I wonder…
We are spending this week chilling out in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We have some time on our hands to reminisce over the last 15 months and thought we’d continue with our theme of lists. For this one, we tried to come up with the seven wonders, but it proved too difficult to narrow down. It made for some good discussions over a few Singhas, but we finally cheated and came up with the following 2 lists.
The places we picked are sometimes not the best or biggest, but they are the ones that captured us. They are places that for whatever reason – the weather, our mood, or something intangible – surprised us or made us just want to stay for a while. There are other famous places, like the Taj or the Rhine Valley, that were great, but missing something that set these apart. Note that these aren’t in any particular order – that would have taken us weeks to rank.
Seven Man Made Wonders
– Sydney Opera House
– Grand Palace, Bangkok
– Burj Dubai
– Giza Pyramids
– Coliseum, Rome
– Gugenheim, Bilbao
– Mezquita, Cordoba
Seven Natural Wonders
– Tongariro NP, New Zealand
– Rotorua, New Zealand
– Mt. Blanc/Alps around Chamonix
– Canyons in Utah – the Arches and Bryce in particular, but Canyonlands and Zion too.
– The Olgas, Australia (Uluru should be on the list, but the thousands of tourists snapping photos took away some of the charm.)
– Santorini, Greece
– Cliffs in Ireland – The Cliffs of Moher are the most famous, but the ones at Horn Head and Slieve League are just as dramatic.
Here’s an informative sign we saw today that was definitely not one of our “wonders”…
halftime