The Historic Center of Rome is probably one of the most significant, historical, and impressive world heritage sites in the world. Like the cities of Kyoto, Jerusalem, and Angkor, there is a bevy of incredible sites sprinkled across Rome—and much of Italy for that matter—that could be named world heritage sites on their own right. …
May 7, 2007, 12:30pm I’m on Easter Island! Let me repeat that. I’m on Easter Fricking Island!!! Easter Island is everything Tahiti is not. Few tourists. Few people. Reasonable humidity. Isolated. Cheap. Clean. I’m staying at a guesthouse called Chez Cecilia run by a woman named, you guessed it, Cecilia. The price is very reasonable …
Over my years on the road, several times I have found myself circling back to the Land of the Long White Cloud (a common nickname and translation for Aotearoa, the Maori name for the country). New Zealand is a country best known to some as Middle Earth (yet another fun fact and a nickname given …
The Church of the Nativity and nearby pilgrimage route in Bethlehem is a cultural UNESCO World Heritage Site in Palestine. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2012 as a religious/Christian structure. However, it was also added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Danger that same year due to the damage incurred at …
I am not a foodie. I wish I were a foodie in the same way that I wish I could play piano or speak Italian, but I am not. I believe I could exist quite happily like Robocop on nothing more than a rudimentary baby food-like paste to keep my organic systems functioning, provided that …
As I have previously written, I’m not a big fan of travel guidebooks. That does not, however, mean I am not a fan of books. I am a voracious reader and during my almost three years on the road I have consumed so many books that carrying them around became a serious issue for me …
October 14 marks the 12th anniversary of my very first blog post on this website. I mark this date as the start of my travel blog. My first post came almost a year and a half after registering the domain name for the website and 5 months before I actually turned over the keys to …
From the World Heritage inscription for the Palau de la Música Catalana and Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona: These are two of the finest contributions to Barcelona’s architecture by the Catalan art nouveau architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The Palau de la Música Catalana is an exuberant steel-framed structure full of light and space and …
From the World Heritage inscription for the Vizcaya Bridge: Vizcaya Bridge straddles the mouth of the Ibaizabal estuary, west of Bilbao. It was designed by the Basque architect Alberto de Palacio and completed in 1893. The 45-m-high bridge with its span of 160 m, merges 19th-century ironworking traditions with the then-new lightweight technology of twisted …