All our reviews

Time of the visit: june the 26th+27th,2025

I took one of the hourly buses in Naha, Okinawa's capital, to Nago, the second biggest city on that island. My intention was to kill two birds with one stone, visiting Nago and the world heritage site. I locked my luggage in the lockers at the Nago bus station. Nago was a disappointment. Nago turned out to be a faceless little town, only the beach was really worth mentioning. Bus 67 connects Nago to the north. It had been incredibly hot until the bus departed. During the journey, it poured with heavy rain. I somehow forgot to buy a SIM card when I arrived at the airport, and afterward, I simply had no time and no possibility to buy one.I communicated with the owner of the jungle guesthouse via email, as I couldn't phone him (he didn't speak English anyway), nor did he have WhatsApp or telegram. He wanted to pick me up at the nearest bus stop, "Okuma Beach." Conveniently, the last grocery store is right next to the stop: a Family Mart convenience store. I recommend anyone following this route to stock up on drinks, food, and instant soups there.

The guesthouse turned out to be the last building before leaving civilization. I had booked a spot in the traditional common room for a small fee. There were no other guests, and I had the entire building to myself. I was offered a room, but I preferred the large common area. …

Time of the visit: the 1st of oct.,2025

At 11.30 am I took the direct bus(every 40 min) from Busan Central Bus Terminal,next to the metro stop " Nopo",to Tongdosa-Sinpyeong Bus Terminal.The journey took about 25 min.

The walk to the temple is very easy. You turn right when you leave the bus station and keep walking straight ahead... straight ahead. The path leads directly to the temple. After about 5 minutes, you reach the Yeongchuisanmun Gate. From there, you walk along a charming pedestrian path, separated from the cars by the river. This path is simply beautiful, lined with large old stone lanterns, a cafe in a sort of small temple replica, and Buddhist inscriptions on stone blocks.

GabLabCebu's review hits the nail on the head, but more on that later.

After about a 20-minute walk along a truly fantastic path, you reach a fenced-in area with giant tortoises. I stayed there for a few minutes and took a close look at them. The main gate is directly adjacent. I first visited the wonderful Tongdosa Museum (free entrance), which explains the history of the temple and displays some of its treasures, such as tablets, Buddhist images, statues, prints, and printing plates. I stayed there for about 20 minutes.

The 600 Buddhist paintings rival any other leading museum in the field of Buddhist paintings.Impressive.

Through another gate, the Buriman Gate, the last of four entrance gates, I entered the main complex of smaller and larger temples. Based on our fellow …

How can you not love the WHS Wadden Sea? First attempt to dip your toes into the Wadden Sea in August 2024, return in October 2024.

The destination of the first trip was the island of Ameland, Friesland, The Netherlands. To get there, you have to take a ferry from Holwerd, which we hadn't booked. Be careful, the price is expensive for a mobile home, but it is possible to leave it in the parking lot at the pier. And we crossed the Wadden Sea to the island where we stayed for 2 days at a very nice little farm campsite.

We had fixed our bikes to the back of Wilson so we could cycle around the island to Het Oerd nature reserve, which is included in the WHS area. It is possible to enter the reserve on foot by following the Wadden Sea from an observatory. There is also a huge beach to the northwest of this observatory overlooking the North Sea, which is very impressive when the tide is low, as the water is so far out on the horizon. There was a warden there, so we thought that when the tide is in, you'd better be able to run well! We saw quite a few birds both on the banks and in the meadows of the island, to our great delight.

This excursion will undoubtedly remain in your memory for a long time: the colors of the vegetation, the sky, the passing clouds and the showers, the …

Ever since I learned that I’d be dispatched on a month-long business trip to Panama, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get a real taste of the Camino de Cruces.

The Colonial Transisthmian Route of Panamá was the most puzzling new inscription from the 2025 WHC. I couldn’t understand why it was designated as a replacement for the former Panama City site rather than as its own separate entry. It was only after reading some research papers that I realized this was a tactful move to prevent Panama City from being completely delisted. The threat comes from large-scale urban development projects, most notably Cinta Costera 3 which encircles the whole Casco Viejo, cuts it off from its surrounding seascape, and undermines both its integrity and OUV.

The new nomination of the colonial transisthmian route effectively rewrote the OUV of Archaeological Site of Panamá Viejo and Historic District of Panamá, repositioning the 2 major components rather as terminal stations of an overland crossing than as harbors on the Pacific front. This narrative shift intentionally dissociated the sites from their maritime setting, and thus downplayed the negative impacts of the coastal construction projects that definitively altered the shoreline. In fact, the concerns of WHC were never addressed at all, only evaded.

Nevertheless, the inclusion of 3 sections of the Camino de Cruces illustrates another layer of the strategic importance of Panamá Viejo and Casco Viejo, and clarifies how goods and wealth once flowed between both sides of the isthmus. …

By crisscrossing France in all directions every other year in summer, of the 78 places listed on the site of the Way of St. James of Compostela in France, I visited 33, some before showing interest in UNESCO, and others even before they were listed.

So I will only highlight here those that are a favorite, without mentioning the 4 places also listed elsewhere that I have already visited:

Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute-Loire :

Le Puy-en-Velay is the starting point of the Way of St. James via Podiensis.We had the chance to visit Le Puy as a family on August 15th, the feast day of Mary, patron saint of the Notre-Dame Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, and witnessed a candle-lit procession through the town's streets, where the Black Virgin is carried by white penitents in a wooden shrine. Le Puy is an impressive place because it is so special, with not only the magnificent Romanesque cathedral built between the 5th and 12th centuries overlooking the city but also the Saint-Michel d'Aiguilhe chapel perched on a volcanic peak and a huge modern statue of Mary on another rocky peak. It is easy to imagine pilgrims climbing up to the main porch of the cathedral at the very top of the street... It is special in that it is, to my knowledge, the only cathedral with two floors; when you enter the porch, you arrive in the middle of the main nave by a staircase! It is a strange feeling to enter a cathedral …

When I visited the castles in Bellinzona a little over a week ago, there was a UNESCO exhibit in one of the rooms allowing visitors to vote for their favorite Swiss World Heritage Site. Not surprisingly, the local site took first, but I was a bit surprised to see that the least popular site (underperforming against both pile dwellings and a beech forest) was the Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona. That's a shame, since it was quite an extraordinary place to visit. I can only assume the tectonic arena may be just off the beaten path for most visitors to Switzerland, who gravitate to more popular mountain peaks.

The Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona is a photogenic region of mountains south of the Walensee in eastern Switzerland, not far from the border with Liechtenstein. The site was inscribed as a World Heritage Site under Criteria VIII for its rich geologic history. Two Swiss geologists, Arnold Escher von der Linth and Albert Heim, and a French geologist, Marcel Bertrand (son of the mathematician Joseph Bertrand), studied the mountains in this area extensively in the 19th century to determine why exposed layers of older rock were found over layers of younger rocks. Their research led scientists to ultimately recognize that the older layer was pushed atop the younger layer as a result of tectonics -- a geologic process called a thrust fault. The scientists named this example the Glarus Thrust (or Glarus Overthrust), after the canton many of the outcrops can be found in.

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It's good this site was added to the UNESCO list, not only because it's a great inscription but also because it made it worth taking a tour into the area again. I added Rani-ki-vav, the sun temple and the other Harappan site to make it an easy 2 day trip. The smaller Harappan sites should be included in this inscription and I think an extension would be required so if you don't want to go all the way south for that I would understand and skipping it is totally ok. There are several of these kind of sites including over in Pakistan so it's probably not gonna be extended anytime soon.

Because I had more sites to add it was worth doing a trip from Ahmedabad which requires staying on Khadir Bet island or maybe somewhere nearby. It takes a good 7h from Ahmedabad to get here thus it's probably the best. There is also a closer airport at Bhuj which only takes 4 hours so if that is your only site to visit then I would attempt that way - there are flights from Mumbai, however it's a military airport and getting close to Pakistan already raises attention for flying to Ahmedabad. Nothing you can do and being honest about your wishes to see the area as a tourist still gets a funny look from immigration. As if I were to do anything naughty...

There are a several places to stay on the island (with roads by the way …

Time of the visit: august the 18th,2025

After some days in Takayama I took an early bus to Shirakagawa/Ogimachi where I put my baggage in one of the bus station's lockers.I had more than 6 hours time before my bus left for Kanazawa.

Shirakagawa is a popular place for organised bus trips for foreign visitors,mainly Chinese ones.

The town was overcrowded with tourists and felt more like a Disneyland village than a still inhabited country hamlet.

I decided to climb to the Ogimachi Castle observation deck first. My maps.me map showed me a small side path leading up, which was steep but easy to navigate. Once at the top, I saw a sign warning people to avoid this path because a bear with her cubs had been found there at 9:00. It was about 10.00.

The observation deck was already full with tourists taking pics or selfies or buying souvenirs.

From there, you get a good overview of the town. Then I followed the crowd down into the village, where I visited various historic houses( in the Gassho-zukuri style), as well as a small museum. The entrance fee deterred many Chinese tourists, so that the historic houses were relatively empty.

I also visited the Myozenji Temple and the Hachiman Shrine (both were closed).There, I came across a resting snake, of which I took a few close photos. I later learned that it was a mamushi, the most common venomous snake in Japan.

Before coming to Shirakagawa, I had already …

I was close to Bosra 5 months ago, when I visited Umm Al-Jimal. That Jordanian WHS lies just some 25km away and is said to have been within the sphere of influence of Bosra. However, although the two share the distinctive black basalt as the main building material, Bosra was clearly the more prominent city during the Roman and Byzantine eras.

We visited Bosra as a day trip from Damascus, the drive is just 1h45 minutes one way. It’s an easy turn-off from the strategic main road to Amman. In the distance, we could see the Druze city of Suwayda, the only place declared out of bounds during our trip due to fighting as recent as July 2025 (it wasn’t on the itinerary anyway). Everything was fine on the ground in Bosra, but some leftover graffitti here and there attested to the city’s prominent role in the toppling of the regime of Assad.

There is clearly an Old Town and a New Town in Bosra. We parked near the entrance of the citadel (yes, another one in Syria – they do castles well). This one, though, is the shell that encapsulates the great Roman Theater. It has been wonderfully preserved, including the stage, and is among the very best remaining of its kind. The grounds of the citadel also have some good mosaics and sculptures.

I had put some effort into adding Points of Interest to our Bosra site map, and managed to pinpoint almost all historic sights. Only …

Time of the visit: 3-13,sept.,2025

I stayed in Hiroshima for 10 days and I passed the ruins of the former industrial promotion site every day,often several times a day during daytime and nighttime. Worldwide known as a symbol of the atomic mayhem which took place at the end of WW2 the building itself is nothing from another dimension.

However,it is the face of the first used atomic bomb against human beings.

I also visited or crossed the peace park opposite the Genbaku Dome several times as I often had to take the tram from there.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial museum leaves no one cold or indifferent...including me. I left feeling sad and depressed. I visited all the different components of the park (fountain of prayer, resthouse, bell, memorial for the Korean victims, etc.).

I also visited the nearby Honkawa Elementary School Peace museum and the Fukuromachi Elementary School Peace Museum( ca a 5 min walk from the Peace Memorial museum).The schools were the closest ones to ground zero when the atomic bomb fell on August 6, 1945. Both schools lost hundreds of students and teachers.I would strongly recommend to visit both places as both schools complement the main museum well IMO.

I stayed in an old-style japanese house near the harbour which was built in 1929. It was witness to the nuclear attack.

One evening, while I was surfing the internet in bed, one of the old Japanese sliding doors toppled out of its frame and fell on my head. …

Yes, like others, we did a day trip to Corfu. We wish we could have given it more though, but logistics did not allow it. Based in Saranda, you are spoiled with choices for ferry crossings. The earliest leaves at 0600hrs for the early starters and the last one back is about 1900hrs. A fast ferry on a Hydrofoil is about 30 Euro per adult and is 30 minutes. 20 Euro for some of the 'slower' ones that take between 45 - 60 min. Go the Hydrofoil to maximise your time. They recommend being there an hour before boarding, not sure if because we were in the shoulder season as we visited on Tuesday the 23rd of Sept, but we turned up at 0755hrs and they just put us on the 0800hrs ferry - Bingo, another hour on Corfu.

Customs on Corfu though took back 30 minutes and was the same time period as the ferry trip itself. 2 officers processing and very slow. The taxi rank has scheduled prices on a large billboard which is great, as sometimes you feel you may be taken for a ride with pricing. Stating such, they are still quite high. Walking into the old town and port is only about 20 - 30 min and there are sights along the way to explore and see, so do the walk rather than taxi. Strategically, we choose this date to visit, as after reviewing the Port's Cruise Ship arrivals, there was none on this day, …

One of the charms of Northern Iraq, Northern Syria and Lebanon is the existence of remote Christian sites. Sometimes these are relict landscapes, but there are also thriving religious communities. This diversity is the strength of the region, but also the source of so much discontent. Maaloula is such a Christian refuge, and it might even be Syria’s next nomination to become a World Heritage Site: it was submitted for a Preliminary Assessment last year. It would be an “interesting” choice, a bit like the Taliban reporting on the conservation status of Bamiyan. Maaloula suffered badly in 2013/2014 when it was taken by the Al Nusra Front, whose former leader is now the president of Syria.

The itinerary of my tour was planned in such a way that we would be in Maaloula during the Christian Festival of the Cross, which is a celebrated yearly event by the local community. On the approach to the town, security surely had been tightened: armed soldiers looked into the boots of cars and there were canine units (to sniff bombs?) as well. These security guys are all 18 to 20-year-old Muslims with long beards, appointed by the new regime.

The setting of the town, at 1500m altitude, is still very fine, but there is a lot of damage to its buildings. On the hills around town, you see recently added Christian symbols, such as a large statue representing the Virgin Mary and one of Saint Charbel (a holy person in the Maronite Church). …

It's best to visit Aix-en-Provence off-season, forgetting as quickly as possible France's attempt to add the Sainte-Victoire mountain and the places where the painter Cézanne lived to the World Heritage List. In this, I fully agree with Matejicek! I don't understand why Cézanne? Why not Bonnard, Picasso, Matisse, to name just a few of the great French painters? Or Rothko's chapel? The history of painting did not stop with him, and other painters also lived somewhere and left their marks... Unless greed rears starts to show in Aix?

With all the good will in the world, we tried to visit Cézanne's studio: closed for renovation, the Château du Jas de Bouffan (which is actually a big house): closed for work. The Bibemus quarries: by reservation with a guide on another day. We fell back on the Granet Museum where a meager collection of Cézanne's works is exhibited: 10 paintings in total and a few engravings and drawings far from being major works, also closed. Finally we visited the temporary exhibition.

When you're frustrated, the best thing to do is to go for a walk in nature, under the Sainte-Victoire mountain for example, but, although the walk was very pleasant, this mountain has nothing special that could justify any inscription. Its karst relief culminating at 1,011 meters is nothing characteristic, like this one can find hundreds of them elsewhere in Europe and in the world...

We drove the mobile home Wilson up to the "La Maison Sainte-Victoire" interpretation center, where you …

I have now visited Uxmal twice: first in 2003 with my family, and again in November 2024. In 2003 we stayed at one of the very nice hacienda style hotels just up the road and were able to visit several of the Puuc Route sites in addition to Uxmal. In 2024, we visited Uxmal as a day trip, driving from Merida. The main highlights of the site are mostly unchanged across the decades: the unique rounded-cornered Magician's Palace, Nunnery Quadrangle, Governor's Palace, and Grand Pyramid are are still very impressive. Other smaller details like the turtles carved on the House of the Turtles are also fun to find. The combination of these grand buildings makes Uxmal one of the top ancient Maya sites to visit.

An advantage to staying close by in 2003 was that it let us come back at night for the Sound and Light show that they had at the time. We watched the show from the Nunnery Quadrangle and it was a special treat to be among the ruins after dark, although the repeated, "Chaac!" chants during the show did unsettle my then-8-year-old a bit.

In our 2024 visit, we picked up a local guide at the entrance, and he provided worthwhile commentary, such as pointing out significance of the serpent and geomentric carvings at the Nunnery Quad, or other buildings on site.

Nearby Sites

As others have mentioned, this WHS incorporates other Puuc Route Maya sites. In 2003 we made it a point to visit …

Out of the 12 components of this inscription, I've only seen one – the Bo Da Pagoda. I suspect this will be the most frequently visited, as it's by far the closest to Hanoi. I can't compare Bo Da to other places, but I must admit my visit was satisfying.

Yen Tu's entire post centers around the Truc Lam Zen school of Buddhism, a purely Vietnamese sect within Buddhism. The history of Bo Da is even older than Truc Lam Zen. The pagoda, also known as Quan Am (Goddess of Mercy) or Bo Pagoda for short, lies at the foot of a pine-covered hill, or actually now occupies a very large part of its territory.

According to a legend, the Goddess of Mercy helped a poor childless couple there. One day, the husband was cutting pine trees at the top of the mountain when he found gold coins. A monk told him that it was a miracule of the goddess. The woodcutter asked the goddess to give him a son, saying that if she did so he would build a pagoda to worship her. The wish was fulfilled, and he did as he had promised. Since then, the pagoda is known from fulfilling the wishes of people praying to the goddess.

Bo Da seems to be very popular, as there's a huge parking lot in front of it. However, on the day of my visit, there were no visitors there, absolutely no one except me. The entrance portal offers some …

Arriving by train, the entrance to the cathedral is a pleasant 15-minute walk through the center of town. As you approach on foot, the immense structure looms like a grey mountain over the Rue Royal. Enter on the northern porch, or you will miss the impressive row of statues flanking the entrance. This door will empty you directly into the nave.

Starting on your left, a series of educational displays lines an archeological dig. After the 1999 tornado, the building was closed for repairs. Although unfortunate for visitors and congregants, this provided a unique opportunity for historians to investigate the origins of the ancient structure. The displays walk through the eras of change of this site endured, from Roman baths to a private residence to a cathedral. You can clearly see the dramatic differences in architectural style between each layer of the digsite.

The rest of the building is still under scaffolding. Broken windows still can be found around the south and east sides.

The cathedral is free to enter, but there is a treasure room with assorted relics that requires a few euros to tour. Photos are not allowed in the treasure room. There were no staff visible in the main part of the cathedral during the time I visited.

Northern tourists who take the "autoroute du soleil" south skirt the Burgundy vineyard's climate classification zone, and it would be a shame not to stop there. This is what many of my friends do, because, coming from Belgium, Beaune is located halfway between Belgium and Provence. Enough to make the most of it...

As for us, we had already been to Dijon and Beaune several times but never with the UNESCO classification as the theme of our visit. This is what we did in May 2025. We first visited Dijon and its emblematic buildings in the city center: le Palais des ducs, Place de la Liberation, the municipal library, etc. then wandered in a mobile home along the roads of the Côtes de Nuits. Be careful, the map that delimits the classified areas is not clear on the UNESCO portal; in Dijon it is relatively small and can be discovered on foot very quickly. On the return trip on the same route, we completed our trip with a visit to Beaune and the Côtes de Beaune.

By car, the ideal is not to take the D974 national road but the small departmental road that connects the wine-growing villages of Gevrey-Chambertin, Vougeot, Nuits-St-Georges, etc. All these names of great wines are obviously dreamy. This road is passable for a 6 m long mobile home like ours. We made a small detour on foot to the summit of Mont de Sène to have an overview of the AOC vineyards of Santenay which …

Arwad is a small island that was settled in the early 2nd millennium BC by the Phoenicians. The still inhabited island lies across the sea from the Syrian port of Tartus (the ancient Tortosa), which its fortifications helped to protect. In the time of the Crusades, it was used as a bridgehead by the Crusaders. It was the last piece of land that the Crusaders maintained in the Holy Land.

You may never have heard about it, I certainly didn’t, but in ancient times, this was an important place. It was written about by Strabo, and features in the Amarna letters and the Bible. It thrived from the 2nd millennium BC to about 1300, and now is trying to make a comeback on Syria’s tourist circuit. This article from Aramco World describes its story well.

Although it was on our itinerary, our guide tried to dissuade us from going as previous tourists he had taken there found it filthy and warned him to take it off the itinerary. The Bradt Guide describes it as “the whole place is horribly polluted … inadequate sanitary conditions”. But we were stubborn: my trip mates fancied a boat ride and I wanted the experience of a so far unreviewed and “unpictured” TWHS. The island is a popular outing from the city of Tartus: from its marina, public ferries leave constantly to make the 20-minute crossing. On a Saturday afternoon, it did not take long for our boat to fill with Syrian day trippers.

I …

Arriving in the city by train, you'll be treated to a pleasant walk featuring the old city walls and canal. An entire trip could be devoted to a tour of these ramparts and their historical features. The route up to the center takes you near the city's beguinage and ends at the belfry. In this way, three heritage sites could be combined in a single 30-minute walk, but I would advise spending extra time getting to know this storied town. I had three days in this city, but could have spent months exploring.Bruges is fundamentally a medieval seaport, a surprising fact for anyone looking at its location on a map. The Romans founded the city on a tidal inlet, which grew in importance under the Franks and throughout the Middle Ages. Silting of the tidal inlet in the 11th and 12th centuries required extensive engineering efforts to combat. This struggle to maintain direct access to the sea continually threatened the city's survival until a modern port, Zeebrugge, was completed.The Stadhuis or City Hall provides an excellent survey of this history via a series of murals and an augmented reality presentation. Once you've acquainted yourself with the founding legends, climb the belfry and stop at each landing to learn more about these chapters from history.I was able to see all of this and several other historic sites with a Belgian Museum Pass. As an American, it was as simple as signing up on the website and using my …

The transnational serial UNESCO World Heritage site "Memorial Sites of the First World War (Western Front)" is touchy. It could be the subject of controversy since it was inscribed on the list by the World Heritage Committee despite the ICOMOS advisory opinion being unfavourable considering that criterion (iii): bearing a unique or at least exceptional testimony to an existing or vanished cultural tradition or civilisation was not demonstrated and that the justification for criteria (iv): offering an eminent example of a type of construction or architectural or technological ensemble or landscape illustrating a significant period or periods in human history and (vi): being directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, ideas, beliefs or artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance was too imprecise.

I will not enter here into the technical-political controversy concerning the opinion of ICOMOS and the choice of the World Heritage Committee; I will only give this column the point of view of the simple traveler-tourist with regard to criteria (iii), (iv) and (vi).

I had already visited Verdun several times during my childhood, my adolescence and then with my family: it was necessary for my children to become aware of what modern warfare is and its consequences. Previously, my wife and I had already visited some places on the site, taking advantage of one trip or another to the south.

For clarity, as there are 139 listed sites, which is a lot, I am using the UNESCO nomenclature to designate each …