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Honestly I'm not 100% I went to the right place although I think I did. Pictures just look different than the previous reviews which could come down to them being at the wrong place or it just looking so various at different seasons. For the second I can't say much and the first is tricky. There are MANY mud cones around Azerbaijan and Baku alone. You tend to visit this by coming to the rock art with mud cones in the first place and there are rock arts at the north of the city next to the tar lakes - well I think you understand that these mud cones aren't special enough on its own. I think it's cool to visit one either way. Google map didn't have ANY information on this place so I just guessed it. Turns out OpenStreetMap has the place in a funny way and it's quite accurate. Surely the parking lot is just a large area of gravel rocks that are used by the trucks to get refilled but the parks are maintained, the gazebo is open. You cannot officially walk up to the volvano (oh sorry...mud cone) but obviously you just do it anyway. I confirmed beforehand with a trucker filling his car who unfortunately guessed I'm American but yes, you are at a mud cone and you need to walk over the hill to see it. Before you get here, by the way, the road takes you through lots of gas pumps, a …

Hi everyone, this is my first review, so any comments are welcome. Reviews from other travelers have been helping me to plan my trips for the last two years, so I will be glad if my text inspires other peoples managing their own adventures.

For the last year I have been wanting to visit one of the beech forests of Europe, but it did not happen over several trips (the closest chance I got was during my stay in Brussels, but Christmas is not the proper time for forests!!!).

So when I was planning my trip by rented car from Zadar to Istria I realized that now it is a time to make stop in either Paklenica NP or Northern Velebit NP: both national parks are parts of both the UNESCO site "Primeval Beech Forests" and the UNESCO tenttive site "Velebit Mountain".

The entrance to Paklenica is located right next to the coastal road, so the choice was not difficult.

Just driving through the main (southern) entrance to the park and walking forth and back along the gorge stream seemed boring to me. So I studied the map in the brochure on the park website and found that I can get to the middle of the creek along the trail down the western slope. And by Google Maps I found a parking area not far from one of trails.

All I needed was to find (or make) a shortcut between the road and the trail.

Indeed, I have found a …

After visiting the grande theater in Manaus I also managed to visit the theater in Belem on my trip this time around. Both were built during the Amazon Rubber Boom of the late 19th. If I remember correctly the theater wasn't very popular before but now stands as a marvel and enriches Belem a lot.

For the one in Belem you must join a guided tour that takes you through the lobby and the main theater. It didn't go up due to renovation so I don't know if you normally visit there. I think you mainly go there for photos which most people were interested in taking anyway. The program starts every hour between 9am and 5pm (sans 1pm) and only mornings at the weekend. It's probably also closed for events so check first. On Wednesdays you even get free entrance which happened for me but it's only 10 real (5 with discount) so wouldn't be the end of the world. Note that there is a 40 people limit and they didn't seem to care about that on Wednesday as they don't even hand out tickets although they might care if it's A LOT more than 40. The lobby doesn't hold many people and the main area gets a bit tight at ~100.

So my tour was in two parts. First you assemble in the lobby, get a talk from the guide and can take photos for a good 5 minutes before there's MORE talk. The lobby is very nice …

This is a multiple UNESCO site that I really liked because it requires a mental connection between several places that are several dozen kilometers apart from each other. Upstream, the catchment areas called nymphaeums or water temples, of which the one at Zaghouan is a part, downstream in Carthage the cisterns of the Maalga and the Antonine baths, and between the two the Zaghouan aqueduct itself.

The aqueduct has nothing to envy of that of the Pont du Gard in France, which is 48 m high and 50 km long; that of Zaghouan is 34 m at its highest for a length which totals almost three times that of the Pont du Gard, which is a technical feat comparable to the amphitheater of El-Djem.

But what is most interesting about Zaghouan is precisely the interconnection between these three elements: the capture of the water source, its transport, and its use in Carthage.I discuss the Antonine Baths on the page dedicated to Carthage.

Coming from Tunis, a beautiful, long, aerial section of the aqueduct is visible along the P3 road. It's hard to miss, as it marks the landscape. It's worth turning off the road to the left when the aqueduct bends and following it until the road leaves it. It's established that the aqueduct supplied water to the city of Carthage, but what about agriculture? It seems not.

The Zaghouan Water Temple is located a little outside the city of the same name, at the foot of the Jebel. The …

Tourism is a funny thing. While the island of Bali in Indonesia is swamped by tourists, when we visited the old coal mining town of Sawahlunto on Sumatra, we were probably the only foreign tourists in town, despite the world heritage listing. That even applied in parts of Padang, the large coastal city nearby.

Sawahlunto owes its existence to the coal mining that took place around and even under the town. It was mainly constructed by the Dutch in the 19th century and their stamp still lies on the town, with many Dutch colonial era buildings and a church visible on a stroll around the centre of town, alongside industrial remains. We stayed a night at the historic KHA Ombilin Hotel, part of the listing.

There are multiple museums dotted around town, that supplemented our self-guided walk around the town. Each costs 50,000 IDR for foreigners and the staff will insist on guiding you through them. Our favourite was the Museum Lubang Tambang Mbah Soero, which includes a tour of an old mining tunnel. The Museum Goedang Ransoem was a former public kitchen - quite unexpected and intriguing. The Museum Kerati at the train station wasn't as interesting, except for the old steam engine.

We enjoyed our visit to the town more than expected, partially because it's just a relaxed place and easy to walk around. Come night fall, there's also plenty of food stalls around Lapangan Segitiga park and near Terminal Sawahlunto, the bus terminal. It's hard to imagine …

Aachen is an overall beautiful city, with green areas, picturesque streets and a lively atmosphere. Of course the highlight there is the Aachen Cathedral, a magnificently preserved building, that showcases the grandeur the city once had. As a Greek, the inside of the church really reminded me of Byzantine churches, with mosaics adorning the walls, while the cupola had a more western twist. Still, this is not a church that someone will expect to find in such northern latitudes. I think it is a really great roadtrip from Cologne, and if anyone finds themselves there, should drive to Aachen.

We stayed at the Continental Hotel, which is convenient as it is located across the street from the Aghlabids pools, where the city's tourist office is located. Just go up to the terrace of the tourist office to get a good view of the pools, which were unfortunately being treated when we came.

After paying the entrance fee (12 DT) to the various medieval sites of Kairouan: The Aghlabid Basins, the Great Mosque, the Okba Mosque, the zaouïa of Sidi Abid el-Ghariani, Abi Zâmaa and Sidi Amor Abada and the Museum of Islamic Art of Raqqada, we went to the Great Mosque on foot.

I absolutely wanted to visit one of the highest spiritual places of Islam since this mosque was built only in 48 of the Hegira calendar (670 AD). The building that we admire now dates from 836 AD and served as a model for many other mosques. I was afraid of being swept away by a swirling crowd of pilgrims, but it was not the case: no one was there. The central courtyard is accessible provided that the bare legs of these gentlemen are hidden under a square of cloth lent at the entrance and a hijab for the ladies on their heads. The staircase in the courtyard where Muslim women take pictures (The photo here) has no technical use. Its flight of steps would be symbolic because it leads nowhere except infinity, a theme that Islamic geometric patterns take up on ceramic tiles: these patterns have …

The road from festive Sousse to spiritual Kerouan is not very long, so we made a detour to El-Djem via the P1 motorway to see its famous Roman amphitheater.

We parked Wilson's mobile home in what seemed to us to be the town centre and continued our walk, when at the end of the street we had taken, the exterior facade of the amphitheater appeared to us like a tall, spectacular stone cliff in the village..

This surprise was well worth a barbecue grilled right on the street, where we took the time to admire the splendor of the monument and its 3 classical registers. Sated, we entered the building (12 dinars with the museum entrance fee) (The introductory photo: 36 m high).

Modern concrete stands were poured at the site where the amphitheater was demolished by the Bey of Tunis around 1750 BC, thus restoring the monument to its original complete form. A very good idea, because from there, one has a beautiful view of the whole. The constructive complexity of the building with its arches and vaults superimposed on 4 floors and the ingenuity of the Roman engineer-architects (238 BC) is obvious. In this respect, and given its gigantic size and its good state of preservation, this monument is exceptional.

The amphitheater could not be seen without passing by the archaeological museum on the ancient city of Thysdrus, a city making its profit from olive oil. It is easily reached on foot in a few minutes. It is …

We've long been meaning to visit the Sumatran Tropical Rainforest WHS - after all, it's a relatively "close" site for Australians, but we never quite managed to plan a visit. After all, the site covers a huge expanse, with three national parks included, and a lot of options for a visit. Last year we almost booked at visit to Gunung Leuseur NP, the most touristed option and not too far from Medan Airport, but then realised our dates overlapped with Eid al-Fitr, when our selected tour operator closed.

We finally made a booking for mid-2025 with the same tour operator (Sumatra EcoTravel), choosing to book a two day trek in the jungle, to up our chances of spotting orang-utans, sandwiched between two nights staying at their cottages in Bukit Lawang, the touristy gateway town. The high season is June to September, coinciding with the "dry" season, hopefully lessening our chances of leeches. (Although an afternoon storm is still likely!)

While the camp where we stayed overnight was rustic, we were spoiled by our beautiful riverside room, complete with balcony hammock, and the plentiful food provided (especially the colourful fruit trays!) After the long transfer from Medan Airport, we relaxed on the balcony for the afternoon, and were feeling energetic at the departure of our trek the next morning.

There was previously an orang-utan rehabilitation centre at Bukit Lawang, that closed 20 years ago, meaning it's highly likely to spot semi-wild orang-utans nearby, even on a day walk. We spotted our …

Waterton and Glacier were, by themselves, two of my favorite national parks that I visited during my July 2024 trip to North America. Together, they form a huge complex of exceptionally scenic wilderness with rich and varied ecosystems, preserving the area of the Triple Divide (of course, this is debated on, depending on whether the Hudson Bay falls under the Atlantic or Arctic Ocean; if it is considered Atlantic, the true Triple Divide is in Jasper NP). It is not just where catchment basins of oceans meet, but also the biomes of both sides of the North American Cordilleras, nowhere better visualized than in the approach to Waterton coming from Calgary, where prairie dramatically gives way to the towering Rockies. As my first sight of this international park, this already gave me the impression of significant enough difference between it and the Canadian Rockies WHS to warrant a separate inscription.

Visually, Waterton-Glacier is quite distinct and with a rather understated beauty. Noteworthy are the more prevalent iron deposits coloring the mountains various shades of reddish, all the way to the stunning Red Rock Canyon in Waterton NP, where oxidized and unoxidized iron create a stunning banding of red and green, respectively. The glacial features are extremely varied, some features wide and others dramatically rugged. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I class them on par with Yosemite. My favorite view must have been the Wild Goose Island in St. Mary, Glacier NP, and I consider it one of the …

We stayed two half-days in Sousse, and we were right to stay there for the night because having parked Wilson's mobile home on the seafront, we were able to witness how Tunisians spend their holidays on the seaside coast. As soon as night falls, it's nothing but a string of rattling cars, horse-drawn carriages, and little tourist trains decorated with fairy lights, in which Tunisians dance and ululates to the sound of tambourines.

The city's main colonial street connects the sea to the medina. We entered through the breach the French blasted in the rampart with cannon fire in 1943. All along the seawall and Avenue H. Bourguiba, many abandoned hotels are reminders of the city's rich tourist past. If one of the few touts who still exist accosts you, firmly say a polite phrase like, "We like freedom" or "We like to be alone," and they won't insist: the streets of the medina, more airy than in Tunis, will then open up to you.

Directly to the left is the Great Mosque and a little further on is the Ribat (whose function I didn't quite understand: a fort, a mosque, a madrasa?). The two monuments look quite similar, but the entrance fee for each of them is worth spending (5 and 10 dinars). They are very typical of coastal medieval medinas, with their austere and squat defensive appearance.

The next day we visited the Dar Essid house-museum (entrance fee what they think you'll pay) and the archaeological museum housed …

The sand glistened like mercury ahead of me, wet and silver. Mussel and razor clam shells crunched beneath my feet as I walked, following a line of gull footprints, the only tracks in an otherwise trackless expanse. Rivulets of water still flowed out to the west, to the visible blue that marked the edge of the North Sea. In the other direction a far-distant, darker, fringe of land seemed to shimmer like a mirage across the sand. And behind me stood the bus from which I had just disembarked, twenty minutes off shore.

If you type in ‘Koresand’ on Google Maps, it finds the location perfectly, but just shows it as an uninterrupted patch of blue sea south west of the Danish island of Mandø. I feel that the maps used on this website do me a bit dirty by more accurately showing what looks to be a patch of sand, with even a couple of tracks making their way onto it. This was where I was.

The Danish section of the Wadden Sea has been rather under-discussed here compared to the original Dutch and German sections which is rather a surprise as it can be accessed very easily. The entire western coast of Jutland from south of Esbjerg down to the German border falls within the Wadden Sea National Park (Nationalpark Vadehavet). And a visitor’s centre, the Vadehavscentret, sits just outside the village of Vester Vedsted, less than 20 minutes drive south west of the pretty …

While planning a short trip to Indonesia and Malaysia, I decided it would be easy to add in a quick trip to FRIM Selangor on one of our transits through KLIA2 airport. At the time it was still tentative and looking unlikely to be added to the list, but of course like many of the nominated sites in 2025 it was of course added - making the stopover a must!

We've previously visited Kuala Lumpur multiple times, hence just deciding to visit only this site. At first I looked into public transport, including the speedy KLIA Express train, but the quickest and cheapest option (for 2 people) is a Grab taxi. It was about a 70 minute taxi ride each direction from KLIA2 with a little traffic on a Saturday, for the cheap price of 80-90 MYR each way (16-18 EUR).

While advance registration for the walks within the forest is necessary, no booking is required to visit Kepong Botanic Gardens and the Forest Skywalk. Just be warned both are closed on Fridays and the limited hours for the Forest Skywalk, including a long lunch break. Entry is 5 MYR to the botanic gardens and 40 MYR for the Forest Skywalk, for foreigners, plus an extra 10 MYR for the taller tower along the Skywalk.

The Forest Skywalk offers impressive views of the trees below and the adjacent protected section of the park. (Briefly opened to the public during COVID, but shut again after visitors interfered in experiments, such as …

Gracehill had been on my list ever since it first showed up on the Tentative list, by virtue of it joining The Giant's Causeway and Bru Na Boinne as the only three sites that a Northern Irish person can make an affordable daytrip to. That being my sole drive to go here should give you some idea of where my expectations were! On the customary pre-visit research and first steps into the site, it felt like nothing more than a particularly pleasant village the likes of which you can find anywhere here.

That's all a roundabout way to say that this site demands a tour. The village's residents have put together such a thing, normally by request but with six public tours in the Summer months. By virtue of social anxiety I went with the latter option and ended up exploring the place with a half-dozen other people, plus my partner. The tours are provided by locals - certified locals, but locals nonetheless - and the casual nature it showed whenever she had a friendly conversation with someone strimming a hedge mid-tour! The main benefit of this was that the guides were also involved with the nomination process and give a bit of behind the scenes that a regular tour guide wouldn't give.

My opinion of the site is probably a lot more generous than it would be otherwise because of the tour. The informational signage is restricted to one room with a lot of paragraphs which are always (at …

From Sidi Bou Said, we circled Cape Bon clockwise to reach Kekouane by midday. The location is well signposted on the main road to Kelibia.

The site is very well equipped, with guarded parking and a small, very informative museum. The model of the Punic and exclusively Punic city is very educational and gives a good idea of ​​the size of the city in the 3rd century BC. The number of Punic works of art presented is limited, but they are very beautifully crafted. It would seem that the excavations are not exhaustive. Do the unexcavated areas correspond to the gaps in the model?

As for the excavation site, its setting is so magnificent that one would almost want to play leapfrog with the base of the walls that remained in place: the ruins, a few trees that provide vertical counterpoint, the sea in the distance, a cloud that has come to the wrong place, the sound of the surf and the singing of Tunisian scouts in the breeze (Introductory photo). Everything is peaceful.

I'm not going to show the image of Els where we see the goddess Tanit on the ground welcoming the stranger, but it's one of the most sympathetic images that we can see on the site. I was also very surprised to see the great know-how of the builders of the time, with these sitz baths covered in red plaster and the floor coverings so accomplished!

For van life enthusiasts, it is possible to sleep in …

Let’s go straight to the point : it would be extremely unlikely for this site, lingering on Romania’s Tentative list since 1991 (since ever ?) to be inscribed one day. The area has been recognized as a UNESCO Geopark in 2015 and I believe it is fine that way and more appropriate than World Heritage status. It has a very low support rate for inscription on this website. That may be the reason for the absence of review so far – a good reason to write one !

As often with such (paleontological) sites, there is not a lot to see “in situ”. The location marked on this website is correct and accurate, as is the location named “Dinosaurs Valley” on Google Maps. You drive through the small village of Sanpetru (sometimes written as Sinpetru), then you park-as-you-can on the edge of the narrow road, and there you are : 20 meters from the road, a board with images of dinosaurs ; 50 meters further, an outcrop on a hill side with a few layers of rocks where the fossils were found, and that’s it, a 10-minute visit.

The day before, we had visited the Home of the Geopark in Hateg, a city with overwise no reason to stop at. The place has limited opening hours and days (during summer 2025 : Wed, Fri, Sat), we called in front of our visit to confirm someone would be present. Located in a regular house in the centre of the city (no …

I spent a day in Belem to see the port including the market and the theater. There is lots to do and you can easily spend hours. I took a motorcycle from the northern airport to the theater and then walked over to the port. From the Estação das Docas (~15-20min max) you almost reached the market and it's a pleasure to walk along here. It's also cooler inside and along the cleaner parts. Once you reach the market it gets crowded, hotter, louder and definitely SMELLIER. I think the smell was the worst part of it all. I arrived before lunch and most of the fish was already prepared with plenty of dead fish just thrown aside. Worse even is that lots of birds go over these remains and it creates more smell.

I don't find much special here. Yes, it's large and has many things but I was looking for a place to chill and just sit down with some snacks but that wasn't possible. The snack bars are kinda dirty and still hot, no place to relax. In fact nobody was there. When I approached one the vendor was super eager to get me to sit down and eat which wasn't my thing at all. There are many sections including food, clothes, art etc. I feel that as a modern consumer I don't visit markets for this anymore. I did go to the markets in Lima and Cusco as examples that I don't avoid them but I …

I visited this serial nomination in two parts. First off I saw São João Fortress in Rio just next to the Sugarloaf Mountain. You can see it from the airport but it's still a bit far away. Do note that there are only certain times to visit this otherwise military-used fortress. I think besides the military use I think it would certainly be included in the final list of fortress sites and thus it would make for an easy tick while you are already in Rio.

There are also a couple of fortresses south of São Paulo. Additional "easy ticks" are in Recife and Forte São Marcelo which is pretty much next to the historical center of Salvador you would visit for another UNESCO site. I am also curious how the one at the other end of the country next to Bolivia is but you'd have to go along the river and it's quite far from the Pantanal lodges after all. Finally, I also visited Santa Cruz de Itamaracá Fort which is north of Recife. I was already out for Olinda and the Itacoatiaras of Ingá River rock wall so it wasn't the worst of detours on paper but the traffic in Recife is pretty horrible so I would advise against this idea next time for that alone. Second reason would be that arriving on the "beautiful" island of Itamaraca also means tourist touts keep wanting you to rent stuff or eat at certain restaurants.

For those interested you can …

We parked Wilson the mobile home in the parking lot of the Sidi Bou Saïd marina.

And early in the morning we climbed a staircase to visit the village as the sun rose over the Mediterranean.

The village of Sidi Bou Said is the archetypal picture-postcard village that is so popular with tourists, Tunisians too, since they themselves say that Sidi Bou Said is "the pearl of Tunisia." So, the day before, we had to turn back in front of the people gathered at the entrance to the village.

Sidi Bou Saïd is a bit like the model of a Tunisian coastal village, clean and well-maintained, with its discreet guesthouses hidden behind a door painted yellow or blue, but that's it, you quickly get around it. What distinguishes this village from others? Its freshness, its whiteness, its purity? Is this what could justify its inclusion on the heritage list? Isn't it a bit overrated?

But let's not be harsh because in the morning when there are still no people, what could be more delicious than sipping a coffee when the establishment opens, a gazelle horn for breakfast, with a view overlooking the rooftops, Carthage and the Bay of Tunis!

We can understand the painters Paul Klee and August Macke coming here to drag their slippers, to capture on their canvases the harmony of the volumes and this very special light!

On this subject, what's great about being interested in culture is the connections between different places, different themes, different eras: …

After picking up my better half from Tunis airport, who I had missed so much during the first part of my trip to Tunisia, we went as a happy couple to the medina to spend a night at the Dar Ya hotel.

Having abandoned Wilson the mobile home in the guarded Mohammed V parking lot along the eponymous boulevard, we walked up the prestigious Habib Bourguiba Boulevard and then Avenue de France to the Bab el-Bahr gate, the main entrance to the medina from the French colonial city. Note that unlike Sousse and Kerouan, the walls of the medieval city (7th-16th century) were demolished at the end of the 19th century under the French protectorate.

How can you express your feelings once you've entered Jeema ez-Zitouna Street? The contrast between the colonial city and the medina is as strong as the Harissa of Cap Bon. The street is narrow and cluttered with all sorts of things, especially touristy ones, but it's worth pushing your way to the Great Mosque, then the western, northern, and southern parts of the city, which are more confidential and residential.

We stayed two days in the medina and you have to devote that much time to visiting it, because, yes, the medina has more than 700 remarkable monuments, most of them Islamic, in an extremely limited space, but they still have to be open to the public! And so for some of them we had to try twice, with no guarantee of success!

Luckily we …