A building partially covered with real gold.
Built in 1397 as a retirement villa for Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Kinkaku is a three-story building, with the last two, fully covered with pure gold leaf. The temple was set on fire by a monk in 1950, but it was restored and the new gold coating dating from 1987 is much thicker than the original one.
Kinkaku is one of Japan’s most beautiful attractions and it serves as a “shariden”, a place where relics of Buddha are stored.
Oh my God, the Chinese have stolen Venice.
Well, not literally stolen, but they copied it on a smaller scale. I’m talking about the Venetian Macao in China, the world’s largest casino and the third largest building in the world. It has more than 1000 slot machines and over 600 gaming tables open 24/7. So it’s safe to say you’ll find a table to lose your money at.
The Venetian is a huge complex with the central building standing over 40 stories high and costing $1,8 billion to build. It also has a smaller replica of the famous, romantic city of Venice which proves once again that Asians love to copy western culture.
This is one of the most beautiful glaciers in the world.
Named after explorer Francisco Moreno, Perito Moreno glacier is one of only three Patagonian glaciers that are not retreating. The 30 km-long ice formation sometimes advances into the L-shaped”Lago Argentino” acting as a natural dam and separating its two halves. The water on one side of the river rises with up to 30 meters higher above the normal level of the lake, in its attempt to brake the icy barrier. The enormous amount of pressure produced by the pushing waters sometimes breaks the frozen dam in an extraordinary event. This glacier rupture cycle isn’t regular, it occurs between once a year and once in more than a decade, but if you happen to see it, it’s totally worth the wait.
The Perito Moreno Glacier is part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the world’s third largest fresh water reserve.
One of the oldest chapels in all of France.
But age is not what makes it special, but it’s placement, on an 85 meters-high volcanic spire. Christians have to walk up 268 steps carved in the small mountain, to reach the place where Joan of Arc’s mother Isabelle Romee supposedly came to pray once.
Saint Michel d’Aiguile was built in 962 in Le Puy-en-Velay, a beautiful little French town also popular for its Notre Dame cathedral and it looks like it’s watching over it from above. It is quite a sight to behold.
Would you let someone jump over your infant like this?
Known as El Colacho in Spain, the Baby-Jumping Festival is a popular event that takes place in Castillo de Murcia near Burgos, every year since 1620. It’s basically all about infants laying on a blanket and adults dressed as devils jumping over them i a procession that’s supposed to cleanse the little ones of all evil doings. Doesn’t sound like it works, but hey who am I to contradict tradition? I just wonder if in history any of the devils tripped and fell over the poor babies…
I for one wouldn’t have my kid jumped over by a grown-up like this, even if they’d allow me to keep my hand over him as protection. If that guy falls my hand isn’t going to break his fall, the baby might though…
The Sedlec Ossuary ( Kostnice Sedlec) is a Roman Catholic Church in Sedlec, The Czech Republic, famous for its unusual, organic decorations.
Unlike other churches that like to use religious paintings and religious jewelery as decorations, this one uses between 40,000 and 70,000 human bone. Built especially as an ossuary in 1400, the macabre decorating started in 1870 when the Schwarzenberg family hired a woodcarver to arrange all the heaps of bones in order. You can see the result in the photos, but just so u know, there are 4 giant bell-shaped mounds in each corner of the chapel, an enormous chandelier which contains at least one of every bone in one’s body in the center of the chapel, and a signature of the artist, executed in bone, of course, and other “works of art”.
Didn’t know they had deserts in Europe.
La Dune de Pila, as the French call it, is the largest sand dune in Europe. It’s located in the Arachon Bay, 60 km from the city of Bordeaux, and it is a very popular tourist attraction in France. The dune is 3 km long, 500 m wide and it has a maximum height of 117 m above sea level.
The Dune of Pyla is a recent formation, born in the XVII century through accumulation of Aeolian sand on a transverse dune. Each year, the dune covers about 8,000 square meters and at this rate, in 40 years the camping and the road at the bottom of the slope will be completely covered by sand.
What’s amazing is that people pay to be close to these man-eaters.
This is Cango Wildlife Ranch in South Africa, a unique endangered animal shelter where people can dive in a pool with crocodiles and get close enough to see their teeth. Anyone over 12 years-old is allowed to dive into the cleverly designed cage that keeps the adrenalin junkies safe from the crushing bite of the crocodiles, but all children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.
There is a small opening at about half the height of the cage where crocs can actually get their noses into the cage, close enough for you to touch them, but thankfully it’s to tight for them to open their mouth. Some activists may complain about how the crocodiles are treated but the organizers at The Cango Wildlife Ranch say that no harm comes to the animals and that they just want to show people how magnificent the crocodile is in its natural environment, so they can understand why it is such a perfect predator.
How would you like to see what people in New York are doing all across from London?
The Telectroscope was born from a very old, wacky idea of digging a tunnel to the other side of the world. Many of us had this idea or at least saw it in practice in children’s cartoons but nobody was crazy enough to try it. Nobody except artist Paul St. George who actually did it…sort of. He came across a 19th century article where a reporter misspelled the word electroscope, a device that measures electrostatic charges, and even misunderstood what it does, saying it was a device for the suppression of absence. The idea was a big thing at the time and people’s imagination started working, so St. George thought he’d try to put it in practice.
The Telectroscopes built in London and New York allow passers-by to take a look at what people are doing on the other side of the devices, not through a tunnel built between them but through a trans-Atlantic broadband network and HD cameras. So during the day Londoners can take a look at New York during the night and vice-versa.
The Telectroscope will be available for the public until June 15 and the company that created it wants to host special reunions between family and friends and even a marriage proposal from the other side of the Atlantic.
Read more on this incredible device right here
This is the world’s largest hourglass.
Unveiled on May 1st 2004 to commemorate Hungary’s entrance in the European Union, The Time Wheel is made out of red granite, steel and bullet-proof glass and it combines one of humanity’s most primitive time measuring devices with a very precise computer. It lies in Budapest near the entrance to City Park. The sand in the hourglass flows from one side of the device to the other for an entire year and the last grains are programmed to flow exactly at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The flow is then turned manually so that it can start measuring time for another year. It takes 45 minutes for 4 people to turn it 180 degrees using metal cables.
The Time Wheel hourglass was designed by Istvan Janaki.
It’s not exactly The Splitting of The Red Sea but it’s pretty close.
Jindo Island, in South Korea, is host to one of the world’s most amazing natural phenomenons, called the Moses Miracle. Two times a year, during a low tide, a land path 2.8 kilometers long and 40 meters wide is revealed, uniting the islands of Jindo and Modo for a period of one hour. A festival is dedicated to this natural wonder and people from all around the world attend every year. However the Moses Miracle was largely unknown until 1975, when a French ambassador visited South Korea and wrote about in a French Newspaper.
The legend behind this Korean phenomenon goes like this: a Jindo village was attacked by tigers and all the villagers ran to Modo island for shelter. All, except for a helpless old woman who was left behind, out of despair she prayed to the Sea God, who split the sea and helped her escape the bloodthirsty animals.
The Moses Miracle just took place on May 18th.
Not many places offer this kind of privacy.
Built between 1861 and 1880 to protect Portsmouth from French naval attacks, No Man’s Land Fort was last used for military purposes during WWII and in later years it has been transformed into a luxury hotel with 21 rooms, indoor heated swimming pool and 2 helipads. But due to multiple problems, including finding a dangerous virus in the water supply in 2004, this incredible location ended up for sale in 2005 and 2007. But the 4 million British pounds price tag kept buyers away and in the meantime the owning company went bankrupt. Now the building is on auction again, while the owner lies in prison.
If you have the money, No Man’s Land Fort is worth a look, it’s 81 meters in diameter and 18 meters in height, it’s built out of granite blocks and reinforced with a thick iron plating and if its luxury doesn’t convince you, at least you know that if you ever have to fend off a naval attack, you have a chance.
If you’ve ever smelled sulfur you understand why I call it hell.
This is Kawah Ijen on Java island, Indonesia, a unique location that sulfur calls home. Ijen crater is a yellow-greenish pit where locals that people go down in every day and come out with over 80 kilos of sulfur on their backs. personally I don’t know how they can handle the stinky fumes, but i guess hunger can drive a man to do anything. Near the crater there’s a beautiful acid lake, but as you might imagine, it has no inhabitants, the sulfur made sure of that.
You probably need a bike to make your way through the streets of this city.
This is Shibam, one of the must-see cities of Yemen, situated in the middle of the desert it stands out like a skyscraper oasis surrounded by a thick, stone wall. It is indeed a sight to behold, but its beauty is not the topic of this story, its tightness, on the other hand, is. All the buildings are very slim yet, at the same time, seem to be glued to one-another, it looks like someone had a limited amount of space to build on and tried to get as many buildings in. The streets are extremely narrow and dark because of the tall buildings but they are extremely full of life, full of tourists and merchants that fit into the picture perfectly.
Kind of like the statues on Easter Island aren’t they?
Manpupuner is a mysterious site in the northern Ural mountains, made out of seven rock towers bursting out of the flat plateau, also known as the “7 strong men“. Manpupuner is a very popular attraction in Russia, but not on an international level and information regarding its origin is scarce. We now however that their height and abnormal shapes make the top of these rock giants inaccessible even to experienced rock-climbers. Manpupuner is very hard to reach, it lies in a very harsh environment, but once there you’ll be able to enjoy a view unique in the whole world.
People who have visited this incredible site, say they have no cravings for water, food or rest, they just want to contemplate the 30-80 meter rock towers, where natives say spirits used to gather in ancient times.
