All our reviews

I visited Erzberg mine and nearby town of Eisenerz, one component of this serial TWHS, by coincidence in 2009, and I had no feeling that I have seen something that has a potential to be inscribed to the list. Actually, I was quite surprised when checking the TWHS list of Austria very recently that I found the site that I have visited!

The reason of my visit was just to have a short stay in Alps after my conference trip to Graz (quite nice WHS). I traveled with my colleagues by car, and they found quite reasonable accommodation with easy access to peaks of Styria Alps.

It happened that the evening of our arrival to Erzberg area was very hot with temperatures above 30deg. During night, temperature dropped by around 20 degrees and it was very cold with heavy raining. We postponed the trip to alpine mountains to the next day. Instead, we headed to the town of Eisenerz. It was rather small, with historical houses very similar to what I have seen in Graz. The most interesting part was the fortified church, but all these small historical towns and churches can be seen everywhere in the Central Europe. However, we noticed that the site bears quite important mining heritage. If I remember properly, it was possible to have a guided tour in the iron mines, but we refused.

Next day, the weather was just suited for climbing uphill, and we did so. During the tour, I …

After leaving Ukraine in mid-September 2020 and spending 3 months in the Schengen Area (1/2 months in Poland and 2 1/2 months in Greece), it was time for me to leave the EU/Schengen Area and move to an EU/non-Schengen country for 3 months. So I decided to move to Cyprus. For me visiting WHSs has become a matter of changing country of residence during the pandemic. On the day I arrived in Cyprus I traveled from Larnaca through Choirokoitia WHS to Paphos by bus. 

I ended up settling in the District of Paphos, one of the 6 districts of Cyprus, for 3 months. As such, I had a plenty of time to explore the 3 locations of this WHS, which I visited on 4 separate days by bus. 

The website to use for bus in Cyprus is: http://www.cyprusbybus.com/setups.aspx

I visited them in the following order: Aphrodite's Sacred City at Kato Paphos, The Tombs of the Kings at Kato Paphos, Aphrodite’s Sanctuary at Kouklia. However, I will report them in the following order, which is the order I would recommend for visits. 

1. Aphrodite’s Sanctuary at Kouklia / Palaepaphos

Bus 631 goes directly from the Kato Paphos / Harbor Bus Station (by the Archaeological Park) to the Aphrodite’s Sanctuary at Kouklia 7 times a day all year around. (Bus 630 also goes from the Municipal Market Station in Paphos to the Aphrodite’s Sanctuary 3 times a day all year.)

But both buses also go on …

I generally don't like fossil sites. I think they are boring and I'd rather read a book about it or look at a website which probably gives me better explanations than the site would. Moler (=Moclay) is clay and a layer of ash that preserved fossils up to 60m deep. Most of these fossils are nothing special, e.g. plants and crustaceans that can be found in many places around the world. What it boasts are good examples of turtles and birds so if you are into that you may want to visit the Molar museum like I did.

The museum is at the northern tip of the island Mors, which maybe not seem like an island from a map view but on closer look you will notice it is only connected via bridges. I crossed the Limfjord (aka Liim Fiord?) from the north via a super short ferry ride. I met a couple biking around the entire area which apparently is a common thing to do in Denmark. After all, most of it is super flat. They had a guidebook for the area and it had a lot of info on Moler. It also showed a grave site just after the ferry crossing marked as "Kong Fegges grav", a grave of a former king. The grave isn't really important but this was the steepest cliff, called Feggeklit, I ever climbed in Denmark! (in other words it takes 2 minutes to get up to the top). The view from there …

This city let me down a bit, not even because of a visit during the pandemic to which we 'owe' the closure of all museums and most of the churches in the city. It started with terrible traffic jams at the entrance (due to its location, Salvador has only two large access roads plus a ferry crossing). In the end, however, we arrived at the hotel in the historic center, and in the afternoon we went for a walk. Walking through the Lapa district, we could see why Salvador is considered a Brazilian city with the greatest African influence - the entire district was one big bazaar, with crowds of people and shouting sellers. You had to hold the hand of the children well so that they would not get lost in this crowd.

A walk in the late afternoon had the advantage that you could see churches that were only open for services. In this way, we visited the beautiful church of Nossa Senhora da Lapa and the slightly less impressive Nossa Senhora da Piedade. The churches in Salvador are mainly characterized by beautiful painted ceilings.

The next day, however, we were less fortunate. Only one church, Nossa Senhora do Conceicao da Praia, was open. The others, including the cathedral and the wonderful Convent of St. Francis, were closed. We did, however, take a decent walk through the streets of Salvador, reaching both the Lower Town with great views of All Saints Bay and the Upper Town …

Site visited in December 2020. Before São Cristóvão we visited 12 WHS in Brazil and they were all worth a visit. Although the Brazilian list can be accused of overloading with colonial towns, selected examples (Ouro Preto, Diamantina, Goias) were certainly outstanding in their category. However, the visit to São Cristóvão left a great dissatisfaction. The town is not particularly distinguished, the historical center is small and rather overlooked by tourists. São Francisco Square itself makes a nice impression, but it is definitely hard to notice the 'outstanding universal value' of this place. It was even harder for us, because both churches entered and the Provincial Palace were closed due to the pandemic.

The negative experience was somewhat sweetened while walking around the historic center and visiting the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora da Vitória open church. It seems that according to ICOMOS, adding the historic center to this entry would make more sense than listing the square itself. But even in that case, it would be by far the worst place on the Brazilian UNESCO list. Fortunately, the visit to São Cristóvão did not require us to deviate too much from our route from Serra da Capivara to Salvador. It took us maybe an hour to explore the town, the other hour to a delicious and very cheap lunch in a local bar, and 4 hours later we checked into the historic center of Salvador.

Serra da Capivara is the least visited WHS in Brazil. The reason is the relative inaccessibility of this place - from southern Piaui, where the park is located, everywhere is far away, and the nearest WHS is Sao Francisco Square, about 900 km away. It's best to get to Petrolina by plane (by the way, the name of this place has nothing to do with crude oil), which is about 5 hours away from the park by car (I covered this route in 4 hours in the early morning - but be warned, there are plenty of holes in it).

Me and my family got to the park in November 2020 from Chapada dos Veadeiros, and the 1300-kilometer route took us about 15 hours net with a stop for the night in Barreiras. The road, apart from the last leg in Piaui, is quite nice and very picturesque, especially the first part from Chapada dos Veadeiros do Barreiras. It was absolutely worth the effort - Serra da Capivara is definitely my number one place among the rock art WHS.

In preparation for the trip, I looked at the list of obligatory guides available on the icmbio.gov.br website (currently, however, the site has been unavailable for a long time) and contacted one who was supposed to speak English. It turned out, however, that the declaration of the guide was not true. According to the locals, the only guide who speaks good English is Waltercio Torres Correia - tel./whatsapp + …

From this serial nomination, I visited only Rock of Cashel as most of other travelers did. In 2007, we went by car from Dublin via Glendalough (another TWHS) and Kilkenny (famous pale ale!) towards the Southwest coast.

We did a short stop in Cashel, which is quite touristy place. My friends were not very enthusiastic with the ruins of the castle full of tourists, and preferred walking in green meadows around the Rock. Thus we split, and I bought the ticket and climbed the Rock, that is however not such a difficult task. The castle is just a ruin that can be found anywhere in Ireland and Britain, but I can admit that this place is kind of special. The obvious highlight is the Cormac Chapel with fine Romanesque details. After the visit, I joint my friends in the gothic ruins of Hore Abbey not far from the Rock. It was very good idea, because there are marvelous views towards the Rock (PHOTO), that were much enjoyable than those from the main road full of traffic.

The central parts of Ireland are rather boring as a landscape is flat with farms and cow all around. The Rock of Cashel was not such dramatic and monumental as I would have expected, but still it was very pleasant and refreshing visit. I am happy that the things have moved on, and the site will be nominated in very near future. Hopefully, I will visit more sites from this TWHS and …

Visit in January 2021

To partially compensate for being forced to cancel plans for visits to many top-level Sites in 2020 I intended to make visits to a few unreviewed, or seldom-visited Sites. As it turned out, most of those sites were unreviewed for good reasons, especially because onerous bureaucracy and remote locations made reaching them impractical, or impossible. The best I could come up with was a visit to Thimlich Ohinga, a Site that was unvisited primarily because it was only recently inscribed, in 2018. The Site is located in the southwestern corner of Kenya, in an area where sugarcane is the dominant farm crop, and which was pleasantly green during that time of year. However, while travel around that part of the country is straightforward enough, reaching the Site itself will likely be a lengthy process, no matter from which direction one approaches, and the effort may be greater than the payoff. Traveling to the vicinity from Nairobi, probably via the Kenya Lakes System Site, would be relatively simple, but still a rather long haul. It would probably be easier to reach the Site from the western gates of the Serengeti, in Tanzania. However, in that case most people would need visas for both countries.

Since I was arriving from the northwest, I decided to stay in the small town of Rodi Kopany, which is 46 km to northeast of the Site and has a couple of decent accommodation options, and then ride down to the …

Disclaimer: this review will be very long. However, the Galápagos Islands largely deserve it. The first site inscribed on the list is an exceptional one. My expectations were immeasurable (after all, I am a biologist, a birder and a scuba diver, the Galápagos should be a paradise for me!), but they have been surpassed! Story day by day.

Days 1-2: LogisticThe first two days were filled with travel and acclimatisation. I left Quebec directly for the Galápagos via Quebec City - Montreal (due to a delayed flight) - Toronto - Quito - Guayaquil (only a short stopover without getting off the plane) and finally Isla Baltra. There is a ferry to Isla Santa Cruz and a bus waiting for travellers to take them to Puerto Ayora. In February 2020, the access fees to the national park were 100$, plus another 20$ for some kind of tourist card. I completed this second day by checking out the dive shops and buying my ferry ticket for the first hour the next morning. Off to the stunning Isabella.

Days 3-4: Wildlife viewing on Isabella

After arriving in Puerto Villamil, I spent two days walking the trails around the city. The beach, first of all, is beautiful and teeming with shorebirds, pelagic birds, marine iguanas (I loved these! See how cool they are!) and colourful crabs. A path of almost 6 km leads to the Muros de las Lagrimas, an abonimation built by inmates in the days when Isabella was …

Like all the other reviewers, I only toured one component of this post, Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park. It is definitely more accessible than the Emas National Park and, judging by the photos, also much more interesting. Chapada dos Veadeiros is situated about 3 hours of a decent road from Brasilia.

The entrance to the park is located in Sao Jorge, halfway from Alto Paraiso de Goias to Colinas do Sul, where we spent the night. By the way, in Sao Jorge itself I saw a lot of pousadas, although none of them were available on booking.com on the day of our arrival. Although the park is open from 8.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m., you can only enter it from 8.00 a.m. to 12.00 It is guarded very strictly, we saw a frustrated traveler who was withdrawn from the park's gate at 12:15. All this so that travelers choosing specific routes have time to cover them and return to the entrance before the park is closed. The entrance to the park requires a fee - 36 reais, if I remember correctly. At the Visitors Center you can get everything you need for the hike – water, snacks, clothes, sunscreen etc. Sun protection is very important as the cerrado is covered with a thin forest and sometimes gives little shade. Each traveler must watch the instructional video and listen to the guide's instructions. Hiring a guide is not necessary and it does not make much sense now - the routes …

Fenghuang, or Phoenix Ancient City, is a great visit but in the end still a very average town. It boasts a light show that more or less covers up the averages. Sure, it has unique features. The culture of washing clothes at the side of the road is still intact (joking), the bridge is special, the house style is not common, and the location within the mountains and along the river of the town is well established in ancient times, but then again isn't that very normal to pick out all over the world?! I find all of this is more important on a national level rather than having any kind of a worldly impact.

Fenghuang has an airport and is also well connected by buses. I arrived in Tongren and switched to a bus to the town. It's highly recommended you spend at least one evening here (I flew out in the evening so that still counts) with hotels along the riverside all offering views towards the lit up river, and with such a huge amount of supply it comes very affordable. Spend the daylight walking around the old cobble streets and maybe visit a couple of the old residences. Highly recommended for a non-world heritage visit.

A lot has been written on this site about Brasilia so it is difficult to add something extra. In short, we just loved our short visit there. Brasilia is perhaps the world's largest example of urban planning - four years before it was built, there was nothing but an idea.

Perhaps no country was better suited to such a task than Brazil. First, the disproportions in the development of the coast and the interior of the country were huge then. Secondly, the most outstanding architects with the vision, knowledge and experience needed to implement such an ambitious project came from Brazil. It also seems that the country has had a climate that allows for the implementation of such bold, utopian assumptions.

I imagine the delight of Lucia Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, Roberto Burle Marx and others - few architects in history have had such a great field to show off, being able to let their imagination run wild in an almost unlimited way.

The gentlemen did not stop at copying the solutions known earlier and created the city not even for their times, but for times that were yet to come (some people claim that they still had not come). The city was built on the plan of a flying condor or a plane, with residential districts located along the wings, and public buildings in the body. At the top of this corps - the head of a condor or the nose of the plane - there is …

Madrid is certainly the most prominent member of the club "European capitals without World Heritage Site". Spain is densely covered with WHS, almost every region and island has at least one site inscribed, but the capital has so far been left empty-handed. And after my three-day stay in Madrid I would say: rightly so. However, the Spanish authorities seem to disagree and nominated the Site of the Retiro and the Prado for decision at the WHC in 2020, postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic.

For centuries, the proposed area was outside the city walls, today it is the green heart of Madrid. The Parque del Buen Retiro emerged from the grounds of the Buen Retiro Palace built by the Habsburg dynasty. The palace was destroyed in the Napoleonic Wars and never rebuilt, in the 19th century the gardens were opened to the public. The rectangular artificial lake is the centre of El Retiro and also one of only a few remains from the time of the royal palace. I liked the Palacio de Cristal best (photo), it reminded me of the wonderful greenhouses at Kew Gardens in London. But in Madrid are no plants on display; the building is used for temporary art exhibitions.The park is very popular with the residents of Madrid, for sports and sunbathing, there are row boats for hire and playgrounds for the kids - a typical city park. It was quite busy when I visited on a hot Sunday morning in May 2019.

As some of you who read my reviews know I'm an avid scuba diver and most of these sites make for good diving if you can reach them. But one of these reef system isn't only for diving - you can easily access a few of these sites by car: Guanahacabibes National Park, which is at the very West of Cuba. That also meant I had visited Cuba from West to East on my journey, and then driving back to Havana to fly out - it's quite a stretch of road! The park also has access to scuba diving so it's nice to get a bit of both. Shore diving AND national park.

Guanahacabibes NP is mainly a huge bird migratory spot. The guide mentioned that most are now gone during my visit but there was still a huge abundance of other birds. The area is so far away from cities that nature lives in peace, and the waters around are supposed to be protected for dolphins, turtles and other reptiles. I say supposed to because there is a lot of fishing for spiny lobster and red snappers.

María la Gorda, a white sand beach at the southern area of the park is very popular with tourists. I recommend you stay there because then you can enjoy the beach, eat at the restaurant (it's not very good but what do you expect all the way out here) and enjoy the bar, plus there is a dive shop for …

On my first trip to Cairo I had a hotel overlooking Tahrir Square. It was beautiful to see the museum square in the lit evening and the morning before all of Cairo's chaotic traffic starts to kick in. I was also the first to enter it and enjoy the museum while it's nice and quiet (it didn't get too crowded during the morning of my stay so maybe that's not an issue). The museum was on my must-do list when visiting Cairo following the Giza pyramids. I wasn't disappointed by the wealth of its Egyptology collection. The Gold Mask of Tutankhamun and many other artifacts from the valley of the kings, huge statues, mummies (I remember they cost extra to visit?), it could take hours to see it all. It doesn't replace a visit to Thebes, Memphis or any of the places it has items from and more or less enhances your visit just like any national museum would do.

So, why am I against it's inscription as a world heritage site? First off the architecture isn't as special in my eyes than what they want me to believe. It may be that, at the time, museums were using existing buildings rather than build one specifically as a museum, if that is even true, but even so that's not special enough. Secondly, the museum is to be superseded by the new Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza which makes the criteria of housing all these artifacts almost moot. It's almost …

I visited this tentative WHS in December 2020 as a day trip from Salalah. To reach Jabal Samhan Mountain Nature Reserve, as it's known locally, I drove up the never-ending series of hairpins of Wadi Hanna just above the peculiar Anti-Gravity Point and dotted with the fine cluster of baobabs which make for interesting stopovers before reaching the signposted Jabal Samhan nature reserve proper.

Before reaching the highest panoramic viewpoint at 2100 metres, allow some time to acclimatise and perhaps be able to spot some of the countless birds of prey camouflaged on the greyish rocks instead of perched on the endemic Dhofar flora. Upon reaching the panoramic viewpoint over the many plateaus and gorges below, some of which are about 1000 metres deep, and which are home to several predators such as caracals, striped hyenas, Arabian wolves and which are one the last refuges for wild Arabian leopards. It really is quite incredible that such a practically uninhabited and undisturbed area exists so close to a desert region. All these predators prey on Arabian gazelles, Nubian ibex, Cape hares, rock hyrax, Indian crested porcupines, desert hedgehogs and several bird species. Just after the area with railings, there is a narrow and dangerous trail to reach the very peak but the view is pretty much the same you'll have without potentially risking your life. An alternative uphill route, which is probably much safer but involves scrambling up and down jagged rocks, can be found just behind the tiny but …

It is easy and at the same time difficult for me to write a review about the Holy Trinity column in Olomouc. Others have already described the monument in detail, and I am not the first and only one who thinks that Olomouc is beautiful town. Actually, it is the second biggest and valuable Czech historical town after Prague.

So, I will try putting the site into the context:

It happened in 15th Century that most of the Bohemia and Moravia was of non-catholic faith. Actually, Czechia was the first country of Christendom, which had two faiths officially approved: catholic and utraquist (it was however closer to catholic than to later protestant churches). It became even more complicated after a massive spreading of the protestant faith in 16th Century. After the defeat of non-Catholics in Czechia in 17th Century, tough anti-reformation program took place. As the result of this process, Czechia turned into baroque cultural landscape full of small churches, castle gardens etc.

During this program, numerous Virgin Mary and Holy Trinity columns have been erected in almost all towns or even bigger villages. The reason for construction of many of them was also the overcoming of plague outbursts. Thus, they are sometimes called as the plague columns. The oldest Virgin Mary column was erected in Prague on the Old Town Square around 1650 as thanksgiving for saving Old Town from the attack of protestant Swedish army. It was pulled down as the symbol of catholic Hapsburgs …

I visited this WHS in December 2020 after having visited Bahla Fort. Prior to visiting Oman I allowed quite a lot of time to prepare well how to access the different locations that make up this WHS. Maps.me is still the best option as there are still different locations erroneously marked with the same name on Google maps and road signs are non-existent (which I find quite strange as even the tentative sites I've visited were clearly marked).

The best time to visit is in the late afternoon but I would allow much more time to actually get to the first location and then to reach the next ones before it gets too dark. Keep in mind that the sites' magnificent mountain scenery in itself means that the sun will set behind the opposite mountains much earlier than the usual sunset time. Also, each location needs at best a short hike on loose rocks and desert terrain.

The first location I visited was Al Ayn (marked on Google maps as Al Ayn's Beehive Tombs) and chose the shorter Amlah-Wadi Al Ayn fully paved route off the highway 21 (just mind the few speed bumps which are nowhere as high as Mexico's topes but still Omani drivers tend to slow down to an almost dead stop upon approaching each one!). Just after passing by Amlah and Al Ayn, on your left hand side you'll be able to spot the long line of tombs on the nearest hill. I'd recommend …

I'm biased towards great architecture (coming second after nature) and the National Schools of Art is no exception. Also, don't you just love a site that you can park right in front even in a country's capital, walk in and look around for 30-60 minutes and move on? Well then this site is for you. The guard did ask me if I study here because I walked in with my camera but he didn't really care as long as you seem nice and tell them what you are doing.

You can already see the brick domes peaking over the walls. I was hoping for something great, and while I wasn't disappointed with the marvelous designs, the bad news is that this place is pretty much on it's last leg. Built between 1961-65 and still incomplete of what it was intended to be like, it hasn't received funding to restore and maintain any of it's building in a long time. There was recently been some discussions of rescuing the schools but discussion lead to nothing because some people do not want to open the school to international students and others are afraid of privatization (this is communism after all). To sum it up, it doesn't look good.

A very enjoyable walk around campus, and if the Mexico City university is a WHS so I think this should easily get onto the list too. It does need to update it's criteria a little because it sounds more like a intangible …

For those traveling in Brazil by car, Goias is very remote, even more so than Diamantina. Having started our trip in Rio, it was here that we got to know the real enormity of the country - we drove from Diamantina over 12 hours and 1000 kilometers, with an overnight stop on the way. Long road, bad weather (the last three hours we were driving in heavy rain that did not let go during the first hour of our stay in Goias) and the accumulation of colonial towns in the previous days probably caused our fatigue - Goias Velho did not appeal to us very much. This does not mean, of course, that Goias stands out negatively among the old colonial towns - nothing like that, it is quite nice, picturesquely situated and beautifully renovated. But it did not delight us and did not capture anything special that would justify such a long journey. During our visit (November 2020) it was also completely free of tourists. It gained a bit in our eyes in the evening when it stopped raining and we could enjoy the sunset over the river flowing through the historic center.

We traveled to Goias through Anapolis, but on my way back to Brasilia, I chose a different route, leading through another colonial gem - Pirenopolis. It was a bull's eye, I give you my word that Pirenopolis is probably the most beautiful colonial town in Brazil we have seen and we were a bit sweetened …