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Olympic National Park is a United States national park located in the state of Washington, in the Olympic Peninsula.The park has four basic regions: the Pacific coastline, alpine areas, the west side temperate rainforest and the forests of the drier east side.

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park

Barcelona

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and the second largest city in Spain, after Madrid.  About five million people live in the Barcelona metropolitan area. It is also Europe's largest metropolis on the Mediterranean Sea. It is the main component of an administrative area of Greater Barcelona, It is located on the Mediterranean coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besòs.

Barcelona

Barcelona is today one of the world's leading tourist, economic, trade fair/exhibitions and cultural-sports centres, and its influence in commerce, education, entertainment, media, fashion, science, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities.


Barcelona is the 16th-most-visited city in the world and the fourth most visited in Europe after Paris, London, and Rome, with several million tourists every year.

Founded as a Roman city, Barcelona became the capital of the County of Barcelona. After merging with the Kingdom of Aragon, Barcelona became one of the most important cities of the Crown of Aragon. Besieged several times during its history, Barcelona has a rich cultural heritage and is today an important cultural centre and a major tourist destination. Particularly renowned are the architectural works of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner, which have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The founding of Barcelona is the subject of two different legends. The first attributes the founding of the city to the mythological Hercules 400 years before the building of Rome. The second legend attributes the foundation of the city directly to the historical Carthaginian Hamilcar Barca, father of Hannibal, who named the city Barcino after his family in the 3rd century BC Barcelona is the passionate capital of Catalonia, an unforgettable city of art, culture and beauty. Gaudi's works, museums, concerts and FC Barcelona’s football team homeland.



A tree-lined pedestrian mall, La Rambla stretches for 1.2 kilometers between Barri Gòtic and El Raval, connecting Plaça de Catalunya in the centre with the Christopher Columbus Monument at Port Vell. La Rambla can be considered a series of shorter streets, each differently named, hence the plural form Les Rambles (the original Catalan form; in Spanish it is Las Ramblas). From the Plaça de Catalunya toward the harbour, the street is successively called the Rambla de Canaletes, the Rambla dels Estudis, the Rambla de Sant Josep, the Rambla dels Caputxins, and the Rambla de Santa Mònica. Construction of the Maremàgnum in the early 1990s resulted in a continuation of La Rambla on a wooden walkway into the harbour called the Rambla de Mar.


Walk along Las Ramblas to enjoy street musicians, living statues, hustlers and just plain loonies. Hop onto the Tramvia Blau for a tram trip up to the top of Tibidabo and take in the magnificent sights of the city below you. Shop along the Passeig de Gracia, at the most well known boutiques in Barcelona.

Have a sunset drink at a chiringuito bar on the Barceloneta beach, then after dark, join the locals for pub crawling at the Barri Gotic for a huge selection of tapas bars, wine bars, cocktail lounges and even Irish pubs! Now that you've worked up an appetite, head for El Born where you'll find the finest in new catalonian cuisine.


The Picasso Museum
The best way to visit the Old Town is on foot, Gothic quarter streets, the old fisherman’s village of Barceloneta and the beach, the fantastic Palau de la Musica Catalana in the Borne district, leading you all the way over to the garden of Barcelona – La Cuitadella . This is a huge part of Barcelona and is a really great way to spend a day.


Barcelona is an extremely practical city in which to go shopping, everything you need is concentrated in the centre and the historical city. Fashion is particularly well represented, by world famous brands which all have a store in Barcelona alongside exciting, young designers. Barcelona is a city well known for interior design and decoration with many stylish outlets in the city, also Barcelona city markets are popular, colorful and noisy places. From food markets to fleas or books markets there is a wide selection throughout the centre on most days.

Barcelona has a uniquely wide range of bars: Ranging from colourful tapas bars , outdoor cafés, chocolaterias, coctelerías (cocktail bars), whiskerias (often singles bars with professional escorts), xampanyerias (Catalan cava, sparkling wine bars), and beer halls. Most stay open until about 2:30am, some even later..

Nightlife in Barcelona starts around 10pm for bars and midnight for clubs. Bars close around 2am in week days and 3am during the weekend. Clubs will often still be bouncing till dawn breaks.

Easter Island,Places of Peace and Power

Located out in the Pacific Ocean and a special territory of Chile, Easter Island holds Moai statues that are the only thing left of a culture that once lived here. These gigantic and amazingly carved heads are just another reminder that primitive people are not really all that primitive. The stones that attract visitors to this island are made out of volcanic ash. Many still remain in the quarry, left by the settlers as diminishing resources on the island left their tribes doomed to war that finally killed them off.

Petra

Petra is an archaeological site in Arabah, Aqaba Governorate, Jordan.

The site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was discovered by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. It was famously described as “a rose-red city half as old as time” in a Newdigate prize-winning sonnet by John William Burgon. UNESCO has described it as “one of the most precious cultural properties of man’s cultural heritage.”In 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site. It is one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World” as determined by the New Open World Corporation

Petra is a famous city carved out of stone, hidden by towering sandstone mountains in Jordan. Although uninhabited today, during ancient times, it was an important city, and was the main city of an ancient people called the Nabataens, who lived in southern Jordan, Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, and created a kingdom with its capital at Petra. Lying in the centre of an ancient caravan trade routes, Petra benefited from the resulting commerce. Caravans pass through Petra for Giza in the south, Bosra and Damascus in the north, Aqaba on the Red Sea, and eastward to the Persian Gulf.

Until they settled at Petra, the Nabateans were largely nomadic. They founded Petra around the 6th century BC and ruled over it until AD 100, when the Romans conquered Petra. In AD 106 it was absorbed into the Roman Empire and was known as Arabia Petraea. Although having lost its autonomy, Petra continued to flourish for another one hundred years. It then began to decline when trade routes changed. An earthquake in AD363 devastated Petra and destroyed its waterworks. Petra lay in ruins until the 12th century, when the Crusaders occupied it and built a citadel there. After they were gone, Petra was left to its native inhabitants. It was first seen by a Westerner in 1812, when Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt discovered it. Petra was made popular in recent times by the Indiana Jones movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Although it is Petra's most elaborate ruin, Al Khazneh is by no means the only sight worth visiting. There are more tombs and chambers on the cliffs surrounding Al Khazneh. The smaller tombs look like black holes on the cliff walls. On the left of Al Khazneh to the left, at the foot of a mountain called en-Nejr, is an amphitheatre that can accommodate up to 8000 people. There are more tombs on the rock walls behind it. When the amphitheatre was carved, it was probably cut into some of the existing tombs as well.
basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba.

Machu Picchu

It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Sacred Valley which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization.

Machu Picchu

7,000 feet above sea level and nestled on a small hilltop between the Andean Mountain Range, the majestic city soars above the Urabamba Valley below. The Incan built structure has been deemed the “Lost Cities”, unknown until its relatively recent discovery in 1911. Archaeologists estimate that approximately 1200 people could have lived in the area, though many theorize it was most likely a retreat for Incan rulers. Due to it’s isolation from the rest of Peru, living in the area full time would require traveling great distances just to reach the nearest village.

In the summer of 1911 the American archaeologist Hiram Bingham arrived in Peru with a small team of explorers hoping to find Vilcabamba, the last Inca stronghold to fall to the Spanish. Traveling on foot and by mule, Bingham and his team made their way from Cuzco into the Urubamba Valley, where a local farmer told them of some ruins located at the top of a nearby mountain. The farmer called the mountain Machu Picchu, which translates to “old peak” in the native Quechua language. On July 24, after a tough climb to the mountain’s ridge in cold and drizzly weather, Bingham met a small group of peasants who showed him the rest of the way. Led by an 11-year-old boy, Bingham got his first glimpse of the intricate network of stone terraces marking the entrance to Machu Picchu.

Archaeologists have identified several distinct sectors that together comprise the city, including a farming zone, a residential neighborhood, a royal district and a sacred area. Machu Picchu’s most distinct and famous structures include the Temple of the Sun and the Intihuatana stone, a sculpted granite rock that is believed to have functioned as a solar clock or calendar.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983 and designated one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, Machu Picchu is Peru’s most visited attraction and South America’s most famous ruins, welcoming hundreds of thousands of people a year. Increased tourism, the development of nearby towns and environmental degradation continue to take their toll on the site, which is also home to several endangered species. As a result, the Peruvian government has taken steps to protect the ruins and prevent erosion of the mountainside in recent years.

The Semmering Railway The Semmering Railway

The Semmering Railway, built over 41 km of high mountains between 1848 and 1854, is one of the greatest feats of civil engineering from this pioneering phase of railway building. The high standard of the tunnels, viaducts and other works has ensured the continuous use of the line up to the present day. It runs through a spectacular mountain landscape and there are many fine buildings designed for leisure activities along the way, built when the area was opened up due to the advent of the railway.

The Semmering Railway

IT is a daring feat of civil engineering that uses sixteen viaducts(several supported by two-storey arches), fifteen tunnels and over one hundred curved stone bridges to surmount the 460m difference in height. The engineer was Carlo di Ghega, a man who pushed the technical boundaries during the pioneering heyday of railway construction.

 The track had to rise up over a kilometre-high mountain pass – which then became the highest altitude that could be reached by railway in the world – and overcome extreme radii and upward gradients. Twenty thousand workmen laboured to carve the vision from the limestone rock; such was the feat that afterwards it was triumphantly claimed that there was nowhere that a railway could not be built.
In 1854 got built the Semmering train, who was one of the first train to pass through high alpine mountains. The spectacular landscape and the monumental buildings were declared UNESCO world heritage. The railway made it easily accessible from Vienna and at the fin-de-siecle several monumental hotels were raised here. Semmering is the best known alpine resort in eastern Austria.

The Semmering line, engineered by Carl Ritter von Ghega, runs from Gloggnitz to Murzzuschlag, crosses the high Alps in a 42 km (26 mile) long section known as the Semmering Pass. It still forms part of the railway from Vienna in Austria to Italy and Slovenia. The Adriatic port of Trieste had special importance as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Since it was the only access the state had to the sea, an efficient railway connection was of the utmost importance.