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June 2012 - this time we visited the North rim. It was already opened to public- We were lucky and could reserve a campground a few weeks earlier online. The north rim is way more remote, hence less tourists and less buildings. The campground is great, we could look over the rim from our tent. On our way from Mesa Verde we passed Monument Valley. A must see on your way through the mid West.

First day we drove to the scenic viewpoints. The views were even more magificant than from the southrim. The next morning we started our hike down at 5. a.m. so we would not get into the heat. After a few hours we met a group of Boys going already up again. They had been hiking all night starting at the southrim, passing Colorado and now back up again, amazing. The north rim is a bit higher and after hours of hiking it got warmer and dryer and the worst part was yet to come, to hike up again. So we decided to turn around after 2/3rds of the way and made our way back. Rest of the day we relaxed. The NPs have fridges loaded with a broad selection of lovely hopped IPAs. So also the rest of the day was great. 

North rim: was really one of the greatest adventures of my life. But we continued next day to Zion, almost as good an experience.

August 2017 - After spending 1 day in the Mazury Lakes, we drove back towards Berlin. For the last night we chose Torun. I have been there in 1994 already, but remembered it differently. It is a beautiful hanseatic city, some streets are even nicer than Lübeck, lots of brick Towers, Walls, churches etc. And you can get gingerbread everywhere "Pierniki".

There was a light festival that day, the illuminations were way to artificial though. Torun was a strategic place in WW II, so it did not suffer from destruction. Luckily, because it is really beautiful. I took a shot that night, which could have been taken 40 years ago:

Tikal was the last major prehispanic archeological site I visited on my Mexico-Guatemala-Belize trip last winter. And it was the best one!

The size of the site (gigantic), the number of pyramids and structure (numerous), the quality of the pyramids (amazing) and the wildlife (abundant) cannot be compared with other sites (even with Palenque). Me and my friend visited on a tour book at our hostel in Flores. We didn't took the sunrise tour, but rather the early bird one arriving in Tikal for opening. I think it's the best time to visit as it is not a ridiculously early wake-up, the crowds are still manageable and the wildlife is active. Our tour last half a day, and we head back to Flores at noon.

The most interesting complexes are la Gran Plaza, el Mundo Perdido, la Plaza de los Siete Templos and el Templo IV. It's a good idea to have a guide here to truly understand the site. Many pyramids and temples can be climbed on wooden structures. The view from la Gran Piramide de Mundo Perdido and from el Templo IV are nice. It's also nice to climb on Templo II and on both Acropolis Norte y Central to get the view over la Gran Plaza.

Wildlife we spotted include a lot of coatis, an agouti and howler and spider monkeys. Even without binoculars, we spotted 19 bird species, including cool ones such as great curassow, ocellated turkey, limpkin, slaty-tailed trogon, black-headed trogon, collared aracari, keel-billed toucan, …

July 2019 - after visiting family in Hamburg, we decided to travel through Jütland to see the 2 mainland WHS in Denmark. We had visited Herrnhut, and we do have a Herrnhuter Star hanging in our flat around Christmas. But we did not know about the significance of the religious group. Arriving in Christiansfeld you see an old, cozy village with brickhouses and Malves blooming in front. Very nice, but we were here a bit too early so all we could do is get some Tyrstrup from the local bakery and wander around the few streets, visit the cemetary and enjoy the weather. Definitely worth a stop, however a joined WHS with other Moravian settlements would make more sense.

August 2017 - leaving Vilnius we drove straight to Trakai. It was Weekend so we could Park for free in the streets, but it was also loaded with visitors from Vilnius. Trakai is a national Symbol and seems very important. The town is cute and had many , but nice, Souvenir shops. The Castle is located on an Island in the Trakai Nationalpark. We decided not to enter the Castle, but take a hike around it. We got to see, what we wanted and continued our journey already leaving Lithuania and visit the north east of Poland.

August 2017 - again a rather historic site with gras on top. We wandered around the hills a bit, visited the wooden church and looked at the scenary. Nothing out of the ordinary, however of national importance. From Kernave it was not much further to Vilnius.

Unfortunately we forgot about the Struve Arc Point not far from here. Nice green for the morning.

August 2017 - After the day on the Curonian Split, our next Goal was Vilnius. We had dinner in Klaipeda and had the stupid idea of going a bit further on the Highway that day. After 1 hour we had to stop as we just fell asleep in the car. So we arrived really early in the morning in Kaunas. Fortunately a small cafe had already opened and we had some breakfast. We walked the Main street and a parallel street to Marvel at the modernist buildings. Well, they are quite nice, but as a standalone Whs? We also drove by the Big white church, which is quite amazing. Definitely worth a stop between Vilnius and Klaipeda.

Now these sites are really screaming to be a WHS. The dzongs of Bhutan are iconic buildings, they are of critical importance for the history of Bhutan, they are a blueprint for the whole bhutanese architecture and they are also just really beautiful buildings ! They are impressive from the outside, all with quite picturesque locations, and they are impressive from the inside, as they are full of decorated courtyards and colorful temples. And all are still actively used as religious and administrative centers, with wonderful festivals inside of them. Now that's how to be a worthy WHS site, you hunting grounds and vineyards !I visited three of the Dzongs, had a look at the forth and didn't found out much about the fifth. Here are my thoughts on the individual locations:

• Paro Dzong (The close one): You will probably see this one even before touchdown, as it is quite close to the only international airport of Bhutan. It is probably the one which resembles a castle the most: There is a keep in the middle, a strong ring of walls, a moat and guarded entrance doors. It doesn't have as many courtyards as the other Dzongs, but is still a very fine building, with lots of wooden decorations and towering walls. You shouldn't feel too bad if this is the only Dzong you can visit, as it's a good example of the dzong style.
• Punakha Dzong (The beautiful one): This one is advertised as the …

August 2017 - after visiting Latvia, unfortunately just the Western part with Riga. We stayed overnight in a nationalpark Not far from Klaipeda. Next morning we parked our car in Klaipeda, grabbed our folding bikes, took the ferry over and the bus to Nida. The bus took a while and all you could see lot of forests.

Finally we arrived in Nida and had early lunch in one of the cute fishermans houses. Also in Nida we visited the house of Thomas Mann situated on a hill. From there a bikepath back to the ferry would Lead us 50 km north. What an adventure! To allow some stopovers, we had to Pedal quite fast. We drove through wonderful smelling pine forests. Had 2 longer breaks to take a swim in the baltic and took the hike on top of a dune, which is among europes largests. I can recommend to everybody taking the bike. It is a wonderful dayfilling bikeride and the best way to get the essence of this whs.

August 2017 After the first night in Liepaja we continued to our first big aim Riga. That day we drove to Jurmala and made a longer lunchbreak in Kuldîga. It is a very romantic town with lots of timber houses, the waterfall adds to the charismatic appearance of the village. From our perspective definitly worth inscription. We walked around a bit, had lunch and continued to Jurmala.

August 2017- we arrived in Vilnius around noon and where quite astonished. At first glance you can already recognize the different influences in this city. For Poland it is a very important place, and you can recognize the deep catholic code of this city. Also thea heart of Jozef Pilsudski is buried here.

However there are many facettes of Vilnius. It has some medieval architecture, a lot from Barock, some modern, and even a small Hippi Republic within the city and lots of streetart.

We enjoyed the many churches, in the evening it became a vivid place with people Dancing on the streets and the Illumination of the buildings was just awesome. It is very different from Riga and Tallin.

I visited Ephesus on a two-week group tour of Turkey in July 2018. As everything was organized, I have done really few researches beforehand and I was happily surprised to discover such an impressive site! We spent two days in Selçuk. We had free time on the first afternoon and I used it to visit Saint John's Basilica, Isa Bey Mosque and Ayasoluk Kalesi. The second day was spent for a group tour to Ephesus, Artemis temple and Şirince (not inscribed) and a self-guided walk to Grotto of the Seven Sleepers (buffer zone) and House of the Virgin Mary.

Inscribed sites closer to Selçuk (Saint John's Basilica, Isa Bey Mosque and Ayasoluk Kalesi) are interesting but far from breathtaking. The Basilica was a very important site for the history of Christianity, but only a few columns and foundations remains. The same apply for Isa Bey Mosque. I know it's an important place, but the visit was not memorable. Selçuk is a nice city to visit. Ayasoluk Kalesi gave me the same feelings of a historically important place where few remain. All these three sites can be seen in the photo background. I really enjoyed the ruins of the aqueduct with its numerous nesting storks!

Ephesus old city is by far the highlight of this WHS. The library and both theaters are especially worth mentioning. Having a guided tour of the site was great. There's not much to see of Artemis temple. A single column made of many pieces remains and, …

March 2019, the 2nd last day of our Sicily Trip we arrived in Syracus. Unfortunately we only visited that part of the WHS. With our baby we strolled around the city and watched our for some seafood. It is a very historic and nice town, however loaded with Restaurants and not many places to rest. However, there are a lot of streets to explorea dn some nice little shops too.

It was a good place to conclude our Sicily trip. 7 WHSites, 1 Tentative, Lots of good food and the first trip with our small girl. We enjoyed it a lot.

Initially, we hadn't planned to visit Shirakami-Sanchi on our first trip to Japan. But I realised that we had one day of our 14-day JR Pass possibly going to the waste, so I added a few extra bullet train trips to our itinerary. (We definitely got our money's worth from the pass!)

We choose to visit the Aqua Green Village area, with the aim to hike to Anmon Falls. The falls can be reached by public transport and are within the buffer zone (all that you can visit within the permit required for the core).

After visiting the Hiraizumi WHS, we continued north mid-afternoon and spent the night in Hirosaki. (We took the 2:51pm local train from Hiraizumi north to Morioka, the bullet train to Shin-Aomori, then the local train to Hirosaki, arriving at 6:12pm.) We arrived too late to buy bus tickets for the next day, so returned fairly early to the Konan Bus ticket office at the train station the next day, concerned we would miss out. Not that we needed to worry, as the tickets aren't reserved and there was hardly anyone taking the bus on the rainy day. The bus starts from the bus station before stopping at the train station, but the return bus only returns to the train station, so we stored our luggage there. The bus only runs up until the end of October, see the timetable with the infrequent services here: http://www.konanbus.com/travel/shirakami.html. 

While doing some last minute research, …

Liangzhu is located on the outskirts of Hangzhou, not far from the furthest reaches of the metro system. Initially when we planned our visit we were only aware of the museum, and had simply planned to visit that. But not long before our visit we were made aware of tours of the actual archaeological site, with the option to book online. We weren't sure about paying 80 yuan to see what we thought would be a standard archaeological site with virtually nothing to see, and anyway it probably wanted us to pay using Alipay or something similar that we didn't have, so we skipped booking.

It was a lovely sunny day when we arrived at the Liangzhu Museum. The museum exhibit is excellent and every modern, although only parts of the display have English translation (enough to learn about the Liangzhu culture but not enough to draw out your visit to become overly long). The highlight are the fine jade artefacts. There were also the first of multiple references to "5000 years of Chinese history" - aha, the reason for this site being prioritised by the Chinese! 

We still had plenty of the day left, so we figured, let's go visit the closest archaeological site and see what the deal is with visiting, without a booking. On Google Maps, search for "Liangzhu Ancient City Relic Site". But the actual entrance is on the major road G104 to the south. We caught another bus from near the museum, which …

Tamzhing monastery is a rather small temple in the Bumthang region of central Bhutan - a region that contains a lot of other temples, monasteries and holy places. Its claim to fame are the association with the buddhist saint Pema Lingpa, and the wall paintings, which seem to be the original ones from the building period of the temple (around 1500 CE).The visiting experience is rather unremarkable. The temple is quite small. It is neither the biggest temple, nor the most beautiful or important one of the area, not to mention of the whole country of Bhutan. It is also not a particular old temple, as the much older Jambay Lhakhang temple is just a few kilometers away. Like most of the temples of Bhutan, the monastery is quite nice to look at and has a lot of athmosphere - it's certainly not a bad visiting experience. However, the average visitor coming to this place will already have seen a lot of other temples and sacred sites in Bhutan and will wonder what is so special about this one. The religious connection to the saint seems to me to be a rather weak argument - many of the sacred sites in Bhutan can claim a connection to an important religious figure of the past. There is almost always a great master who inspired, created or even wished the site into existence. Who can say that one saint is more important than any other saint ? The second argument for an …

I've always associated Potsdam, Germany, with the Cold War, but outside of knowing some historical context, I was unprepared for how beautiful the palaces and gardens would be when I visited in the fall of 2007. Autumn was a spectacular season to stroll the grounds, as trees changing color were reflected in the waterways wending their way through Sansoucci Park, the heart of the original inscription. While I enjoyed visiting some of the palaces and grand structures in this World Heritage Site, to include Sanssouci, the New Palace, and the Chinese House, it was the gardens that I found most memorable. The terraces ouside the Orangery and Sanssouci palace provided a beautiful view over Potsdam, nestled in fall foliage. Leaves gently falling from the trees lining the grand walkways also added to the atmosphere. The gardens may have been out of season, but they were very well kept up. For those interested in Cold War history, in addition to nearby Schloss Cecilienhof, where the Potsdam Conference was held, Glienicke Bridge over the Havel River is also within the core zone. This bridge, which used to form the border between West Berlin and East Germany, was the site of prisoner exchanges during the Cold War, including the swap of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel for the American U2 pilot Gary Powers in 1962.

Logistics: Sanssouci Park is walkable, but private transportation may make it easier to travel between different components of this large series of gardens and palaces.

As if Peru doesn't have enough awesome stuff to see, they added a few more tentative places in 2019. I'm quite sure most were already on the average tourist's itinerary. Take a bus from Cuzco towards Urubama and drop off at the junction heading to Maras to find a taxi driver who will take you around. If not then take a bus that heads to Maras and ask around in the "town". The junction has a shaded bus stop to wait for buses heading back. I ended up taking a bus that goes the "scenic" route through the villages which cost me nothing but pain, literally, it was almost a penny to take the bus but the road is bumpy and dusty and the "air-con" aka "windows are open" doesn't make it pleasant - you do get to meet some interesting characters though. Also the buses on the main road are often full so I was happy to get going one way or the other.

Anyhow, the region is super popular with tourists already and this was a day trip together with Moray which is ultimately a great day out but nothing I would see on the UNESCO list as outstanding value. The same salt mine structures are in northern Spain, and...well, other places. I think they do it better in Spain anyway. It also takes an effort to press through all the tourist crowds that shop on the only way down the ramps and most of it wasn't …

WHS#64

One of the highlights of my May 2018 Holy Land trip was an obscure National Park almost an hour south of Jerusalem. Maresha - Bet Guvrin National Park is home to a huge variety of manmade caves that together form, in my opinion, one of the most interesting archaeological ensembles in the world. It's recommended to have private transportation around the park, as I did, as it's quite a large area. This is not a normal tourist stop mostly because it doesn't really have any biblical or even historic significance, but a visit here is almost sure to impress.

The first part of my visit was to the ancient city of Maresha. Well, I didn't exactly see an ancient city, I'll tell you that. Instead, I had to climb a hill, which I believe was the tel, to get to the excavated caves. The caves I encountered were columbariums - caves used for raising pigeons with little niches in the wall. Indeed, I walked down and saw a huge cavern, almost like a giant catacomb or beehive, with little holes all over the walls. While the caves aren't being used by man anymore, they're still used by the avian inhabitants, as evidenced by ever-so-subtle scent of guano. And the birds flying around, of course. These columbariums seem to come in different shapes, with one being quite boxy or compartment-like and another like a bell cave. I hear there are also other types of caves in Maresha, but …

On 1 November 2019 we left Adıyaman at mid-day to go to Mount Nemrut (Nemrut Dağ). It takes about 70 km to get there (best way is to go by car but there are also organised tours available from Malatya, Adıyaman or Kahta, or further afield from Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa). The region was part of the Kommagene kingdom (163 BC - 72 AD). On the way a good number of monuments can be visited from that era - they are situated in the Mount Nemrut National Park and are all well signposted. Several of them now being touristically upgraded with financial support from the EU. The first stop is at the Karakuş Tumulus ("Black Bird" in Turkish). It is a burial site of the women of the royal family of Kommagene. A column with an eagle sculpture on top and the tumulus itself can be seen from away and it is easy to get there - about 10 km from Kahta - it is just off the main road, not fenced off and there is no admission fee. Nemrut Dağ can be seen in the distance. A small kiosk nearby offers drinks.  

Just around the corner the Septimus Severus Bridge stretches across the Cendere (Kabinas) River, built in in the second century AD. It is one of the most impressive Roman infrastructure monuments in Anatolia; it carried the traffic until the 1990s when a new bridge was built further downstream. On the eastern side of the bridge a small …