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I found it a bit spooky to walk here on my own on a quiet Sunday morning. The complex is huge, with multistorey buildings, bridges, railway lines, and towers. All in the same dark red colour.

Since the mining here stopped, nature is beginning to win back its territory. Most of the railway tracks and the smaller industrial leftovers are now covered with moss, grass, and weeds. This adds a special atmosphere to the place - a good location for a film director to shoot a thriller.

Many of the buildings nowadays are used for art exhibitions. The Red Dot Design Museum is worth a visit both for its collection of contemporary design and to take a look inside one of the industrial halls.

By car, I drove on the left side of the Rhine from Koblenz to Bingen. There I took a ferry and drove the same 55 km back. This is a really great way to enjoy all the wonderful views in this area.

The funny thing is that you get the best views of the monuments on the opposite side of the Rhine. So when you see a really nice castle, the Rhine is always between the castle and yourself.

However, I did enter some of the most interesting ones. The Marksburg Castle is surely not to be missed. It still is quite intact, and there are guided tours that take you into the Middle Ages (at least for an hour or so).

The Four Lifts can be found in the Canal du Centre between La Louvière and Mons. The road to the lifts (ascenseurs in French) is well-signposted from the E19 highway coming from Brussels.

First I visited Lift no. 3. That one is situated in a small town that has seen better days. I was amazed to see the old buildings that surround the lift: it looked as if I had arrived in Northern England! The Industrial Revolution has left a large mark on Wallonia, and certainly in this region.

A few kilometers away you can take a look at Lift no. 1. You can walk around this one and take a closer look. Unfortunately, there were no ships in the canal, so I haven't seen the huge construction in action.

Kutna Hora presented itself to me as a charming and quiet town. I stayed there for 4 days (in Hotel Garni Na Havlicku, recommended). Quite a lot of restaurants there have garden terraces, and the food is good and cheap. Actually, everything is.

My sightseeing in and around town brought me to the Italian Court. During Kutna Hora's silver rush this functioned as the Royal Mint. The interior is palace-like. Also worth mentioning is the Ossuary in Sedlec. This freak sight dates from 1870 - when Frantisek Rint decided to become creative with the bones of the 40.000 people buried here.

And I didn't even get to see what is reported to be the highlight of Kutna Hora: an underground tour through the silver mine shafts. At this time of year (and on weekends) you really have to pre-book this guided tour. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of that. But Kutna Hora was really worth visiting anyway.

The most well-known part of this WHS - Koyasan - I visited on my second trip to Japan. This temple town has the usual Japanese abundance of souvenir shops and restaurants: don't expect it to be very serene.

Most of the temples are grouped in the western part of town. Their designs are all very different. Okuno-In, the temple that houses the body of Kobo-Daishi, is on the other side of town. Going there you have to cross a large cemetery, covered in moss and hidden under huge dark trees.

An experience not to be missed here is staying overnight in one of the temples. The local Tourist Information can arrange this. The Fudo-In was my accommodation: very quiet (only 2 young monks seemed to be living there), with great food and a fine traditional bath.

After two visits I still only have seen a fraction of all the temples in Kyoto. Most remarkable are the big differences between them (probably caused by the fact that they were built during several periods within the long heydays of Kyoto).

For a first-time visitor I would recommend Ginkaku-ji (the Silver Pavillion), Ryoan-ji (to sample a fine Zen garden) and Daitoku-ji (no worldheritage status, but a lovely complex to walk around).

Trier is a small city in southwest Germany, very close to Luxemburg. It has an excellent location along the Moselle River. At first sight, it looks like a 'normal' German town, but you don't have to walk far to come eye to eye with Trier's Roman heritage. There's even so much of it that you get the impression that by accident you've been stranded in a German town in Italy.

There's a lot to see here, so I'll name some of the highlights. The large Dome of course, and the baths. And, somewhat out of the center of town, the huge Amphitheatre.

Really interesting also is the regional museum. One room there exhibits large mosaics in good condition that have been found in Trier. At the heart of the museum, an ornamented light blue grave monument is the centerpiece of the attraction. How beautiful the streets of Trier must have looked in Roman Times!

One has to pre-book a visit to this site, as only 80 people are allowed inside daily. Also, photographing is forbidden, so I can't show more here than its entrance and the ticket.

Is it worth all the fuss beforehand? Yes - besides being one of the highlights of Malta (together with Mdina, which still only is on the Tentative List), it's a unique construction dating from a very early age. Especially the "doors" are carefully carved out of stone, by people that didn't have metal tools in use.

There are a lot of mysteries surrounding the Hypogeum, adding some extra flavour to a visit. A trip here starts with a video that links this underground site with the many megalithic temples above ground elsewhere in Malta.

This must be the largest disappointment of my Portugal trip. The town's beauty is sung by many guidebooks, and it has become very touristy.

Even around Christmas, quite a number of tourists occupied the streets of this Spanish-looking town. The historic centre is confined within city walls, but unfortunately, cars (and buses) are allowed there too.

One sight I did enjoy was the "Bone Chapel". I found it really strange to stand in a room that is built totally with cemented human bones, and a skull here and there. And then those two bodies hanging in a corner ...

I almost missed this one! Really, I could tell some stories about world heritages that I didn't see because I couldn't find them. Not a good sense of direction I'm afraid.

The Escorial actually is situated at the heart of the city San Lorenzo de El Escorial, where I expected it to be in a park somewhat out of town. But a first glance at the huge building was enough to guide me in the right direction.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of fellow visitors were around at its premises. On my tour inside the monastery, I was most impressed by the Pantheon de Los Reyes, the mausoleum for Spain's royal family.

One of my Portuguese favourites, this site is. Two hours by public bus from Lisbon, through continuous rain, took me there.

But the sun started to shine when I arrived in the town of Alcobaça. The Monastery is in the heart of it, so locals are confronted by it every day when they go to the post office or shopping.

While the outside looks massive, the inside is very pretty. I especially lingered in the huge kitchen. This is completely covered with white and blue tiles and has a strangely scaped chimney (see picture above).

This I found a sight to go really out of your way for. You have to anyway because it's quite a long drive from the major motorway between Lisbon and Porto.

On the outside the complex looks like a massive, fortress-like castle. When you go inside (through a tiny and well-hidden door) the richnesses of the convent come to you.

The major attraction inside, in the church, is the charola, a Romanesque rotunda full of frescoes and gold.

I enjoyed some wonderful days here. Segovia is a lovely town with a friendly atmosphere. Especially in the evenings when its inhabitants go for an evening stroll in the medieval streets.

Segovia is most famous for its aqueduct. It's really huge and remarkably complete.

What you really shouldn't miss also is the Alcazar, the Castle. Situated at the top of a hill it has a romantic quality. Inside the knights in armour await you.

The A6 from Derby to Matlock is the place to go when you want to see the Derwent Valley and its mills. It's a small road that crosses green valleys and passes tiny towns.

I started my tour in Belper, a somewhat larger town with a prominent mill (unfortunately closed today). The first mill I could get into was Cromford Mill. There are now shops and a small exhibition room, there's not much to see otherwise.

Finally, I went to Masson Mills. This is also turned into a shopping center, where you can buy fancy things like golf clubs and towels&soap. But there is more: a large part of the building is now a working textile museum. Here you can see the spinning and experience the noise in the large factory hall.

Brühl is a little town near Cologne that is famous for its amusement park 'Phantasialand'. I drove 2,5 hours from my home to see the castles though.

After I arrived I first did a guided tour of the Augustusburg Castle. There I learned about the mighty Clemens August, who ruled a large part of northwestern Germany in the 18th century. One of his hobbies, besides hunting, was building castles. It cost him so much money that after his death all the furniture had to be sold to pay the debts. But the fine rococo palaces are still standing. In Augustusburg you really should see the staircase, by which Clemens August meant to impress the humble visitors that came to see him.

The other castle that is part of this world heritage site, Falkenlust, is being restored at the moment. It's a lot smaller but in nice quiet surroundings. The small chapel in the woods to the right is also very pretty.

For my visit to the Defense Line, I chose Muiden and Pampus, two of the most accessible locations. Muiden is a historical fortress-town to the east of Amsterdam. The whole town is like an open-air museum and has a real historical feel to it. The Muiden Castle is also a must.

From Muiden I took the ferry to Pampus. This island became the final part of the Defense Line: it had to guard the entrance to Amsterdam via the IJ-river. Soldiers were trained here between the two World Wars, but never has the island been used in combat. The place was already outdated when its construction had finished.

Nowadays Pampus sees 35.000 visitors a year. Since 1990 it has been privately owned by a foundation that wants to maintain and restore the fortress island. They haven't been lucky in finding funds though, and so the site is in really bad repair. Not as bad however as when they acquired it twelve years ago when there were rats everywhere and trees grew out of the buildings.

So typical Dutch that it even is not remarkable anymore when you are living there. Flat, very flat, and neatly ordered. The best views of this and other polders in the area are from the air when you prepare for landing at Schiphol Airport.

My first visit was on a dreary Sunday, not the best of times. A good way to explore the Beemster polder is on a bicycle. But beware: the wind can be strong in these open fields!

On my second visit, I tried to find (and photograph) some of the 62 monuments that are included. The village of Middenbeemster is the core area for this: when you park your car near the church, a couple of the monuments are close enough to visit on foot. A little more out of the way is the windmill (under repair) and the Mennonite church. The roads are so narrow here that it's impossible to park.

Karakorum nowadays is a small town in the center of Mongolia. There's even a road there from Ulan Bator, one of the few in Mongolia. The town hosts the country's major tourist attraction: Erdene Zuu monastery. So we weren't the only visitors here. The monastery buildings are encircled by a wall of 108 white stupas: just great!

The next day, after staying the night in a comfortable ger camp, we drove on to Tövkin Khid. This is a smaller monastery in the mountains, a few hours from Karakorum. The drive to get there is completely off-road, crossing a river and driving along the paths in the grasslands. This day was undoubtedly the best day of my stay in Mongolia: I wished it would never end. The landscape around here is greener and hillier than in the rest of Central Mongolia, and so pure. We also visited a nomadic family on the move, dismantling their ger with help from their neighbours.

In the Orkhon area you can see quite a number of gers from nomadic families, maybe because of the proximity of a 'big city'. This traditional way of living is still quite common in rural areas, though I wonder for how long. The grasslands are getting drier and drier by the year.

There's not much left of the special wooden houses: during the ages, a large number of them burnt down, and the remaining ones are now mainly used as souvenir shops - open 7 days a week and catering to the American and Japanese visitors, selling trolls and knitted stuff.

For an experience of what has been, there are two must-sees: the Schøtstuene and the Hanseatic Museum. The Schøtstuene is a small wooden building that served as an assembly room for the Hanseatic merchants. They came here to eat, drink, meet and teach their pupils. The dining/meeting hall with its large fireplace is especially worthwhile to take a look at.

The Hanseatic Museum, a few doors away also in a traditional building, shows how a Hanseatic merchant lived in the 18th century. His own rooms were nicely decorated, in contrast to those of the boys that were still in training. They could even be locked up in their beds at night by their supervisor!

The world heritage sites I like best are those that require some effort to get to. That's also the case with Urnes: a flight, a local bus, a hired car and a small ferry (and 4 hours) took me there.

The Urnes church lies high on the slopes. Because of its relatively small size, it cannot be seen from below. After a steep climb, you are rewarded by this sight that is both very familiar (I've seen lots of pictures) and striking (its almost perfect shape).

Visitors to the site (and they are relatively numerous in summer) can go inside the church with a guide. An explanation is given about its history. That it has been rebuilt several times but that there are some original elements left. And that it is still used as a church, once a month during the summer months.