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Chateau D’Oex Balloon Festival
Imagine 50 balloons rising simultaneously from the glistening snow of the Swiss Alps, soaring above 10,000 – foot peaks. This spectacle takes place every January at the Chateau D’Oex Winter Alpine Balloon Festival in Gstaad, Switzerland, an event that draws balloonists from more than fifteen countries. It’s ten days of special events, including a dirigible [...]
California’s Channel Islands: Seal and Sea Lion Playground
North America’s largest sea lion and sea elephant rookeries are within easy reach of the West Coast. California’s Channel Islands National Park, perhaps the best place in the Lower 48 to view seals, sea lions, and elephant seals, is just a few hours’; travel from Los Angeles. The most popular Channel Islands tour is a [...]
County Kerry, Ireland
Ireland has been called Western Europe’s only third-world country, but the upside for cyclists is a dearth of car and truck traffic and a feeling of remoteness from modern ways. Back roads, velvety mountains, fishing villages, pubs—and everyone speaks English. There’s no place in Europe a cyclist can feel more welcomed by the local populace.
DeRussy Now
Today DeRussy serves as a recreation center for military past and present. Its beaches and most other facilities are open to the public and the wide sand here offers some of the best lazing ground in the island. Now all DeRussy needs is protection from the eyes of hungry developers that see the land as [...]
Architectural Ensemble of The Trinity-Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad
Brief description: This is a striking example of a working Orthodox monastery, with military features typical of the 15th to 18th centuries, the period during which it developed. The main church of the Lavra, the Cathedral of the Assumption, echoing the Kremlin Cathedral of the same name, contains the tomb of Boris Godunov. Among the [...]
Cultural & Historic Ensemble of the Solovetsky Islands
Brief description: The Solovetsky archipelago is composed of six islands in the western part of the White Sea, covering 300 square kilometres. Inhabited since the 5th century B.C., important traces of human life from as far back as the 3rd millennium B.C. can be found there. Since the 15th century, the archipelago has been the [...]
Haeinsa Temple Changgyong P’ango, the Depositories for the Tripitaka Koreana Woodblocks
Brief description: The Temple of Haeinsa, on Mount Kaya, is home to the Tripitaka Koreana, the most complete collection of Buddhist texts, engraved on 80,000 woodblocks between 1237 and 1249. The buildings of Changgyong P’ango, which date from the 15th century, were constructed to house the woodblocks, which are also revered as an exceptional work [...]
Historic Centre of Evora
Brief description: This museum-city, whose roots go back to Roman times, reached its Golden Age in the 15th century, when it became the residence of the Portuguese kings. Its unique quality stems from its white-washed houses decorated with azulejos and wrought iron balconies, 16th to 18th century. Its monuments decisively influenced Portuguese architecture in Brazil.
Peru: Manu National Park
Brief description: This immense 1.5 million-hectare park has successive tiers of vegetation rising from 150 to 4,200 metres above sea-level. The tropical forest in the lower tiers contains an unrivalled variety of animal and plant species. Some 850 species of birds have been identified and rare species such as the giant otter and the giant [...]
Peru: Historic Centre of Lima
Brief description: Although severely damaged by earthquakes (in 1940, 1966, 1970 and 1974), this “City of Kings” was, until the middle of the 18th century, the capital and most important city of the Spanish dominions in South America. Many of its buildings, such as the San
