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“You don’t need luck. You need good shoes!”, fellow WH traveller Nan e-mailed me when I told him to wish me luck ticking off the Par force hunting landscape. He was so right, and I’d like to add to others that plan to visit this WHS: also bring snacks, something to drink and a smartphone with GPS. And do read up a bit about what par force hunting entails beforehand.

From the 3 main components of this WHS, I had set my sights on Store Dyrehave (“large deer park”). Both Store Dyrehave and a formerly connected second component, Gribskov, lie near the town of Hillerød (the third, Jaegersborg, is located closer to Copenhagen, sees a whopping 7.5 million visitors a year and is already well-covered on this website).

Getting to Hillerød already did not prove to be as easy as internet research had led me to believe. Part of the direct S-train route was blocked, so passengers had to be transported by bus to the final destination. This added another 20 minutes to the 1-hour trip from Copenhagen Airport.

Having finally arrived at the station in Hillerød, you'll just have to walk. There is no signposting at all. Beforehand I had carefully studied the route to the deer park and downloaded a map of the area to my phone. Both actions proved necessary, not at least to find the "right" patch of forest: a remarkably similar forest lies on the other side of the main road Københavnsvej …

It may not have been such a good idea to try to combine my annual ski trip with visits to World Heritage Sites along the way.

This winter the ski resorts of my choice were Poiana Brasov in Romania and Bansko in Bulgaria.

Accordingly, I attempted to visit the Dacian Fortress at Sarmizegetusa Regia and the Monastery of Horezu in Romania.

I usually use public transportation for visiting WHSs, but this time I decided to rent a car because it seemed very difficult to visit these sites with public transportation. 

I left Brasov by bus at 6.30, arrived in Sibiu at 8.30, and explored the Sibiu TWHS for a few hours. And then I rented a car in Sibiu at 12, got to Sarmizegetusa Regia at 14 and arrived at my hotel in Targu Jiu at 20. The following day I started at 6.30, got to the Monastery of Horezu at 8.30 and drove back to Sibiu at 12 to return the car within 24 hours. The car rental was 35 Euros and the gas was about 30 Euros.

I ended up driving on icy roads from Costești to Sarmizegetusa Regia to find the fortress ruins covered by snow.

But there were about a dozen tourists, mostly Romanians. The site officially closes at 15:00 in winter.

The most visited site by our community.

I was back in Paris for some personal business in mid-Januaruy 2017.

I just wanted to add a photo here, as I don't see too many photos of the banks of the Seine here. It is my re-creation of a shot from a Robert Bresson movie. :)

When I looked at the map of the core zone of this WHS again, I noticed that some areas of the core zone are off the Seine. Such areas include the Madeleine and the park where Eifel Tower is situated. I was also happy to see the Tomb of Napoleon, my man, in the core zone. There are many tombs around the world that are World Heritage Sites, and Napoleon's should be one of them, even though it may be a relatively recent one.

From Edinburgh I stopped at Lanark by train on my way to the Glasgow airport.

At the Lanark train / bus station on a Wednesday morning I asked a bus driver if there is a bus to New Lanark, and she suggested that I took a cab.

So I just walked to the New Lanark WHS.

I have to say I did not particularly like this site, not because I disagree with OUV or because I didn't find anything interesting, but because of some strange atmosphere.

First, what was that huge souvenir shop that looks like a supermarket and that sells things totally unrelated to the site??? (This shop may have opened recently.)

Second, I seriously felt that people who worked there were unusually unfriendly, beginning with the lady at the visitor center. I was about the only tourist when I got there at 9.30, and everybody avoided eye contact with me and said nothing to me as I walked around, as if they didn't want to start working that early in the morning. Are they so underpaid? The clerks at the supermarket were also unfriendly; they don't like tourists probably because when the dust settles after tourists leave, they have to clean the dust!

Third, after all this I did not even care for the ice cream they claimed they had created in order to fund their projects. It's probably the same ice cream I had at the Derwent Valley Mills WHS anyway!

I understand that these industrial heritage …

Visited January 2017

It would be a shame not to visit Tetouan during our travel in Andalusia, Spain. On last day of 2016 we took a ferry from Algeciras to Tangier Med, it is only 90 minutes. There’s no public transport from the ferry port but to Tetouan, so we decide to hire a taxi. We passed through the beautiful Rif mountains and after one hour drive we reach Place Moulay El Mehdi, the best starting point.

Our hotel was located in the middle of medina. It’s called Riad Dalia, and this used to be Dfouf family house with an inner courtyard of four columns and arches corresponding to the architecture of 18th century. The views from the rooftop are amazing! And the restaurant – highly recommended; you can try different dishes and taste the real Moroccan cuisine.

If we had no guide, we would never have found this hotel because the streets and alleys pattern of the old city is like a labyrinth! Well, it is not as big as other medinas in Morocco, but it is very easy to lose yourself. And do it! Everywhere little shops, roofed alleys, lots of friendly people (mostly men, and they are not trying to cheat on you, ‘cos there a not many tourists there) wearing long cloths…

Just walk around, go to the Casba, see the cemetery and some hammams and mosques from outside (non-Muslim are not allowed to get in). If you reach the old Jewish neighbourhood of Mellah al-Jadid, …

Again, I'm not sure why I have been so fascinated with canals lately, but I went back to the Llangollen Canal WHS on the 4th week of January to see one of the main components of this site, that is the Horseshoe Falls.

In order to do so, I decided to stay overnight in the town of Llangollen, which surprised me as soon as my bus from Wrexham entered the town.

The whole area around Llangollen constitutes "one huge outdoor adventure playground" with hiking trails, one of which leads to the Horseshoe Falls. I took the trail along the Llangollen Canal and the River Dee to the Falls. In fact I'd have to say it is the River Dee that makes the natural setting of the whole area so dynamic and beautiful.

You can also kayak on the river, take a narrow boat, even one drawn by a horse, on the canal, or take a Steam Locomotive (not in winter) between Llangollen and the Horseshoe Falls.

At the artificial Horseshoe Falls some water from the River Dee is diverted to feed the Llangollen Canal, the system designed by pioneering engineers William Jessop and Thomas Telford.

Later I also hiked up to the hill-top ruin of Castle Dinas Bran, where you get the 360-degree, sweeping view of the whole area all the way to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.

I am so glad that I went back to the area to see the Falls because, who knows, …

I've visited several villages in Val d'Orcia WHS as recently as last year, but my favorite is Bagno Vignoni, which I visited in 1997.

This village is known in Italy today for its high-end spa, but it was also the main setting for the Russian cinematic giant Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece Nostalgia (1983).

Nostalgia was directed by Tarkovsky but was written by him and Tonino Guerra, perhaps the world's finest screen writer of his generation and one of the top Italian poets, who took Tarkovsky around Italy for location hunting for the movie.

This photo of the main square of the village, which is filled with water from a nearby hot spring, was taken by me 20 years ago and has been converted to a digital photo.

It was prohibited to get in the water when I was there, but people had supposedly gathered in the water to chitchat for centuries, as you can see in Nostalgia, just like they have been doing so at any other squares in Europe.

The water at the square was consequently used as a metaphor for human condition to a devastating effect in the movie.

Apparently, Val d'Orcia inspires artists even today.

Been here many times! In "historic" terms, when has a castle in the Latin American region been inscribed in the list? Let's remember the scope of European influence during the 19th century in Mexico, 'cause only so will we understand the real value of this site. ;)

One can lament the quirks of the Unesco process where a site like the Jesuit Missions of the Guaranis gets inscribed twice: once for Paraguay and once for Brazil and Argentina. To me and others the separate inscription was a welcome reason to venture into Paraguay for a day trip on my route from Posadas to Puerto de Iguazu.

In the morning I had flown into Posadas from Buenos Aires. I dropped my luggage off at the main bus station in Posadas and then jumped onto a local bus to Encarcion in Paraguay. Encarcion lies across the Rio Parana and is plastered with Duty Free shops, courtesy of some crazy tariffs and taxes the Argentinians put in place.

From Encarcion I took another bus to Trinidad and visited the great ruins of the Jesuit mission. It’s certainly one of the nicest ruins; I would put it on the same level as nearby San Ignacio de Mini in Argentina.

Initially, I had planned to also go and see the other site in Jesus de Tavarangue. Lonely Planet had promised me a collectivo or a cab readily waiting at a junction nearby. But neither of these options materialized. I briefly tried my luck with hitchhiking, but my heart wasn’t in it that day. It was way too warm and I close to a sunburn. Seeing I also needed to cover additional distance to San Ignacio that evening I decided to call it a day and I returned …

Visited December 2016.

It is not a good idea to visit Northern Kazakhstan during winter. And especially windy Korgalzhyn with temperatures dropping to -20 degrees when I was there at the beginning of December. But I did, and this state reserve is ticked on my list.

It is possible to visit Kargolzhyn National Park as a day trip from Astana, but you have to arrange everything in advance because there’s no one at Visitors’ Center (they call it museum in the village) who can take to the reserve without prior arrangements.

The first bus from Astana Saparzhay Bus Station, very close to the train station, departs at 10am, and at 9am all tickets were sold out. I wanted to take a marshrutka, but the driver wanted to charge more than other pax in his car, so I waited the next bus (500KZT) at 1130 am. And I was a very good idea, because in the bus I met a young speaking English man (Artiom Yanushevski) who helped me a lot.

Korgalzhyn used to be a small town but after the collapse of USSR most people with German, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian origins left the country. Only the half of the village is Kazakh and everybody speaks Russian. Lots of ruined houses, and at this time of the year everything covered with snow, lots of snow.

After visiting Aksu Zhabagly on an organized tour with a German-Kazakh tour company (that cost me a lot, but it was worth), I decided to …

Tel Megiddo, one of the three Biblical Tells (basically towns built right on top of each other over the span of hundreds to thousands of years, forming a mound) inscribed on the World Heritage List, is a deeply excavated site rich in history. I visited this tell in February 2015 as part of group tour of Israel with my church, and it was fascinating to see how much archaeological work has been done there. Because I was on a group tour, we didn't have time to tour the site individually, nor was there much discussion about the Bronze-age history. However, we did learn about the association many archaeologists have made of this site's growth during the reign of King Solomon, to include the installation of stables. We also walked through an ancient city gate en route to the top of the hill, to get a better understanding of the tell's strategic placement between the coast and the interior of the country. This advantageous location has led to battles in Biblical times and in more modern times--almost 100 years ago during World War I. Although I didn't get to see any other tells on the group tour, Tel Megiddo was an amazing site to visit.

Logistics: Tel Megiddo can be visited by private transportation or as part of a group tour.

A large part of the satisfaction I got in ticking this site off stems from the fact that not only did I see the three nature reserves that form the Table Mountain National Park, but, more importantly, I was able to pay proper visits to seven out of the eight protected areas that make up the inscribed serial property (I missed out Groot Winterhoek).

The Cape floral region is a truly unique ecosystem of the fynbos. Kirstenbosch provides a bird's eyeview of the different fynbos that thrive across different habitats, and it would be best to start one's travel here (I, however, started with the Baviaanskloof moving towards Table Mountain then going up to the Cederberg, making the botalnical garden my last stop).

Here are some of the highlights: (a) the beautiful mountain scenery provided by the Swartberg Pass and the Merringspoort Pass. Both connect the Little Karoo and the Great Karoo, and are great feats of mountain engineering; (b) the rock formations of the Cederberg and its good collection of ancient Bushmen paintings (we took the Sevilla rock art trail); (c) the coastal white sand dunes and game drive of De Hoop; (d) views of Strand, Stellenbosch, Franchshoek and the rest fo the Boland area/wine region on top of the Holland-Hottentots mountains; (d) scenic coastal drives by the Cape of Good Hope and Kogelberg biosphere reserve -- very enjoyable!; and (e) imposing beauty of Table Mountain as seen in and around Cape Town - a true world-class landmark! Also …

Évora has received some mixed reviews on this site, and, although I had a pleasant visit (admittedly a quite short one), I also thought the town was a bit overrated (maybe the hordes of tourists prove me wrong). The main sight, the cathedral, is really massive on the outside and beautifully decorated on the inside. The Roman temple (generally named the Temple of Diana, but it's not really clear to whom it was dedicated) just a few steps away is nice, but nothing really special. Évora has some other historic attractions (mainly the Church of Sao Francisco with the Bones Chapel - unfortunately already closed when I went there) and is really nice for wandering around, but I felt that the WH status was only justified for the cathedral, not the entire town.

We visited Salzburg at the end of December, hoping for snow. While this was not the case, Salzburg was still an enjoyable and beautiful city with a cosy Christmas atmosphere.

Next to the most visited sights (Hohensalzburg fortress, Mozart's Geburtshaus, ...), Salzburg is also full of magnificent churches. We particularly liked the St. Peter, the Kollegienkirche and of course the Dom. In case you buy a ticket for the Dom Quartier (Salzburg's cathedral museum complex - highly recommended), you will be guided through the Dom at organ level which provides a spectacular view on the Dom's inside and ceiling.

In case you go to St. Peter, also make sure to visit the cemetery and catacombs. 'Cemetery enthousiasts' could also visit the one at the Sebastianskirche with a large number of graves and tombs full of details.

Hohensalzburg fortress probably has the best city sights, but those from the Museum der Moderne and a bit further on the Mönchsberg, as well as from the Kapuzinerkloster are also very nice.

Salzburg is of course also known for the Salzburger Festspiele. In principle every day at 14h guided tours through the different festspielhäuser take place. Especially the Felsenreitschule with part of the stage carved out of the rock is worth the tour.

Finally, make sure to have a look at the Mirabell's palace's baroque staircase and marmorsaal. Although the palace currently houses the city council and is therefore not open to the public, you can take a peek into the marmorsaal without problems.

Have visited this Exquisite Church in a heavenly setting twice. Both visits came on tours coming from Rome and Northern Italy.

How refreshing, delightful and awesome compared to the dark and heaviness of the Italian Churches.

NOT TO BE MISSED if you can get there.

A great pastoral setting. Play the Beethoven Pastoral on the way to realize this fully.

Today, the border between Spain and Portugal is hardly visible, but in centuries past, it was heavily fortified and fought over. There is a fair number of fortified border towns in both countries (some of them also striving for WH status), but the best one is certainly Elvas, guarding the approaches to Lisbon on the main road from Madrid and Badajoz. Fought over various times throughout the centuries (with the Spanish and Portuguese sometimes on the same side, as in the Napoleonic Wars), Elvas is a great example of military architecture. The town is surrounded by massive walls and has several huge forts outside. I spent quite some time in the biggest one, Santa Luzia, which also features a military museum. This fort and the castle of Elvas, dating from Arab times, both offer great views over the surrounding area and give an impression of the strategic location and importance of the town, which also features several interesting non-military attractions, especially the Amoreira Aqueduct and the beautifully decorated Dominican Church. Elvas is definitely worth a day of exploration, and is conveniently located between Mérida and Évora.

The Cistercian Monastery Maulbronn was founded in 1147, and is considered the most complete and best-preserved medieval monastic complex north of the Alps. Surrounded by fortified walls, the main buildings were constructed between the 12th and 16th centuries. Follow the World Heritage Traveller in: Maulbronn.

Erzgebirge / Krušnohoří Mining Cultural Landscape was originally planned for nomination in 2016. I decided to visit this TL site ahead of its official inscription, in april 2016. This nomination was withdrawn a few weeks later, due to the ICOMOS evaluation, pointing, as I understood, a lack of coherence between the individual components.

It is true that this project is difficult to apprehend. On the German side, there is 8 areas, with 39 elements and more than 110 sites (some sites including up to 11 significant objects). The Czech side consists of 4 cultural lanscapes, one lime work and the Red Tower of Death.

The nomination dossier avaiblable on the WHC site does not show clear maps of the different elements, sites or significant objects, and I spent considerable amount of time researching the internet to correctly locate all objects. I found this site in German (http://www.jenskuglerverlag.de/studien-dokumentationen) which lists some studies with maps of some of the elements.

I must say that I do agree with ICOMOS with the lack of coherence, at least on the German part. It is a patchwork of monuments (some very vaguely) related to the mining history of the area. To note :

- head office of companies working in mining (or in watch making, or cutlery and tableware).

- administrative building of mining companies, far away from the mines.

- professional schools, I imagine in which engineers were trained for mining.

- churches and cathedral where miners could attend service.

- castle or historic …

Palau’s Stone Coffin or Tet el Bad is one of the strangest entries on any Tentative List. It may be the smallest object in size: it measures 233cm by 66cm, at a height of 40cm. And it is a moveable structure, not only in theory but also in real life as it has been moved for research to a museum in Koror in the 1930s. It has stayed there until the 1980s, when it was transported back to its place of origin on northern Babeldaob. Despite its flaws, I am going to write a full 500 word blog post / review about it!

The coffin lies on Palau’s main island, Babeldaob. When I was young I was active with geofiction, and Babeldaob could have been a creation of mine (its name sounds like fiction already). Somehow the countries I created were always islands, often located in the Pacific. Always round or oval-shaped, with points of interest scattered around evenly across the surface. For sure I would have designed a flag for it, another one of my childhood interests.

Finding this stone coffin required some determination. I had rented a car from my hotel in Koror (on a different island, but connected to Babeldaob via a bridge), and drove all the way north to the ‘state’ of Ngarchelong. Possibly due to its long connection with the USA, Palau calls its communes ‘states’ – each often having not more than a few hundred inhabitants. There is only one main road into Ngarchelong, …

“When will we be there?”, asked my wife when we were driving in the middle of the WHS Beemster. A question, I quess, which kind of sums up the outstanding universal value of the site; if you don’t know about it you will have a hard time seeing and appreciating it.

Because the Beemster just looks like any other “polder”, a green flat meadow, I couldn’t really blame her. However, when it was created in the 17th century the Dutch made an effort to create the most ideal landscape ever made. It was the time of the Renaissance and old ideals about order, symmetry and harmony were pumped in the new land as to give it a feeling of harmony and proportion. Everything what you see nowadays is actually the result of quite some thinking.

The new land was diveded into squares of app. 900 meters and by doing so they created a chessboardpattern in the landscape. At the edges of the squares either a road or a ditch was built so products from the land could be transported easily. The trees along the road are there so they could protect the traveller against the weatherconditions and to emphasize the straight lines in the landscape. The farms on the new land had a square core and a pyramid roof etc and etc. It was all about mathematics in the polder. After the work was finished people as far away as Florence (the Renaissance city par excellance) came to see what …