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With this huge Qhapaq Nan serial nomination, the Andean countries seem to have clustered all Inca sites of any importance. I visited the area in 2011 and 2017, and besides Cuzco/Tiwanaku/Quebrada de Humahuaca which are already WHS in their own right, I visited some of the "lesser" sites too.

Pachacamac is an easy half-day trip out of Lima. I took one of the dozens of minibusses that leave all the time from Avenida Grau. It dropped me off right at the site's entrance. There's a little museum on-site, displaying some pretty Wari ceramics and also textile that has survived the ages due to the extremely dry climate here.

Its location indeed is one of the most remarkable things about Pachacamac - it's out there in the desert, within sight of the sea. The site is totally covered in sand. Archeologists are only slowly making their way to the many temples and other features below. Most of it is off-limits to visitors, though the Temple of the Sun can be climbed and other parts like the North-South Street have explanatory boards. You can do a full circuit walk of the large terrain in about an hour (if you have a car, you can also drive).

Pachacamac was a ceremonial and pilgrimage site between 200 and 1535. It was used by different civilizations: the Lima, the Wari, the Ichma, and the Inca. Its most distinguishing fact is that it predominantly is a Wari site, a culture that is not …

La Chaux-de-Fonds is located in the far west of Switzerland, a bit off the beaten track, but I combined it with Besancon (Vauban citadel) and Arc-et-Senans, as there are around 3 daily trains from Besancon. I spent half a day in La Chaux-de-Fonds (plus around 40 minutes in Le Locle, only 10 minutes away by train, but my visit was cut short by a huge thunderstorm), and I felt that this was enough to get a feel for the city. I joined a tourist train for a ride (especially useful for the residential districts located on a quite steep slope) and so could see the rectangular street layout (also well visible from the Espacité lookout tower) and some of the unique buildings of this town. I also visited the Watchmaking Museum, which was quite interesting, but only focused on watches/clocks in general, not on the city itself. Le Locle is much smaller than La Chaux-de-Fonds, but quite similar in its structure and buildings (it also has its own watchmaking museum). The WH designation is probably justified for the unique city plans and the focus on a very specific type of precision industry, away from the usual ironworks/steel mills/mining sites. The two cities are nice places to visit if you are in the area, but going out of the way for them is only something for WH collectors.

Ever since I encountered a group of “druids” dressing up at the parking lot of Stonehenge, I have had a hard time taking these megalithic sites seriously. Especially the UK ones, as they seem to be surrounded by a mix of semi-religious revival and commercial exploitation more than others. However, Neolithic Orkney was still on my to-do list. This site comprises 4 locations: two stone circles (Ring of Brodgar and Standing Stones of Stennes), a burial mound (Maes Howe), and the remains of a village (Skara Brae). All are located not far from each other on the Orkney island of Mainland.

I was tempting the logistical odds by visiting Mainland including this WHS on a weekend trip from my home. I flew to Inverness on Friday evening and returned Sunday evening. It’s a loooong commute and of course, it would be better to take more time. But I managed to tick off the WHS and see some particular features of the Scottish highlands and Orkney as well.

I started out from Inverness at 7.15 am on Saturday morning. There’s a bus that connects with the ferry to Orkney from John O’Groats. The bus ride in itself is a tour already, as it comes with a guide. On the Orkney side, a bus is waiting to take you up to Kirkwall and even to do a full tour of the island. I had only booked to Kirkwall, rather wanting to see things at my own speed. The tour bus …

This is a very interesting site consisting of 2 separate components located near the Swiss border. I set out to visit both places by public transport from Besancon in one day. The train ride from Besancon to Arc-et-Senans is straightforward and very short, and the salt works are just a few steps from the station. As stated in the other reviews, Arc-et-Senans is mostly about architecture and urban planning, and the creation of a model city that was never fully realized. It is very pleasant to walk from building to building, which are set up in a semi-circle, and also to explore the surrounding gardens. The buildings have different purposes, from hotel rooms to exposition space (including a nice exhibit on World Heritage sites), and it takes a few hours to see everything. I then took the train to Mouchard and waited for a bus to Salins-les-Bains that didn't come (apparently I had misread the schedule, because there are fewer buses in summer, during school holidays). The lady at the SNCF ticket counter was nice enough to call me a taxi so that I could arrive at Salins-les-Bains (about a 15-minute drive away) in time for the German guided tour (they started with these this year, and tours are also available in English, at least in summer). They take you underground and give interesting explanations about salt extraction and the lives of the miners; some parts date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Afterwards, you also see a building aboveground …

I visited Villefranche-de-Conflent in August 2017. The town is awfully picturesque (it is also on the register of the Most Beautiful Villages in France) and very tiny, literally two streets and a square.

The components of the WH site brought mixed impressions. The ramparts are very imposing when viewed from outside the city walls, but I found touring them slightly disappointing: for all the history and all the good preservation, you basically end up walking a couple of kilometers of pathways of different width, with very little to see except a few largely empty courtyards and chambers. If you are expecting elevated perspectives of the town, you will not find much to choose from.

Cova Bastera is a cave complex ending in a fortified chamber overlooking the town. It is the only component that offers free entry. The caves pale in comparison to the nearby Grotte des Grandes Canalettes (which has nothing to do with Vauban), so make sure you visit Cova Bastera first.

Fort Liberia high above town takes about 20 minutes of climbing up the stairs even from the most athletic. It is certainly worth an effort. Inside, there is a great example of a self-contained military post, with barracks, service areas, a church, and beautiful crenellations. If you descend by the underground passages (750+ steps, not for claustrophobic), you will come upon an open landing with unobstructed panoramic views over the town.

Time allowance for all components of the WH listing: ~3 hours. I ended up spending …

The Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura was a welcome addition to the WH List this year for those ticking off Western European WHS on weekend trips. Recent reviews of it by Hubert and Clyde have already paved the way regarding all practical details necessary for a worthwhile trip. The site lies some 620km from my home, and I visited it by car with a stop-over in Darmstadt. I decided to not visit all locations, but instead, do some cherry-picking among the inscribed caves and associated museums with a special focus on seeing the figurines.

My day of exploration started at the Archäopark Vogelherd. At the park entrance, there is a small exhibition room, and that’s where I found my two first figurines: a mammoth and a cave lion. Both are tiny objects. They are on show in a display case each, and there’s nothing else in the room. The mammoth is easy to recognize as such and is in perfect shape. It has to be admired from the “front” though, as the other side is much rougher. This seems to suggest that it was a brooch or similar ornament worn on clothing or the body.

The other figure is said to represent a cave lion. With some imagination a tiger or a puma as we now know them can be seen in the object. “Cave lions” were widespread in the age of the early homo sapiens and could grow bigger than modern lions. They …

Technically this was the first UNESCO site I ever visited, on a road trip when I was 8. However, I barely remember it, and it wasn't inscribed until 2015, so I was happy to get the chance to revisit last week and also see the rest of the missions.

I went to all five missions in about 5 hours, using a rental car to get from place to place. I was pleased to have the vehicle since it was blazing hot. Having grown up in Oklahoma, I've been to southern Texas approximately one million times, but I am never mentally prepared for the heat.

I have a full write-up, photos, and a video of every mission here (FYI, I edited the video in the middle of the night waiting for a redeye flight to escape Hurricane Harvey before it hit, so I missed some typos on the video text. Once I'm not jetlagged, I'll go back in and fix them):

UNESCO World Heritage Site: San Antonio Missions

The Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout was the Dutch World Heritage Site I was most excited to visit when I traveled to the Netherlands in the summer of 2014. When I was growing up, I had associated windmills with the Netherlands, but I hadn't realized their role in water management until I arrived at Kinderdijk. A theater at the visitor center showed a movie explaining how the mills worked to pump water out of the lower land of the polder so it could be drained into rivers -- I'm rather in awe at the engineering ingenuity the Dutch employed here and throughout the country! Kinderdijk is an outdoor museum of 19 windmills picturesquely situated along canals in a polder just a short distance east of Rotterdam. I had intended to rent a bicycle in Rotterdam to take with me to Kinderdijk, but there were no bikes available at rental sites. Despite the setback, I enjoyed a relaxing walk on the paths to the windmills, stopping to take in the views of the turning sails reflected in the canals. Two of the windmills were open for visitors on the Saturday of my visit, allowing visitors the opportunity to see the gears and living areas inside the mills. This complex is a fine and memorable piece of Dutch heritage on the World Heritage Site list.

Logistics: Kinderdijk can be reached by private transportation or, on weekends between May and September, by boat from Rotterdam (requiring a boat change at Ridderkirk for Kinderdijk).

The Stećci Medieval Tombstones Graveyards are made up of 28 sites across Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia.

22 of the sites are located in Bosnia and Herzegovina and we stopped at the Radimlja Necropils located about 30 drive minutes from Mostar. The Radimlja Necropils is one of the most well preserved sites and contains decorated tombstones dating back to the 1480s.

The site was quiet and had a small entry fee amounting to a few euro. We were among two sets of visitors there at the time.

Although I'm not such a big fan of industrial sites, and I don't really know a lot about the process of iron- and steel-making, I did enjoy my trip to the Völklingen Ironworks. Not only was there an interesting exhibition on the Inca in a part of the complex when I visited in August 2017, you can also wander around the site freely and explore all nooks and crannies on your own. After some walking around, you will come to the area where hard hats are required to climb various staircases up to the viewing platform 50 or so metres above ground - this is really the highlight of any visit. Völklingen is just a 10-minute train ride from Saarbrücken, and the ironworks is maybe a 5-minute walk from the station. You can't see it very well from the train if coming from Saarbrücken, but it should be perfectly visible if coming from the other direction (e.g. Trier).

I recently went to Ulm to have a look at the newly inscribed Ice Age sites, and I picked the Vogelherd and Hohle Fels caves as the ones easiest to reach by public transport. Both can be done in a day (I went on a Sunday in summer), but because there are only 3 daily buses to Vogelherd (from the train station in Niederstotzingen), I could not visit the museum in Blaubeuren, as I had originally planned. The Vogelherd cave is part of the Archaeopark, a nice little museum/visitor centre/archaeological event centre. A relatively short walking path takes you to the actual cave, which is really quite small and open to the elements - hard to imagine how people back then would have survived a strong winter. In the afternoon, I took the train (via Ulm) to Schelklingen, from where it is about a 25-minute walk to the entrance of the Hohle Fels cave. There is a small exhibition at the entrance, and the actual cave is really quite big and impressive - to me, a real cave compared to Vogelherd, which just seemed to be an opening in the rock. You can walk all the way to the far upper end, it's just a bit slippery inside. Because I had no time for the museum on this or the following day (it is closed on Mondays), I thought that I had learned more about caves than about the actual cave art, but it was still an enjoyable day. Ulm …

Visited this site in August 2017. A visual representation of site is a little bit strange: five hills and green valley from the hills to the river. When walking around the hills it is quite difficult to imagine how the constructions were located; however in the museum there is visual demonstration of the place during prosperity times. But still it looks like that the hills’ surface is too small to accommodate anything larger than one house circled by a wall (and I can image how it was painful to carry water, food and everything all the time up the hill).

Unfortunately, there are no visible remains of the human settlement on the site, but the overall setting and views are very beautiful. Not surprisingly, the area was inhabited for over 11,000 years and this one of the important site values. It is advisable to visit small museum as well to see some additional information and displays (as coin collector I like the coin with the knight most).

Visited Sviyazhsk in August 2017 just 1 day before Irina Bokova also visited this site in order to personally hand over UNESCO certificate. For this occasion on the road from Kazan airport there were celebrative flags and posters.

We visited Sviyazhsk as half-day tour on car from Kazan. The place is now extremely touristy and visited by the group hoards.

This legendary city was founded in 1551 by Ivan the Terrible as an outpost to attack and capture Kazan. The wooden Kremlin was constructed in 4 weeks with the wood transported 700 km through river from Uglich. In 1 year Kazan was seized and included into the growing Moscovite kingdom. Sviyazhsk became quite big military base and city.

In 1918 Sviyazhsk became famous again when Leon Trotsky personally headed Red army in its fight against the White Guard ruling in Kazan. In this dark period, he ordered to death each tenth soldier from the corps that earlier surrendered Kazan (punishment used only during Roman Empire times).

In 1957 after construction of Kuibyshev reservoir Sviyazhsk became an island. Only in 2008 a road dumb was completing facilitating access to the site. Starting from 2000s massive restoration and reconstruction program was initiated by Tatarstan authorities and WHS application after several years finally succeeded in 2017 (but narrowing to the Assumption Cathedral and Monastery only).

The island is a place for pleasant walk with many restored churches and well maintained civil buildings. Apart from the Assumption Cathedral, the main attraction is another monastery …

Visited this site in August 2017 with day-trip on a rented car from Kazan.

The site includes a number of ruins and restored monuments mainly dating back to 13th-14th centuries (however, the site was inhabited since 7th till 15th century).

Interesting that in 922 Bolgar was visited by a mission from Baghdad (well documented) after which Bolgar accepted Islam as official religion. Bolgar was capital of Volga Bolgar civilization at the crossroads of evolving Russian state and Asia.

It is noted in the Unesco assessment that the number of restoration works and interventions is high and it's visible. However, several surviving buildings are quite unusual and interesting architecturally. The site is well maintained, the monuments are labelled with information in Russian, Tatar and English. There is also ongoing archeologoical research and through the fence one could glimpse at 3-4 meter deep excavation works.

There is also mosque called Memorable sign built in 2012 to honour anniversary of Islam acceptance, where the largest Koran in the world is kept (weighing 800 kg).

Brand new museum of Bolgar civilization has a number of artefacts and information, as well as model of the city.

It would take around 2-3 hours to see all the monuments. The overall area was quite touristy and visited by the large groups of locals. Also there is another recreation area with some ruins and museum of bread located around 3 km to the south of main site, which could be of interest as well.

In overall, not an …

My wife and I visited here in August 2017. As it's in use these days as an office building, it's closed to the general public during the week. However, the company urbanguides.nl run tours at 12pm on Saturdays and Sundays, which can be joined for 16 euros per person. Tours last for an hour and can be conducted in English or Dutch, depending on the make-up of the group.

We really enjoyed the tour and being able to see inside! Access to the site is easy, either by bike or by direct bus from Rotterdam Centraal. Limited parking is also available on site for an extra charge.

See below for my full video review!

So many belfries! My wife and I visited Belgium in August 2017, and decided to see a representative sample of the belfries on the list. In the end we saw two cathedral belfries (in Antwerp and Leuwen), a town hall belfry (Antwerp), two marketplace belfries (Bruges and Ypres), and two standalone belfries (Tournai and Mons).

Of these, I think Antwerp cathedral, Bruges and Tournai are the most impressive mainly due to their height and imposition on the surrounding area. And if you're going to climb one, don't make it the one in Bruges! It's 10 euros, while climbing in Tournai is 2 euros.

See below for my full Youtube review.

Germany is working towards a 2020 nomination for the Artists' Colony Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt. This is a Gesamtkunstwerk of buildings, gardens and works of art, created during the years 1901-1914 over the course of four exhibitions. The art-loving Hessian Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig was the patron for the notable Jugendstil artists that were part of this community.

I had never been to Darmstadt before, and I visited it for a night and a morning on my return from the Ice Age Art Caves. My first impression was that of a rather dull city. It is large enough though to have its cosmopolitan edges – I ate at a Peruvian restaurant on Saturday and a Persian one on Sunday right after visiting Mathildenhöhe (the recommended Shiraz which is within walking distance). To find a site like the Artists’ Colony in a city like this still is a real surprise.

Mathildenhöhe is signposted all over Darmstadt. It’s a small quarter just northeast of the city center. The core consists of a block with the Wedding Tower and the Exhibition Building, with the emblematic Russian Orthodox Chapel and the Platanenhain (sycamore grove) in front of it. Around this cluster lie a number of houses created for and by the artists. It has the general atmosphere of a public park, and many locals were also out for a Sunday stroll. People also were entering the Russian Chapel to pray. The chapel has no direct link to the Artists' Colony but it greatly adds to …

Following Kintante's recommendation in the forum, I set out to go to Eggishorn. Leaving my apartment in Hamburg at 5 a.m. I stood on the top of the mountain at 1 p.m., a flight, two train rides and two cable cars in between. And there it was. Or better there it wasn't: The glacier was hidden from view by heavy fog. And the mountains were covered in thick snow ...

The previous day when I checked the hiking trails and the weather I was already given a warning: snow and rain. I had packed accordingly. Still, I was not prepared for how little I would actually be able to make out of my visit. The view was limited to 20m and the trails were not discernible. While I hiked a bit in direction of the viewing platform, I eventually turned around as I couldn't make out the path and simply didn't feel safe.

After I had resigned myself to the fact, that I would neither see the glacier nor be able to hike in the high mountains, I took the next cable car down to the valley. From there I went back to Brig and took the train the Kandersteg.

The scenery around Kandersteg is nice with plenty of waterfalls coming down the mountains. And due to the lower altitude the scenery wasn't hidden in heavy fog. Same applies to snow. Instead I got heavy rain.

While I have counted this as visit, I have …

I've been to the parts of Rome that comprise this UNESCO site twice-back in 2011 and in 2014. There's nothing quite like sitting in a taxi, heading into Rome for the first time, and rounding the corner to see the ruins of the Forum.

Today the remains are mostly a jumble of what was rescued from archeological digs. Many of the main sites were covered in 20-30 feet of dirt and debris until the 19th century.

It's been a while since I've been, so I don't have great practical tips. However, here's the interview I just conducted about the Roman Forum that goes much deeper into its history: The Roman Forum.

If you are looking for an early version of a toll booth, the castles of Bellinzona should give you a good idea. They were built at a strategic location, a narrow alpine valley, through which multiple alpine trading routes passed. At its height in the 15th century the fortifications cut along the full width of the valley enforcing the collection of tolls for all traders passing by.

The main castle, Castelgrande, sits right in the middle of the valley on a hill. The panoramic views you get with the Alps as backdrop are breathtaking. Already the Romans had built a castle here.

The two smaller castles rise up from the valley on two neighboring hills, with Castello Sasso Corbaro on top. I would assume these were build to protect the flanks of the main castle and the profits the toll booth brought.

During my visit I managed to see the two lower castles, i.e. Castelgrande and Castelle di Montebello. Admittedly, Montebello feels more authentic, but I had little objection to the state of repairs of Castelgrande.

This is the second trip in a row that ended with me climbing castle walls. Both times I really enjoyed the experience. With very limited knowledge of military engineering, I would argue that the English castles in Gywnedd are superior to their Swiss counterparts.

Getting There and Away

Bellinzona is well accessible by train. The castles are within walking distance of the station, albeit some climbing is required, …