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I visited this WHS in January 2018. Since I had read positive reviews on Harry Nanya Tours and reading that a 4WD is more suitable to visit Mungo National Park, I booked way ahead to secure a spot on the afternoon and sunset tour. Communication was swift and I received a booking confirmation shortly after. A few months after I double checked and was told not to worry but to simply confirm my arrival at Mildura the day before or on the day.

Having many other bookings to confirm, I left it at that. While on the road in Australia, our initial plan was to stop at a motel in Bordertown after visiting the Naracoorte Caves NP. However, on the way, luckily we listened to an announcement on national radio stating that most places were going to be on shutdown the next day due to a catastrophic fire alert. Meltwaterfalls' past experience in the US came to mind so I decided to double check my booking with Harry Nanya Tours before driving any further and possibly for nothing.

The call immediately diverted to voicemail countless times and when double checking the contact number on the internet, I learned that Harry Nanya was seriously ill since a couple of months and apparently the tour company does not exist anymore. Already feeling that this was going to be a near miss, I decided to call the Mungo National Park Visitor Centre to see whether or not they would be closed. Surprisingly, a …

I took a bus from Logatec to Idrija, but the bus stop was not at the Logatec train station, and the closest bus stop to the train station was here: 45°55'01.8"N 14°13'26.9"E

I spent about 22 hours in Idrija, from 13:30 on Monday to 11:45 on Tuesday in February. It was a busy 22 hours, which made the visit more fun for me. 

When I got off the bus one stop before the Idrija bus station, the driver asked me where I'm going. I said "To the museum," and he said "The (Castle) Museum is at the next stop." I had meant the Smelting Plant Museum, which the driver was not aware of.  

As it turned out, the Museum at the Smelting Plant opened only a year before. When I got to the Museum at 13:45, I was the only visitor, and the attendant kindly gave me a tour of the Plant and even served me a cup of coffee while I browsed through the exhibition. I was especially surprised to encounter the section of the exhibition about the mercury poisoning at Minamata, Japan, which I grew up hearing about, and how the problem in Minamata made the difference with regards to mercury around the world, just as the problem in Fukushima made the difference with regards to nuclear energy around the world recently. We humans learn by making mistakes... I spent about 90 min. at the Plant Museum.  

My next plan was to visit the Kamst before it closes …

So impressed when I visited Plitvice Lakes in spring 2010 that I went back there with my then-girlfriend in summer the following year. Upon my first visit, I said if the US had Grand Canyon, Europe had Plitvice Lakes. But after seeing amazing photos of the park covered in snow in Google Images, I had been seeking a chance to come back here in winter, and the chance finally came this winter.

Upon hearing that the park could be closed due to snow in winter, I decided to stay overnight at the park to increase my chance of entering the park and booked an inn about 2 km south of Entrance 2. I thought I could easily walk for 2 km.

I took an 8:30 bus from Split and after a long but somewhat scenic ride, during which it started snowing as the bus went into mountains, arrived at the park about 13:00. To my surprise, Entrance 2, the only entrance I used in my previous visits, was closed, and the bus kept going north for another 4 km to Entrance 1, meaning I was now 6 km away from my inn.

Entrance 1 was open and was selling tickets until 14:00. The price of ticket was reduced by half because only a half of the park was open.  

I walked on a loop that took me about 90 min. Somebody told me that it only started snowing a few days before in the area, so …

I visited this WHS in January 2018, focusing on South Australia's only WHS - Naracoorte Caves National Park. I had prebooked online (32 dollars) to secure a place for the Victoria Fossil Cave guided tour at 14:15 (it takes roughly 1 hr). If there are any palaeontologist geeks who would like to invest more time (and money!) there's also a WH tour to Victoria Fossil Cave and Blanche Cave to also visit research areas not usually seen by the general public.

After a long drive from the Great Ocean Road (at least you 'gain' 45 minutes if driving from the state of Victoria), we parked at the Wonambi Fossil Centre. Here we collected our tickets, and got a brief visual introduction of some fossils and how the megafauna must have looked like by doing the self-guided walk through a simulated forest and swampland geared mostly at entertaining children. There are several information boards displaying inscription on the WH list just next to the entrance and the only cafe and toilet facilities available around. We drove again to the Victoria Fossil Cave (some 2-3km away) to meet our guide. Even though the number of people visiting the cave at any one time is capped to 25, it felt a bit too crowded at times. The temperature inside the cave is a constant 17 degrees Celsius so it's not too bad and a welcome change from the outside heat.

Apart from a few rather ordinary cave features, the highlight of the cave …

I had to create another WHS hunting trip itinerary around my annual skiing trip, and this winter the ski resort of my choice was at Jahorina, Bosnia, the site of the 1984 Winter Olympics. So I attempted to bag remaining WHSs in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. Unlike last winter when I couldn't move around in Bulgaria due to criplingly heavy snow, there wasn't so much snow in the Balkan this winter, so I was able to follow my itinerary fairly well, although bus timetables I got off internet in Serbia and Bosnia were way off. 

Flew from Berlin to Nis in Serbia and took bus from Nis through Kraljevo and Usce to Novi Pazar. 

The day I arrived in Novi Pazar, I just walked to St. Peter's Church, which was about 2 km from my hotel. 

A woman at the bus station of Novi Pazar had told me there was no bus to the Stari Ras area, and completely forgetting seeing a bus in Els' photo at the Stari Ras area, I decided to take a taxi the following morning from Novi Pazar to Stari Ras and Sopocani Monastery for 13 Euros. Well, the woman probably thought infrequent bus would be too inconvenient for me...

We headed to the Sopocani Monastery first, and I saw a bus passing by the Monastery...Damn...

There was no attendant at the Monastery, so I just freely walked around, having the taxi wait for me for about 20 min. 

After Sopocani I was …

Great Smoky Mountains National Park was the first World Heritage Site I visited, part of a family vacation when I was six. I have fond memories of the trip and the blue-grey mist over the mountains, but much time has passed since then, so I decided to revisit the park in the summer of 2016 while on a road trip to Atlanta, Georgia. The park is a wonderful encapsulation of Appalachian culture, with small settlements and mills scattered throughout the forest. There are many other similar state and national parks throughout the Appalachian Mountains, but Great Smoky Mountains (and likely its family-oriented gateway towns) retains a mythos that continues to draw vacationers from all over the East Coast of the United States. During my visit, I toured an old farmstead off the Roaring Fork loop road and hiked up to scenic Grotto Falls, an easy and beautiful trail. I later traversed the park via Newfound Gap, which offered memorable viewpoints of the surrounding mountains. I also drove up to Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the park, to take in the views from the observation tower. The Great Smokies are definitely worth a visit (be sure to allow time for hikes), and, if one has extra time, I'd also recommend visiting some of the other parks in the Appalachian Mountains.

Logistics: An automobile is necessary to travel to the many trailheads in the park, but from there the Great Smokies are a hiker's paradise.

I visited this WHS in January 2018 before heading towards the Great Ocean Road. I had prebooked the guided heritage tour over the phone to make sure I could visit the Royal Exhibition Building's (REB) interior.

The tour takes roughly 1 hour and runs on most days except when the REB is closed because of an event. If for whatever reason, you're hard pressed for time it is possible to exit the building before the tour ends. Since I drove directly from Melbourne International Airport, the easiest solution was to park in the Melbourne Museum underground parking. The tour starts in the foyer of the Melbourne Museum where I also collected tickets. Usually I'm not much of a fan of the juxtaposition between old and new, however the Melbourne Museum really attracts lots of people and keeps the REB and Carlton gardens area alive.

There are several information boards with the UNESCO symbol at the Carlton Gardens and there is a metal post displaying inscription on the WH list just next to the REB entrance. The gardens are a pleasant place to rest on a sunny day and to gaze at both the REB and the modern skyline of Melbourne. There's nothing of OUV in the gardens and they act more as a buffer zone in actual fact. The two fountains are the only two things worth viewing apart from the REB itself. Perhaps it is worth follwing the Golden Mile trail if you have more time. The overall experience …

I visited this WHS in January 2018. Having already visited a number of rainforests, we decided to visit this WHS as an easy day trip from Cairns.

After arriving at the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway Terminal in Smithfield, the whole cable car ride (7.5km) over the rainforest canopy took around 40 minutes (not including time spent at each station). There are 2 worthwhile stops: Red Peak Station and Barron Falls Station. Red Peak Station is the highest point at 545 metres above sea level and there is a 200 metre boardwalk where you can easily see primitive fern-like cycads, elkhorns, staghorns, bird's nest ferns, Kauri pines, Alexandra palms, Caribbean pine trees, fan palm trees, a variegated fig and a banyan tree, apart from several metallic starlings.

The next stop is Barron Falls Station surrounded by lush, complex rainforest with several basket ferns and Cooper's tree ferns. The best views of the Barron Gorge and Falls from the cable car are between Towers 25 and 27. When we stopped at the Barron Falls Station, we headed straight to the small yet informative Rainforest Interpretation Centre and then to the three lookouts providing panoramic views of the Barron Gorge and Falls. There are UNESCO WHS inscription boards at both stations as well as other information boards on the flora and fauna. We happened to visit on one of the few days when the Wet Tropics of Queensland didn't live up to its name as it was a hot sunny day. Probably this was …

I visited this WHS in December 2017 and January 2018 from Hamilton Island and from Cairns. In all I dedicated a week to this extensive WHS to be able to cover different areas and features of this marine WHS by boat, by plane and by helicopter.

Even though I travelled to some of the most beautiful marine areas in the world (ex. French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Maldives, Seychelles, Caribbean), none are comparable to the Great Barrier Reef not only in terms of size but in terms of the different hues of blue/turquoise, the clarity of the water, the variety and amount of marine life. This applies both underwater and from above. Since we visited during stinger season, we wore a stinger suit when snorkelling to be on the safe side. Being such a vast area, you get to see and experience different things depending from where you're based.

The World Heritage Area Boundary withing the GBR Marine Park stretches from beneath the Torres Strait to just above Fraser Island excluding harbours and islands. For the first 5 days we stayed on Hamilton Island, one of the Whitsunday Islands, and every day we did a different excursion to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Already from my window seat, flying from Brisbane, I enjoyed an incredible aerial view of two of Australia's great WHS - Fraser Island and the GBR. First I saw never-ending sandy beaches, dunes and trees. Then the sheer beauty of the GBR and the Coral Sea islands and …

As indicated in previous reviews, for many years it has only been possible to make very limited visits to the Monastery of Daphni, situated in the Western suburbs of Athens, both in terms of when it has been open and in what could be seen when you got there. The building has had a very chequered life having been sacked by the Franks, been used as a barracks and an asylum and enduring numerous earthquakes. The latest of these in 1999 (9 years after inscription) led to a major restoration project which resulted in the monastery becoming a building site. Most photos on the Web show it completely encased in scaffolding. In recent years it has only been open for limited hours on Tuesdays and Fridays. WHS travellers should know, however, that the situation has improved and that it might be worth their while including a visit to it in any future visit to Athens.

This limited opening was still the situation when we visited it in Oct 2017. However, I can report that all external scaffolding has now been removed and that, internally, there is only a small area still undergoing work in the Narthex which hardly detracts from what is on show - not much different from preservation work one will find in many WHS. Those who visit Athens from now on should be aware that a visit will provide excellent views of the restored mosaics – well worth the “free entry” which still applies! Indeed if you …

UNique – 6/10

Located a few kilometers away from Moscow, Kolomenskoye was a small village until in 1532 the Russian Grand Prince decided to build a church as a token of his gratitude for the birth of a son, an heir to the throne, who would eventually come to be called Ivan the Terrible. (In my humble opinion, that is an absolutely awful name to give to a child. It’s like Denice the Menace but much worse. You could not expect him to get up to anything good with that moniker.) Church of the Ascension was the first tent-roof stone building in Russia and would become the turning point in Russian religious architecture. As you enter the church, you realize that the 3-meter thick walls encroach on the interior, making the church feel very small inside. This perceived narrowness of space does a lot to emphasize the height of the structure.

ESsential – 4/10

After the construction of the church was completed, the status of the surrounding area grew in importance. Kolomenskoye became a residence of the Russian tsars in the 17th century. It is here that Peter the Great staged his play battles during his youth. To celebrate his connection to this area, a small wooden house which he resided in during the Northern War in 1702 has been moved to Kolomenskoye.

COst-Effective – 6/10

The entrance into each building of the complex is a nominal 100 rubles, but considering that there is not much inside the small church, …

Today I visited the town of Ein Karem. It is only a short ride from Jerusalem. Ein Karem has many religious buildings, but none seems old or very special. The environment is nice to walk. 

I think the outstanding universal value has to be that John The Baptist has been born here. It was 8 in the morning when I was there, and the first buses with tourists allready arrived. My host in the hotel told this is a good place to find a restaurant on a saturday (Sabbath). 

There is not a lot of parking space there. I found a small (free) car park and some spaces along the road. 

Liftah is and abandonned small town in a valley. You find there some houses left in 1948, in the state as they were then, but in the state you expect after 70 years. Besides houses there is a spring and a small pond. It is surroundes with a few big motorways. Parking space is limited near the site. I went down into the valley, did a small walk till the end of the town and went back up the steep hill. Never can believe this becomes world heritage one day...

To reach Fraser Island you can catch a ferry either from Rainbow Beach or from River Heads. I chose the latter and it was quite a long drive to reach the quaint fishing village of Urangan. The extra time I invested in driving to Urangan in the evening, meant that we could depart later in the morning (if you depart from Rainbow Beach you'll have to catch a much earlier ferry and you'll still have to organize a long and bumpy ride from the ferry point to one of the two resorts on the island (the cheaper one is Eurong Beach Resort; even though, at sunset and sunrise, the 75 Mile Beach area close to the resort is where a number of dingoes can easily be seen - the only ones we saw were here - and it is advisable to keep your distance behind the fenced off area at these times). 

Fraser Island has no tarmac, asphalt or gravel roads, apart from two small ones within the Kingfisher Bay Resort (where we stayed). Driving is strictly limited to 4WD vehicles and even then, you have to be quite an experienced and skillful 4WD driver to drive from one place to another without getting stuck in the sand which is a frequent sight on the island. Moreover, there is no …

Similar to most of reviewers, I only visited Naracoorte component of this World Heritage Site as part of my Great Ocean Road trip from Melbourne to Adelaide. I chose Penola, a lovely small town with fine food and nice red wine of the well-known vineyards of Coonawara as my base to visit this fossil caves national park. Before the visit it is highly recommended to check the website of the national park for tour schedule and buy the limited ticket, I saw many tourists came without this preparation and found no tour available. I arrived the tourist center 1 hour before my booked tour to register. The biggest attraction on the ground level is the big, cute statue of Diprotodon, an ancestor of wombat and Koala bear.

From the tourist center, I had to drive to the entrance of Victoria Cave and wait for the ranger with the less of almost 30 tourists. The tour could easily divide into 2 parts, the normal cave tour with lovely stalactites and stalagmites, and the fossil bed tour. I was quite surprised to see that actually the cave was quite beautiful, better than my original idea. Maybe originally the caves have pretty low ceiling so the formation of dripstones here are easier. It was quite fascinating to see how much earth they had to dig out in order to make passageway for tourists without crawling the low ceiling. Too bad that the quality of dripstone could not compare with other famous World …

To me as a musician Gulbenkian meant until recently a Portuguese Orchestra. For most visitors of Lisbon probably means one of the best museums in the capital. Behind both of them stands the same Gulbenkian Foundation and I think one needs to know a little bit about it to understand this application on the tentativ list. The museum was built in the end of the 1950s, “when the country was still dominated by a conservative dictatorship, closed to the world and resistant to the values of progress. The foundation thus emerged unexpectedly in Portugal as a symbol of and place to promote art, education and science”. From a national perspective importance of this foundation can hardly be overrated.

But what is there to see? There is a big modern park with several buildings in it. Out of them only the big head office seems to be included in the application. This is a brownish long stretched building consisting of several simple volumes, quite Corbusier-like. The park around it is inspired by certain Japanese garden ideas: Big stone plates form the paths through lawns, ponds, artificial waterfalls, bamboo groves and old trees. Those trees are the most interesting aspect of the park: They stand in contrast to the modernity of the buildings and the garden. It seems the garden is based on a recreational farm from the 13 century. Therefore some of the trees may be very old and sometimes one gets the impression the buildings were created in respect to …

The Historic Center of the City of Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay is a perfectly adequate World Heritage Site, but, as has been intimated by other reviewers here, it would likely not fall in the top tier for many WHS travelers. Like others, I visited the town as a day trip by ferry from Buenos Aires in March 2016. The weather was warm, which made the stroll around the historic cobblestone streets of the historic quarter rather pleasant. I appreciated the tile maps of the city found throughout the historic quarter, and also enjoyed the overhead views of the city from atop the lighthouse. Scattered around the quarter were several old cars that had been turned into artwork, and antique lamps were hung from the sides of many of the buildings. Before returning to Buenos Aires, my friends and I enjoyed a relaxing late lunch at a cafe overlooking the Rio de la Plata and some of the old city walls on the south side of the historic quarter. Although my visit to Colonia del Sacramento gave me an opportunity to see Uruguay for the first time, I think I'll have to return for a longer visit some day to get a better feel for the rest of the country.

Logistics: Colonia del Sacramento is accessible by ferry from Buenos Aires; the historic quarter is a short walk from the ferry terminal in Uruguay. Be sure to plan time to go through customs in both countries.

This nomination certainly overlaps with the nomination of Pombaline Lisbon but includes additionally all the other areas of the older city center. When the text for Pombaline Lisbon seems already a bit enumerative and unfocused this is even more the case for his nomination. Lisbon certainly has a long history that starts from the Phoenicians and the Romans, but nothing is left of the first and very little of the second. The also nominated area on and around the Alfama hill is very nice and based on the old islamic city but of this seems only the layout left and there are much better preserved islamic quarters in world heritage cities like Granada and Cordoba, to name only some examples in Europe. The very important era of exploration is very prominently covered with the Monastery and the Tower in Belem. Perhaps the most important part is the Baixa, the central quarter that was rebuilt after the big earthquake. In addition the text mentions among many things the Azulejos, the miradouros and even the Fado. 

Lisbon is a very interesting city with many distinguishable nice neighborhoods and full of history but I think it is neither coherent nor various enough to justify a nomination of the entire old city. I found the old city of Porto not necessarily more interesting but more coherent and beautiful from a touristic point of view. I think though Lisbon stands a chance if it concentrates on the Pombaline Lisbon and its influence on aseismic construction …

From the four tentativ sites within the city of Lisbon this seems to me the one with the best perspectives. It is a nice area to walk around though you have to suffer somebody begging or offering their business every five meters. There are nice long views and big squares of which the Rossio is probably the most enjoyable.

This site wakes already a lot of interest though its connection with the terrible 1755 earthquake. The application text is incredibly long which raises the suspicion that they are not so sure about which were the main arguments for the nomination. Some of the claims are quite grand: "the first modern Western city, unique within Europe and indeed the world", „It was the very first to be conceived and executed according to the criteria and comprehensive methodology that continue to form the basis for the urban planning of all newly constructed or regenerated cities today.“ They claim also a „utterly innovative orthogonal plan“. But how original can a orthogonal plan be, when orthoganal cities can be found long before in ancient Greece and Babylonia and in Spanish colonies a hundred years earlier?

The most interesting of the many mentioned criteria may be the earthquake-proof and fire-proof structures, drainage systems for wastewater and rainwater and the planning and creation of a rubbish collection system.

Again, the singularity of all this had to be proven. When I searched on the internet I couldn’t really find a lot of information about any of those …

Fortunately, UNESCO added Budj Bim in the tentative list before I finalized the whole itinerary of my Australia trip, so after checking its location, I conveniently put this unknown place as one of the must stops along the famous Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to Adelaide. Since the site was relative unknown, it was quite hard to find information and I afraid that the visit without any professional guide will not make my trip to be worthwhile, I still decided to go and explore the site by myself.

There are two components of Budj Bim, old Volcano of Mount Eccles together with nearby lake Condah and the old lave flow near town of Tyrendarra. After checking with google map, I decided to visit only the Tyrendarra area as the geography of shallow lake Condah and swampy Tyrendarra both are quite similar, and I have no interest to climb Mount Eccles or old mission ruins. On the road, I put my navigator to Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area, while the road is good just next to the main highway, the place gave a feeling that it was located on the middle of nowhere. I parked my car and saw a sign of warning of flood and snakes! Since I visited on spring, the small creek flooded the whole area of old lava flow. The small pedestal bridge to the nominated area was almost submerged by the strong high water. After I crossed the bridge I found an explanation board of the …