Guide to UNESCO World Heritage Sites
![Buddha’s Birthday – Lotus Lantern Festival [videos] pt.2/2](https://i0.wp.com/www.travelworldheritage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/DSC07712.jpg?resize=735%2C375&ssl=1 "Buddha’s Birthday – Lotus Lantern Festival [videos] pt.2/2")
Buddha’s birthday comes with a lot of celebrations, including the fantastic parade across Jongno during the Lotus Lantern Festival. If you missed the last post on the festival, check it out here. Thankfully, I was in a good spot to take some videos of the whole thing. Here are three of the best ones!
If you liked the picture of the fire-breathing dragon Read more
Buddhism is one of the oldest religions in the world, tracing its history back to the birth of the Buddha, which means “the enlightened one,” 2556 years ago. In Korea, it is a national holiday, which thankfully landed on a Friday this year. It was pretty cool to have a three day weekend, but the festivities aren’t just about having a day off (even if it is a nice perk).
The Lotus Lantern Festival is one of my favorites in Korea, highlighted by its fantastic Read more
You may not be an absolute novice, but might be a beginner looking for a more efficient way to plan a trip. ‘Travel Planning for Beginners’ is the second part of a 5 part series that explores travel planning for novice, beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert travelers. If you missed the first ‘novice traveler’ post, check it out. In this guide, I will take the same approach of going through the steps as in the ‘novice’ guide, but add more options since I assume you have at least some experience booking and planning your own trips by now.
Again, this guide is with the assumption that you want to travel longer, more often, and with less money. Here are additional assumptions I am under:
Assumption 1) You have traveled a few times at most.
Assumption 2) You are not rich, and budget is important when planning a trip.
Assumption 3) You have 1-2 weeks of free time for this trip.
Many people, like me, know when their vacation time is far in advance. This is both good and bad. The good part is that Read more
Location: Agrigento, Sicily, Italy
Visited: July 29th, 2012
Background and Opinion:
The Archaeological Area of Agrigento, also known as the Valley of the Temples (Valle Dei Templi) is one of the best preserved signs of Greek civilization and architecture still standing today. With the earliest building, the temple to Heracles, being built at around 890 BCE, the history of the temples spans almost 3000 years. By comparison, when Angkor Wat was completed, this site was almost two thousand years old! Just the fact that anything remains is a minor miracle. The main structure, the temple of the Concordia is almost completely intact giving one of the most insightful views into ancient Greek architecture.
The archaeological area is divided into two main zones across southern Agrigento. On one side of the road, upon entering the area, is the temple to Zeus and Polloux. Not much remains of these besides a few scattered columns and some large atlases, an architectural column in the shape of a man (possibly Zeus himself?) Despite this, it is still quite incredible to see. On the far side of the temples was a hidden garden which cost 5 Euro to enter. While I am going to label this a tourist trap, the jam that the lady in charge sold was definitely worth it (4 Euro). In fact, I am eating it as I type right now, almost a year later (maybe not a good idea).
The other side of the ruins has the more impressive and complete temples of Heracles, Hera, and Concordia.
Before coming across this Open Travel article, I actually had no idea Read more
I have a sneaking suspicion that people don’t really dislike the idea of a planned out trip, they just hate the work that comes with the ‘planning’ part of it. Many hard core travelers rave about how they just ‘go with the flow’ without plans and see where that takes them. Some of them even shun the idea of planning as ‘not real traveling,’ evident in this forum discussion. I like that idea too, but I like to have a back up plan as the pieces don’t always fall into place. I have seen countless of these travelers searching for things to do in the hostel they are staying in during the trip! To me, this is a complete waste of time which could be spent actually enjoying a new place. Trust me, you don’t want to be that guy who spends his day staring at a map and trying to figure it out the day of.
Recently, I was looking at my old pictures and found one of a map of Italy. It was a Google map which I made during the brainstorming part of my summer of 2012 trip to the land of Ancient Rome. When I was about to hit delete, I thought, “this is the kind of thing I wish I could find online to give me an idea of potential travel routes.” Then, it hit me, why not post my Italy itinerary of what I did on that trip, in the hopes that someone will find it useful, or entertaining at the very least.
Here is my Italy itinerary, with a map of my route along with a short run through of what happened.
[Note: Because I was traveling with my mother and brother, the itinerary was a lot more rigid than I prefer. Nonetheless, it went great!]
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July 28th
* Fly to Bologna, Italy for an overnight layover – This went as planned, with no time to Read more