Website Update #1

Julio Moreno Updates 2 Comments

Now that I have been doing this blog for 3 months (fine, I started mid February, but I would hate to remember that) it is time for an update. While I am not an expert in blogs, or website building, I didn’t start this blog just out of the blue. I did it with a goal and intent in mind, a “masterplan” if you will. However, as time progressed, I have found it necessary to modify some of the original plans (so much for ‘master’) to better fit the needs of my readers (all 5 of you) and my own physical limitations (explanations coming up). This is a no-frills (read: no pictures) list of the technical and stylistic updates since the inception of this site on Feb 13, 2013.

1) The website got its own domain in mid-March (www.travelworldheritage.com). I thought it would help my credibility, and have seen more traffic since! It might also be that I have more posts to choose from, but either way, it was a good move. I thought of doing this much later, but I am impulsive sometimes.

2) The “Kingdom Animalia” series will be discontinued after its fourth picture on May 4th, 2013. Why? I hate it and it sucks!!! Just kidding. Actually, quite the contrary. Besides Unesco World Heritage Sites, I love to travel to see, and hopefully capture animals and plants with my camera. I have such a stockpile of what I think are worthy animal pictures that I feel the need to share more of them more frequently. But, let’s be honest, this didn’t really fit the overall theme of this website. Long story short, I have decided to launch a new website sooner than expected: KingdomAnimals.com. While I wanted it to retain the “animalia,” that domain was taken!

and with that…
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Vatican City

Julio Moreno UNESCO World Heritage Site, Vatican City , , , , , 0 Comment
Vatican City

Basilica of St. PeterLocation: Vatican City (within  Rome, Italy)

Visited: August 3, 2013

Opinion and Background:

Vatican city is the center of the Roman Catholic Church, which has over one billion followers world wide. The only other groups with that many members are Facebook, Islam, China and India. Now go tell your friends this fun fact! (I actually don’t know if that’s accurate, so don’t quote me on that!) However, for such a powerful organization, Vatican City is also officially the smallest country in the world. Its entirety is located in the city of Rome, and is about 0.2 square miles (just over 100 acres).

Since the death of Jesus around the year 33 C.E., it is believed that Peter founded the church and effectively became the Bishop of Rome, a title now known as the Pope. Back then however, this did not mean what it does today. The pope was simply the bishop of the largest and most powerful city in the Roman Empire, and held no power above any other bishop.
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Travel Destinations With Deceiving Postcards

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Postcards, we’ve all seen them before. They can make even the most boring place look exciting. While this IS a negative post, it is not a rant. It is important to be realistic and even-headed with our travel experiences. I like to be as positive as possible, and while I have found something good about everywhere I’ve been, let’s face it, not all places live up to expectations.  In the past, I went anywhere that was recommended without double checking. These days, I am far more careful about where I spend my money, as I take drastic measures to save it, and am not as easily fooled by touched up ‘postcard pictures’ anymore. Here is a short list of three places that I thought were over-hyped. I am not saying the whole place is not worth visiting, but there are established ‘truths’ of each city that deserve a second opinion.

1) The Beaches of Los Angeles:

Fantastic beach in Tulum, Mexico
This is what a great beach looks like.

This is easy for me to say, since I was raised most of my life in LA. You become desensitized to a place if you spend way too much time in it. When I was little, I often went to the beaches with my family and of course, always had a great time. While in high school and college, I had the good fortune of being able to go whenever I wanted, living no more than 15 minutes from the shore. But, I didn’t. In fact, I sometimes made excuses not to go to the beach. “I’m just not a beach person,” I told myself. But, since I knew that the response to uttering those blasphemous words out loud would be, “Who the hell is not a beach person?” I kept my true feelings a secret.

I was wrong; I AM a beach person, just not an ‘LA beach’ person, and I think I know why. There is no nice way to say this: The beaches in LA really suck. LA has this aura of being a beach capital of the world. Now that I live abroad, I am often told that the main reasons people want to go to LA are the weather and the beaches. I agree with the first one. The weather is awesome, with over 300 days of sunshine. However, the idea that you can spend more time at the beach than at home needs a reality check.

People go to the beach in LA for the sand, not the water. The beaches in LA are cold, year round. I didn’t really realize this until I went to Mexico’s beaches where the water is so warm, it feels like a sauna. In LA’s beaches, you are told that “you will get used to the temperature soon enough.” Why should anyone have to “get used to it.” That is like eating liver and convincing yourself that it tastes great because ‘you are used to it’ now. In addition, while some of the beaches do an overall good job at keeping the sand and water litter-free, it is hardly transparent, and not that deep-blue you see in great beaches. LA has a nice beach culture, but if the water is too cold to swim and you can’t see your feet, it defeats the main purposes of a  good beach. Almost every other beach I have ever been to has been warmer, far more beautiful, and far less over-hyped.
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Nature Photo of the Week: Episode #3 – The Shy Cherry Blossom

Julio Moreno Uncategorized , , , 4 Comments

A Cherry Blossom Bud

Taken two weekends ago in the Changgyeong Palace in Seoul. They are cherry blossoms that are so close to blooming. It was kind of difficult to focus on the three buds in the front at the same time, but I like the picture anyways. That weekend was the famous Cherry Blossom Festival in Seoul. We decided to pull a fast one and avoid the massive crowds by coming here instead. I am told that there are many species of cherry blossoms. Does anyone know where I can find this information?

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Travel Tales #1: My First Traveling Trip!

Julio Moreno Travel Tales, United States , , , 0 Comment

Introduction:

Catch-22…that’s what travel blogs are. They’re unfair!

Before you have been anywhere, why start a blog? What will you write about? Have you even experienced anything worth blogging about? If you waited until you traveled a while, what happens to all of those past stories? Will people really want to read about something you did years ago? Will you even remember? I am starting this “Travel Tales” section of my blog in an attempt to recall past travel adventures. My regular WHS posts are impersonal, and while I am okay with that, it is only part of me. I want to teach people about World Heritage Sites and while I love the growth of TravelWorldHeritage so far, I also want to share a more personal side of me. These “Travel Tales” will hopefully share what happened, beyond the monuments.

Travel Tales #1: My First Travel Experience Ever – The Grand Canyon with Abraham

If you look at my list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites I have visited, you will find that I started traveling later than most. Many other bloggers have stories of how their family was huge on travel and how they went on trips all the time. I didn’t. I never went anywhere. Besides a single trip to Mexico, which was mostly to see family, I didn’t even leave my home state of California until I was nineteen!

Me at nineteen, evident by how much hair I have.

It was my sophomore year of college and I wanted to have an adventure. Something in me had suddenly triggered, and I kept pushing my best friend Abraham to go with me. I was not yet the type to do anything by myself, and like most people that age, I had conversations with my friends about pseudo trips we would “take some day.” While I still have such a list of trips to take, I never imagined that I would actually, “do that too.” We were all talk. Even when I had the money, spring break came and went and I was satisfied with visiting the town bowling alley. Yeah, yeah, maybe I was lame.
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