Sitting high on a hill overlooking the center of Lisbon, the Moorish Saint George Castle (or Castelo de São Jorge or Saint George Castle) looks exactly how a castle should look, with its imposing ramparts offering spectacular views over the city. Fortifications have existed on the site for thousands of…
Tayok Pye Temple (also sometimes written as Tayok-pyi) is one of the larger temples in the eastern part of the Bagan Archaeological Zone. It’s notable for intricate stucco ornamentation on the outside (much of it renovated) and its painted murals inside. Precisely when it was built isn’t clear, but it…
Lemyethna Pagoda is located in the eastern part of the Bagan Plain and was built in 1222. It features intricate figure frescoes on its interior walls and ceilings. Based on some of the ruins nearby, the temple was likely originally part of a monastery.1 Photos of Lemyethna Pagoda Photo by…
The gold stupa of the Dhammayazika Pagoda certainly stands out, especially at sunrise and sunset. But it wasn’t always this opulent. Until the 1990s when it was restored, it was basically deserted. The renovations included a gleaming gold finish for the massive stupa. They also destroyed some of the original…
Thatbyinnyu Temple is the tallest of the pagodas in Bagan, rising up the equivalent of about 21 stories. And being close to both Ananda Temple and Old Bagan, it’s one of the easiest to visit. Despite its prominence on the skyline and close proximity to the famous Ananda Temple and…
I really don’t know much about this temple. It doesn’t appear on any of the maps or guides I’ve come across. There aren’t any signs–at least, not in English–nearby. And there was no-one around to ask. I came across when out exploring by myself. It sits in an open dirt…
From fresh fish to cooking oil to betel nut, the Mani Sithu Market in downtown Nyaung-U is the main local market for the town. It’s a permanent market and set up under a light wooden structure that occupies a large block in the middle of town. You won’t find much…
If you’re flying to Bagan, Nyaung-U Airport is the airport you’ll fly into. As small as it is, it’s the airport that serves as the aerial gateway to the Bagan region. (There are other ways to reach Bagan, of course, such as flying into Mandalay and taking a bus or…
This is a guide to temples and pagodas of Bagan that was compiled by the Director of Archaeological Survey, Burma, in the mid-1950s and revised in 1963. It was published in Rangoon by the Union Cultural Council, Ministry of Union Culture, Revolutionary Government of the Union of Burma. I picked…
Located just south of Myinkaba Village in the Bagan Archeological Zone, Apeyadana Temple is named after Apeyadana, an 11th-century chief queen consort of King Kyansittha of the Pagan Dynasty of Burma (Myanmar) and maternal grandmother of King Sithu I of Pagan. Much about this temple remains unknown or obscured through…
Manuha Temple is one of the easiest temples to visit. It’s in Myinkaba Village, just south of Old Bagan, and right on the main road. It’s also one of the oddest, not at all like most of the other temples and pagodas in Bagan. The layout is very different, inside…
Nagayon Temple, about half a mile south of Myinkaba Village, gets its name from the large serpent mouths that arch over the statue of The Buddha in the main shrine. Naga refers to the serpents, or king cobras, that you see stylized around the place, often protecting the entrances to…
Myazedi, which translates as “emerald stupa,” is located just north of Myinkaba Village and just south of Old Bagan. A notable item at the Myazedi stupa is a stone slab with the text in four languages: Pyu, Mon, Pali, and Burmese. It’s the earliest dated example of written Burmese language,…
Compared to many of Istanbul’s other mosques, Nuruosmaniye is quite new. It was built between 1748 and 1755. So it’s still not exactly a new build. While it shares some distinctive design features with other mosques in Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye Mosque was the first and largest mosque to be built in…
The Gran Hotel Cuidad de Mexico is well worth a visit even if you’re not staying there. It sits on a corner of the Zocalo in Centro Historico, the old-town portion of Mexico City that was itself designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. There are newer, fancier,…
The Palacio de Bellas Artes was built in the early 20th century to house the national theater, but it has become more than that. Some call it the “Cathedral of Art in Mexico.” It has become a cultural hub of Mexico City–in addition to containing two theaters, there are important…
The Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada (Tejada Library) specializes on holdings related to economics. It’s named for Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, a 19th-century Mexican finance minister, treasurer, minister of foreign affairs, and magistrate of the Supreme Court. It’s housed in a former chapel, la Capilla de la Emperatriz del Palacio…
It’s known as the world’s largest book. But it doesn’t look much like any book you’ve seen before. Each of the 729 “pages” is a large marble tablet inscribed with text from the Tipitaka (some of the Buddhist scriptures). The text was originally in gold, but it has long since…
Built in the 1770s, the Templo de la Enseñanza is a small church a block behind the Catedral Metropolitana. Sometimes known as La Enseñanza Church, its name translates as “The Teaching Church,” a nod to its original role as a church attached to a teaching convent. The convent has long…
Longyearbyen isn’t very big, but there are two museums in town. This is the older but smaller of the two. It focuses on efforts to reach the north pole with various types of aviation, some successful and some not. You’ll sometimes see the North Pole Expedition Museum referred to by…
I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising that it’s small. It’s right there in the name, after all: The Little Mermaid. As with the Mannekin Pis in Brussels, there’s something a bit jarring for an iconic attraction with such an outsized reputation to be so petite. It’s a roughly life-sized…
On a recent trip to the Arctic I decided to stick a GoPro on one of the ship’s rails to capture our progress punching through the polar ice pack as we got north of Svalbard. This drifting sea ice is the summer home of polar bears and the seals they…
The Chapel at Kronborg Castle isn’t especially large, and it’s not ornate by the standards of other European churches, but it has its charms. It’s also one of the oldest parts of the castle. It dates back to 1582 and survived a major fire in 1629 that claimed much of…
The legend of Holger Danske, or Holger the Dane, is nearly a millennium old. The legend tells of a Danish prince accomplishing great feats after being sent to Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne as a hostage. The legend actually originated in France, but it has been adopted by the Danes with…
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It’s drafty and dark, and It feels like you’re walking around the deck of a ship. And there’s a good reason for that. The pagoda is made entirely of teak, a timber long prized in shipbuilding and boatbuilding. It’s held up by 267 massive posts of teak, the largest of…
If you’re headed into the Guatemalan highlands town of Chichicastenango, chances are you’re going for the famous market day. While you’re there, it’s worth dropping by the town’s cemetery just down the hill a little. The town is not very big, so the cemetery isn’t either, but it sure is…
Bangkok is the very epitome of a bustling city. Crowded, crammed, and chaotic. Amid all that, there are still millions of bites of beauty around many of the city’s corners. But you get a totally different perspective from up high. Some of the fancy newer hotels have realized this and…
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Travel Photography On Top of Mandalay Hill, Myanmar MANDALAY, Myanmar (Burma) – Sitting on top of Mandalay Hill, Sutaungpyei Pagoda features a large patio that offers a wonderful views over Mandalay City and the Ayeyarwaddy. The Tombs of the Sultans at Hagia Sophia ISTANBUL, Turkey (Türkiye) — The Tombs of…
Translating as “Temple of the Golden City,” the 16th-century Wat Xieng Thong sits on the end of the peninsula of Luang Prabang’s historic center, wedged between the Mekong and the Nam Khan rivers. It is considered one of the most important of Lao monasteries, and the temple remains a significant…
Most of the temples in Bagan are out on the plain. The Manuha Temple is different. It’s tucked into Myinkaba Village, a smaller built-up area just off the main road, halfway between Old Bagan and New Bagan. It was built around the 1060s, making it one of the oldest temples…
It feels a little odd to be climbing hundreds of feet up on a pile of bricks that is famous for being structurally unsound. And there are places on the way up where the line between building and rubble is definitely fuzzy. But the view at the top is worth…
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