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Evora is forever in mine hart! I have worked there from may untill october. The city is full of historical monuments and each building has its own story. I have met the nicest people on earth and working there has made me to what i am today. The idea that there is a city beneath Evora is amazing. Walking in the little streets you can see a part of this city beneath you. Really impressing. I have been in many old houses and you can smell and sense the history inside! I worked in restaurant Pickwick, nearby the big square Place du Geraldo. The owners are Antoinette en Luis Linhan. I have lost contact with them becauses i have moved to another place and so do they. If someone can help me!!! I know they still work there, its a famous restaurant. They also own Mr. Snob, a restaurant-bar. There isnt a day when i think about them. Please contact me. Lots of thanks, Laura Eijkelboom-Wernsen

I went to Mana Pools in December with my brother, who lives in Zimbabwe. It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and the experience was enhanced by seeing the rare & elusive painted hunting dogs, and also lions, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, hyenas and other species of animals and birds too numerous to mention. The experience of living for five days in such an utterly wild place, sleeping outside with the sound of roaring lions, whooping hyenas and grunting hippos to lull me to sleep, and spending the days surrounded by such stunning scenery, is one I will never forget.

Difficult to get a place in a lodge unless you know a Zimbabwe resident (& even then not easy), but there are campsites open in the dry season, and it's well worth visiting if you can find a way.

All 3 of Armenia’s WHS are churches or monasteries! Apart from “ticking off” additional WHS one must ask whether there is a great deal of extra benefit to be gained from chasing all 3 since the non-expert is probably not going to discern the differences in style. Indeed you will see many more than those on the WHS (and there are several more on Armenia’s “Tentative List” too!)

We did and have no regrets at doing so. The Armenian church lies at the heart of this country’s uniqueness (together it should be stated with its alphabet/language and the sense of “difference” and “oppression” which its geographical location and history of persecution and survival have given it) and seeing its monuments and the people worshipping in them is an essential part of gaining a feel for the country.

Each of the sites is in a different setting and Geghard’s is in a delightful deep valley. Dating from the 12th century the structure is half building and half cave. Its rural location was emphasised by the sellers of bread and fruit lined up outside and the slaughtered sheep hung up for skinning nearby. It was busy – but with Armenians on pilgrimage not tourists and a quiet reverence was maintained inside. The explanations of Armenian inscriptions and of saints with strange (to us) names largely passed us by but the atmosphere of peace and tranquillity stayed with us. (Visited July 2000)

I recently visited the Cathedral on January 9th this year after 13 years of not seeing it at all, and it impressed me much more than when I was living in Cologne in 1990. It might be just because this time I took myself the time to look at it properly and listen to the guide's explanations, but it really moved me. I also went there out of curiosity for the three kings story, and that impressed me too. So I must accept that besides the cold, the Dom has overwhelmed me tremendously.However, please choose a sunny day to enjoy its splendour at its highest peak.

I visited Champasak in 1996 with my family who are originally from there, from a little village called Ban Dou. It was the first time for me and over twenty years for my Mother and Aunt. After arriving in Vientiene, which we stayed with my Uncle's relatives for a few days, we booked a flight down to Pakse which lasted about 45 minutes and then crossed the Mekong River by ferry to Champasak. I have heard they have since built a bridge that connects the two sides and you can now drive across. From there we drove to my mother's village which is about twenty to thirty minutes and is located on the main road, which its name has escaped me. Unfortunately we did not see Vat Phou or toured the main city of Champasak, but stayed in the countryside. It's so beautiful there, the sky is so blue and the clouds are so white and puffy and at night the stars are endless, because there are no bright city lights to shadow them. We stayed in Ban Dou for only two weeks, and for me it felt like it was only a few days. There is so much to take in, by just walking along the main road down to my grandfather's rice patty to walking with a bunch of my cousins down to the little stream and taking a swim. I savored every moment and it would take a book to tell you all the things we saw …

Vienna, is a most stately, magnificent, majestic city. But the most majestic? It’s certainly near the top of the list, if not at the very top.

Located along both sides of the Ring-Strasse, the many impressive things to see include the Opera, museums, castles, the Rathaus (city hall), Beethoven-Platz, the Stadtpark (City Park), several precision-planted gardens, and a guidebook’s-worth of things to see and do. Hours and days can, and should, be spent walking and looking at this most unusual boulevard.

Vienna’s tourist map lists so very many churches, palaces, synagogues, academies, libraries, theaters, embassies, towers, and Government buildings.

If you are hungry, in addition to the famous Sacher-Torte (cost up to $30) at Hotel Sacher Vienna, tried and true McDonald’s are available for a quick snack, or a restroom break.

When we arrived in Hallstatt, we knew we had found one of the more beautiful places in the world. Pictures of Hallstatt, a picturesque, beautiful lake-side village, are often used for a calendar, a jig-saw puzzle, or a greeting card.

People have lived here for 3,000 years, and it's easy to see why. There were 6 or 8 waterfalls and streams coming down the mountain, through the town. They had built garages on stilts, out over the water, to keep the boats protected from the weather.

Next to one church, a couple flights of stairs lead to the town cemetery. Each grave is a separate, detailed, trimmed, precision flower garden. The "gravestones" are crosses covered by a little roof, and many display a photograph of the person buried there.

Only a few of the original huge stones are still standing, so it's difficult to say more than Stonehenge consists of huge (twenty-five feet tall, twenty-plus ton) rocks that were put in place 2,000 to 5,000 years ago.

When did someone first notice a characteristic that connected the stars, the moon and the position of the sun, with the seasons? How was the information 'recorded' and passed from generation to generation?

Did two different groups of people (Stonehenge, and Carnac, France, separated by the English Channel), study the sky, come to the same conclusion, and use huge stones to build astrological installations? Or did members of one civilization cross the channel, and transplant the knowledge that must have taken many generations to perfect?

References we have read do not indicate a connection between Carnac's Avenues and the Great Circle at Stonehenge, but the use of huge stones, and the apparent astronomical purpose are certainly similar.

We walked past a line of sidewalk vendors selling bread and pastry, fishing boats offering fish for sale, and a ferryboat terminal, disgorging crowds of people.

We had only a precious too few hours to visit Süleyman (Blue) Mosque, St. Sophia Mosque, and shop in the 4,000 stall Grand Bazaar. As we walked back to the ship we again crossed the bridge over the Golden Horn. It was meal time, the restaurants were filling with hungry patrons, fishermen were still selling fish, street stands were still selling pastries, the ferryboat terminal was still disgorging passengers.

Those street scenes will be there for us to enjoy when we return to this city, the most enthralling of the 124 ports we have arrived at, or departed from, on a ferry or cruise ship.

Downtown Bern is outstanding, blocks of arcaded shopping streets, with a beautiful 16th century clock tower in the middle of the main street. Around the city we saw many very nice houses and apartment buildings, and the countryside and the Bernese Alps (mountains), within 50 miles of the city, are exceptional. After several visits, we think Bern would be our favorite city to live in Europe.

The city name, Bern, means bear in German, so we went to see the famous bear pits, where the bears sit up and beg for food. The day we were there, they especially liked to eat carrots.

If you do get the chance, to go up to Jungfraujoch: The Top of Europe. SBB will take you up to the bottom of the mountain, and then a special train - which is very expensive at CHF150- will take you up to the observatory known as Top of Europe. I was fortunate to get a very special deal, where I commuted all the way from Geneva at about CHF189. There are scientific experiments being undertaken up there, including global warming, pollution, oxygen levels and so on. The view is amazing, absolutely stunning views of glaciers and green, especially in May and September. This is Switzerland at its very best. You can ski, use discs as surfboards in the perpetual snow at 10,000ft. Take in the Eispalast, a beautiful museum of ice carvings, and two levels of viewing, the Sphinx area being the better one. The restaurant is not bad either. This was one of my most memorable trips.

We visited the house where the painter El Greco lived and worked for years. Many of his paintings were on display. In one set of 12 pictures, each of the Apostles had small parts of each picture unfinished. For example, there would be a hand, but no fingers. While we were there, some important looking officials arrived for a tour of the museum. They rode in a large limousine, complete with guards and guides.

We drove down a street into a small plaza and found several narrow streets came into the area, but only one seemed to go out. As we were trying to decide what to do, a small truck about our size went through, so we followed, then found we had plenty of room. That is, about 2 inches between each mirror and the buildings.

Seville's Cathedral, with two aisles plus chapels on each side of the nave, is the world's largest Gothic building. There's room for a ball game and a church service at the same time, neither would disturb the other. Its bell tower, The Giralda, is one of the finest examples of Moorish tower architecture. The Cathedral is huge, and a portion of the ceiling vaults are embellished by barnacle-like encrustation. There are 45 yard-square sculptured scenes, each filled with intense detail.

The City of Seville and its Cathedral are fascinating and attractive, and certainly deserved much more time than we had available, that time.

As we walked toward the city center of Kraków, Poland, we heard the famous Kraków bugle call from the tower of the Church of St. Mary. During a war with the Tartars (from western Asia) in 1297, while the Polish bugler was sounding a call, an arrow was shot through his throat, stopping the call in mid-note. In a few moments another soldier picked up the horn, and continued the call, and that is what you hear today — a bugle call, an interruption, then the bugle call continues.

At noon on Saturday the bugle call is sounded over radio stations in Poland. One year as we sailed the Atlantic from Rotterdam to Montreal on the TSS Stefan Batory, at noon on Saturday, the bugle call sounded over the ship’s PA System.

Many caverns/galleries contain works of art, often altars and statues sculpted by miners/artists. We visited several levels by stairs or elevator, and saw many works of art, carved entirely out of salt.

Most spectacular was the Blessed Kinga Chapel, carved in one of the largest galleries. There were beautiful three dimensional 'salt' statues, such as the 'Last Supper'. The floor looked like a carefully laid tile design, but further examination shows it's salt carved to look like individual tiles. The huge chandeliers in this Cathedral are made of salt, each consisting of many dangling salt crystals.

The first thing that impressed Jim about Pompeii was its location. How did the city planners, in several centuries BC, know just where to place Pompeii so that 2,000 years later it would be at an off-ramp of the Autostrada, next to a railway station, hotels, and the campsite. That’s careful planning.

It’s interesting to note that Pompeii’s amphitheater, and the two theaters, are perhaps the most complete structures of their type to have survived the ages. Since they were buried below the ash of Vesuvius, they did not suffer the destructive power of wind and rain, and stones could not be quarried and stolen for other building projects, as happened elsewhere.

A housing shortage in Italy resulted in most young people living at their parent’s home, rather than in their own apartments. The well-dressed young people in nice cars were waiting an hour or so to rent a room in the Pompeii campground for an hour or so, or maybe after such a long wait, just a few minutes or so. How romantic!

From our book, tation To Italy (Google)

Ceramic tile was being removed from the floor in a large room in a building near the St. Francis’ Basilica. The workmen happily insisted we take a full piece of tile as a memento of Assisi. It’s right beside Jim’s computer, used every day as a coaster.

But surprise of all surprises, there was a two-story, canopy covered escalator, leading up the hill from the parking lot. At the top of the escalator we walked higher through the town, then turned and walked down, down and down the hill, snaking through this most unusual city. Fruit and vegetable vendors filled market squares, pink stone houses and stores lined the narrow walkways.

In spite of what we missed by not parking near the Basilica, parking in that upper lot, riding the escalator up the hill, then walking those miles down the hill through Assisi, was one of the best travel ideas we ever had even if it was just an accident.

From our book, Invitation To Italy (Google)

Metéora consists of about 60 huge columns of rock, up to 984 feet high, many large enough for a monastery to be built on the top. Starting about the year 1000, and extending into the 1500’s, 24 monasteries were built, but now only four are inhabited. Since the monks wanted to be alone, until recently access was by means of very long ladders or a basket or net suspended on a rope. Now they have added staircases with hundreds of steps, but for a tourist, it’s well worth the climb.

The large monasteries look tiny on the tip of these peaks. Drove up the steep twisty hairpin roads stopping to take pictures, and stopping for breakfast overlooking The Varlaám monastery, a little below the Megálo Metéoro, the largest of the group of monasteries. We later walked up hundreds of steps to visit these two ancient sites.

Each time we have visited the Pont du Gard (Bridge over the Gard River), ten or twelve miles northeast of Nîmes, the weather has been sparkling clear, but rain or shine, it’s an awe-inspiring structure. The aqueduct was built without mortar between the stones (some weighted six tons), and we know engineering codes wouldn’t permit that these days. Of course it’s most likely that structures built under our engineering codes won’t last 2,000 years, either.

The first times we were here we were able to drive across the bridge with no problem, but on our fourth visit, police had blocked access to the road. The next morning, the police were gone, and we again drove across the Pont du Gard. Why is that so exciting, since we’ve done it a couple of times? Well, who else do you know who has done it even once?

From our book, Invitation To France (Google)

One year as we approached Mont-St.-Michel from the east on the 'little' road near the coast, our first sight of the cathedral was across a mile of grassy pasture with grazing sheep and cows in the foreground. Once we arrived at the point where the causeway leaves the coast, there were still two kilometers of awe and wonderment as we continued to the parking lot near the Outer Gate.

One evening, as the sun was setting through the clouds and the floodlights were gradually illuminating the Abbey, we walked the two kilometers from the mainland and took twenty-five or thirty photos of the ever-changing ethereal scene in front of us.

From our book, Invitation To France (Google)