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It was 6:40h in the morning in Karlovac and I was boarding the bus to Plitvice NP. I had assumed that primarily locals would be on a bus this early, but I was mistaken. Indeed, plenty of Asian travellers had boarded the bus at 6:00h back in Zagreb. That's when I knew that this was a popular site.

We arrived around 8:00h and exited the bus at Entry 1. Directly behind the entry there is a viewpoint with a nice view of the largest waterfall of the park. Arriving this early had the benefit of mist still covering the lakes and canyon. It looked mystical. I should have brought a dark filter and a tripod for my camera.

There are several hikes in the park. I started with Trail A, but was a bit befuddled when I didn't see the glorious cascades. So I hurried all across park to get to Entry 2 hoping to see them there, but no. Clyde in our whatsapp group eventually resolved the mystery: Water levels in autumn were really low, so the cascades were not as impressive as they could have been.

Due to bad bus schedules and me having to travel back to Pula I only had 2h on site. While this is enough for Trail A, I would have preferred some more hours to see a bit more.

Getting To

Plitvice is Croatia's most popular tourist site. As such I assume that you will be …

In Sept 2018, while we were “in town” looking at the Canal du Midi, we paid a revisit to the Old City of Carcassonne – after a gap of many years. A mistake, unfortunately. “Never go back” is the saying but it isn’t always true in the case of WHS. Many of them certainly repay multiple revisits to deepen knowledge and add new positive memories. But, in other cases, a revisit can overlay earlier impressions with more negative ones, highlight the site’s deficiencies and the changes which have occurred both in one’s own views/knowledge and in the site itself. During the visit I found myself asking “why are we here”? Not a good sign! Across the passing years Carcassonne had become even more a pastiche of a pastiche. A pseudo mediaeval theme park. Yes - the skyline is “iconic” but then so is that of the “Cinderella Castle” at Disneyworld! It receives more than 3 million visitors each year - presumably supercharged in part by its additional "fame" as the title of the Board/Xbox game. 

Crossing the Pont Vieux we ran the gauntlet of assorted “mediaeval” peasants and soldiers who had erected “barriers” across it, either to persuade tourists to stop and inspect their wares or else just to have a chance to play out their hobby of dressing up as peasants and soldiers. The citadel itself was festooned with a “castle sized” contemporary “art installation” titled “Cercles concentriques excentriques” which had been created to “celebrate” 20 …

I visited this WHS in August 2018. Ujung Kulon National Park is located at the westernmost tip of Java as its name suggests (Ujung Kulon actually means Western Point) and it is made up of Ujung Kulon peninsula low rainforests (home of the last remaining Java rhino) and the volcanic island groups and nature reserves of Krakatoa, Panaitan, Peucang and Honje in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra.

I visited Krakatoa or Krakatau Nature Reserve as a long private day trip from Jakarta and it turned out to be by far the most dangerous and exhilarating WHS visits so far for a number of reasons. First of all after having booked online well in advance, hell seemed to break loose just before visiting Indonesia with very strong and devastating earthquakes and tsunami alerts all over the country but mostly near Lombok. On top of that, Anak Krakatau or the Child of Krakatau, a volcanic island which emerged from under the sea in 1927 from the caldera formed by the terrible 1883 eruption of Krakatau (which killed more than 30,000 people), got more active than usual and from June till September, molten lava eruptions took place almost on a daily basis with incandescent gases and ash coming out intermittently with occasional 'ballistic rocks' spewing out of the volcano and landing all over the island.

For this reason, we were almost certain that the trip would be cancelled as it involved climbing Anak Krakatau for a …

As soon as you enter Sudan, you can see each and every advertisement that have the slightest connection with tourism having the image of the pyramids, and that implies that Meroe is the crown jewel of the Sudanese tourism, and its relative closeness to Khartoum makes it the most touristy place in the whole country. But do not expect crowds of tourist flocking the ruins. When we visited meroe last December seemingly we were the only foreigners there. The presence of desperate souvenir sellers and guys who offered rides on their camels shows that there were better times, and maybe there are days when there are more people coming. 

The site consists of two major parts, the capital of the Meroitic kingdom, and its necropolis. The capital is a bit more far away from the main road. it's more or less completely ruined, you need an extremely good imagination to see the lush palaces and pompous temples of Egyptian and local gods in the less than a meter high cramped walls. But the scenery with the trees offering a shadow for the exhausted traveller is impressive and with a knowledgeable guide it can be a somewhat interesting experience.  

On the contrary the necropolis in the red desert is touching for the first sight. One of the most impressive sites I've ever seen. The pyramids are much smaller than their Egyptian brothers and much younger too, but not less interesting or mysterious. The black stone buildings in the reddish …

I visited this WHS in August 2018. Apart from the main complex of Prambanan, there are another 3 temples nearby which are worth visiting too, namely Candi Lumbung, Candi Bubrah and Candi Sewu. The latter of the three has very intricate carvings which hint at how extraordinary this temple must have been in its heyday before the several earthquakes that hit this region up until 2006 (with the Yogyakarta earthquake) and in 2014 (with the volcanic ash from Mt Berud volcanic eruptions).

The effects of these several disasters is clearly visible as most of the temples are in ruins but recent restoration works have helped at least conserve what is still standing. Nonetheless, Prambanan is the largest Hindu temple site in Indonesia and one of the biggest in South East Asia. In a way it is comparable to Ayutthaya in Thailand.

If you visit first thing in the morning, a long (half) day should suffice even though the Ramayana show and sunset views could add value. I opted to tick Sangiran WHS instead. To cover the 3 minor temples, it is a pleasant walk but if the heat is too much you can hire a golf cart or ride the hop on hop off tourist train too.

I visited this WHS in August 2018 in the late afternoon after a pleasant day in Prambanan. Although the museum structure and area is quite big, its condition is not up to standard and the actual space dedicated to Sangiran No. 17 and other Java Man finds is only restricted to two rooms with a couple of stands and display cases. The smaller museums close to the excavation fields are even worse and such an apparently important WHS for Homo Erectus studies is not given the prominence it might deserve, in favour of national pride and school group outings.

Out of all the prehistoric man sites I visited (haven't visited the one in Beijing yet but not too eager to either), this was definitely the worst and apart from the WHS tick for WH travellers, I wouldn't sacrifice anything from the 2 top-notch WHS of Borobodur and Prambanan to visit. Apart from the few animal fossils and ancestor bones on display out of the thousands kept locked in a storage room, the most interesting features of the museum were the informative video of the locals who found some of the fossils and bones (with subtitles in English) and of course the display case with Sangiran No. 17's skull (photo).

Site visited April 2018. For me getting to the World Heritage Site of Caral turned out to be agony and race against time but in the end it won over me.

I guess everything worth knowing about this site and its historical importance have been told already on the previous reviews so on my review I focus mainly on my trip to Caral.

My plan was to visit Caral on my way from Huaraz to Lima. I knew this could be a bit tight schedule for one day but I decided to give it a try. I left from Huaraz bus station at 9 AM and was at Barranca four hours later. The bus left me at some gas station outside the city centre so I had to walk quite a long distance with my large suitcase in the mid day heat. During my walk I tried to catch a taxi to Caral. The task proved to be very hard. There were only lots of mototaxis that tooted at me all the time. I thought that those are not suitable for my needs. I saw only few taxi cars and those were reserved. At some point I got tired of walking and trying to catch a taxi. Then I saw a hotel and went to the reception to ask about driver to Caral. The receptionist was very kind and she arranged a driver for me but I had to wait for some 45 minutes for it to show …

I visited this tentative WHS in August 2018. I spent two nights here (1 day to visit Prambanan and Sangiran WHS) and dedicated one day to visiting some of the locations which make up this tentative WHS. What struck me most were the mostly intact city walls (top left photo) and colonial buildings which were still in very good condition compared to similar ones in Jakarta. Some highlights worth mentioning were the Vredeburg Fort, the Bank Indonesia building and the Gili Golong Monument at the central axis of both pathway locations.

The OUV probably lies in two main 18th century buildings of Yogyakarta - the Kraton Complex and the Taman Sari Water Castle - both linked to the Sultanate of Yogyakarta. The Kraton is an Asian palace complex in traditional Javanese architecture style. There are two bangsal or pavilions made of teak wood with floral design ceilings (bottom left photo). The main bangsal and the inner courtyard can only be viewed from outside. In a way the kraton atmosphere reminded me a bit of the Sitorai Mokhi-Khosa Palace in Bukhara, Uzbekistan even though that had European influences.

The Taman Sari Water Castle is the former royal garden of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta and had several functions, such as a resting area, a workshop, a meditation area, a defense area, and a hiding place. Taman Sari consisted of four distinct areas: a large artificial lake with islands and pavilions located in the west, a bathing complex in the centre, …

In September 2018, I took an early morning train for the three-hour trip from Saint Petersburg to Veliky Novgorod, founded in 859 and traditionally considered the cradle of Russian statehood. Veliky Novgorod is now recognized for dozens of medieval monuments, including monasteries, churches and Kremlin, all added to the list of World Heritage Sites in 1992. But the memory of the bear sausage I ate at lunch at Dom Berga will linger longer than that of Russia’s foundational religious buildings.

The Republic of Palau is one of these destinations that isn’t frequently visited by tourists. And those that do are mainly Asian (Chinese) tourists. Palau has just 1 WHS site and that’s the rock islands. There are many but the most famous is the 70 Islands cluster. You can’t go in there anymore. The only way to see them is from the air! I did a helicopter flight over Palau which is an amazing experience. You see much better these rock islands. The next day I also did a Kayak tour where you get closer to other rock islands. Both tours gave me a good view of this WHS. I liked it as it’s unique.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t visit all the TWHS; I missed the stone money quarry as I ran out of time. But, I did visit Yap and saw the stone money a week later. Will be back to Palau one day I hope as I still want to go diving there.

I visited these remote islands in West Papua, Indonesia in September 2018. To get there I caught a series of internal flights (Garuda Indonesia is the most reliable overall) via Jakarta and Mekassar, Sulawesi until we landed in Sorong Airport. From there we took an airport taxi to the Sorong ferry harbour where we bought our 'VIP ferry tickets' (important if you have big luggages and want comfortable seats and air condition) to Waisai island.

I must say that considering that there are no international flights to West Papua and limited infrastructure, the Raja Ampat Marine Park management and entrance permit system is top notch. Other parks and indeed WHS such as Komodo NP should really emulate Raja Ampat's system which is really simple and practical. Upon disembarking from the ferry at Waisai island and before heading to the different small boats which take you to different home stays or smaller islands, there is a make shift booth welcoming visitors where you currently pay 1 million rupiah and a laminated credit card format permit with your name is printed on the spot and is valid for 1 year. No more snorkelling fees, ranger fees, conservation fees and hassles as per Komodo NP for example.

We had booked online at a home stay island (top right photo) with rudimental over-the-water rooms and already the choppy currents to get there were a premonition of what was yet to come in the coming days. In all we spent 4 nights there …

I spent two nights in Jakarta and did my best to cover as many Dutch colonial buildings in the Old Batavia centre as possible. Even though the crumbling infrastructure and overall hygene (open sewers, rats, cockroaches, etc.) of the old historic centre need to be addressed, on par with the rest of the highly developed areas of Jakarta, there seems to be enough OUV and potential for this site to become a WHS. It reminded me mostly of Macao, Hong Kong or Singapore.

I specifically chose a hotel close to the neighborhood known officially as Kota Tua which mostly contains Dutch colonial structures dated from the 17th century, when the port city served as the Asian headquarter of the Dutch East India Company or VOC. There's also a Chinese downtown area known as Glodok which is part of Kota Tua. I found this area very interesting to visit as I had read Simon Winchester's Krakatoa: The Day the Earth Exploded which gave me invaluable historic details and information about the most important buildings and it was of great help to give me some context.

Old Batavia was the first walled settlement of the Dutch in the Jakarta area. It was an inner walled city and it was established as the capital of the Dutch East Indies. This inner walled city contrasted with the surrounding kampung or villages and rice fields. It was a center of commerce due to its strategic location within the spice trade industry in Indonesia. …

I visited Crimea in September 2018, when I flew from Murmansk to Simferopol, the de facto capital of Crimea, and caught a bus at the airport to Sevastopol, the largest city on the Crimean Peninsula and a major Black Sea port. Like many cities in the former Soviet Union, Sevastopol is stocked with war memorials, monuments and statues, yet empty of international tourists deterred by its political status and sanctions imposed by Western governments in response to the annexation of Crimea by Russia. I had to bring a stack of Russian rubles because my ATM and credit cards were useless. I stayed at the Sevastopol Hotel, opened in 1959 and the city's oldest hotel. I took a local bus from the bus stop nearby the hotel to Chersonesus, an ancient Greek colony founded 2,500 years ago on the Black Sea, now located in the outskirts of Sevastopol. The site, nicknamed the Ukrainian Pompeii, was successively controlled by the Greek, Roman and Byzantine Empires, and is the only World Heritage Site on the Crimean Peninsula.  

I took a bus from Sevastopol to Yalta, on the southern coast of Crimea. There are frequent boats to the Swallow's Nest, designed to look like a medieval knight's castle, but really an architectural folly built primarily for decorative purposes. The small castle supposedly earned its name because it sits like a swallow’s nest on steep cliffs overlooking the Black Sea. I also took a local bus to Livadia Palace just outside Yalta, which …

The first Japanese gardens I saw on my visit to Japan was in Hiraizumi. It takes a while to fully appreciate the artistry of a Japanese garden, so initially I felt somewhat underwhelmed. The gardens are small in scope and at first note seem random.

It was only after I had seen more of the gardens all across Japan (Kanazawa, Kyoto) that I was able to grasp that most of what I was seeing was not random nature, but planned and arranged to look natural. Back home I looked at the pictures and those from Hiraizumi stood out.

The site is spread across the city. There is one trail where there is a bear warning. The temples are fine examples and I felt that Hiraizumi was a good start on my Japan trip.

Getting There

Hiraizumi is a bit off the average travellers itinerary for Japan. But equipped with a Japan Railpass and relying on the excellent Japanese high speed rail network it's easily feasible as a relaxed day trip from Tokyo (Ueno). In Hiraizumi itself you can do everything on foot.

On Japanese Gardens

While Hiraizumi is a great garden, the best garden I have seen was in Kanazawa (Kenrokuen). I really hope the Japanese will submit it eventually. Apparently, Japanse list the following three as the best landscape gardens:

• Kenrokuen in Kanazawa
• Kairakuen in Mito
• Korakuen in Okayama

In Sept 2018 things had moved on at Sta Coloma since Hubert’s visit/review in 2014. Our hotel (The Garden – "Ok" at 60 Eur B+B for 2 with ample free parking) was situated in the Andorra la Vella suburb of Sta Coloma immediately opposite the alley leading to the church, so it was no problem at least to have a look at it from the outside. We had tried 2 of the Romanesque Churches from Andorra’s other T List entry – St Joan de Casselles and Sant Miquel d'Engolasters and found both closed so I haven’t bothered to do a review of them. However we were “in luck” with Sta Coloma and found it open – AND with a new “videograph” presentation.

The Church contains just one in situ mural – a partial “Agnus Dei” in a medallion surrounded by 2 angels dating from the 12C and created, it is believed, by the “Master” of St Coloma. This is located at the front of the nave just before the apse. In the apse itself there should have been a complete set of pre-Romanesque paintings by the same hand, but these had been sold in the 1930s - apparently to help pay for repairs to the church. They were confiscated by the Nazis from the original Belgian collector and finished up in Berlin. However, in 2007 they were recovered (at a cost of over 4 million Euros!) by the Andorran government.

The decision has been made not …

After Lednice and Valtice, the second World Heritage Site royal castle of Czechia I visited was Kromeriz, ironically this castle also owned by Liechtenstein family similar to Lednice and Valtice. The castle was located in the city center of Kromeriz which in my opinion a prosperous looking town. At first, I expected a typical design of royal palace with grand entrance next to city main square, but to my surprised, from the city square I could only saw the small portion of the palace complex, well at least its tower was quite striking almost similar to church tower. The palace’s exterior was a tiny poor version of Schonbrunn with similar Habsburg yellow Baroque, while there was no grand entrance or front garden courtyard. As I had no intention to see another baroque palace interior which I heard very similar to Schonbrunn, I directly walked to its rear garden. The garden was nice pure English garden without anything worth to remember especially after seeing a better one in Lednice yesterday.

Then I drove to another part of this World Heritage Site, the Flower Garden called Kvetna zahrada or Pleasure Garden, which located just outside the town center. In my opinion this was the true highlight of this UNESCO site. Behind the wall was the large complex of French styled garden together with many smaller gardens. At first, I went to see small greenhouse which seem to be designed for tourist’s souvenir photo. Then I saw what is called Dutch Garden, …

The first discarded leaves of autumn crunched underfoot where they lay scattered amongst the graves of Greyfriars Kirkyard. They served as a thematic link to the tombstones – proper 18th century grave-markers carved with macabre skeletal figures and empty-eyed skulls. Why dress things up? The seasons turn and we age. Change is inevitable. Death is inevitable. The new replaces the old. And nowhere is that truer than in Edinburgh, where the filth and jumble of what we know as the ‘Old Town’ was abandoned for the sterility and order of the New Town across the Nor Loch. These two aspects of Edinburgh were jointly and justifiably inscribed as a single World Heritage Site. This was a fitting tribute to Auld Reekie’s split personality, a city where Deacon Brodie could serve as a respected councillor by day and rob by night, where the professors of medicine could procure fresh corpses for their anatomy classes from body-snatchers, and which influenced native son Robert Louis Stevenson to pen The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

This was probably my tenth visit to Edinburgh, though my first as a pure sight-seer. Previous visits had been for weddings or stag dos, to see friends, to watch or to perform at August’s Fringe Festival or for work. As my wife pointed out, “The rules are different when you’re a tourist. Even more so when you have a child.” And so on this trip we did all the touristy stuff: visiting the castle, …

The scope of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape can seem rather daunting, with its multiple components, but after my visit last May, I felt I had a better understanding of its role in the Industrial Revolution. I appreciated the recommendations of other reviewers on this site to help focus my travels, and used the quaint town of Tavistock as a base for my two day tour. From Tavistock, which is well described already, I followed its canal south to the Victorian river port of Morwellham Quay. This open air museum includes a copper mine, a village with a large water wheel used to crush manganese, and a quay once famed for the amount of copper transiting through it. Similar to Morwellham was the atmospheric port of Charlestown, where fog was rolling in over tall ship replicas when I arrived. This coastal harbor in southern Cornwall was also used to transport the region's copper out to the world. Some of this copper ore was shipped north to the Welsh port of Swansea, which, thanks to its nearby coal reserves, became famous as a copper smelting city in the 18th and 19th centuries. One can easily enjoy touring Cornwall and Devon with no knowledge of this World Heritage Site, but I really appreciated learning about the region's mining history.

Logistics: I found it easiest to visit sites via a rental car, since there are so many sites spread out across the region. In addition to Tavistock, Morwellham Quay, and …

While I was planning my trip to Eastern Czechia, I was fed up to note that at least three palaces were on World Heritage List, Litomysl, Kromeriz and Lednice-Valtice, and I determined that to escape from this noble bombardment, only exterior of these palaces were enough for me. From Brno, it was just an easy drive to reach large landscape of Lednice-Valtice. I directly drove pass Lednice to the town of Valtice first. There was a straight road connecting these two towns, at first I expected to see beautiful landscape similar to Loire Valley or Versailles since many reviewers praised its beauty, but what I saw was an uninspired area of typical vineyards, dense forest and modern villages that I hardly believed to a fine example of man-made landscape, I did make a detour to see some famous follies along the lake shore; for example, Temple of three graces, but again nothing special which made me disappointed greatly.

However, when I reached Valtice, I was impressed with its townscape with lovely and harmoniously buildings. The star of this pretty town was its castle, while overall architecture was quite boring with typical Austrian baroque that could be found everywhere in former Austro-Hungarian territory, its front courtyard with stately stairs and two sculpture was perfectly designed, and I did a quick look at the castle’s chapel, its ceiling was just beautiful. Then I drove back to Lednice Castle, the main estate of Liechtenstein family of this domain. Its yellowish gothic exterior …

I really enjoyed my visit to this WHS, way more than I was expecting. Having seen both Roman ruins and Mosaics elsewhere, I wasn't expecting to be impressed.

However, the huge Roman Mosaic covering almost the entire floor of the Basilica is one of the most breathtaking that I have ever seen. Both its scale and content are impressive, I particularly enjoyed the fishing scenes.

Also in the Basilica are two crypts, one of Frescos, one of Excavations. I visited only the former and again, found the frescos to be better than I imagined. The colours are vivid and the emotions depicted on the subjects faces are incredible.

The cost for the Basilica and Crypt of Frescos is EUR 5, an additional couple of Euros buys you entrance to the Crypt of Excavations and another 2 euros for the climb to the bell tower.

Wandering around the additional roman ruins (for free) is a low-key event but enjoyable nevertheless, especially the warehouse and port ruins, which I haven't seen much of previously.