend them at a city trip to Cairo – not too far away but good for 3 quality WHS within 5 days. I started my trip with a long-awaited visit to Memphis and the pyramid fields of Giza and Saqqara . The good thing about this WHS is that it covers the entire history of Egyptian pyramid construction, not just the big and famous pyramids of Giza.

Pyramid of Cheops in Gizeh

My plan for the first day was to take a bus from the Egyptian museum to Giza. There should be 2 bus lines (355 and 357) that ply this route - but where do these buses stop? The surroundings of the museum are a jumble of multi-lane streets, a fly-over and a roundabout. There are many buses but no bus stops and I also did not see the 2 right bus numbers passing by. So I decided to switch to the metro, which turned out to be …