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At the start of my trip around northern Spain I based myself in Oviedo, to enable me to see a bit of Asturian countryside and also the bulk of the sites in this inscription.

My first stop was to walk up to the sites at Monte Naranco overlooking the city. I was surprised by how small the monuments actually were; there was not a huge amount of room especially inside San Miguel de Lillo. The architecture was impressive in an understated, almost crude kind of way, and there were lovely sculpted detailing in the former palace of Santa Maria. The two sites were surrounded by nice green pastures and afforded wonderful views over Oviedo, especially down to Santiago Calatrava’s striking new conference centre. They are about 3km west of the station and uphill, it took me about 35 minutes to walk there from the station but Bus 10 is probably a better option for those that don’t fancy a bit of a hike. When I visited tours were given in Spanish, but I found it fairly easy to understand the gist as I had done a bit of background reading.

I walked back down into the city, accompanied by the sound of clunking cowbells in the nearby pastures and bagpipes at a local wedding. I didn’t make it down in time to see any of the interiors of the inscribed sites but did enjoy walking around and people watching on the streets of the charming old town. The Camara Santa …

very disappointing that so little of the site is currently open.They only seem to be working on one building at present yet have ripped out the walkways and closed most of the site much earlier than necessary.With a little planning they could easily work in stages and keep most of the site open.What you can see is fantastic but its very frustrating to see tantalizing distant glimpses of so much more in the closed areas.I will return one day when its fully open but unless they get their act together I suspect this may be years away.

The temples of Luxor and Karnak on the west bank and the Temple of Hatshepsut on the east bank of the Nile are simply amazing for the amount of work and effort that was expended creating them. Today, even with cranes and other machinery it would be difficult, but 5000 years ago it was all done by human power. And then followed all the work of painstakingly carving the designs and hyroglyphs. The effort surely dwarfs any construction project of the modern era.

From all of those churches my favorite one would definitely be Our Lady of Ljeviš. It is an outstanding example of late byzantine architecture. Throughout its long history it was a holly place for Christians and Muslims, who converted it during the Ottoman rule and named Friday Mosque (al-jumʿa xhamia in Arabic). This name is still in use among Muslim Albanians in the city of Prizren.

Unfortunately the devastation of the paintings inside the church - initiated during Ottoman times - reached its peak during the march 2004 riots. The restoration of the site is still in progress.

I used Lutherstadt Wittenberg as a base for visiting the many WHS in the area. Trains took me as far as Bad Muskau in the east and Eisleben in the west for day trips, as well as to Quedlinburg, Worlitz and Dessau.

Being rather ignorant of Luther and his activities I did learn a lot by visiting Wittenberg and Eisleben. But I wondered what the bus loads of Chinese and Japanese tourists visiting these sites made of it.

Architecturally the churches are rather austere, although I did like the decorated ceiling and pulpit of St Anne's church in Eisleben.

I visited the Bauhaus Museum and the Masters' Houses in Dessau, a housing estate in Dessau-Sud as well as the Bauhaus University and the Haus am Horn in Weimar. Whilst I realise that in the 1920s and 30s this architecture was exceptional, 80 years later it is commonplace, so I wonder why they are WHS. Is it enough that they were the first to justify the listing.

This is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I have been the last year and it is a unique experience. It combines a fantastic natural landscape with spiritual buildings.

You can visit with a low cost flight from London (or Brussels, Düsseldorf, etc) to Valladolid airport (Villanubla). There, the best way to visit the zone is hiring a car (there are a lot of small villages to see).

Bamberg is a very historic and quite pleasant town in northern Bavaria, just a short train ride from Nuremberg. It features several interesting buildings, above all the old town hall (on an island in the river) and the famous cathedral with the equally famous Bamberg Horseman. The town is easily explored on foot, and was very nice to discover on a warm fall day. The cathedral museum should not be missed.

This site covers almost 10,000 square kilometers, and stretches for 400km along the north coast of Europe from the Netherlands to the Danish border. To get an appreciation of this site I visited it at several diverse locations in the Netherlands and Germany:

Texel Island - reached by ferry from Den Helder, then by bus to Oudeschild, a small port facing the Wadden Sea. From here there are excursions by boat to see the wildlife on the sandbanks.

Terschelling Island - reached by ferry from Harlingen. From the port on the island I walked to Green Beach to see the bird life there, but saw more from the deck of the slow ferry on the way back to Harlingen.

Norddeich - from here there are ferries to Norderney and Juist Islands. I took an informative cruise to the National Park to see the seals and birds on the sandbanks adjacent both islands.

Wilhelmshaven - saw views over Jade Harbour from the Wattenmeerhaus, a museum of the fauna and flora of the Wadden Sea at South Beach.

Cuxhaven - I just timed it correctly to catch low tide at Dunen Beach in order to take a trip by horse and cart out onto the sandbanks. I also visited the National Park exhibition at Sahlenburg Beach.

Sylt Island - This island is accessible only by train or boat. I took the train to Westerland, then a bus to Hornum on the southern tip of the island. Then I took a boat cruise …

The stately medieval buildings that today surround the Market Place are testimony to the value of preserving heritage. Fortunately the town centre escaped destruction in WWII and remains pristine. Exploring beyond the Market there are other examples of fine architecture in the Schuhof, the Kaiserphalz and Stiftskapella, and in the Frankenberg district. Seeing these buildings was the highlight of my visit to Goslar, although I did take a bus up to the Rammelsberg mine and take an underground tour by train to see the workings.

idanre hill is a wonder that would take away ones breath.

am an indigene of idanre ,and i must confess its a place one need to be.

theres so much wonders on the hill, except one goes with a tourist guard that would take one to great sites i.e

unreadable writing on the hill , noah's like ark ,olofin chain that goes straight in the sky,where hot and cold water meets,first ancient palace, agbogun foot print etc.

how proud am i 2 be reckon with such a great place.

After visiting Wismar and Stralsund as well as Lubeck this year, I am pleased that Lubeck is a separate WHS. Probably as a result of having been hidden in East Germany for several decades these two towns have retained their integrity as heritage towns. Very little modern construction is apparent, in fact some WWII bomb damage is yet to be restored, eg the Marienkirche in Wismar).

Saw both towns in a day, travelling by train between.

After the austere gardens of Muskauer Park the Worlitz gardens were at the other extreme with an abundance of ornamentation. I visited the pleasant Luisium, Georgium and Muskigau parks within Dessau city first then took the train, a single car double deck contraption, out to Worlitz.

The garden there is attractively laid out, but is cluttered by many structures including a Roman villa, a synagogue, a church, wierd bridges and a stone grotto. But the chain ferries used to link the footpaths to the islands were a novel idea.

There is certainly a lot to see in this site, and in two days I saw most of it. Outstanding for me, but not exactly beautiful was the castle on the Pfaueninsel, reached by bus and ferry from Wannsee. Another interesting site was the Schloss Babelsberg, built on a hill overlooking the Glienicke Lake and its famous Glienicke Bridge. After walking around Jagdshloss Glienicke I crossed the bridge and caught a tram to Potsdam. There I visited the listed properties. I particularly liked the Nikolskoe church in the Volkspark, the New Garden and its colonnaded marble palace, and the houses of Alexandrovka.

It was about 5km outside of Sarria that I spoke to my first proper Pilgrim, or Perigrino as they are locally known. I was feeling pretty good having decided to walk the last 120km of the Pilgrimage Route to qualify for my Compestela and properly ‘tick off’ this world heritage site.

The South Korean Pergirno asked me “Where did you start walking from?”

“Sarria, I only just started, but I feel good an hour into the pilgrimage. How about you, where did you start?”

“Paris”

“Paris!”

“Yes, I started 3 months ago at Notre Dame”

We walked on talking, we passed a few full pilgrim hostels before eventually finding one with space. We ended up having to share a double mattress on the floor in a room crammed with 30 other perigrinos. Later settling down to a rather limp looking steak, I talked about how there was no hot water in the single shower for all 30+ of us.

A German on the next table turned to me

“Welcome to the Camino!”

And this was how life progressed for the next 3 days. Endlessly meeting and talking to a huge array of people; each with their own reasons for doing the Pilgrimage; some wanted a break from everyday stresses to sort out their direction in life; some for religious reasons and many just wanted to walk for the experience. I met and spoke to people from all over the world, but liberal European holiday allowances and the location meant that …

I visited Lubeck after visiting Wismar and Stralsund, and was disappointed at the rampant disregard for its heritage evidenced by all the modern steel and glass construction. Even the majestic Holstentor was not enough to warrant OUV. The interior of the Petrikirche had been destroyed by being painted white, while that of the Dom had been modernised quite out of character with its red brick exterior.

After reading Els disappointment with a visit to the new copy of Altamira which correlated with some friends experiences, I decided to forgo a trip along to Cantabria and instead visited one of the Western most inscribed caves, Tito Bustillo, which was regarded as one of the four most important in the inscription.

This was my first cognisant visit to a cave art site, so I don’t have much to compare it with, however I was massively impressed by the examples I saw. It was a long walk (1km) through a rather impressive cave, displaying all of the features one would expect, stalagmites/tites etc. We then got to a dark section of the cave and our guide shuffled us into position, she then shone her torch on the art and I must admit I joined in when the rest of the group gasped. The depictions of animals were limited but very impressive. Our guide proceeded to give a very thorough explanation (in Spanish, but I got the gist, and the movement of the torchlight made it very easy to follow) and show that there were many other faint representations with-in the gallery.

Unfortunately it is not possible to reach the ‘Cave of Vulvas’ for which Tito Bustillo is particularly renowned (one of the earliest examples of art with sexual motivations), we were shown the access point to the cave system in which it lies and without proper caving equipment and a very bendy body it is inaccessible. This was a …

I was driving around looking for Bahrain Fort, but ended up at a sign for the Barbar Temple. So I decided to visit this Tentative Site first. It's a small archeological site in a residential area. A couple of men were doing maintenance work at the site, but there were no visitors.

Besides the subterranean shrine as pointed out by Paul Tanner in his review below, the offering blocks and pierced blocks that are thought to be tethering points for sacrificial animals are also noteworthy. There's a sign board at the entrance telling the history of the temple (there's no entrance fee). Via a paved path one can circumnavigate the dig.

It's a rather small site that I guess will never make it into becoming a proper WHS (or only maybe as part of a serial nomination).

P.S.: the Manama-suburbs (Karbabad) that lie near this temple are quite poor and ostentatively Shiite. Black flags by the side of the road, billboards displaying religious leaders, mosques heavily painted and also decorated with black flags. I had never seen anything like this before, only on TV when Hezbollah-sites in Lebanon are shown.

As with many sites in Bahrain, I found this difficult to find at first. I gave up trying at my first attempt. During my last afternoon in Bahrain I had some time left and decided to try again. And this time with success: it is actually quite easy, there is a sign "Saar Archeological Site" from the main highway between Manama and Saudi Arabia. The mistake I made the first time is to get off at Saar village - but that's a sprawling town where you'll never find it. You just have to wait for the next exit from the highway.

The only other creatures around at this dusty site were a policeman and a couple of dogs with puppies. I was a bit scared of the dogs at first, but the guard waved me in. The site is quite extensive, and with clear roads has the feel of a village. Unfortunately I did not have much background info on me, and there's only a small interpretative sign at the site itself

Dear Frank, Hoi An is my favorite destination in VN..so apprciate what u wrote about it. The noodle u mentioned above is generally called as " My Quang" or "Quang noodle", the most delicious i enjoyed is at a small restaurant at Ly Thuong Kiet.st, can't remember the name. Sorry, welcome back..