Villages on the slopes of the gorges of Norway are common. Balestrand is at the entrance to three. Its settings stand out in such a way that they have attracted famous painters and continue to seduce intrigued travelers.
A unavoidable historical and architectural treasure of Japan, Nikko's Toshogu Shrine honors the most important Japanese shogun, mentor of the Japanese nation: Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Traveling through Florida, we deviated from the programmed orbit. We point to the Atlantic coast of Merrit Island and Cape Canaveral. There we explored the Kennedy Space Center and followed one of the launches that Space X and the United States are now aiming for in Space.
berry, Myanmar
Determined and opportunistic, two Portuguese adventurers became kings of Pegu's kingdom. His dynasty only lasted from 1600 to 1613. It has gone down in history.
The island of Gozo is a third the size of Malta but only thirty of the small nation's three hundred thousand inhabitants. In duo with Comino's beach recreation, it houses a more down-to-earth and serene version of the always peculiar Maltese life.
It has been the main settlement in the Faroe Islands since at least 850 AD, the year in which Viking settlers established a parliament there. Tórshavn remains one of the smallest capitals in Europe and the divine shelter of about a third of the Faroese population.
We leave Homer in search of Whittier, a refuge built in World War II and housing two hundred or so people, almost all in a single building.
In colonial times, the great African region of the Volta was German, British and French. Today, the area east of this majestic West African river and the lake on which it spreads forms a province of the same name. It is a mountainous, lush and breathtaking corner of Ghana.
The old and majestic Vegueta de Las Palmas district stands out in the long and complex Hispanization of the Canaries. After a long period of noble expeditions, the final conquest of Gran Canaria and the remaining islands of the archipelago began there, under the command of the monarchs of Castile and Aragon.
A mere year into the first millennium, a Viking missionary named Sigmundur Brestisson brought the Christian faith to the Faroe Islands. Kirkjubour became the shelter and episcopal seat of the new religion.
It was built by Emperor Constantine, on the site of Jesus' Crucifixion and Resurrection and an ancient temple of Venus. In its genesis, a Byzantine work, the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher is, today, shared and disputed by various Christian denominations as the great unifying building of Christianity.
Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands
It began as a mere Villa del Apurón. Come the century. XVI, the town had not only overcome its difficulties, it was already the third port city in Europe. Heir to this blessed prosperity, Santa Cruz de La Palma has become one of the most elegant capitals in the Canaries.
We go along the road that connects the homonymous capital to the sharp end of the island. When we arrived in Roça Porto Alegre, with the islet of Rolas and Ecuador in front of us, we had lost ourselves time and time again in the historical and tropical drama of São Tomé.
The southernmost point of São Tomé and Príncipe, Ilhéu das Rolas is lush and volcanic. The big news and point of interest of this island extension of the second smallest African nation is the coincidence of crossing the Equator.
Chania was Minoan, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Venetian and Ottoman. It got to the present Hellenic nation as the most seductive city in Crete.
Edfu to Kom Ombo, Egypt
Having accomplished the unmissable embassy to Luxor, to old Thebes and to the Valley of the Kings, we proceed against the current of the Nile. In Edfu and Kom Ombo, we surrender to the historic magnificence bequeathed by successive Ptolemy monarchs.
Santo Domingo is the longest-inhabited colony in the New World. Founded in 1498 by Bartholomew Colombo, the capital of the Dominican Republic preserves intact a true treasure of historical resilience.
It is only the third largest island in the archipelago. It so impressed European navigators and settlers that they got used to treating it as the supreme.
A Dutch colony in the Caribbean became a major slave hub. It welcomed Sephardic Jews who had taken refuge from the Iberia Inquisition in Amsterdam and Recife. And it assimilated influences from the Portuguese and Spanish villages with which it traded. At the heart of this secular cultural fusion has always been its old capital: Willemstad.
San Juan is the second oldest colonial city in the Americas, after the Dominican neighbor of Santo Domingo. A pioneering emporium and stop over on the route that took gold and silver from the New World to Spain, it was attacked again and again. Its incredible fortifications still protect one of the most lively and prodigious capitals in the Caribbean.