Wikivoyage:Discover/2017

December 2017

 * Local legend states that Chicken, Alaska (amusing sign pictured) got its peculiar name because the early residents couldn't spell ptarmigan.
 * Sant Antoni de Portmany in Ibiza is considered by British clubbers to be the clubbing capital of the world.
 * The official recipe for Caen tripe is written in the form of a poem.
 * Wildlife at Chico Mendes Ecological Park in the western part of Rio de Janeiro includes the three-toed sloth, the broad-snouted caiman (pictured), and the red-footed tortoise.
 * The last spike completing the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad was driven near Brigham City, Utah, in 1869.
 * The name of Schiphol translates to ship grave, a reference to the many ships lost in the area.
 * Although Persepolis was set on fire and destroyed by Alexander the Great, its still impressive ruins (pictured) permit a fairly complete reconstruction of its original appearance.
 * Schwerin is the smallest state capital in Germany and the only one not to be a "Großstadt"
 * The Three Powers Square in Brasilia includes the seats of the country's three highest authorities: the Congress, the Presidential Palace and the Supreme Court.
 * Formerly a sulphur mine, the smell at the Kawah Putih crater (pictured) lake in Ciwidey is occasionally strong.
 * Founded in 1806, Potsdam (New York) was named after the orange colored Potsdam sandstone found in Central St. Lawrence County.
 * The Cook Strait ferries provide the essential "floating bridge" between the North and South Islands of New Zealand.
 * The Aral Sea (pictured) was once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world, but is now more aptly dubbed Aralkum ("Aral Sands")
 * Jeffreys Bay became popular with surfers after the 1966 movie Endless Summer.
 * Hanover is the northern terminus of Germany's first ever high-speed rail line.
 * Maunga Pu, the highest peak on Aitutaki, offers good bird's eye views (pictured) of the whole island.
 * In some parts of Britain and Ireland, a Celtic language is preferred over English for local communication.
 * Hamburg is the only major German city without a tram network of any kind.
 * The shocking and in-your-face charms of Kolkata (ambassador taxis pictured) are best summed up by its nickname - the city of joy
 * Los Angeles may be commonly known as the city of the freeway, but the LA Metro has built over 100 miles of urban rail since 1990.
 * Near Nouadhibou, you can explore the ruins of an old French coastal gun emplacement, designed in its day to protect the French colony from the Spanish border a few kilometres away.
 * Residents of Michigan use their hands as a map of the state (pictured) that they carry with them at all times.
 * Through the transatlantic slave trade, the Igbo language (spoken mainly in Nigeria) has influenced many creole languages in the Americas.
 * The world's first passenger railway was in Swansea, Wales. It began service in 1804 and ran five miles from the centre of Swansea to the suburb of Mumbles, using horse-drawn vehicles.
 * Built immediately after the saint's death in the 1200s, Saint Anthony's Cathedral (pictured) in Padua houses his tomb and notable relics.
 * Turpan, China gets so hot that its people have developed an irrigation system composed of wells connected by underground channels.
 * Mississippi is the home of the blues, and live blues music is still fairly easy to find in the Delta and in Jackson.
 * Not many overnight bus services are actually designed for sleeping passengers, but a few actually have bunks on board (pictured)!
 * The little town of Nueva Helvecia, Uruguay, looks a bit like Switzerland transplanted to South America, complete with Central European crests adorning the houses.
 * Saugatuck and Douglas, Michigan, offer a peculiar mixture of traditional small-town Midwestern values and progressive alternative-lifestyle tolerance.
 * Herzberg am Harz markets itself as "Herzberg – la Esperanto-urbo" - Herzberg, the Esperanto city (Esperanto-Platz pictured)

November 2017

 * Southern California is famous not just for the movie industry around Los Angeles, but also for its sheer amount of freeways and highways.
 * Wuppertal is the result of the fusion of Barmen and Elberfeld, the former the birthplace of Friedrich Engels.
 * The Yungang Grottoes (pictured) in Datong are filled with 51,000 Buddhist statues, ranging in size from a few centimeters to 17 meters.
 * Mormons make up a majority of the population of Utah, and their beliefs and practices are one of the strongest influences on public policy in the state.
 * The history of Erlangen was shaped by the Huguenot refugees from France.
 * Helsinki is one of few large cities in Europe with a good chance for snow on Christmas (pictured).
 * The Capela dos Ossos is a chapel in Faro, Portugal made almost entirely out of the bones of local monks.
 * Originally just a cluster of villages, Darjeeling was established as the de-facto summer capital of India during the days of the British Raj.
 * The Arecibo Observatory (pictured) in Puerto Rico is home to the largest radio telescope on planet Earth and possibly the universe.
 * Cooperstown, New York, the alleged birthplace of baseball, hosts the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
 * The world's largest Cornish festival takes place not in the motherland, but on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula.
 * Its portentous title of oyster capital of France belies the fact that Bouzigues (pictured) is for most of the day a small, sleepy community.
 * The Bridge of the Immortals is a spectacular, narrow, and railing-free rock bridge over a deep chasm in Wulingyuan, China.
 * Siesta Key Beach in Sarasota, Florida is consistently ranked among the most beautiful beaches on Earth.
 * Mount Fuji's almost perfectly symmetrical volcanic cone (pictured) has made it a near-mythical national symbol immortalised in countless works of art.
 * A visit to a hamam (Turkish bath) is an essential part of any trip to Istanbul.
 * St. Louis, Missouri is named after King Louis IX of France.
 * A golden angel high upon a tower (pictured) is visible from the back of St. Finbarr's Cathedral in Cork.
 * When making up your travel budget, travel insurance is the wrong thing to save on; in emergencies it will get much more expensive.
 * The locals in Bolinas, California, are notorious for removing road signs pointing the way into town.
 * The equator lies immediately south of São Tomé Island, passing through (marker pictured) an islet named Ilhéu das Rolas.
 * Manitoulin Island is the largest fresh water island in the world, and there you can also find the world's largest island in a lake on an island in a lake.
 * Twice weekly, a black-and-white fiction movie from 1924, filmed in the jungle of northern Laos, is screened in the Champasak Shadow Puppets Theater.
 * Tel Aviv is known as the White City with the world's largest collection of Bauhaus architecture (Bauhaus museum pictured).
 * Sarajevo's tram network opened in the mid-1870s and was the first in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
 * The Brazilian restaurant chain Fogo de Chão, though started in Rio Grande do Sul, now has more locations in the United States than in Brazil and none at all in its state of origin.
 * The Soo Locks (pictured) for ships travelling by Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan form the largest system of locks in the world.
 * Nusa Penida, one of the Southeastern Islands, is best known as a world-class diving destination, where the rich waters around the islands support no less than 247 species of coral.
 * Vrindavan stands on the original forest of Vrindavana where the Hindu deity Krishna is said to have spent his childhood.
 * Santa Catarina Island (pictured), part of the city of Florianopolis, is known as "Ilha da Magia" or Magic Island, probably because of its incredible natural beauty.

October 2017

 * The Museum of Colorado Prisons, located on the grounds of the "Old Max," a prison still in operation, tells the story of Cañon City's colorful prison history.
 * Highlights at the Treasury of the National Jewels in Tehran include the world's largest uncut ruby, largest pink diamond (the Sea of Light) and a globe made from 34 kilograms of gold and an astounding 51,366 precious stones.
 * Rising to a height of 45 metres, Candi Siva (pictured) is the tallest temple at Prambanan.
 * Rostock-Warnemünde is Germany's busiest port for cruises
 * The self-proclaimed Hutt River Principality is Australia's oldest and most well-known micronation.
 * The Mall of America (interior pictured) in Bloomington (Minnesota) is the largest indoor shopping complex in the United States.
 * The traditional Faroese kitchen mainly owes its food traditions to the archipelago's harsh climate.
 * The street numbering scheme of Conakry labels all roads with a two-letter code for the urban district, followed by a three digit number.
 * While the Ruta del Tránsito (Lake Nicaragua, on the route, pictured) was tremendously important during the Gold Rush of the 1840s and 1850s, it has since been almost forgotten.
 * Most expeditions to the North Pole take place in April when the Arctic night is over but the winter ice is still strong.
 * Drawing more than 600,000 visitors each year, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is North America's largest classical repertory theatre.
 * Xi'an has a pleasant cosmopolitan flair to it and it is worth visiting for the famed Terracotta Warriors (pictured) alone.
 * The world's largest pencil collection is on display at a museum outside Colonia, Uruguay.
 * Gwandong Palgyeong are eight landscapes that have been famous for their beauty since the Joseon Dynasty.
 * The Phoenix Islands Protected Area is the world's largest Marine Protected Area and its coral reefs (pictured) and bird populations are virtually untouched by man.
 * There is a wide variety of rocks in Kos which is related to its geographical formation.
 * Hanover hosted Germany's only world exhibition since World War II in Expo 2000.
 * Owned by the Australian Academy of Science and a Canberra landmark since the late 1950s, the Shine Dome (pictured) is nicknamed the "Martian embassy" by locals.
 * Fishing is much more than just the activity of trying to catch fish: it is an ancient art form that is practised in many different ways across the world.
 * When the Presidio of Tucson was created by Don Hugo O'Connor in 1775, it was the northernmost Spanish outpost in the New World.
 * The Golden Temple Complex in Amritsar is worth visiting twice: once during the day, once at night, when it's beautifully lit up (pictured).
 * In Bella Unión, Uruguay, it's perfectly normal to see men and even surprisingly young boys riding horses down the street.
 * Beginning in the 15th century, Galway was ruled by the leading fourteen merchant families, which were known as "tribes".
 * The Eisler Brothers Country Store (pictured) in Riverton (near Baxter Springs, Kansas) was one of the stops on Pixar's Route 66 research trip for 2006 film "Cars".
 * More than any other place in Thailand, Bangkok offers wonderful opportunities for just sitting and watching people go by.
 * The only tricky sound to watch for in Czech is the 'ř' letter.
 * At 4,884 metres, Puncak Jaya (pictured) is the tallest mountain between the Himalayas and the Andes and the highest island peak in the world.
 * With 300 sunny days a year, 36 shipwrecks, impressive walls, canyons, caves, Ray habitats and shark habitats, Beirut definitely has something to offer for a serious scuba diver.
 * The British Empire covered a quarter of the globe at its height.
 * Lubart's Castle (pictured) in Lutsk is perhaps the most interesting castle in Ukraine, and is featured on the 200 Hryvnia note.
 * Gulf Shores is home to the National Shrimp Festival, an outdoor event held annually in October and featuring over 300 vendors that offer fine art, arts and crafts, an international marketplace and plenty of shrimp.

September 2017

 * Gothic architecture is very striking and a major reason for tourism and pilgrimage to and within Europe.
 * Once the northern ruling city of the Inca empire, Ingapirca (pictured) outside Cuenca contains the largest known Inca ruins in Ecuador.
 * The summit of Ben Nevis is 1,344 meters (4,409 ft) above sea level, and the start of the walk really begins right by the sea so you'll walk every foot of those 4,409.
 * Ascension Island features what was at one time reputed to be the world's worst golf course.
 * The Uppsala Cathedral (pictured), built in the 13th century, is the largest church in the Nordic countries.
 * The Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou features a 4-meter-tall mammoth fossil replica, whose remains were excavated from the Yellow River basin in 1973.
 * St. George, Utah is well known for its mild climate of over 300 sunny days a year.
 * In North Central Rome, there is the Museo delle Paste Alimentari, a museum devoted to pasta (pictured), Italy's premier gift to world cuisine.
 * Tax and tip can easily add 25% over the price quoted in the menu for a meal in a midrange or upscale restaurant in Nicaragua.
 * The island of Yap in Micronesia is famous for its stone money, which is rather large and cannot easily be moved.
 * The Tree of Life (pictured) in Bahrain has survived the harsh desert conditions for more than 400 years.
 * Pickpocketing is a very old crime that is continually being reinvented, and a hazard in most destinations.
 * You will frequently encounter old cars parked on the cobblestone streets of Colonia, Uruguay, the oldest being from the 1930s.
 * Finnish national parks are open to the public without fees, even for lodging in open wilderness huts (hut in Finnish Lapland pictured).
 * Souq Omdurman in Khartoum is said to be one of the largest markets in Africa.
 * Manchester is famous all over the world thanks to its football clubs, including Manchester United and Manchester City.
 * The borders of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands meet in Vaals, on the Drielandenpunt (pictured).
 * An ascent of 2446 stone steps brings you up to Mt. Haguro, the most easily accessible of the three mountains comprising Dewa Sanzan.
 * Antarctica has 24-hour sunshine during the Southern Hemisphere summer, and 24 hours of nighttime during the winter.
 * The Waterfront Park in Charleston (South Carolina) features plenty of lovely fountains, including one shaped like a pineapple (pictured).
 * As a city not accessible by road, motorcycles and mototaxis dominate Iquitos unlike anywhere else.
 * For a city of its size, train connections to Dresden are surprisingly slow.
 * The Arbroath Abbey (pictured) is a red sandstone abbey founded by King William the Lion in 1178 and where he was buried in 1214.
 * There is no value-added tax in Eilat, therefore many duty free shops line the boardwalk, culminating in duty free shopping centres.
 * One of the most westernized capitals in the Pacific Islands, Nouméa features beautiful beaches and colonial mansions and is not yet a heavily touristed destination.
 * At the Magnetic Hill (pictured) in Moncton, due to a type of optical illusion created by rising and descending terrain it appears that cars roll uphill when in neutral gear.
 * Founded in 841, Dublin was originally settled by Vikings among a population of Celtic tribes.
 * As the Giant of Africa, Nigeria has more than 500 ethnic groups with different languages and customs.
 * The Ashokan Pillar (pictured), erected by Emperor Ashoka (249 BC) on the spot of Buddha's birth features an inscription, granting Lumbini a tax-free status in honour of Buddha's birth.
 * The highly fertile soil of the Willamette Valley drew the first American settlers to Oregon in the 1840s and it remains the center of population in the state.

August 2017

 * With one-way traffic circulating clockwise, the Queen's Park Savannah in Port of Spain claims to be the world's largest roundabout or traffic circle.
 * The striking Ishavskatedralen (lit. Arctic Sea cathedral) in Tromsø contains one of the biggest stained-glass windows (pictured) in Northern Europe.
 * Hebin Park in Guiyang features a gigantic UFO-shaped restaurant in the centre, help up by both bamboo and metal pillars--an apt symbol of the fusion of Chinese culture and modernity.
 * Brasilia hosts one of the most important festivals of Brazilian cinema; the Festival de Cinema Brasileiro, which takes place late October/early November.
 * Cueva de los Verdes (tunnel of the greens, pictured) on Lanzarote is a succession of caverns and tunnels formed by an underground river of lava.
 * Kaohsiung's first railway station has now been turned into a railway museum.
 * In the 1920s, Berlin was the second biggest city by area and the third biggest by population in the world.
 * There may be no better place to experience the casual riches Chicago has to offer than Rogers Park (pictured).
 * The name Nassau ultimately goes back to a castle in what is now Rhineland Palatinate.
 * Many parts of Australian slang have their origins outside Australia, particularly in England and Ireland.
 * Lake Yojoa (Lago de Yojoa, pictured) is the largest natural lake in Honduras.
 * Despite its name (Turkish for "white bridge"), Akköprü is made of local reddish stones that are so ubiquitously used in Ankara's other major old buildings.
 * Depending on the source, Hindi is listed anywhere from the 2nd to 5th most widely spoken language in the world.
 * During a total solar eclipse, the sun's corona (pictured) can be seen radiating around the black circle of the moon.
 * Lakshadweep are India's only coral atolls and geologically a part of the same chain as the Maldives.
 * The island of Unst in Shetland was visited by Robert Louis Stevenson and might have served as a template for the shape of Treasure Island.
 * The Bernina and Albula lines of the Rhaetian railway (pictured) in the Engadine are one of only three railways featured as a UNESCO world heritage site.
 * Bulawayo was founded by Lobengula, the last Ndebele king.
 * San Salvador lies in the "Valle de las Hamacas", in English "Valley of the hammocks" as it was called by the Pipil, due to its intense earthquake activity.
 * Corbin, a small city in Kentucky's Daniel Boone Country, is the birthplace (pictured) of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
 * The Reichenbach falls, place of "death" of the fictional Sherlock Holmes, can be visited in Meiringen.
 * Dumaguete is sometimes called the "City of Gentle People".[[Image:Yekaterinburg QWERTY Monument.jpg|100px|right]]
 * The QWERTY Monument (pictured) in Yekaterinburg, one of Russia's weirdest attractions, is a gargantuan keyboard in which big white stones rise from the earth. Engraved upon them are words and symbols like "Q" and "SHIFT".
 * The social atmosphere at hostels makes them a good choice for solo travellers or anyone looking to make a new friend.
 * Some shots of season 5 of Game of Thrones were shot in Girona.
 * Rotorua (pictured) is built over a geothermal hot spot.
 * It's more than just a stereotype: Ireland's highlights are indeed the stuff of knights' tales.
 * Turkish has a linguistic feature called vowel harmony.
 * The pink Bahaman Parliament Building in Nassau has a statue of an enthroned Queen Victoria out front (pictured).
 * Verona is most famous as the setting for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
 * On Anegada there's a museum with relics from centuries past that have washed ashore.

July 2017

 * Gaborone was constructed as a planned city in the 1960s, and you will find a great deal of modern architecture (Parliament pictured) there.
 * The Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk has one of the world's most diverse collections of exhibits from the Ice Age.
 * Miami has the largest Latin American population outside of Latin America.
 * The Sanahin Monastery (pictured) in Alaverdi is a UNESCO World Heritage site and for good reason. Its incredibly well preserved Armenian architecture has stood for almost a thousand years, with little change.
 * Girona has an ancient and proud Jewish heritage.
 * In 1979, Shenzhen was a small town with a total population of only a few hundred thousand; today it is a bustling city of 14 million, due to being China's first Special Economic Zone (经济特区).
 * The airport on the island of Barra, Scotland (pictured), is one of only two in the world where scheduled flights land on a beach runway.
 * The tombs of generations of Habsburg royalty are housed in the Kaisergruft in Innere Stadt of Vienna.
 * The Grand Canal (大运河) in China is an engineering work comparable to the Great Wall but unlike the Wall, it is still heavily used and actively maintained today.
 * The mining museum in Ostrava's Landek park is the largest exhibition of coal mining equipment in the world (exhibits pictured).
 * Malaria is life-threatening, and requires immediate treatment.
 * Chihuahua is famous for Norteño food, a delicious if not particularly heart healthy cuisine that makes liberal use of beef, cheese, and chiles.
 * The historic town of Siwa stands on an isolated oasis (pictured) situated in the Western Desert region of Egypt.
 * The Faroese parliament has been meeting at the same site in Torshavn since 900 AD.
 * In Sucre, "7 Cascadas" (7 waterfalls), are just a 8-km hike out of town.
 * The island of Lysøen, near Bergen, used to belong to Ole Bull (pictured), a famous musician, who bought the island in 1872.
 * Known as "Little Italy" for over a hundred years, the North End proudly carries the torch of Boston's Italian heritage.
 * French cuisine has set a standard for fine dining around the world.
 * A special combination of climate and shape means that Fox Glacier (pictured) moves approximately 10 times quicker than other valley glaciers around the world.
 * Ulsan is the gateway to the Yeongnam Alps, and is considered to be one of the most beautiful national parks in South Korea.
 * The Arrernte Aboriginal people have made their home in the Central Australian desert in and around Alice Springs for more than 50,000 years.
 * While the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument (pictured) was only made a national monument in 2013, the recreation areas within the current monument have been developed for a while now, with visitor centers, campgrounds, trails, and new roads being constructed over the past couple of decades.
 * In the Yongsan district of Seoul, you can visit the I'Park Mall e-Sports Stadium where professional video game players duke it out real-time on an enormous screen and top players can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
 * One of the mottos of Leave-no-trace camping is "Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints."
 * At Ranua Zoo you can observe Arctic animals (Eurasian lynx pictured) throughout the year.
 * The Homestead Museum in Drumheller features over 10,000 artifacts from the Victorian and Edwardian era, including a two-headed calf and a complete house bought from an Eaton's catalogue.
 * O.R. Tambo International Airport serves as the major sub-Saharan hub.
 * Incredibly, it is possible to safely swim in natural pools (pictured) at the top of the Victoria Falls, on the Zambian side.
 * Barentsburg is named after Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz, who (re)discovered Svalbard in 1596.
 * Pinyin allows very accurate pronunciation of Mandarin for those who understand it.
 * The National Civil Rights Museum (pictured) in Memphis was designed around the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was fatally shot in 1968.
 * Despite its size and location in-between some of the most-visited cities in Europe, Liège sees very little tourist traffic.

June 2017

 * Poipet hosts Cambodia's main border crossing with Thailand, and cross-border activity has made the town grow to be larger than its provincial capital.
 * Krasnoyarsk (pictured) was originally called Krasny Yar, meaning "Red Steep Bank".
 * A local airport opened on eastern Saint Helena in 2016, but landing has proved challenging due to wind shear and the originally-planned passenger services remain on hold.
 * In Brazil, spoken language can be very different from written language and official grammar, confusing non-native speakers.
 * The casbah (pictured) of Algiers dates to the 17th century and has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
 * Winnipeg is a "gateway to the West", and can be visited for architecture, museums, and a broad retail market.
 * The famous pier Zhan Qiao is the iconic symbol of Qingdao.
 * While numbering may suggest otherwise, Lisbon retains only five of the 28 tram (pictured) lines it became famous for.
 * The trip from Trinidad to the Valle de los Ingenios takes place in an old steam train with a restored carriage.
 * Along with Italian (italiano), Sardinians speak one of the dialects of Sardinian (sardu), considered by many scholars to be one of the most conservative Romance languages.
 * The Barossa Valley (pictured) is one of the best wine-producing regions on the Australian mainland.
 * Also called the "Pink Lake", the high concentration of cyanobacteria indeed gives Lake Retba in Dakar a pink tone.
 * Isfahan translates to Half The World in Persian.
 * In Roxbury, Boston, the Shirley-Eustis House (pictured) is one of the last remaining mansions of royal governors in the United States.
 * In the Netherlands, Rotterdam has the highest percentage of foreigners from non-industrialised nations. Nearly 50% of the population are not native to the Netherlands or have at least one parent born outside the country.
 * High Wycombe, England has an annual "Mayor Marking" ceremony where they weigh the mayor to see if they're getting fat at taxpayers' expense.
 * In 2004, Lake Wales (pictured in the top left of image) was hit by three hurricanes, which was the first time in recorded U.S. history that 3 hurricanes passed through the same county in one year.
 * Altrincham can be accessed by narrow boat along the Bridgewater Canal.
 * As the first and last European colony in East Asia, Macau has more visible colonial history than Hong Kong.
 * At the Four Corners Monument (pictured), visitors are either vastly underwhelmed by this attraction, even angry they drove so far out of their way to see so little; or they are inordinately pleased with running from state to state and having their picture taken.
 * When visiting San Carlos de Bariloche, look out for the St Bernard dogs on display for tourists.
 * In 2001, the town council of Kensington, Maryland banned Santa Claus from touring the town on a fire truck, prompting national media attention and a protest with dozens of Santas!
 * The plant-filled River of Seven Colors (pictured) in tiny La Macarena, Colombia is said to be the most beautiful river in the world.
 * The new congress building in Asunción, Paraguay was built with funding from Taiwan, as Paraguay is the only country in South America that recognizes Taiwan instead of the People's Republic of China.
 * Rauma, the third oldest town in Finland, is famous for seafaring and lace—it still celebrates an annual Lace Week.
 * The Statue of Liberty (pictured) in New York City, one of the most famous symbols of the United States, is actually a gift from the people of France.
 * Samoa switched from driving on the right to the left and later switched sides of the international date line, to improve ties with Australia and New Zealand.
 * The Congolese city of Kisangani has surprisingly few vehicles, due to its isolated location in the jungle of the Congo Basin.
 * Beautiful ice and snow sculptures (pictured) appear throughout the "Ice City" of Harbin during its annual Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.
 * Despite what you might think, the city of Weed, California, is named after a person, not a plant.

May 2017

 * Going around the world in 80 days, as depicted by Jules Verne in 1872, is easy now by air — but the voyage around the world overland remains a challenge today.
 * The enormous golden Buddha statue in Bangkok's Yaowarat district (pictured) was hidden under a layer of plaster until a fall during transport cracked the plaster and revealed the gold underneath.
 * Vatican City, located entirely within the city of Rome, is the world's smallest country both by area and by population.
 * The U.S. state of Texas was an independent republic for nine years after gaining independence from Mexico.
 * Borobudur temple complex (pictured) in Central Java, Indonesia, is the single largest Buddhist structure anywhere on Earth.
 * Once a small fishing village, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca has exploded into a major destination for surfers and backpackers on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.
 * Acclaimed American TV show Breaking Bad makes extensive use of the local scenery in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
 * Traditional Catalan human towers (castells, pictured) rise above the crowds at festivals in Barcelona.
 * Meat and alcohol are banned in the entire cities of Rishikesh and Haridwar in Uttarakhand, India.
 * Though not aligned with any country or ethnic group, the constructed language Esperanto is useful for the Pasporta Servo home stay network.
 * Qibao ancient town (pictured) in Shanghai's Minhang district has two canals and lots of traditional buildings.
 * Dachau, Bavaria was known for its impressionist painters until the presence of the first Nazi concentration camp cast a pall over the town.
 * Old-growth coastal redwoods, the tallest living things on the planet, can be seen in their full glory near Mill Valley, California.
 * The Uruguayan beach resort of Punta del Este has an enormous sculpture of fingers (pictured) sticking out of the sand.
 * Wakkanai sounds like "wakannai", which happens to mean "I don't understand / I don't know" in colloquial Japanese, so you can expect to get some ribbing if you answer questions like "Where are you?" with "Wakkanai"!
 * The Dead Sea, shared between Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, is the lowest point in the world at 394.6 m (1,269 ft) below sea level.
 * The Laas Gaal cave complex outside Hargeisa, Somaliland has some of the earliest known art in Africa (pictured).
 * Formerly outlawed for part of the 20th century, the Catalan language is a point of pride for many inhabitants of Catalonia.
 * Donkeys are used for transporting goods in the well-preserved medina of Fez, the world's largest car-free urban zone.
 * Provincetown (pictured) has an intriguing history as the first landing site of the Pilgrims and the place where the Mayflower Compact was signed.
 * Montevideo's 40-day carnival, said to be the longest in the world, features parades, performances, and African-influenced candombe music.
 * Kabak, in Turkey, doesn't have a large enough population to be designated even as a "village", so it's often omitted from maps, even quite detailed ones.
 * Thornicroft's giraffe and Crawshay's zebra (pictured) are both species endemic to South Luangwa National Park (Zambia), and both known for their unusual appearance within their respective genera.
 * Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire is the only known place in the UK ever visited by Elvis Presley.
 * The Sereer people of Senegal practise a distinct form of wrestling, in which combatants use brute force and magic to force their opponents to the ground.
 * Although often thronged with mountaineers attempting Everest, Namche Bazaar (pictured) remains a small hillside village with just 60 permanent residents.
 * The name of Amqui, Quebec charmingly means "where we have fun" in the local Mi'kmaq language.
 * In Kannur's Muthappan Temple (Kerala), there is no idol to worship; in its place, there is a ritualistic art form, which is unique in India
 * In the French Quarter of Haidhausen in Munich (pictured), the streets are named after places in France and the layout of the street grid imitates that of French cities.
 * České Budějovice was founded in 1256 by the Czech King Premysl Otakar II, who now has a square named after him in the city.
 * The highest point in Antigua and Barbuda was named Mount Obama for the 44th U.S. President.

April 2017

 * In Cold War Europe, tiny Mödlareuth was nicknamed "Little Berlin" as it was divided by the East German border wall (pictured).
 * The microstate of San Marino claims to be the world's oldest republic.
 * Danville, Virginia was the last capital of the Confederacy for a week at the end of the American Civil War.
 * St. Jacob's Church (pictured), accessible only by a steep trail through the woods outside of Ortisei, South Tyrol, is more than 700 years old.
 * Nha Trang is Vietnam's most famous seaside resort town, and the scuba diving centre of Vietnam.
 * Fanø hosts Denmark's first golf course, the Fanø Golf Links, established in 1901.
 * Contrary to intuition, seeing the Northern Lights (pictured from space) isn't just a matter of heading north. The Lights occur mainly in a circular band centered on the Earth's Magnetic North Pole, which is not at the same location as the Geographic North Pole.
 * The borders of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands meet in Vaals, on the Drielandenpunt.
 * The Geysers del Tatio, in San Pedro de Atacama, are some of the highest geysers in the world. It's also the third-largest geyser site on Earth, with over 80 active ones.
 * Ulsan (pictured) is the gateway to the Yeongnam Alps, considered to be one of the most beautiful national parks in South Korea.
 * Mombasa was founded in the 16th century and has been ruled by the Portuguese, Arabs and British. The city's culture today still exhibits those of its past.
 * The fact that the small town of Simpelveld had two different monasteries gained it the local title of "kloesterstedsje", or "monastery town".
 * Denver Airport (pictured) has been the focus of numerous conspiracy theories, with some people suggesting ties to everything from the Illuminati to the New World Order.
 * El Balneario de Alhama de Granada in Andalusia is a spa which has been in use since the 1st century.
 * The world's longest known cave system is in Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, with over 392 miles of cave.
 * Palais de l'Isle (pictured) is a former palace-turned-prison situated on a tiny island between canals in Annecy.
 * Prachuap Khiri Khan was Thailand's first seaside resort, having been popularised by King Rama V and his family.
 * The Rio Negro and Rio Solimões flow parallel to one another for many miles before finally meeting near Manaus, forming the Amazon.
 * St Mary's and All Saints' Church (pictured) in Chesterfield, Derbyshire is best known for its crooked spire, which has inspired much local folklore.
 * Carver, Massachusetts once produced more cranberries than any other town in the world.
 * Taxis in Freetown are normally shared and operate fixed routes; travellers wishing to charter their own taxi should say "cha cha" to the driver and negotiate a price.
 * Zamboanga (pictured) is known as Asia's Latin city, due to its melting pot of Spanish, Filipino and world cultures.
 * Tallinn is treated as a home away from home by day trippers from Finland, due to their close linguistic and cultural ties with Estonia.
 * White pearl-sand beaches, bathed in a perfumed breeze, are a most popular visitor attraction of Comoros.
 * Apple Valley's 485-acre Minnesota Zoo (pictured) was one of the first to organize animals into themed areas and trails by their living environment, as opposed to their species.
 * The national flag of the Czech Republic was banned by the Nazis in 1939. It was restored at the end of World War II and still flies across the country.
 * The steepest street in the world is claimed to be in Dunedin, New Zealand, and celebrated by the annual rolling of 40,000 chocolates down the street.
 * In about 1257, Mount Rinjani (pictured) erupted so violently that its shape changed, and this event is believed to have contributed to the onset of the Little Ice Age.
 * There are 160 monasteries in Bulgaria, which remained vital centres of local culture for centuries under Ottoman rule.
 * For a town pretty well slap bang on the Equator, Entebbe is a few degrees cooler than you might expect.


 * Magadan, an oblast in the Russian Far East, served as a gateway to the notorious Kolyma Gulags.
 * Bautzen, home to an medieval-era old city in Saxony, was infamous throughout East Germany for its penitentiaries.

March 2017

 * In Balatonfüred, you can go to the Anna Ball, which is one of the most unique balls in Hungary, and has been organised annually since 1825.
 * The last Emperor of the French, Napoléon III, is entombed in Farnborough, a quiet suburban corner of Hampshire, England.
 * Mongolia (pictured) is nicknamed the "Land of Blue Skies" and with good reason; there are said to be about 250 sunny days throughout each year.
 * In 1960, Grand-Bassam was little more than a ghost town, until a surge of tourism in the 1970s led to its resettlement, with today, a modest 5,000 people calling the town their home.
 * Wikivoyage's E11 hiking trail article is the only English-language guide giving a precise routing of the trail.
 * It is said that Christopher Columbus sighted Saba (pictured) on his trans-Atlantic voyage, but did not land due to the rocky shores.
 * Derry is the only remaining completely intact walled city on the whole island of Ireland.
 * The most famous landmark in Jakarta is the 137m-tall obelisk of solid bronze National Monument, commissioned to celebrate Indonesia's independence.
 * You can visit the dam which James Bond bungee jumped from in the opening scene of Golden Eye (pictured) in the Verzasca Valley.
 * Bahrain means "two seas" in the Arabic language.
 * Antarctica is notable for being the only continent with no significant land plant life and no native land mammals, reptiles, or amphibians.
 * The TelefériQo cable car (pictured) hoists visitors up the active Pichincha Volcano, with views of half-a-dozen volcanoes and all of Quito below.
 * Eskişehir province is the only place in the world where Meerschaum is extracted.
 * Riobamba is known locally as the "Sultan of the Andes", due to its majestic mountains and regal colonial architecture.
 * Fort St. Angelo (pictured) has been in Cottonera (Malta) since Roman times, and possibly before.
 * Ooty was founded in the 19th century by the British, and served as the summer headquarters of the Madras Presidency.
 * The Atlantis resort on Paradise Island is responsible for an amazing 11% of the Bahamas' GNP.
 * Albany (pictured) is the longest continuously chartered city in the United States.
 * At about 1,700 m above sea level, the airport in Samedan (Switzerland) is the highest in Europe.
 * Frankfurt airport has two railway stations, one for local trains only and one only for long distance trains.
 * The Arkansas State Capitol (pictured) in Little Rock occupies the former site of the state penitentiary.
 * Most sites in Egypt offer a hefty 50% discount on entrance fees for holders of the International Student Identification Card (ISIC), or the teacher equivalent.
 * Known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota technically has well over 15,000.
 * In Melbourne centre, a number of intersections require drivers to perform the infamous hook turn (warning sign pictured).
 * Since its opening in 1998, Skytrax has named Hong Kong International Airport the world's best airport eight times.
 * Madeira Casino (pictured) in Funchal, the only casino on the island, was designed by Oscar Niemeyer who also designed much of Brasilia.

February 2017

 * With a huge selection of records and instruments, the House of Guitars in Rochester (New York) is considered a shrine to music and musicians.
 * The bullring (pictured) in Colonia is almost unused, it was finished two years before bullfighting was outlawed in Uruguay.
 * Greenland is the world's largest non-continental island.
 * Tsitsikamma translates to "place of much water" in Khoisan, and probably refers to the average annual rainfall of 1,200 mm.
 * At low tide, you can walk between Saint Martins Island and the island of Chera Dwip (pictured).
 * There are more native speakers of Wu Chinese than there are native speakers of French.
 * Lviv has a multicultural history but just a little of the evidence of this has survived the ravages of war, Nazism and Stalinism.
 * The 18 survivors of the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation (map of circumnavigation pictured) were the first recorded people to have sailed around the world.
 * There is no standard for written Azerbaijani in terms of spelling.
 * Tulum is one of the earliest resorts in Mexico, offering a place of worship and solitude for the Mayan kings, clergy and gods in early times.
 * Krabi Town (pictured) is, in reality, two towns.
 * According to a German internet meme, Bielefeld does not exist. Incidentally this is the one thing almost all Germans know about the town.
 * Lotus Lake in Kaohsiung is surrounded by temples, some of which have built out onto the lake.
 * Clusane (pictured) was founded during the Bronze Age, and has been a fishing village since the 18th century.
 * Almost all long distance trains in Germany are run by state owned Deutsche Bahn.
 * Albert the Bull in Audubon is the world's largest bull statue.
 * Berenty Reserve is world-famous for its lemurs (pictured), which have been studied and filmed extensively.
 * The Republic Square is the main meeting point of Belgradians, and popularly referred to as "by the horse".
 * In one part of Washington D.C., you can visit the place where President Lincoln penned the second draft of his Emancipation Proclamation.
 * You can see the remains of the HMS Bounty (painting of ship pictured) in Bounty Bay in the Pitcairn Islands.
 * The Brecon Beacons National Park contains some of the most spectacular and distinctive upland formations in southern Britain.
 * The Ark citadel was once the fortified residence of the rulers of Bukhara.
 * Lublin is a beautiful mid-sized city with its own particular Renaissance style, called the Lublin Renaissance (St. Joseph church pictured).
 * Although the ground at the South Pole is close to sea level, the thick ice at that location raises the station to an altitude of 9,300 feet (2,835 meters).
 * The black stupa in Vientiane is the mythical abode of a seven-headed dragon that protects the city.
 * Cuzco (pictured) is the city with the highest average level of UV-radiation in the world.
 * On both sides of the Atlantic there are museums and memorials to RMS Titanic's tragic journey.
 * The Midwest was historically the center of the American brewing industry, and major domestic breweries remain headquartered in the area.

January 2017

 * Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane is the world's first and largest koala sanctuary, and also features other Aussie wildlife (resting kangaroo pictured).
 * The outdoor night club Heat in Mbarara is a car wash during daytime.
 * Sleeveless shirts and short pants or skirts are not permitted within the borders of the Vatican.
 * The Tiger Leaping Gorge trek leads through some of the most naturally beautiful and diverse landscapes China has to offer (pictured).
 * Llanwrtyd Wells claims to be the smallest community in the UK with the status of a town.
 * Elburg, rebuilt in the 1390s, is the only historical city in the Netherlands to have been entirely rebuilt on a grid pattern before the Industrial Revolution.
 * Bento Gonçalves is the wine capital of Brazil; most of the country's wine and grape juice is produced in the region (Miolo vineyards pictured).
 * Karni Mata temple outside Bikaner is home to holy rats.
 * Elk Island National Park is one of the last remaining large areas of natural aspen parkland.
 * In Abiquiu (pictured), you can visit the home of famous painter Georgia O'Keefe.
 * Whenever you buy something at Manchester Airport, you're probably saving someone, somewhere, some money on their council tax!
 * An uninhabited island off the southern coast of Puerto Rico is named Caja de Muertos — "Box of the Dead".
 * Laxey is home to the Laxey Wheel (pictured), often described as the biggest water wheel in the world.
 * Puerto Pirámides is one of the best sites to observe the famous southern whales.
 * Always wanted to sleep in a lighthouse? Kylmäpihlaja lighthouse outside Rauma has been converted to a hotel.
 * Awash National Park (pictured) features places where some of the earliest human remains have been found.
 * Kuala Lumpur translates to "muddy river confluence" in Malay.
 * Norfolk Islanders have their own language, Norfuk, a blend of English and Tahitian. It is not easily understood by outsiders.
 * Rishikesh is scenically located where the Ganges River (pictured) comes down from the Himalayas.
 * Big Bend is one of the largest national parks in the lower 48 states yet one of the least visited.
 * The Rance tidal power plant in Saint-Malo reportedly attracts 200,000 visitors per year.
 * The Castle of Good Hope (pictured) in Cape Town is South Africa's oldest surviving building.
 * Some divers know Isla Malpelo as the "shark heaven."
 * The Tamil language is described as having one of the richest literatures in the world.


 * The most popular association football team in Mexico, as rated by FIFA, is Club Deportivo Guadalajara (stadium pictured) in Guadalajara.
 * Legend has it that Kraków was built on the cave of a dragon whom the mythical King Krak had slain.
 * With the same time zone and latitude (though to the south, rather than the north of the equator) as Hawaii, the Cook Islands are sometimes thought of as "Hawaii down under".
 * The Ha Long Bay archipelago (pictured) is made up of 1,969 islands, both inhabited and uninhabited.
 * Barbados has a well-deserved reputation for producing excellent rum.
 * Savaii has no real towns as such, just a series of small villages with people living in traditional huts.
 * Mount Sinai (pictured) is said to be the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God; indeed, the Arabic name Gebel Musa means "Mount of Moses".