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Awesome places in the world (probably NSF56k)
ege02
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I have a curious attraction towards places that are far away. Sometimes when I'm bored I find myself looking at a world map or something and wondering what life on <insert remote place name here> would be like.
I think it's kinda sad that I'm 23 yet I'm already thinking about where I'd move for retirement. :P
Maybe I'm not the only one who is like this. So I thought I'd make a thread. With pictures. Here are three remote (and maybe exotic) places that at some point in life I'd like to visit and live in for a few years at least. Of course your definition of "awesome" may be different so feel free to share your own places, preferably with pictures!
Falkland Islands
Map
Located 300 miles off the coast of the southern tip of South America, Falkland Islands are an archipelago consisting of two big islands and about eight hundred smaller islands. They are a self-governing Overseas Territory of the UK.
Wikipedia entry.
Awesome things about them:
- There are only three thousand people on the islands.
- The islands are close enough to Antarctica that there are penguins on them! Penguins!
- The islands have only one eye doctor that visits only once a couple of years so if you're an eye doctor you'll be treated as god there. :P
Pictures (shamelessly stolen from the wikipedia entry):
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Chile
Chile is a country in South America that sits between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It commands the longest shoreline in South America: some 4000km long. The country spans from tropical regions all the way south to arctic regions, and as such each of the 15 regions of the country are fairly different from one another.
Awesome things:
- Longest country in the world! Amazing diversity in geography (see pics).
- The least corrupt country in South America. Unlike the rest the country is run really well.
- I tried a pisco once and it's amazing.
- Their traditional dance, The Cueca, looks fun. :P
Wikipedia entry.
Pictures:
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Anyway I'd like to list more but I'm out of time. So I'll just make this OP and let you guys post your own stuff.
Rules:
- Spoiler images if they are big
- List some facts about the place you're posting about
- Talk about your travel experiences if you have any!
Have at it.
I think it's kinda sad that I'm 23 yet I'm already thinking about where I'd move for retirement. :P
Maybe I'm not the only one who is like this. So I thought I'd make a thread. With pictures. Here are three remote (and maybe exotic) places that at some point in life I'd like to visit and live in for a few years at least. Of course your definition of "awesome" may be different so feel free to share your own places, preferably with pictures!
Falkland Islands
Map
Located 300 miles off the coast of the southern tip of South America, Falkland Islands are an archipelago consisting of two big islands and about eight hundred smaller islands. They are a self-governing Overseas Territory of the UK.
Wikipedia entry.
Awesome things about them:
- There are only three thousand people on the islands.
- The islands are close enough to Antarctica that there are penguins on them! Penguins!
- The islands have only one eye doctor that visits only once a couple of years so if you're an eye doctor you'll be treated as god there. :P
Pictures (shamelessly stolen from the wikipedia entry):
--
--
Chile
Chile is a country in South America that sits between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It commands the longest shoreline in South America: some 4000km long. The country spans from tropical regions all the way south to arctic regions, and as such each of the 15 regions of the country are fairly different from one another.
Awesome things:
- Longest country in the world! Amazing diversity in geography (see pics).
- The least corrupt country in South America. Unlike the rest the country is run really well.
- I tried a pisco once and it's amazing.
- Their traditional dance, The Cueca, looks fun. :P
Wikipedia entry.
Pictures:
--
--
--
---
Anyway I'd like to list more but I'm out of time. So I'll just make this OP and let you guys post your own stuff.
Rules:
- Spoiler images if they are big
- List some facts about the place you're posting about
- Talk about your travel experiences if you have any!
Have at it.
ege02 on
0
Posts
New Zealand (Fiordland, on the west coast of South Island):
(^lake in a glacial valley, not a fiord, but still awesome)
1.8MB panorama of Milford Sound
(Typical west coast weather^)
MOD EDIT: large gifs need to be linked, not simply spoiled. They still pre-load when under spoilers.
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I was lucky enough to see these. It's a fantastic experience. They generally take the tour boats right up under the waterfalls.
I was in New Zealand for almost two weeks and loved every minute of it. You can drive from a temperate climate to a rainforest to a glacier in a DAY.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
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Like L|ama already said, fjords are really impressive. I'm not sure if I'd actually stand on it, but Kjeragbolten in Norway would be fun to see. It's something like a 1000 meter drop down.
Antarctica might be fun to see...it'd just be something completely different from anything else I've ever seen. Big boat ride over scary waters, see some penguins and seals, run around on some glaciers.
http://williamclydesmith.googlepages.com/2007-02-28amPenguin.JPG/2007-02-28amPenguin-full.jpg
http://williamclydesmith.googlepages.com/2007-03-01pmArticWonderland.JPG/2007-03-01pmArticWonderland-full.jpg
(Not in image tags because they're 3000 x 2000 pictures)
Holy fuck, my heart dropped to my knees just looking at it. I opened the spoiler, my heart skipped a few beats and I closed it. There is no way I could ever see myself just standing there like that. As beautiful as it may be... Fuck no. I can't even bring myself to re-open the spoiler for a second look.
I blame movies. We're trained to think, "Convenient rock perched precariously over a thousand meter drop? No fucking way. That thing ain't gonna last five minutes."
This is true, but I think there are many of us my self included that can't stand being that close to a massive drop off like that with out expierncing vertigo. I can't get close to a ledge at the top of the space needle in San Antonio with out freaking out.
it's kinda like having alcohol for the first time, at first it's bitter work putting yourself through it, but eventually you'll aquire the taste and appreciate the views and experiences if you know what i mean
as for places i want to go? new zealand's already been said but i'll be damned if it's not way up on my to see list, same with norway which also has already been said. i've already seen alot of europe so i'd like to go further east, china, japan, thailand would all be very nice. oh and the easter islands i definitly want to go there
I can look at it but the bottoms of my feet hurt when I do it.
What's funny is that my boyfriend would love to stand there. AND THEN JUMP OFF IT WITH A PARACHUTE.
I had no idea chile was so beautiful. I know a few people who have visited/lived there and now I can understand why.
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
Awesome.
http://www.suboptimist.com
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
Holy crap, I thought I was the only whose feet did this. Also I would totally base jump off of that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4
Check that video at 3:07 for some guy dancing on top of that rock. Also a lot of other awesome places in the world in that video.
Oh my yes.
Where the hell is Matt is great hahah.
The colours in that photo remind me of inland Australia. Red sand as far as you can see.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
A favourite of mine that I've actually visited (really, just about every country has some stunning views and fascinating geology) is Delphi, in Greece. It's very remote and exceptionally quiet in the off-peak season. Although it's well known, not many people at all actually live or visit there. I love the combination of mountains + thousands-year-old history.
Bad scanned photos:
Still, google images has even worse photos. It seems to be a really hard place to capture, but it was amazing in person.
I've been to Norway and yes the fjords are amazing.
Another very beautiful place is Ireland. In my 2 years overseas, I still maintain my best pictures are from the emerald isle. Here's some samples
Taken at Killkenny Castle
Christ Church cathedral in Dublin
Blarney Castle
View from the top of Blarney Castle
You can tell why the Irish love Green so much. Seriously, such a beautiful country.
I absolutely second Greece -- even the more popular places like Mykonos and Santorini are just gorgeous. Plus, check this out:
"Little Venice" on Mykonos, all those little shops and buildings right over the water. I'd love to live in one of those. I absolutely love the buildings in Santorini, right near the water, how they're all just stacked up the hillside:
Mount Fuji is absolutely breathtaking from afar and near. Seriously. Go when it's not raining, go to station six or so, and just stare down.
I didn't take any pictures from the mountain because I was too busy gawking.
It's a pretty cool place. Santiago, the capital, is nice, but not very exciting. It's very stable and modern. The people there have a lot of money, but there are some very sizable shanty towns just outside it's borders. You do get amazing views of the Andes from pretty much anywhere in town.
I also visited Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, which are two towns on the coast about an hour and a half drive from Santiago. Valparaiso is a very cool city. It's much older and much more unique, but also more seedy than Santiago. It's built on hills, so the streets wind around a lot like a medieval town in Europe, but the architecture's mainly Victorian. The houses are painted really nice reds and yellows and blues. The flatter part of the town closer to the water has a lot of older European style buildings, but many of them have been destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt upon themselves in newer styles, very interesting. Also, there are funiculars scattered around the city, which are these awesome turn-of-the century up-hill trams that get you up and down the hills.
Vina del Mar is pretty much a resort town for the Santiago elite. It's full of casinos and high-class hotels and apartment blocks. That said, the coastline there is completely breathtaking.
I haven't been too far out from the main cities, but from what I hear it's very under-developed compared to the Santiago area, but also beautiful. I definitely want to visit again to see more of the country some time.
Pictures (GIS, not mine):
Santiago
(Yeah, there's a good amount of smog there)
Valparaiso
I wish I could find my pictures and show you guys some of the awesome graffiti in Valparaiso. The place is covered in it.
Sumela Monastry, Trabzon, Turkey:
Pamukkale (translates as "Cotton Castle"), in Turkey:
I thought I was the only person who'd ever been to Valparaiso. I was only there for a day or so, but it seemed like a really nice city, and it's really cool how the city adapts to going up and down mountainsides. And there are sea lions, which makes me happy. I've travelled a bit in South America, I'll see if I can dig up some pictures of Macchu Picchu and the Galapagos. (both are incredible)
Fix'd!
I'll second Ireland. I don't have any pictures of my own, but I'll try to search up some suitable images of a few Awesome Places I saw.
Dun Aengus, on Innismore:
http://www.conference.ie/imageupload/Dun_Aengus.jpg
Notice that it is actually on a substantial cliff:
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~aburnham/bigpic14/dun_aengushi.jpg
And surrounded by what Wikipedia calls a karst landscape:
http://oasis.halfmoon.jp/extphoto2/ie2_photo/p9130306.jpg
The dense rocks you see around the fort in the first image are also really cool close up. They're slender rectangular blocks placed densely but irregularly so that they all point at various angles up and away from the fort.
The Burren, north of Galway:
]Wikipedia pulls through with perfect pictures! And informs me that the Burren is also a karst landscape.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commonsBROKEN FOR HUGE/9/97/Burren_0513.JPG
Ugly and depressing -- but wait!
More Burren:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Megalithic_Passage_Tomb.jpg/800px-Megalithic_Passage_Tomb.jpg
Much of the burren is GREEN between the rocks. Sidenote, I saw that tomb. And as a result you get stuff like:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Flowers_in_the_burren.jpg/800px-Flowers_in_the_burren.jpg
The Burren is home to like A MILLION different species of flowers. And you can pasture cows in it, if you can lead them between the very tiny patches of pastureland.
What you're missing here is a picture of the part of the Burren that has huge, rolling, Irish-style hills, crisscrossed at random with really random and incredibly long stone walls. These were built with Irish labor at British behest and had no purpose other than to keep the natives busy. They're sad and eyecatching -- it's too bad I can't find a picture.
Ege, I'm really liking those Turkey pictures. My favorite is Sulema Monastery. :^:
Actually the picture I posted of Guangxi in China is karst, and so are the ones from Turkey that other guy posted.
From my limited understanding, karst basically means that the bedrock, or at least a significant portion of the bedrock in an area is made up of a type of rock that's particularly susceptible to erosion. It usually results in some bad ass landscapes.
I was trying to allude to it more subtly :?
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I've got a few pictures of Delphi that turned out pretty well. I can upload them if you'd like.
The biggest 'sand sea' in the world, The Empty Quarter proper is the size of France and is totally uninhabited, it boasts dune forms and other landscapes that are found nowhere else.
Theres a cool little presentation on the national geographic site with some really stunning imagery:http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0502/sights_n_sounds/media2.html
Photos:
Pretty awesome imo.
Hong Kong, Aberdeen
More Hong Kong
Sri Lanka
Kandy - old capital of Sri Lanka
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/348910.jpg
Man I love Google Earth and the user produced photos linked in it
If you look to the upper left of the photo linked above, that is one of the areas where a bit of the first LOTR film was filmed. A whole bunch of other scenes were filmed not far from here as well.