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Wikivoyage:Disambiguation pages

A disambiguation page lists the full titles of several different articles, and allows the traveler to choose between them.

It is useful to create a disambiguation page when destinations share identical names. For example, Perth refers to several different cities and towns.

If you reach a disambiguation page by following a link in an article, it means that the original article isn't linked directly to the right article. You can help make Wikivoyage better by going back and editing the link on the page that directed you to the disambiguation page. Before you do you might like to read the naming conventions, especially those on disambiguation.

If an article that should be listed in the disambiguation page is not, this might mean the article does not exist yet or that it has not been added to the disambiguation page. If you can find the article by searching, please add it to the disambiguation page. If you cannot find the article and want to write or link to a new article, please ensure the correct format for the link on the original page and add that link to the disambiguation page as well.

Format
To create a new disambiguation page, use the following format (code can be copied directly into the disambiguation page):

There is more than one place called Name of place: ===Region=== * Place (Region) — a town in Region ===Region=== * Place (Region) — a town in Region * Place (Region) — a town in Region

In the above example, the section headings ( ===Region=== ) usually contain links to the country containing the locations, such as United States of America. The article links ( Place (Region) ) are links to the actual disambiguated articles, such as Lafayette (California). The is special markup that denotes a page is a disambiguation page. The markup will leave a note saying that the page is a disambiguation page, and will appear on the page like this:

One of the links in this notice points readers to this page to explain why they exist and what to do when encountering one. The decision about when to create a disambiguation page is left to writers of new pages.

A link to the disambiguation page at Wikipedia can be added using Wikidata. This is optional. This will add a link to the related Wikipedia disambiguation page in the left column. For additional details on adding link to Wikipedia, see Links to Wikipedia. Be sure and check the link to make sure it goes to the correct Wikipedia disambiguation page.

Disambiguation page maintenance features
This guideline asks that links that point to disambiguation pages be changed to point to the correct articles. When a link that leads to a disambiguation page is changed to point to a new article, it means the disambiguation page can become unlinked.

Unlinked disambiguation pages show up as orphaned pages. To prevent this happening they should be added to the Links to disambiguating pages page.

Putting disambiguation in articles
See Naming conventions for guidance on how to name (or rename) articles to make it clear which destination the article refers to.

If you have a page that is so much more famous than the other places of the same name that it deserves the simple article name, consider putting in the article intro. This will insert a message like,
 * For other places with the same name, see Paris (disambiguation).

See number 4 in Naming conventions for detailed guidelines on such cases.

Harder cases
Disambiguate unofficial place names for region articles only for articles that essentially have the same title, e.g., disambiguate South West (Western Australia) and South West (Scotland)—but not Southwestern Georgia.

Include city district articles in disambiguation lists only if the district (or well-known neighborhood within the district) has a well known placename. E.g., include Chicago/Hyde Park in a disambiguation page for Hyde Park, but do not include Jakarta/South in a disambiguation page for South.

Disambiguation pages for topics that do not merit their own article (example: SeaWorld) should be an exception rather than a rule. Disambiguation pages for non-articles should only be created for attractions that are major travel destinations in their own right, that new editors commonly re-create (example: North Sea) or that there is a consensus to create. When there is doubt as to whether a destination meets any of these criteria a consensus must exist to keep a page, otherwise it should be deleted.

Extra-hierarchical regions
Regions that overlap with other regions but are in themselves unique should not be marked as Disambiguation.
 * Geographical regions that do not form part of the hierarchy, for example New Guinea.
 * Historical regions that share common features but are not part of our hierarchy since that is based on modern borders, for example Bactria.
 * When bodies of water and other geographical features have information about them in several other articles, but either do not have a destination guide of their own or have one that does not fit in the hierarchy. An example is Lake Tai.

These articles should be tagged extraregion.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikivoyage:Disambiguation pages


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Wikivoyage:Discover

Here we collaborate on future discover facts that are featured on the Main Page (and on the Discover page).

Criteria

 * At a minimum, link the article that contains the fact in question. The fact must be taken from a Wikivoyage article.
 * Boldface the fact of interest.
 * Linked articles don't need to be perfect, but preference should be given to those with a status of "usable" or higher.
 * Relevant images are required for one in every three facts. They should be placed above the fact in question, with the following formatting:

The interesting fact linked to this image goes here.

 * When looking for fun facts to add, Special:Random (also accessible in the left sidebar) which displays a random Wikivoyage article can be a useful tool. As many articles unfortunately are short on content, you may want to hit the link multiple times while opening up new articles in new tabs.

Now displayed

 * The content in Template:Discover is automatically updated on a daily basis and each Discover entry is displayed for three days.
 * If the box above is empty, it means that the template ran out of entries. If this happens you can add new entries from the nominations below. Remove entries from the nominations list as you add them to the template.
 * If you are unsure about how it works, feel free to try out things in the Discover sandbox first.
 * When an entry isn't shown on the Main Page any longer, it should be added to the Discover archive, not just deleted from the template.

Nominations
Add your entries to the end of this list. Do not leave any space or other commentary between entries. However, feel free to rearrange the list, because geographic variety in what's displayed is good (e.g. if the next three items are all from Europe, it's good to intersperse something from somewhere else).

 * Courmayeur began to grow during the 19th century's fashion for alpinism, and Italy's first alpine guide society was established here.
 * The Inuit name of Resolute (pictured), Qausuittuqis, means "Seagull Nesting Place".
 * Liepāja is known in Latvia as "the city where the wind is born", because of the continual sea breeze.
 * Graaff-Reinet was established in 1786 to bring law and order, religion and education to the many Dutch farmers on the Eastern Frontier.
 * The Old Portland Island Lighthouse (pictured) was shifted to Wairoa from Portland Island at the tip of Mahia Peninsula.
 * Founded in 1719, the Christ Church in Warwick Parish is one of the world's oldest Presbyterian churches outside of Europe.
 * The Rock of Authority in Kabwe is known as the birthplace of Zambian independence for its use as a political rally site by independence fighters.
 * The Chashma-Ayub Mausoleum (pictured) in Bukhara contains a spring said to have come up from the ground when the Prophet Job struck the spot with his staff.
 * The clock in Tryavna's Clock Tower has been running since it was installed in 1815.
 * The Mayan civilization was never unified as many people assume, so different regions had their own unique styles of architecture.
 * Dungur Palace (pictured) in Axum is nicknamed the Palace of the Queen of Sheba, but it actually dates to the 7th century, 1500 years after her reign.
 * The largest tea garden in the world is Sri Mangal in Sylhet.
 * The Argentinian town of San José de Jáchal has a monument to the casserole in its Plaza Principal.

On hold
The articles linked in from the entries below need to be improved before they're ready to go. Plunge forward, edit them, and move to the main queue. If you move trivia to this list, please provide a reason for doing so.

 * I've self-reverted an item I'd added about an ice hotel as novelty architecture. I see nothing in Wikivoyage talk:Discover that should prohibit me from linking both novelty architecture and the article about the town. Comments? K7L (talk) 02:26, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes. As you said, use as many relevant links as there are. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:26, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems I have misinterpreted what the consensus was (or rather wasn't; the discussion doesn't seem to have come to any conclusion). This being the case, I apologise for interfering with your edits and citing a consensus that doesn't exist.
 * However, I do agree with Ypsi's original concerns that the entry should generally only link to the page where the fact is mentioned; in nearly all cases that is the destination / travel topic that is the entry's subject. Novelty architecture (as an article covering an entire field of study) is only tenuously related to this one specific ice hotel in Sweden. It's a bit like linking to Historical travel (very broad and general topic) in an entry about Herculaneum (a specific Roman archaeological site).
 * But we should really try to conclude that discussion one way or the other. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:55, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * What if the fact is mentioned in more than one place? For instance, Chicken AK being named for ptarmigan is mentioned in both the town's article and places with unusual names. Likewise, it would make sense for the "ice hotel" concept to be mentioned both in their host cities and in the novelty architecture article. K7L (talk) 11:17, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, ice hotels in general, and the specific hotel in question are both mentioned on novelty architecture, like you say. There are lots of cases like this where the same or similar information appears on more than one page. But the discover fact is about this hotel in particular (it being the very first of its kind), so that's the article we should link to, in my opinion. There could be a future discover entry specifically for the novelty architecture article, though, no problem. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:48, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The novelty architecture is the whole point of the item; the bit about "being first" was merely an arbitrary line drawn to avoid having to list all of the other hotels of the same genre - which are too numerous to fit in a twenty-word blurb. K7L (talk) 12:44, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I still think we should link to just one article, the article where the fact appears. If we are to link to several articles, like the factoids in Wikipedia's Did you know (upon which our Discover section is based), I'd say we should also write the name of the article where the fact appears in bold letters, just like they do. --ϒpsilon (talk) 14:25, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The facts do appear in places with unusual names (for Chicken) and novelty architecture (for the ice hotel). K7L (talk) 02:47, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
 * In these cases I still see the destination is the "main article" which should be highlighted somehow. It's Jukkasjärvi that has become famous because of the ice hotel representing Novelty architecture, not the other way around (ie. novelty architecture would still be around if they had built it in Gällivare instead, or not at all). In the same way, Chicken is famous because it has a funny name. --ϒpsilon (talk) 10:50, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
 * If the rest of you think it's best to have only one link per entry, I'll accede to that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:57, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
 * That's for the best. We can still have a fact relating to novelty architecture in the future, whereas linking two or more articles in one fact is basically using those articles up for the foreseeable future, in that we don't like repeat coverage of the same articles within a period of time. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:26, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I believe the concerns about duplication are that we don't want the same fact twice, not that we are trying to prevent two facts about the same destination from appearing at different times. This was raised at Wikivoyage talk:Discover before the WT split, and I think there was one we'd removed the better part of a year ago here as the same fact was mistakenly submitted twice, one month apart. K7L (talk) 13:34, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * We can certainly feature a single destination as many times as we like but I think there should be a couple of months between them at least. Intentionally featuring the same fact again is something we should avoid, though if this occasionally happens by accident (maybe because there have been so long time since it was featured that nobody remembers) I don't think it's a huge problem. For instance, the fact we had a few weeks back of Michigan's map resembling two hands was featured in October 2015 with a different wording. ϒpsilon (talk) 08:34, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer not to feature the same fact twice, or have three facts from the same country appear in the same three-day interval (like The Aleutian Islands of Alaska are the easternmost U.S. point", "Texas is the second-largest state, behind Alaska", "Wyoming is the second least-populous, behind Alaska" )... unless this were April 1 or some occasion where the pattern is the joke. Conversely, I can't see a fact on big things in Australia being precluded because a fact on ice hotels had already run previously; both are technically novelty architecture. K7L (talk)

 * The 2½-mile boardwalk is the central focus of Ocean City's attractions.
 * This is a disambig page – which Ocean City is it?
 * New Jersey, it's in the lead. I opened the three articles and searched the for the sentence, that took a fifth of the time writing this reply. Ypsilon (talk) 10:23, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

The following calendar-related items are "ready-to-go" criteria-wise and should be moved to the main queue at a date appropriate to the trivia featured:

title: Wikivoyage:Discover


text:
Discover

The Discover page is an archive of about strange but true trivia about destinations around the world, previously featured in the Discover section on the main page. You can contribute and add or edit future facts to the list here. Previously displayed facts from this year are below. You can find older facts from previous years using the links at the bottom of the page.

July 2024

 * The unfinished Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (pictured) in Turkestan is a pilgrimage destination and has come to epitomize the Kazakh national identity.
 * Ghent features a graffiti alley where the local graffiti artists are allowed to do their work.
 * Khajuraho's art is a manifestation of the essence of the philosophy of Indian aesthetics.
 * In Aventino, Rome you can see three countries through a keyhole (pictured).
 * Howth harbour features an imprint of the footsteps of King George IV, who landed here on a visit to Ireland in 1821.
 * A Communist hideout during the Vietnam War, the caves below Vieng Xai were known as a "hidden city", and are now the biggest attraction of the town.
 * The prominent Overseas Telecoms Centre (pictured) in Carnarvon that tracked the Gemini and Apollo space missions has been turned to a museum that really recaptures the 1960s/70s space era.
 * Akron is called the City of Invention but used to be known as the Rubber Capital of the World, and before that, as the original home of Quaker Oats, and before that, as a pottery works.
 * Na'in is known for extremely fine carpets.
 * The Gate of Dawn (pictured) in Vilnius is straddled by a chapel with a large icon of the Virgin Mary, painted in the 1620s, which has become a pilgrimage destination.
 * The easiest natural underground works to access are tourist show caves.
 * The same Gull Force Memorial can be found in both Dongfang and Darwin to memorialize Australian POWs killed in Hainan during WWII.
 * Saint John's Episcople Church in Franklin has one of only 3 full sets of Tiffany windows (one window pictured) in the world.
 * Mammoth tusks are popular souvenirs in Magadan, a city where many mammoth fossils have been excavated.
 * The town of Omu-Aran was founded by a prince at the behest of an oracle.
 * The oldest known record of Japan's Top 3 Gardens comes from a 1891 postcard from Okayama's Korakuen Garden (pictured) reading "Korakuen Garden, Number 1 of the Top 3 Gardens".
 * "In Bavaria the clocks run differently" is inscripted on clocks from Oberammergau, because Bavarian clocks run counterclockwise.
 * The Festival of Lanterns in Ahuachapan held every year on September 7 is a celebration of the birth of the Virgin Mary.
 * Adam's Brige (pictured) in Mannar is the single remaining evidence that Sri Lanka was once connected to India

June 2024

 * The Fälschermuseum in Vienna is not a replica museum, but a museum of famous forgeries
 * Every night at the City Pillar Shrine in Khon Kaen, movies are shown for free on large projectors outside.
 * A British pyramid (pictured) near Robertsbridge dating to 1811 entombs a local named John 'Mad Jack' Fuller
 * The largest Quran in the world can be found at Bayt Al-Qur'an Al-Akbar in Palembang.
 * After merely looking at a mirror image of the beautiful Padmini in her palace, Alauddin decided to attack her city of Chittorgarh in an attempt to make her his own.
 * The MAAM Museum in Salta has exhibits dedicated to the discovery of the three Inca "Llullaillaco Children" found frozen like mummies (pictured) at the peak of Mount Llullaillaco.
 * Esztergom Basilica in Esztergom holds the relics of Saint Marko Krizin who was beheaded for refusing to denounce his Catholic faith.
 * Unlike most US states, Oregon has no sales tax.
 * São Sebastião is famous for the Maresias beach (pictured), part of the international surf circuit and regarded as "the Ipanema of São Paulo".
 * With many colonial houses and embassies, Avenue Charles de Gaulle in N'Djamena is a reminder of the French colonial days.
 * Travel has always been integral to golf.
 * The many casas colgadas - "hanging houses" (pictured) - built right up to the cliff edge, make Cuenca one of the most striking towns in Spain.
 * During the War of 1812, Leesburg was used as a temporary capital of the United States when the British occupied Washington.
 * Rüdesheimer Kaffee is a coffee drink with Asbach Uralt brandy, served flambéed.
 * Saint-Barthélemy has long been considered a playground of the rich and famous and is known for its beautiful pristine beaches (St Jean beach pictured), gourmet dining in chic restaurants and high-end designer shopping.
 * There are two official variations of written Norwegian: Bokmål and Nynorsk.
 * The Yalu River Broken Bridge in Dandong reaches only halfway across the river, bordering North Korea.
 * You can take the Pikes Peak Cog Railroad (train pictured) to the summit at just over 14,000 feet (4302 m).
 * Benin is the birthplace of voodoo and voodoo temples, roadside fetishes, and fetish markets are found throughout the country.
 * Home to several bonsai nurseries, Saitama is considered to be the bonsai capital of the world.
 * Gorilla tracking (mountain gorilla pictured) is the main activity in the world heritage-listed Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.
 * The striated caracara (johnny rook) is a rare bird of prey found only on the Falkland Islands and some islands off Cape Horn.
 * About 300 km (190 mi) east of Svalbard and 400 km (250 mi) north of Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land is one of the remotest parts of the world.
 * Porta Reale (pictured) is an entrance to Noto and its main street, the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
 * Kentucky is home to famous food (Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hot Brown, and Burgoo), drink (bourbon whiskey) and music (bluegrass) traditions.
 * The world-class Calgary Zoo is home to over 1,000 animals from all over the world, as well as to the Botanical Garden and a Prehistoric Park for dinosaur lovers.
 * Shitthaung Pagoda (interior pictured) in Mrauk U translates to 80,000 Buddhas, but actually contains more than 84,000 displays of Buddha.
 * The Musée National du Costume in Grand-Bassam has an excellent collection of traditional Ivorian costumes, masks, ornaments and ethnographic photographs.
 * The Deutschland-Ticket allows for unlimited travel on all regional and local public transport in Germany.
 * At 4,200 m (13,800 ft) above sea level, El Tatio (pictured) is one of the highest geyser sites in the world.

May 2024

 * Visitors are not allowed to drive around the Vatican without permission from the authorities, only granted for important reasons.
 * The Empty Quarter is the largest continuous body of sand in the world.
 * University of Mary Washington (Monroe Hall pictured) near Downtown Fredericksburg has been voted, in the past, as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the United States.
 * The Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh was built in the 1960s for the Asian Games that never happened.
 * Kiribati consists of 33 atolls widely dispersed through 3.5 million square kilometres of sea territory.
 * Each July, Nijmegen hosts the International Four Days Marches Nijmegen (participants pictured), the largest multi-day walking event in the world.
 * In basketball, traveling takes just four steps - and you lose the ball.
 * Taal Volcano is sometimes described as the world's smallest volcano, or as "a lake within a volcano within a lake".
 * The massive 1.5-mile-wide Mendenhall Glacier (pictured) is calving into its own lake about 13 miles north of downtown Juneau, Alaska's state capital.
 * Rugby football is named after the school in the English town of Rugby.
 * The numerous varieties of wildflowers and flowering bushes, many endemic to the Altai Mountains, attract tourists from around the world to the Altai Tavan Bogd National Park.
 * Composer Johann Sebastian Bach worked as a cantor in St. Thomas church in Leipzig until his death, and he is buried under a bronze epitaph near the altar (pictured).
 * The open desert terrain that surrounds much of Reno, especially to the Northwest, offers some fantastic mountain biking.
 * Tapiola is a showcase of Finnish architecture from the 1950s and 60s and many of the buildings look quite innovative and unusual even today.
 * The world's main deposits of meerschaum is around Eskişehir, and the town has a museum displaying objects made of this mineral (tobacco pipe pictured).
 * Axum was for nearly 800 years the administrative centre of one of the great empires of the old world.
 * The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto showcases Napoleon Bonaparte's socks and footwear from cultures all over the world.
 * Visiting Santa Cruz, Bolivia but don't have time to explore the country's large national parks? Head to the city's Yvaga Guazu Park (pictured) with similar vegetation.
 * Granite architecture is the defining feature of Aberdeen, though much is showing its age.
 * As wine is usually regarded as the most sophisticated of alcoholic beverages, wine tourism or enotourism is highly developed in many regions around the world.
 * When buying Okiagari Koboshi dolls (pictured) in Aizu-Wakamatsu, buy 1 for every family member plus 1 for the blessing of a new baby.
 * The church bell in Iglesia de San Francisco in Comayagua, cast in Spain in 1460, is the oldest bell in the Americas
 * The Lake of Sorrows in Da Lat is so-named because of a tale of two lovers, one who committed suicide after the other was called up to serve in the army.
 * The Dead Vlei (pictured) in Sossusvlei is so dry that normal decomposition cannot occur, so dead trees remain standing unchanged for centuries.
 * You can see wild Livingston bats, the largest bats in the world, in Nioumachoua.
 * Alabama residents had to fight for Sipsey Wilderness to become the first designated wilderness area east of the Mississippi River due to poor wording in the original Wilderness Act that excluded the East.
 * Solar cookers (pictured) require no fuel, which makes them particularly useful for long trips without reliable re-supply opportunities.
 * The city of Khujand is known as "Lenin's Favorite City".
 * One of the biggest attractions at Water Country USA is the "Big Daddy Falls" water slide.
 * Lincoln Cathedral (pictured) is one of the finest Gothic buildings in Europe, at the heart of the medieval city.
 * The ruins of Sitifis' U-shaped Roman circus have now mostly been built over; only the southern curved end remains visible.

April 2024

 * The Moravian Museum in Brno is the second largest and oldest museum in the Czech Republic.
 * Captured by the Chilean navy in the late 19th century, the Huascar (pictured) anchored outside Talcahuano is the oldest floating historical relic in the world.
 * The main temple on top of Jade Emperor Hill offers a wonderful view of Hangzhou and the lake below.
 * Catania sits under Mount Etna, the most major active volcano in Europe, and has been destroyed many times in the past.
 * Now a visitor attraction, the Underground Hospital (interior pictured) in Mount Isa was built underground in case of Japanese air raids during WWII.
 * In Kailua-Kona there are diving excursions to see giant manta rays at night, and its reportedly the best and most reliable place in the world to see them.
 * There are many infectious diseases that can pose a hazard to travellers who may not be familiar with them and their risks.
 * Porto's (pictured) geography is hard on the feet, but pleasant to the eye.
 * In Wyndham you can see graves from around the 1890s of Afghan camel drivers who were the backbone of transport between cattle stations and towns in the days before road trains.
 * The Golden Mile in Durban is well known for its excellent surfing, occasional shark attack and wide sandy beaches.
 * Oklahoma's state capitol building (pictured) in Oklahoma City is the only capitol in the world with an oil well under it.
 * Saint Nicholas Collegiate Church in Galway is the largest medieval church still in everyday use in Ireland.
 * The Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina features a half-size robotic T-Rex called "Megamunch".
 * "Tubing" down the Nam Song River (pictured) is the activity that dominates Vang Vieng.
 * In the course of history, Cēsis has been rebuilt almost the same three times – the street patterns date back to the Middle Ages, but the oldest buildings to the 18th century.
 * One Korean tea specialty is insam cha, made from the roots of the ginseng plant.
 * The Northern alun-alun square in Yogyakarta can be explored by pedal cars decorated with lights (pictured) on weekend and holiday nights.
 * Zaragoza was founded by the Roman Emperor Augustus, and named after him as Caesaraugusta.
 * Bergen's outdoor fish market has a long history, being the historical centre for fish trade.
 * Due to the need to acclimatize to the altitude for a few days, trekking the Inca Trail (view pictured) must be part of a longer trip.
 * Cross country skiing is the original form of skiing and was developed as a common mode of transport in Northern Europe.
 * In the 18th century Ayutthaya was the trading capital of Asia or even the world, and the most populous city in the world.
 * San Francisco International Airport has an Aviation Museum & Library (pictured) set up in what the airport looked like in the 1930s.
 * Nybro is the gateway to the world famous Swedish glass manufacturing district Glasriket which can be translated to The Kingdom of Glass.
 * The Nigerian dialect of English can be surprisingly different from other forms of English.
 * The 19th century St. Hubert Royal Galleries (pictured) in Central Brussels is one of the world's oldest shopping malls.
 * At the Hook & Line Museum in Port aux Basques you can experience activities such as the baiting of hooks and splitting of fish.
 * Bringing visitors up to the Mittelallalin ski resort outside Saas-Fee, the Metro-Alpin train is considered the highest subway in the world.
 * Once reputed as a "hell on earth", many highly recognisable ruins remain of the 19th-century penal settlement Port Arthur (pictured).
 * In Dutch the letter combination "ij" may both be treated as one or two letters.

March 2024

 * Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival is the biggest chamber music festival in Finland.
 * The railway station (pictured) of Maputo is sometimes mistaken to be the work by Gustave Eiffel.
 * Gokarna means cow's ear in Sanskrit.
 * Cheyenne is infamous for seemingly having different types of weather over a few miles.
 * There's a Japanese saying that "A fool never climbs Fuji (pictured); a bigger fool climbs it twice".
 * While Australian banknotes are used, Kiribati issues its own coins.
 * St. Augustine lays claim to being the oldest city in the United States.
 * The Roman Stadium (viewed from the seats) is literally under the city streets of Plovdiv.
 * Some Christian organizations have hidden Bibles in the area around Petra in anticipation of the arrival of end-times saints.
 * The oldest working mechanical clock is in Salisbury Cathedral and has been ticking apparently over 4 billion times since 1386.
 * Elevated 40 m above the sea and with its curve sweeping close to sheer cliffs, the largest lake in the Faroe Islands, Sørvágsvatn (pictured) may look like an optical illusion.
 * Some time zones seem to defy logic and were mostly drawn by national or regional governments to make commerce and administration easier.
 * The Rialto Square Theater in Joliet is a stunning reflection of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine architecture and has been called one of the ten most beautiful theaters in the U.S.
 * Salinas is one of the most popular holiday destinations on the Ecuadorian coast because of the fine beaches (Punta Carnero beach pictured) and steady weather all year round.
 * The Auto & Technik Museum in Sinsheim has interesting displays of many vintage and historic cars, motorcycles, other machinery, and aircraft.
 * Like countless other "founded 1784" towns, Prescott, Ontario was established by United Empire Loyalists soon after the American Revolution to house the King's loyal subjects.
 * The Sengan-zakura at Oharano Shrine (pictured) in Southern Kyoto is known as the phantom cherry blossom, because it blooms for just 2-3 days.
 * The medieval Lemböte Seafarers' Chapel in Lemland is now a ruin, but the chapel site is used for occasional services during the summertime.
 * Tel Aviv's markets are the best show in town, and they're bustling all day long.
 * Wat Sorasak (pictured) in Sukhothai is surrounded by 24 elephant statues and it seems that the elephants are carrying the structure on their back.
 * As a former British colony, the official language of Belize is standard British English, which makes Belize stand out from its Spanish-speaking neighbours.
 * A local speciality of La Alpujarra is Vino Costa, a pinky brown wine with a strong taste and stronger kick.
 * Diamond Harbour (sunset pictured) makes a perfect escape from the hustle and bustle of nearby Kolkata.
 * The residents of the Isle of Portland have a superstitious belief that rabbits are a source of bad luck.
 * Iguala is known as the "city of tamarinds" for its tamarind trees surrounding the downtown cathedral.
 * Over the centuries, Sofia (pictured) has had several names: Serdika, Sredets and the remains of the old cities can still be viewed today.
 * The snobby feel of Manhattan may not always make it to Queens, which is one of its great appeals for those who live there.
 * Many popular surfing destinations have surf schools and surf camps that offer lessons.
 * Maybe the most interesting thing to see in Kuwait, the fish market (interior pictured) of Kuwait City is a giant, bustling building filled with rows of counters stocked high with fish.
 * Sipadan island is known above all for some of the best scuba diving anywhere in the world.
 * Lake Turkana is the world's largest desert lake.

February 2024

 * Serranía de Hornocal (pictured) outside Humahuaca is a colorful rock formation, and is known as the "mountain of 14 colors".
 * After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the E11 hiking trail became one of many means to stimulate the integration of Western and formerly Eastern, now Central Europe.
 * Bogota's Zona Rosa is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in all of Latin America and the world.
 * Bečići beach (pictured) won the "Grand Prix" in Paris in 1935 as the most beautiful beach in Europe.
 * Often considered by residents as the most liberal city in Montana, Missoula is an interesting mix of ranchers, cowboys, hippies, yuppies, students, artists, athletes and recreationalists.
 * There is something very unsettling about being unwell overseas so it's good to be prepared.
 * Everywhere in Saijo, fresh water gushes out from ground, even from a shallow hole (fountain pictured).
 * The history of Sandefjord has been formed by the Viking Age, the shipping industry and whaling in Arctic and Antarctic areas.
 * Paseo Xolotlan features replicas of old Managua before the 1972 earthquake, including Augusto C Sandino's and Ruben Darío's house, as well as a Boeing airplane.
 * Built around the birthplace of future US bank magnate Thomas Mellon, the Ulster American Folk Park (exhibits pictured) in Omagh showcases the story of emigration from Ulster to North America from the 18th to 20th centuries.
 * The best thing to do on Lake Malawi and in Monkey Bay is kayaking to the surrounding rocky outcrops and small islands and snorkelling to see the amazing fish.
 * Taupō's natural scenery with its lake, forests and volcanic backdrop make for an excellent skydive location.
 * In the Pioneer Saloon (pictured) in Goodsprings, you can see historical bullet holes in the wall resulting from a poker game gone awry.
 * Cochem is rated as one of the prettiest villages along the Mosel.
 * Most Indians know of Udupi not as a place, but as a category of restaurants.
 * An enormous statue of Chairman Mao (pictured) overlooks the Tianfu Square in Chengdu.
 * Punta Uva means "Grape Point", and is named after a sea grape tree in town.
 * Phitsanulok is not well-known to foreign tourists and thus has retained the charm of a typical, larger Thai city.
 * The most famous landmark of Chichen Itza, the Pyramid of Kukulcan (pictured) was a temple-pyramid dedicated to the Feathered Serpent God.
 * The Pacific Rim Whale Festival in Ucluelet in mid-March celebrates the annual migration of the grey whales.
 * Manadonese food is famous throughout Indonesia for two things: the Minahasa eat absolutely anything, and the flavour of choice is very spicy.
 * The Hafnarfjörður Museum (pictured) is a collection of old houses in the centre of town, some containing exhibits and others just renovated to demonstrate their original use.
 * From South Lake Tahoe you can take the Heavenly Gondola to see a beautiful view of Lake Tahoe.
 * The Benedictine Abbey Santa Maria de Montserrat also has a publishing house with the oldest press in the world, still running, with the first book published in 1499.
 * Probably the prettiest street in Khartoum, and with the Blue Nile on one side, Nile street (pictured) is lined with pretty, albeit decaying-looking, colonial buildings.
 * French spelling is not very phonetic.
 * The extensive gardens of Powis Castle in Welshpool look much as intended when they were laid out in the 1770s are an attraction in their own right.
 * Chuncheon (pictured) was featured in the popular Korean drama Winter Sonata, and so it is now a popular destination for tourists from around East Asia.
 * Port-Gentil is Gabon's workhorse with offshore oil rigs and port activities humming around the city.

January 2024

 * A thing to try in Kolhapur is misal, a famous Maharashtrian snack made from spicy sprouted moth beans.
 * The hill Cerro San Luis (pictured) has given name to the adjacent city of San Luis Obispo.
 * The Memorial Ossuary of Kumanovo is a monument to the National Liberation War of Macedonia.
 * A favorite of all kids visiting Ogden, the Ogden Eccles Dinosaur Park has over 100 realistic full-sized dinosaur sculptures.
 * The beautiful European-style Carlton Gardens in Melbourne features a number of towering plane trees and majestic fountains (pictured), some of which date from the Victorian era, and is a World Heritage Site along with the Royal Exhibition Building there.
 * Cagayan de Oro is known as the "City of Golden Friendship."
 * Musee Basque et de l'Histoire de Bayonne offers an excellent introduction to traditional Basque culture and the town of Bayonne.
 * The Petronas Twin Towers (pictured) in the Golden Triangle of Kuala Lumpur is the tallest twin tower building in the world.
 * Near the southern end of Noordhoek beach is the wreck of the steamship Kakapo, that ran aground in 1900, when the captain mistook Chapmans' Peak for the Cape of Good Hope and put the helm over to port.
 * The Natyanjali annual festival of classical Indian dance in Chidambaram takes place at the end of February is the city's biggest attraction that brings thousands of people from all over the world.
 * Known as "the baroque village", Holašovice is famous for strongly decorated and colorful village houses from 19th century (pictured).
 * Now a museum, Einstein's early 20th-century home in Berne was where his special and general theories of relativity were born.
 * Completed in 1932 in an Art Deco style, the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln is the state's third capitol building.
 * The Nymphaeum (pictured) in Jerash is the ruins of an ornate public fountain that was decorated with lions heads and dedicated to the nymphs.
 * Prohibition in the United States allowed Liverpool to become a rum running centre in the 1920s.
 * Winnemucca's Old West Chinatown has disappeared, but the town's Basque heritage remains strong.
 * The observation deck of the Ping An Finance Centre in Central Shenzhen has little glass-floor nooks where you can see the city far down beneath your feet (pictured).
 * On the thirty-four Boston Harbor Islands, pets are not allowed.
 * Riding a felucca along the Nile River is a great way to relax and enjoy a night under the stars in Cairo.
 * Once a month, at high tide when the moon is full, seawater rises to wash the streets of the historic center (pictured) of Paraty.
 * Along with the poetry of its setting, Hull has a formidable connection with some of the most influential poets in English literature.
 * Almost all well known European cheeses are protected by the protected designation of origin guidelines specifying where and how it can be produced to be use its name.
 * Many of the Wildwood's motels were built in the "Doo-Wop" era of 1950s and 1960s (Caribbean Motel pictured, listed on the National Register of Historic Places).
 * The Port of Rotterdam is the largest harbour in all of Europe.
 * The Oregon Caves are unusual due to the fact that the rock is marble, although the caves were formed from the common process of slightly acidic water seeping through cracks.
 * Morske orgulje (Sea Organ, pictured) in Zadar is a man-made organ working with the motion of the waves and 35 pipes to create a musical soundscape.
 * Modern Tanzania combines two areas that formerly were governed separately: Tanganyika on the coast of the African mainland and the island of Zanzibar nearby.
 * There are long and short vowel sounds in Latvian.
 * The Maxwell Food Centre (interior pictured) is described as one of Singapore's best food hawker centres.
 * It might help nervous flyers to understand what happens before and during a typical flight.
 * The Wentworth Pioneer Museum showcases life on the Murray during the era of agriculture.

Old discoveries

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 * 2007

title: Discover


text:
Wikivoyage:Discover/2007

December 2007

 * The cobbles paving the ground in Moscow's famous Red Square are black, not red.

 * If you visit the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, you can learn to drive a streetcar.

 * Among the attractions of the Argentine city of Cordoba is the Museo Paleontológico de la Universität Nacional de Córdoba, featuring the largest fossilized spider in the world.

 * Nanjing, China had the world's longest city wall. Large parts of it are still standing, though much of the modern city is outside them.

 * A dam in Switzerland's Verzasca Valley was featured in the James Bond movie Goldeneye, and is used for what's claimed to be the longest bungee jump in the world.

 * Where did that come from? Solvang, California is best known for its Danish theme (architecture, cuisine, etc.), but also included among its attractions is an ostrich farm.

 * Competitors in the North Bay Triathlon, in the Canadian town of the same name, are allowed to wear wet suits for the swimming part of the competition, because of the cold waters.

 * Arkansas' state capitol, in Little Rock, is built on the former site of the state penitentiary.

 * Mr. Bean fans visiting Portsmouth in Hampshire, England should stay at the Queen's Hotel - the episode Mr. Bean in Room 426 was filmed there.

 * The Bahamian Junkanoo festival, celebrated on Boxing Day and New Year's Day, involves dancing in disposable crepe costumes while clanging cowbells.

 * The Wheels O' Time museum in Peoria (Illinois) features a mechanical barbershop quartet in which all of the figures bear faces of former US presidents.

 * The Bolivian mountain Chacaltaya is the site of the world's highest-elevation Alpine ski area, but it's threatened by global warming.

 * The minor-league baseball team in Charleston (South Carolina) is known as the Riverdogs.

 * Verftet USF, a notable night spot in Bergen, Norway, is located in a former sardine factory.

 * The castle in the small Japanese city of Himeji was, for a time, the largest in all of Asia.

 * If you're allergic to bee stings, be careful when visiting Parque Simón Bolivar in Guaranda, Ecuador; the park's statue of the hero harbors a bee's nest in one of its armpits.

 * It's possible to go scuba diving at Crater Lake National Park, but only if you can carry your gear up and down the mile-long Cleetwood Trail to the eponymous lake.

 * The Grenada Chocolate Factory, on the island-nation of the same name, produces chocolates with machinery powered by solar energy.

 * Several hotels in Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia are built out of salt.

 * Red Hook Ale Brewery in Portsmouth (New Hampshire) is located on the grounds of a former Air Force base.

 * Local beers served in Moshi, Tanzania have the labels Kilimanjaro, Safari and Tusker, among others.

 * If you go scuba diving in Lake Atitlan near Panajachel, Guatemala, be careful: you can burn your hands on the lake's bottom, which is heated by volcanic activity.

 * Walkie-talkie, a dish from Cape Town's impoverished townships, is made from chicken beaks and feet.

 * Arachnophobic? Just wait until you see the holographic projection of a 3-foot-long, crawling tarantula at the Museum of Holography on Chicago's Near West Side.

 * Bandung's prison has been turned into a shopping mall — except the one cell where Indonesian independence leader Sukarno was held.

 * In Honolulu, escape from the hot weather to the last place you'd expect to find - an ice rink.

 * The holes in Swiss Cheese - known locally as Emmentaler in its native Switzerland - are made by gas-excreting bacteria.

 * The replica of Independence Hall in Buena Park, California is so accurate that the original structure in Philadelphia borrowed the blueprints for its restoration.

 * The $50,000 honeymoon suite package at the Peninsula Hong Kong, a hotel in the Kowloon district, includes a helicopter tour of the city.

 * A Salzspeicher (salt warehouse) in Lübeck, Germany was the lair of the title villain in two movies featuring the vampiric Count Nosferatu.

 * The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina is the largest single-family home in the United States.

 * Among the exhibits at Egri Vár, a castle-museum at Eger, Hungary, is an ancient, makeshift motion detector that uses peas.

 * A memorial in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA honors World War II's most decorated battleship (the USS South Dakota), even though the town is hundreds of miles from any ocean.

 * The volcano on the eponymous island of Vulcano is hiker-friendly, and is one of the few places in the world where you can view droplets of molten sulfur.

 * Laos derives its roots and its name from a 14th-century kingdom with the name Lane Xang -- meaning "Million Elephants".

November 2007

 * The English town of Woking was the landing place for the aliens in H. G. Wells' original "War of the Worlds" fiction, a fact commemorated by art work around the town.

 * The Aloft Loft on Chicago's Far West Side is home to a theater group composed entirely of trapeze artists.

 * Ketchikan, Alaska is one of the rainiest cities in North America, with just over 150 inches of average annual precipitation.

 * The Nongae Shrine in Jinju, South Korea memorializes a courtesan who seduced an invading general and then killed him (and herself).

 * The Liberty Hotel in Boston occupies a former prison.

 * Town names on the Malaysian island of Langkawi include "Gravy", "Broken Crockery" and "Seeping".

 * The written language of Thailand is notoriously difficult to read because of a complete absence of space between words.

 * A move is afoot to rename Volusia County, Florida to NASCAR County (note the caps) because of its main attraction, the Daytona International Speedway.

 * In Bangladesh, don't miss the chance to have a bony bite of hilsa, the officially designated national fish.

 * Access to White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, USA is occasionally interrupted by missile tests launched from a nearby Air Force base.

 * The beach at Pantai Sabak in Kota Bharu, Malaysia doesn't have much sand any more due to erosion, but it still features pillboxes left over from World War II.

 * The "living ghost town" of Chloride, Arizona is named after the ore silver chloride, formerly mined nearby.

 * Hotel 1929, a boutique hotel in Singapore, is famous for its collection of chairs.

 * In Kemi, Finland, you can go for a spin on Sampo, the world's only cruise icebreaker.

 * Seattle used to have a district called Sodo -- "South of the Dome" -- but the term is now largely obsolete because the Kingdome has been demolished.

 * Sculptures in Sligo commemorate the town's importance as a port of embarkation during the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century.

 * Place Maréchal-Foch, in Nantes, contains one of the few existing statues of Louis XVI left in France.

 * Traveling through Chicago's O'Hare International Airport with time to kill? Spend it staring at the complete fossil skeleton of one of the world's largest dinosaurs.

 * Trapizza in Singapore is simultaneously a pizzeria and a trapeze school.

 * A part of the table service at the Wuji Rib House in Harbin, China is plastic gloves to keep the rib eater's hands clean.

 * The Druid Hills district of Decatur (Georgia), United States of America provided the scenic setting for the movie Driving Miss Daisy.

 * Malaysia may be an Islamic country, but its Genting Highlands casino is so popular, it has the world's largest hotel.

 * Funazushi, the traditional sushi of Shiga, Japan, uses fermented, not raw, fish.

 * Don't worry too much about the morality of The Annual Hookers Ball in Chatham, Massachusetts; it's by, for and about fishermen -- rather than other kinds of hookers.

 * Brasilia, capital of Brazil, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site even though it's less than 50 years old.

 * Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico, USA features not only the remnants of a supervolcano but also scenic, abandoned movie sets.

 * Now there's one less reason to get caned in Singapore — on October 26, 2007, oral sex was legalized. (Unless you're gay, that is.)

 * The largest lizards in Japan, reaching a length of two feet, are found on Iriomote Island.

 * The Little Rock Zoo is home to the world's only waving carousel.

October 2007

 * The town of Pontianak, Indonesia is named after a mythical baby-eating undead female vampire.

 * The two distinct sections of the Old Town district of Quebec City are connected by the Escalier Casse-Cou -- "Breakneck Stairs".

 * Nha Trang, Vietnam contains a museum dedicated to the memory of Alexandre Yersin, who discovered the bacterium that causes bubonic plague.

 * Fort Denison, a complex at Sydney Harbour that tourists can visit, was originally built to guard the city against Russian attack.

 * Parkersburg, West Virginia, USA holds an annual Volcano Days Festival, even though there has been no volcano (apart from an extinct town by that name) nearby for millions of years.

 * The theoretical net worth of every citizen of Abu Dhabi is $17 million.

 * Singleton, Australia is home to the Southern Hemisphere's largest sundial.

 * On historic Route 66, look for the world's largest cross and a leaning water tower in the small Texas town of Groom.

 * The house from the film A Christmas Story is in Cleveland, Ohio, and is now a museum dedicated to the film.

 * The name of Mexican city Guanajuato means place of the frogs, but it's also a place of tunnels, with many roads running under its sloping surface.

 * One of the exhibits of the pint-sized museum in Hydra, Greece is the embalmed heart of Admiral Andreas Miaoulis.

 * The ivory-billed woodpecker, long believed extinct, might still exist nearBuffalo National River in Arkansas, USA.

 * Built at a cost of over $3 billion, the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi is probably the most expensive hotel in the world.

 * The luxury Volkswagen Phaeton car is contructed in Dresden's Gläserne Manufaktur, a transparent factory.

 * The most visited grave in Buenos Aires's Cementerio de la Recoleta is that of Eva Perón.

 * The Singaporean district of Bugis, named after pirates and once infamous for transvestite prostitutes, is now a shopping mall.

 * Kalimotxo, trademark drink of the Basque Country town of San Sebastian, is made of equal parts wine and Coca-Cola.

 * The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago was founded in 1874 with the $10 purchase of a single bear cub.

 * The false morel mushroom is considered a delicacy in Finland, but it's so poisonous that eating a single one raw can kill you.

 * Much of New Zealand's capital city Wellington is built on reclaimed land raised up by a major earthquake in 1855.

 * The 110,000 people that crowd into Beaver Stadium during Penn State football games are claimed to (temporarily) make State College the third largest city by population in Pennsylvania.

 * The Maldives forbid importing pork and exporting sand.

 * The fur seal colony that lives on Montague Island, Australia during spring months is an all male colony: the seals that live there have been unable to assemble a harem.

 * The Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, is a full-scale replica of the original structure in Athens.

 * The site housing the Mu-dom Bar in Freiburg, Germany once served as a morgue.

September 2007

 * Coca-Cola was first bottled in the Biedenharn Candy Store in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

 * Waterloo, Ontario has the second largest Oktoberfest celebrations in the world, after those in Munich.

 * If you venture out from Iriomote, Japan to nearby Yubu Island, you'll ride in an amphibious cart pulled by a water buffalo.

 * Sahti, a traditional Finnish type of beer, is flavored with juniper berries.

 * The USS Razorback submarine in Little Rock, Arkansas, is named after a whale, not the University of Arkansas mascot.

 * The Hotel Grand Canal in the Dutch city of Delft occupies a former prison.

 * Despite its name, Casa de las Chimeneas, a B&B in Taos, New Mexico, offers non-smoking rooms only.

 * According to local legend, the bauru sandwich, a trademark food item in São Paulo, was invented by a law student.

 * The classic photo of Harry Truman with the incorrect "Dewey Defeats Truman" newspaper was taken at St. Louis Union Station.

 * Nostalgic for Cold War days for some odd reason? Then visit the Polish city of Szczecin, and go on a tour of Poland's largest fallout shelter.

 * There are five million people in Finland... and two million saunas.

 * The Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run, starting in Silverton (Colorado), is often called the toughest endurance race in the world, yet is so popular that would-be runners must enter a lottery to register for it.

 * In a bit of national one-upmanship, the Parliament building in Budapest is claimed to be one meter longer and wider than its English counterpart.

 * The Sink, a bar in Boulder, Colorado, USA, once employed a janitor named Robert Redford -- yes, that Robert Redford.

 * There used to be a nutmeg orchard owned and run by a Mr Orchard on Singapore's Orchard Road.

 * Salmiakki, a popular Finnish candy, is flavored with ammonium chloride.

 * The Unsichtbar, a bar/restaurant in Cologne, is designed to let guests experience blindness; patrons get a private butler, who is a blind person, and eat in total darkness.

 * Hot Doug's, an eatery in the Far Northwest Side of Chicago, specializes in sausages, with ostrich sausage among its offerings.

 * The Atlantis resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas is responsible for over one tenth of the country's gross national product.

 * The San Fernando Valley in California is home to over a thousand exotic wild parrots descended from pet-store and theme-park escapees.

 * The shrine at Phra Nang Beach in Rai Leh, Thailand holds offerings to a legendary princess claimed to have drowned there: carved, red-tipped phalluses.

 * The city of Tenney, Minnesota bills itself as the smallest statutory city in the United States, with a fully functioning government and six full-time residents.

 * Atolls in the Maldives all have handy code names: instead of Maalhosmadulu Dhekunuburi, you can just say Baa.

 * Most of the animals at Star Eco Station, a rescue center/teaching zoo in Culver City, California, are illegal animal immigrants seized during Customs operations.

 * Among the events of the Indy Irish Fest, a September festival in Indianapolis, is a mile race in which all contestants must wear kilts.

 * A centerpiece of the September Fiesta de Santa Fe (New Mexico) is the ceremonial burning of Zozobra, a huge animated figure also known as Old Man Gloom.

 * The original church at the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Dubrovnik, Croatia was said to have been built using funds donated by Richard the Lionhearted.

 * The city of Kagoshima in Kyushu, Japan was recently given a grant of several billion yen for the purpose of covering its streetcar tracks with grass.

 * The old hangar at the Pearson Air Museum in Vancouver (Washington) once housed not only airplanes but prisoners of war.

August 2007

 * Festivals in the Finnish city of Oulu include Garlic Night and the International Air Guitar Festival.
 * The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California is the largest Buddhist temple in the Western Hemisphere, measuring over 2,000 acres, and has a hall filled with 10,000 golden Buddhas.
 * The Matsuyama youth hostel in Matsuyama, Japan runs courses in spoon-bending and aura imaging.
 * The figures of angels and saints that once adorned the Astronomical Clock in the Czech town of Olomouc were replaced during Warsaw Pact days by depictions of scientists, laborers and athletes.
 * A jewelry store in the arts-and-crafts district of Santa Fe (New Mexico), one of the world's great art centers, recently suffered a midnight break-in -- by a mountain lion.
 * The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Akron, Ohio, USA is constructed from old grain storage silos from a former cereal factory.
 * The surface area of Saint Martins Island in Bangladesh varies from 5 to 8 square kilometers, depending on the tides.
 * The river running through Hue, Vietnam is named Huong Giang -- translating into English as Perfume River.
 * Casa Peralta in San Leandro, California is a former adobe built by the Spanish during the state's missionary times.
 * Sado Island drummers Kodo once performed in Boston — immediately after running the Marathon.
 * The Rustic Nirvana spa in Singapore's Chinatown offers a Kung Fu Bouncing Herbs treatment.
 * The House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin features the largest carousel in the world, with 239 carousel animals — not one of which is a horse.
 * Cafe 100, an eatery in Hilo, Hawaii popular with locals, has been destroyed twice by tsunamis.
 * The first of the Big things in Australia was the Big Banana, which you can still see today near the city of Coffs Harbour.
 * Novelist Natsume Soseki and haiku poet Masaoka Shiki lived together in a Matsuyama house called Gudabutsuan, or Stupid Buddha Hermitage.

July 2007

 * Zeche Zollverein in Essen, Germany has been called the most beautiful coal mine in the world, and in fact, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
 * The statue of Will Rogers and his horse Soapsuds at Texas Tech, a university in Lubbock, Texas, is oriented so that the horse's rear end points at Tech's collegiate rival, Texas A&M University.
 * The name of Tōge-no-Yu Bihoro (峠の湯びほろ), a hot spring in Bihoro, Japan, translates as "Pass Hot Water Bihoro".
 * The average annual temperature in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, exactly matches the world average temperature to within a tenth of a degree Centigrade.
 * Part of the cuisine of Huaraz, Peru and vicinity is cuy, better known in English as guinea pig.
 * The authentic Sopwith Camel aircraft in Little Rock, Arkansas is the only one in the United States.
 * The women of Kochi, Japan are known as hachikin, or Eight Testicles, as they reputedly hold their liquor better than four men.
 * Every floor of The Basin Park Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas is a "ground" floor.
 * By tradition, members of the crews that finish last in the annual Punt Boat Race in Tübingen, Germany must drink a half liter of cod liver oil.
 * Los Alamos, the "Atomic City," is sited on the slopes of a slumbering supervolcano.
 * The Cube, a sculpture by Tony Rosenthal in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, is a 15-foot-tall, 2400-lb glossy black cube that spins on its axis when pushed.
 * Redwood Empire Ice Arena in Santa Rosa, California is also known as "Snoopy's Home Ice", because it was once owned by cartoonist Charles Schulz.
 * Okhotsk Ryūhō Museum in Abashiri, Japan is devoted to the meteorological phenomenon of pack ice.

June 2007

 * The Church, a popular bar and dance club in Denver, is housed in a former Episcopalian church.
 * The Grand Mosque in Muscat, Oman claims to house the largest hand-made Persian carpet in the world.
 * It is said that there are 365 ponds in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- one for each day of the year.
 * You can take a land-and-sea tour of Dublin, Ireland in World-War-II-vintage amphibious landing craft.
 * Where did they get that name? Travelers flying to Dehradun, India land at Jolly Grant Airport.
 * Ever felt like joining the circus? You can come close at the ¡Explora! Science Center and Children's Museum in Albuquerque, where one of the "hands-on" exhibits is a high-wire bike.
 * The water from Devi Falls, one of the scenic attractions of Pokhara, Nepal, drops into a cave and is lost from sight.
 * Ichiran, a famous noodle restaurant in Fukuoka, Japan, forbids cellphones, children and conversation.
 * Juneau, capital of Alaska, is not connected by road to the state's other major cities (Anchorage, Fairbanks, etc.), even though they're all on the mainland.
 * Visiting Montreux, Switzerland? Make sure to see Marmots' Paradise, with specimens of the little squirrel-like animals from all around the world.
 * Kugleralm, a beer garden in Munich, was the birthplace of Radler -- beer diluted with lemonade.
 * One of the thermal areas at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California bears the curious name Bumpass Hell.
 * The Brew Kettle, a microbrewery in Cleveland, Ohio, allows some customers to brew their own beer.
 * If you're capable of some acrobatics, when visiting the Öpfelchammere (Apple Chamber) bar in Zurich, you may win a glass of wine and the chance to drink it while hanging upside down.
 * The Marzipan Museum in Szentendre, Hungary has a life-sized statue of Michael Jackson made of marzipan.
 * In the Bahamas, you can get three-dollar bills and 15-cent coins.

May 2007

 * Miss Tiffany's Universe Pageant, held every May in Pattaya, Thailand, is a beauty queen competition with a difference - all the contestants were born as men.
 * The Kowloon district of Hong Kong is the most densely populated place in the world.
 * One of the events in the Yankee Homecoming Festival in Newburyport, Massachusetts is a bed race, where beds with occupants are pushed along a main street.
 * May 5th is Coronation Day in Thailand, in tribute to the world's longest-serving current Head of State.
 * In Singapore, chewing gum is available only in pharmacies -- and you need to show ID to make a purchase.
 * The visitor center that welcomes newcomers to Fort Smith, Arkansas, USA is located in a former bordello.
 * Popular nightspots in Turku, Finland include a former nursery and a former public lavatory.

April 2007

 * At Karim's Restaurant in Kebab Lane, Old Delhi, the most famous dish is Tandoori Bakra — an entire stuffed goat.
 * One of the attractions of Bilbao, Spain is the Museo de Reproducciones Artísticas -- dedicated to copies of the world's great art.
 * In South Korea, roasted silkworm larvae are a popular streetside snack.
 * One of the many museums in and around Tucson, Arizona features a disarmed but formerly nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
 * Up until the 1980s, Singapore's anti-hippie policies required that all male visitors get a haircut and a shave before entering the country.
 * Songkran, the Thai New Year, is celebrated in mid-April with a three-day nationwide water fight.
 * The remote Shimokita Peninsula of Japan is famous for squid ink noodles.
 * Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, a pub in Nottingham, claims to have been founded in 1189, making it the oldest inn in England.
 * New Zealand's Bay of Islands has fine natural scenery, but it also boasts not-so-natural but scenic(?) public toilets designed by architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
 * In Turkmenistan, the month of April and the word bread were renamed after the mother of former President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazov.
 * The Cooper Skull, a 10,000-year-old bison skull on display in a museum in Norman, Oklahoma, is the oldest known painted artifact in North America.
 * Namibia isn't a dictatorship, but its capital, Windhoek, contains streets with names like Fidel Castro St. and Robert Mugabe Ave.

March 2007

 * The pilgrimage route to the summit of Mount Ishizuchi, Japan involves climbing up 166 meters of metal chains.
 * Exhibits in the Lao National Museum, Vientiane include socks worn by Politburo members during a prison escape.
 * The dome of Mills Observatory, a free, public astronomical observatory in Dundee, Scotland, is made of papier-mâché.
 * Chateau Louis Liquor Store in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada was the scene of a whiskey kidnapping, as a bottle of rare malt was stolen and held for ransom.
 * A church in Almaty, former capital of Kazakhstan, was built in 1870 without using nails.
 * The Berjaya Time Square shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur has a five-story indoor rollercoaster.
 * Driving a dirty car in Oman is illegal and may render you a fine.
 * Ice fishing is a popular winter pastime in Sudbury, Ontario - but ice fishing huts must be off the ice by March 1st

title: Wikivoyage:Discover/2007