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Visited in February 2024. Walking around the historical Jeddah during noon on a weekday, you'll get the place all for yourself. Not much local life here during the daytime, which is the case everywhere in Saudi Arabia. The old town is still mostly a construction site. Almost every building is undergoing renovations and none of the museums were open for the public during my visit. However, the old town is still quite picturesque with the tall buildings and their wooden balconies. 

I started my visit from the Al Bayaa Square in the northern part of the old town, where one of the old gates is located. There was a lot of buzz around here as people were building up stalls for the Jeddah half marathon. From there I started to walk towards Shafei Mosque. I found this northern part of the old town to be the most pleasant part, maybe because there was no one around, but also the buildings were there more beautiful. Rest of the old town has more non-traditional buildings in the mix. At Shafei Mosque I was invited to join a tour group and heard about the history of the mosque. The beautifully carved wooden door of the mosque is 600 years old. From the mosque I continued to Nassif House Museum which was closed for renovations. The building is beautiful and well-restored from the outside. From there I walked along the Souq Al Alawi to Matbouli House Museum which was very much closed and …

I visited the archaeological site of the ancient Ilici -nowadays known under its arabic name, " La Alcudia",the hill- on tuesday,the 21st of may 2024.

The location is approximately 4 km from Elche's city centre

The entrance fee is 5€ and the archaeological site is open from tuesday to sunday, from 9.30 am till 03.00 (15.00)pm ,closed on mondays.

After having had a coffee and a light breakfast in one of Elche's countless bars in its city centre I walked along the river bed till I reached the avenida de Ramon Pastor,there I turned left and within a few minutes I arrived at Lidl,a german supermarket,where I bought a bottle of water and a snack. I then followed the carretera Elche-Dolores till I reached the archaeological site " La Alcudia,where the known and famous Lady of Elche was discovered.

The way along the carretera was not as pleasant as along the river bed but there was no heavy traffic and palm trees could be seen everywhere.

I truly enjoyed my walk to the archaeological site.....even carrying my bag with me. I left my bag at the reception inside the interpretation centre and followed the proposed path through the premises. First to the fragment of the roman wall,then to the western thermal baths,then to the iberian houses,from there to the drainage,then to the wealthy roman homes(domus),from there to the goldsmith's house,then to the central area(the heart of the roman city,so to speak),then to the museum(more than …

Visited June 2024.

As this is one of my first reviews, I will aim to limit myself just to the important information reviewers before me have not covered. The situation seems to have changed somewhat since the signage situation was most recently reviewed, which is principally what I will cover here.

As with all my trips, I challenged myself to do this without my own vehicle or any private vehicle.

I'm hardly a strong hiker and always conscious of doing stuff like this by myself. Like many other reviewers, I opted for the route to the Fontverd Plateau and found it -- if not nothing -- completely accessible and felt safe the whole time.

Andorra La Vella is more giant mall than European capital, so I opted to see this site en route from Toulouse to Barcelona, making use of the Andbus service leaving at 9:45 from Toulouse and arriving in Barcelona around 23:00. It would also be doable as a daytrip from Barcelona, but not from Toulouse as it leaves too little time in Andorra itself.

I took the bus through the parish of Encamp (not to be confused with the town of Encamp which is quite far from where you'll want to be). From here it is a short walk to the starting point of the 'Lakes Circle'. All the 'information points' I saw listed in Google Maps in this area appeared to have been closed for some time. Perhaps this is …

To be honest my main reason to visit Ivrea was its famous chocolate cake, the Torta900 or Torta Novecento at Pasticceria Balla, something that I really wanted to try after seeing the cake on TV couples of years ago, the UNESCO site was just a bonus. Unintentionally the road I used from highway exit to Pasticceria Balla was Via Guglielmo Jervis that run through the core zone of this World Heritage Site. At that time, I had no idea that those buildings were the inscribed ones, I even told my friend that this area must be a new modern zone of Ivrea. After enjoying the very delicious chocolate mousse filling inside cocoa-flavored sponge cake and good Italian coffee, I drove to see Olivetti complex guided by google map to be found out that those modern buildings we saw in the morning was actually our destination.

Fortunately, one free parking lot on Via Guglielmo Jervis was available so we could have a carefree sightseeing. The view of long factory building with many glass windows called ICO Workshop made me think of Van Nelle Factory in my hometown, Rotterdam. To our surprise the whole complex was not a museum, and interior viewing was not allowed, so we had nothing much to do with this beautiful piece of architectural. We impressed with the beautiful hexagonal pillars along the portico of the Social Service Center opposite ICO, the design was really complex but provide lightful environment. Then we went to see the former …

We will surely see a nomination and subsequent inscription of Jingdezhen in the coming years. Chinese porcelain was a major global export product and Jingdezhen was the undoubted primary location for its production from the 14th century onwards.

For those who want to visit the site already, there’s always the tricky task of deciding which possible location to go to. It seems likely that this will become a serial nomination with all things related to the porcelain history of Jingdezhen scattered around town. There is a kiln site outside of the city center called Hutian, there is the Jingdezhen Ceramics Folk Museum which Zoë described in her review, and there is the Imperial Kiln Site (a.k.a. Yuyaochang Relic Site) right in the commercial heart of the city.

I visited the latter, which seems to have been geared to bigger plans already. It checks all the boxes of a Chinese archeological WHS:

• Grand entrance.
• An iconic and modern museum building designed by a renowned architecture firm (Studio Zhu Pei).
• An ‘Old Street’ filled with souvenir shops and coffee/tea bars.
• Some important-looking excavations under a protective cover (not necessarily holding original remains)

What it lacks though is good on-site interpretation: there’s a few QR-codes to scan that will tell you something about an individual object, but the overall picture and a clear narrative are missing. So I had to get the story via the info I found online. At this location, porcelain …

Arequipa is a pleasant enough city and I enjoyed my stay there, but it didn't seem particularly outstanding to me. The main square and cathedral are quite nice, and there are a couple nice small museums featuring Andean mummies. I think the volcano connection makes it a little special -- the city has grand views of multiple snow-capped volcanos, and the signature white buildings are made from pyroclastic stone. This is the first place where I was aware of that being used as a building material. 

There are a variety of "free" walking tours around town. Most of the people I talked to didn't have great recommendations of the one they had taken, and I was disappointed in the one I joined also, but it did lead me to a couple interesting courtyards (upper right photo) and spots that I wouldn't have found on my own.

The description here mentions that local building "designs show the integration of European and native" and I noticed this in the unique carvings on the church at the Yanahuara scenic overlook (photos).

Arequipa is a good place to take a breather on a trip through Peru. I enjoyed nearby local attractions. I used Arequipa as the starting place for my Colca Canyon overnight trek, which was an intense day of hiking but very rewarding (and also not particularly close to Arequipa). Closer to town, I took the popular half day tour to the Ruta del Sillar, which takes you the quarry …

Visited in February 2024. Visiting Hegra and the nearby town of Al Ula is a reminder that Saudi Arabia is not yet ready for the mass tourism that it's hoping to achieve. I arrived to Al Ula by plane and took one of the official Al Ula taxes from the airport to my accommodation which was a van parked in someone's date palm farm. Finding mid-priced accommodation (budget accommodation is non-existent) is still very hard in this town and that might lead you to stay in fun places like a van! Most people from my flight seemed to opt for rental cars but I tried to survive without one. Careem was working now fine but you had to usually wait for some time for a pick-up.

So next morning I ordered a Careem ride to the Winter Park which I had read from everywhere is the place to start your visit to Hegra. After arriving to the Winter Park visitor centre I ended up being very confused how the ticket policy works. I was first told that everything is fully booked for the day but there were still places for "hop-on hop-off bus tour" of Hegra. As I only had one full day here I happily took that option. Then I was told that the shuttle buses from the Winter Park to Hegra are totally booked for the day and I have to find a taxi to take me there. All this sounded very strange to me considering I …

The worldheritagesite in Ban Chiang relates to the remains of the Ban Chiang culture that was named after the village that developed on the site where the ancient culture has lived around 200 years ago when settlers moved there from the territory that is today Laos. The site is famous for the pottery which was most famously used for burial rituals and that can be split into three time intervals between around 5,000 years ago and 2,000 years ago. Additionally remains of bronze and iron processing have been found often next to skeletons. We have visited the three components that are presented in the leaflet available in the national museum of Ban Chiang. The museum is the most interesting component however it´s only in the buffer zone as in this area no burial remains have been found. It was dedicated to the archaeology by the king when he visited the excavation sites in 1972 and was supposed to support the national understanding of the origin of the Thai people or generally the people of the region. The first room is at the end of the museum, so you have to walk through the whole exhibition and in the end climb up one level to the room that is dedicated to the visit of the king. There is a lot of emphasis on the visit by the king and his questions that he asked to the archaeologists. In other countries the presentation of his visit would probably be seen as exaggerated …

Three reviews out of 400 visitors, with the last review written more than a decade ago… Surely, the Red Fort Complex deserves better, given how important and popular this site is (emphasis on the word ‘popular’). Although I visited the site both in Dec 2013 and Dec 2023, this review is based mostly on my second visit.

Inside the Red Fort

Shah Jahan, the Mughal Empire’s 5th emperor, founded Red Fort (aka Lal Qila) to serve as his fancy residential palace-fort, only to be later imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb in Agra Fort. The fort later became a British military garrison and is now a crowded tourist site with museums that hold art exhibitions such as the India Biennale, which was quite enjoyable and ate up half of the time we were there.

Many of the interesting structures in the Red Fort are located on the eastern side of the complex, while most of the real estate is grass parks dotted with trees. Excluding the time spent purchasing the ticket or visiting the Kranti Mandir museums, I reckon no more than 2 hours is enough to explore the area. While I suggest checking out all of the historic structures in the complex, I found a few that are important, interesting, and worth a visit:

• Lahore Gate - This is the gate where tourists enter. It is what you'd usually see as the postcard photo of the Red Fort, remarkable for the two towers that flank …

Like the other reviewers, I went to Yancheng for my ‘tick’ of the coastal Migratory Bird Sanctuaries. The visit starts at the iconic museum building, where it’s all about the cranes. The threatened red-crowned crane is the flagship species of the Reserve. The exhibition tells you about crane species all over the world and there is even a video shown of how to fold a paper crane. Another room shows the role cranes play in Chinese culture: it’s especially a Taoist symbol of longevity.

For my visit deeper into the Reserve, I had wanted to rent a golf cart so I could easily reach all corners of the area. However, despite considerable efforts by the guy renting them out, we could not make the full payment circle work with my Weixin Pay account. So I had to go on foot, which limited my radius of course (but the Reserve is not huge anyway). It turned out to be quite a pleasant walk and birds were everywhere, despite it being late in the season. The best chance to see its most famous visitors, the red-crowned cranes, apparently is December-January. I did scoure the sky for larger birds passing by and when looking at my pictures later on my laptop I saw that I had captured two cranes (of an unknown species) as well.

Smaller birds were plentiful on the ground and in the water. These all are common birds for the area, but still nice ones such as the …

After I visited Oksan Seowon and on my way to see Dodong Seowon, adding Goryeong as a detour for Gaya Tumuli seem to be a compulsory for World Heritage Site enthusiasts despite uncertainty that the nomination will be accepted or not. I reached Daegaya Museum on lunch time, the first thing I saw apart from modern museum building and some drivers had lunch around the empty carpark, was the impressive view of many tumuli on the hills surrounding the museum complex. The location of Tumuli on the high hills was really different from those Silla Tumuli I saw in Gyeongju but quite similar to the Baekje one I saw in Gongju, but the numbers of Tumuli on the hill here was already impressive. The museum staffs were energetic by giving me all English information documents they had and helped me get a ticket from ticket machine, they were really afraid that foreign credit card may not be accepted.

The highlight of the museum in my opinion was the tumuli replica that display the layout and burial ritual of noble Gaya. The tomb construction and layout were different from Silla and Baekje or even much later Joseon, and the ritual had many human sacrificing. In my opinion with only these two elements, Gaya Tumuli maybe the most interesting one in South Korea. After the museum I went to another building that built to cover the excavated Tumuli, inside I saw the real version of what I earlier saw in the …

I visited the Rock Paintings of the Sierra de San Francisco within the El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve in March 2024. Having already seen the El Raton replica paintings in the Anthropological Museum of Mexico City, and judging by their small size, limited quality and ease of accessibility, I opted to visit the El Palmarito Cave or Cueva Cuesta de Palmarito which involves arranging a trip with an experienced driver owning a suitable high clearance 4WD car (expect to pay 150-200 US dollars for the car and driver if you're alone), who in turn fixes a time with the site "ranger" to collect the entrance fee (around 500 pesos including entrance, camera fees and guide), who in turn sets up a local guide (one of the two available - a fit old former farmer who lives alone there or a younger ranchero proudly wearing his iconic hat) who accompanies you along the 1-1.5 hour trek (one way) and opens/locks the protective fence around the cave. Another advantage of organizing a trip with a driver is that he can take care of contacting the INAH office instead of you reporting at their office during their limited opening hours (frequently closed on weekends or during siesta times, so not very convenient if you're booked for a whale watching the day before!).

The Cuesta de Palmarito cave is located on one of the slopes that fall into the small valley of Santa Marta, where a very small "rancheria" community of herders/farmers is located. …

Visited in February 2024. Things are changing fast in Saudi Arabia and At-Turaif Quarter is not an exception to that. I visited At-Turaif (also known as Diriyah) on a weekday just before the Saudi Founding Day. My Uber took me to the entrance of Bujairi Terrace, a fancy restaurant and shopping district, that you have to walk through to get to the historical site. You needed a ticket to enter, which you got by scanning a QR code at the entrance, and the ticket was for free, which might have been because of the Founding Day.

After getting my free ticket checked at the entrance to Bujairi Terrace, I walked through the district to the entrance of the historical site. You are greeted by a brand new visitor centre and friendly staff but I didn't find the centre to be very informative. From there I started to walk around the site. Somehow I managed to do it in the wrong direction despite there being guides in every corner greeting you, but you are supposed to start from the mosque ruins, not from the money museum. The site has few museums here and there (at least for money, Arabian horses and house-building) which you don't need to pay separately to visit. Lots of construction is still going on and many side streets are blocked. The renovation work is bit too perfect and sometimes the site feels like an instagram set for a good photo shoot. I spent couple hours walking …

I definitely like this nomination but it needs to be limited to only important areas. I used this picture (public domain) because it shows 100 years ago Tiananmen Square was an important place and unfortunately the modern student protests including a car terrorist attack in 2013 make us feel the place isn't right for UNESCO. It was also massively renovated with the people's hall, Mao's mausoleum (which used to be the Gate of China area), the museum, none of these should be listed as world heritage. This is only the square, with the other locations usually the same: important, old, but renovated and improved. My picture of Qianmen above (not actually public domain) shows a modern shopping street. It used to be different, even a brothel at a time, but it would only get nominated as the modern look.

If you haven't seen the axis it would surprise me because they even want to add the Temple of Heaven and the Tiananmem Square is hard to miss, you'll probably run into one of the old gates or Beihai park. Like I said I can't see this not getting inscribed but it will cause a lot of problems if not limited to just the old gates.

Sonian Forest, May 2024

The Sonian Forest is a small 2-km2 property in Flanders located on the south-eastern outskirts of Brussels – all that remains of what used to be a much larger forested area going all the way to the Ardennes. Pretty much all of it was chopped down over time, including some trees ending up – rather uselessly – for building Napoleon’s never-carried-out English invasion fleet.

A Flemish-only UNESCO forest would not work in the complex dynamics that is the non-country (to quote the rather infamous former MEP), hence two smaller pieces along both sides of a busy road to the north in the Brussels-Capital Region as well as two really tiny areas on the other side of a major highway to the south in Wallonia were added to balance things out nicely.

I started my hike on a Sunday morning at 6:30a at stop Foresterie, where helpful bus 17 drops you off, coming from metro station Beaulieu that connects you with Brussels center. The two Grippensdelle areas (forming the northern end of the core zone) lie on both sides of a through road, which was surprisingly busy even at this early hour. The car traffic along with the constant noises of airplanes starting from nearby Zaventem made me wonder if the little plaque I noticed at the forest entrance alerting wanderers to be mindful of Bambi deer in spring was maybe not a tad optimistic. At any event, the only wild animals I saw …

Alto Duoro, from my experience on visiting countless European UNESCO listed vineyards, is probably the best of its kind. The inspiring views of endless beautiful steeply sloping vineyards on endless mountains along the Duoro River valley really show its superlative of its long history of manmade landscape for viticulture. From Porto, we drove to Sao Leonardo de Galafura for its famous viewpoint. Duoro Valley welcomed us with heavy rain and thunderstorm, we thought that Bacchus already cursed us since we could not find any outstanding wine for the past couples of days in Porto and Coimbra. Luckily that when we reached the viewpoint, the rain stopped, and we could admire the breathtaking view of the Douro valley, a perfect start for wine hunting day.

From Sao Leonardo de Galafura we took a hilly road to Peso de Regua, along the way was magnificent view of the sea of mountain vineyards, small villages and modern highway, the whole landscape was impressive of how natural environment has been transformed by 2000 years of wine industry. Quinta da Pacheca is the first Quinta of the day, while the view from this Quinta was just fine, the wine was superb, and we felt that our curse on wine was lifted by Bacchus. Then we continued along the riverside road to Pinhao. The Duoro became more majestic behind river dam, Barragem da Regua, tempting us to stop at few more Quintas, Branco, Popa and Tedo. The best one along …

We've done the full day tour in Khao Yai National Park and stayed overnight in the park after the tour. The second day we did the trail number 1 close to the visitor center and afterwards another half day tour by our recommandable operator Greenleaf outside the national park which however was the most memorable visit. For the full day tour we were picked up early in the morning by a Greenleaf driver at our hostel in Pak Chong which is connected by a train line to Ayutthaya and Bangkok. The car brought us to the operators' place on the road towards the most popular entrance of the huge Khao Yai NP. This area of the road is still full of commercial life incl. 7-Eleven, Hotels and restaurants. With a pick-up with benches we drove into the park. The price of 1500 THB is decent regarding the fact that it includes the 400 THB entrance to the park and enough food during the day. After spending some time at a nice viewpoint we had about 30 minutes at the visitor centre where we could arrange a bungslow for the night at the cost of 560 THB with fan and electricity. It's 1,5 km from the visitor center. We were prepared for going in a tent, but were happy that we could arrange the bungalow. There is a website to book the places online but it's so bad that it's impossible to use it. On the weekends and vacations the park …

Jantar Mantar in Jaipur is an 18th-century observatory built to study the sky with the naked eye (yep, no telescopes). It's a small, accessible, and quite straightforward site to visit, and you get to tick both this site and Jaipur in one go. I visited Jantar Mantar twice (Dec 2013 and Dec 2023) and spent no more than an hour on both visits.

1. A UNESCO site within a UNESCO site

I used to share the opinion that Jantar Mantar as a separate site from Jaipur seemed confusing. I mean, it is well within Jaipur City’s core zone and is an integral part of the city palace’s compound. However, Jantar Mantar as a separate site has its own merits, and as I see it, India intended it that way. Its OUV rests on being an excellent example of an 18th-century architectural ensemble of scientific and technical instruments. It is also a testament to the monarch's (Jai Singh II) patronage of astronomy and cosmology, and sort of a reflection of the rich artistic and scientific culture at the time. It also fills the gap in heritage sites that are devoted to astronomy (see ICOMOS Thematic Study on Astronomical Heritage in 2010). Jaipur City’s focus is obviously way different. I reckon its separation from Jaipur City does not make Jaipur’s OUV anything less, and vice versa, and that they can stand on their own.

2. Highlights

Jantar Mantar has some 20 instruments crafted with seemingly geometric precision.I took …

I agree with the general sentiment that jantar Mantar is a confusing nomination.

Foremost, it's Right in the middle of jaipur old city. So it's hardly justifiable to make it a whs on its own. This is a clear case of duplication, something I've found India is particularly adept at. 

Furthermore, the site is quite hard to interpret at the moment, with very simple and lackluster explanations. 

The there's the OUV. The instruments though certainly monumental, weren't that advanced for the time, and in fact their size is somewhat unjustified. The astronomers in charge of the project weren't adept at architecture and the soil has given up under the heavy weight of their sun dials making the instruments unprecise. all in all I would say jantar Mantar is more of a unique expression of the science of astronomy in India. In that sense it is truly remarkable and unique (though a few more jantar Mantar exist in other Indian cities, like Delhi) and I'm happy it's part of the list. 

The visit is short and pretty ordinary. Though the giant sun dial makes for great photos. 

I visited this WHS in 2024. Due to its location, it is much easier to visit from the United States and/or Canada (especially overland but also by flight) than it is from Mexico City.

There are flights to Loreto (still a good 3.5-4 hours drive to the San Ignacio base) from the United States (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas and Phoenix), from Canada (Calgary) and from Tijuana (Mexico) but NOT from Mexico City. Wanting to avoid 2 internal flights CDMX-Tijuana-Loreto and back, and since the rental car rates with unlimited mileage as well as domestic flight prices were significantly cheaper on my planned dates, I opted to travel to Mexico City-La Paz (a much longer 8hr drive; a very boring extra 4 hours when compared to starting from Loreto). Still, when adding up the travel time to Tijuana plus the extra costs involved, the time difference, and keeping in mind the added bonus of being able to visit the newly added Gulf of California WHS component of Balandra, I used La Paz as my southern base and San Ignacio as my northern base.

San Ignacio is still a good 1.5 hour drive away (with around 25 kilometres of dirt road driving on compacted sand and gravel; doable slowly with a standard non-4WD vehicle on a sunny day) from the San Ignacio Lagoon area where the boat tours depart from. The Ojo de Liebre Lagoon is also reachable with a further drive to Guerrero Negro and then a much …