Author Profile: Ilya Burlak

Forty-eight hours in an unfamiliar destination is usually enough to check out the highlights, form a limited impression – basically, scratch the surface at best. My stay in Iceland was exactly that long, and it gave me roughly one cumulative day to explore the capital of Reykjavik. Which, for a city of a relatively small size that is not exactly known as a sightseeing magnet, appears sufficient. I got a reasonable feel of it, managed to stop by most of its main landmarks, and found time for...   view more

As mentioned in the previous post about the Longobards World Heritage site, I was planning to acquaint myself with the city of Brescia in addition to my WH-chasing priorities. The Santa Giulia Museum and the archaeological site of Brixia Romana held my attention for nearly three hours combined. I wanted to leave myself a bit of sunlight for another location that same day, so I ended up limiting my exploration of Brescia to just a trio of central squares and their connecting streets in the...   view more

You probably heard me say on these pages on several occasions that my traveling preferences are to explore places that I’ve never been to before. The most recent example was my sort of lament about the dearth of new discoveries on travels during the last year. And practically in the same breath, I freely admit that I only allocated about seven hours to seeing Genoa for the first time, but a full 24 hours to a city that I’ve been to repeatedly in the...   view more

Genoa does not loom large in the imagination of visitors to Italy as a must-see destination. Even as far as Liguria goes, you are most likely to prioritize seeing Cinque Terre or Portofino before setting your sights on the region’s capital city. That goes some way to explain how, in my nearly quarter of a century of coming to Italy practically every year, I had not set foot in Genoa until the recent November...   view more

Every big city has its share of impressive architectural highlights and interesting museums. Milan is certainly not an exception to that rule, even though I have always viewed it as not really a top sightseeing destination on its own. It does not boast a significant number of must-see sights, nor does it offer a great variety of pleasant walking routes or spaces to linger – the main criteria that I, in my infinite wisdom subjectivity, consider the hallmarks of a remarkable place to...   view more

Our trip to Greece this summer started with a full day in the capital city. It was planned specifically so that we could visit the Acropolis Museum, which did not feature on our first visit itinerary to Athens. Beyond that, we spent quite a bit of time reacquainting ourselves with Athens, on foot and on...   view more

It is a mildly curious quirk of fate that I haven’t really been to Boston. While we were young and in the process of building our American Dream, we traveled sparingly and almost exclusively within the US. Boston was our “bad luck” destination. On two separate occasions in the 90s, we planned extended-weekend trips to Beantown, only to run into unforeseen health-related problems just days before each trip, necessitating cancellations. The third occasion never came around; we got the taste...   view more

As I stated in my “back from” announcement, you don’t come to Aruba to go sightseeing. You come for the beaches, for the outdoor activities, for the nightlife. None of those attractions and pursuits customarily align with carrying around an expensive semi-professional camera. And yet, I always bring the camera with me – I am in the distinct minority of people who do not find any enjoyment in taking pictures on my phone – and I want to put the said camera to...   view more

Bratislava is only a two-hour train ride away from its Hungarian counterpart. It is frequently mentioned as a capital city that retains small-town intimacy and is reasonably off the beaten path to be somewhat of a hidden gem, so I incorporated a full-day trip to the Slovak capital into my Budapest-centric...   view more

Look at the map of Hungary about 50 kilometers north of Budapest, and you will notice how the Danube twists and turns in its flow, before changing direction completely from roughly eastward to roughly southward. The banks of the river on that stretch are colloquially known as the Danube Bend and are home to several lovely towns that frequently feature on lists of top Budapest day-trip destinations. My plans included visiting three of them, starting with Esztergom. Those plans unfortunately only...   view more

Arequipa is the second largest as well as the second most economically important city in Peru, and a World Heritage site to boot, and yet it does not enjoy a destination profile anywhere near that of Cuzco. Not being in the heart of the Inka Empire has that effect. Truth be told, Arequipa falls into the “really pleasant without being exceptional” category of towns. Its historic center – similar to what we have seen in Lima – offers points to admire here or there, interspersed with...   view more

My preferences for multi-leg travel itineraries dictated having two overnight bookends in Lima for the Peruvian trip, giving me two and a half days in the capital in total. The city objectively does not have a destination profile high enough for such time allocation, even though its historic center, known as the City of Kings, is a World Heritage site. As I had plenty of time, I explored it quite...   view more

In between my fabulous foreign adventures, I occasionally travel for business. In that rare happenstance, especially when I find myself in a place completely new to me, I try to carve out a bit of time to explore. Right before Porto, my destination for a good portion of a work week was Dallas, Texas. The full meeting schedule allowed me to catch the last couple of hours of sunlight in the Downtown Historic District on one of the...   view more

The second set of pictures from my February visit to Porto covers a number of key sights in the historic center of town, most of which are named in the WH inscription. You will probably find a bit of overlap between these pictures and the ones found in my first Porto retrospective, but this time I certainly stepped inside quite a few more places. Starting with the church of Santa Clara, the 15th-century masterpiece that sports an interior so dazzling in its gold-plated design that individual...   view more

I frequently end my retrospectives of travel visits with a variation of “didn’t do it justice, need to come back”. There may be a dozen major destinations in Europe that I can claim great familiarity with, but most of the places are usually given a relatively brief look-over. Who is ever able to do “slow travel” anyway? With professional obligations, family constraints, distances to get there and back, and the sheer number of places that warrant visiting, we always opt for quantity...   view more

Before the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and made the newly renamed Istanbul their capital, the seat of the Ottoman Empire for over a century was in Bursa, where a succession of sultans developed the city around several commercial and religious focal points. Here is the perspective from my hotel window in Bursa, dominated by the Grand Mosque which anchors the most central of the inscribed areas in the city known as Orhan Ghazi Külliye (the word “külliye” translates as a...   view more

When you cross Bosporus to go to the Anatolian part of Istanbul, you leave behind most of the tourist crowds and most of the city’s iconic sights. This side is primarily the living quarters of ordinary residents, quieter and of significantly lower profile than the European side. A few defined points of interest do exist here, starting with probably the most known – the Maiden’s...   view more

When in Istanbul last October, I stayed in Beyoğlu. Historically known as Pera (which means “beyond” in Greek), this was a predominantly Christian area surrounding the coastal town of Galata that faced Constantinople across the Golden Horn. It has become the entertainment and nightlife focal point of Istanbul in modern times, but its past “outsider” status contributed to the fact that it has way fewer must-see highlights than the old...   view more

The Golden Horn – the estuary of the Bosporus – divides the European side of Istanbul into what is historically known as “the old city” and “the new city”. The former is officially called “Fatih” and extends beyond the Sultanahmet area that we explored before. This set looks at a few other highlights of this district. A lesser-known water reservoir known interchangeably as the Cistern of Theodosius and Şerefiye Sarnıcı (“goodwill cistern”) attracts significantly fewer...   view more

As my very first – and very short – trip to Istanbul perfectly illustrated, you can claim reasonable familiarity with the main sights of Istanbul by spending just a few hours in or around the Sultanahmet area. There is a high concentration of prime points of interest in Sultanahmet, which is why practically every visit to the grand city starts here. The two unmissable highlights – Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque – are well covered in that photo essay from...   view more

Not without interest. This is my usual polite way to indicate that the town in question may have a few interesting features but in no way rises to the “must-see” category. If you are in the area, you probably should visit, but don’t lose sleep over not being able to allocate significant time to its exploration. Cagliari – the capital and the biggest city of Sardinia – is exactly that: not without...   view more

On my third visit to Edinburgh, a full day exploring the wonderful city center was the least I had to set aside, including several landmark visits and a large walkabout circuit. The skies were dreary in the morning, turned cloudy blue for a short time midday, and then reverted to gray in the afternoon. I still ended up with a passable refresh of my Edinburgh photographic...   view more

Hardly anyone budgets time for San Jose beyond an overnight stop on the way to other destinations in Costa Rica when the flight schedule dictates so. Spending time in the capital city in a country that is famous for its sun, sea, rainforests, and fauna sounds a bit wasteful. That sentiment is not entirely undeserved. The city can never be mistaken for impressive. In fact, it looks decidedly not too well cared for, and with the absence of significant architectural monuments, it all combines into...   view more

The World Heritage site in Panama City, inscribed for being the oldest continuously occupied European settlement on the Pacific coast of the Americas, comprises two components. Both somewhat confusingly have the moniker “old” in their names. Casco Viejo (or Casco Antiguo) is the historic heart of the city but is actually “the new town” compared to the archaeological site of Panama Viejo. The latter is the original settlement of the 16th-17th centuries. I managed to visit both parts of...   view more

To state the obvious, you can only see so much of a place when time is limited. While in Panama City on a layover that spanned two nights and one full day, we managed to set foot in three major locations of interest. Casco Antiguo and the archaeological site of Panama Viejo featured in the World Heritage post. The other sight on our itinerary was the Miraflores Locks of the Panama...   view more

The Principality of Monaco is among the more curious countries. It is a constitutional monarchy whose ruler, while not being styled “the King”, has probably the most powers over his domain than any other remaining monarch in all of Europe. It is the second tiniest sovereign entity in the world. It is a largely independent country that is nonetheless in many aspects closely integrated with its big neighbor. It hosts more commuters and visitors on any given day than its entire population of...   view more

The capital of the French Riviera may enjoy continuous fame as “the playground for the rich”, but it is in essence a big city with big-city attractions. Certainly, there are plenty of visual highlights to be found in town, and yet its cultural offerings – museums, theaters, varied cuisine – far outstrip the visual effect. We spent a few days in and around Nice over twenty years ago, exploring it to some degree. Since then, we largely skirted the city in favor of other destinations on the...   view more

Every guidebook to Venice out there mentions three lagoon islands – usually sequenced as Murano, then Burano, then Torcello – as fairly unmissable targets on a Venetian itinerary. I hold a potentially unpopular opinion that only Burano rises to a must, while the other two are more of a special-interest kind. Nonetheless, on each of my visits to Venice, I have set aside a day to stop by all three. This time was no...   view more

In a true walkabout manner, let’s start this set with assorted canal views, the majority of which represent sestiero of...   view more

Let’s continue our wanderings around La Serenissima. Starting with yet another elevated viewpoint – the top landing of Scala Contarini del...   view more

I walked a lot in Venice. (And occasionally took the vaporetto.) The map of the city on my phone contained well over a hundred various points of interest – museums, churches, squares, bridges, etc. – and every day I followed a route that loosely led me from one to another. “Loosely” in the sense that I tried to minimize the number of times that I checked the map while walking. Along the way, I took shots of whatever struck my fancy at a given moment. In many cases, that was explicitly as...   view more

Hardly anyone who comes to Venice – be it for the first time or the fifth time – does not make a beeline for Piazza San Marco. I can’t claim any immunity from being awed by that monumental public space, so my first full day in Venice was almost entirely given to revisiting the famous landmarks there. Which probably means that most of the photo perspectives in this installment are not unfamiliar to you. (As luck would have it, parts of the square had renovation going on – cropping...   view more

Chicago, in my humble opinion, is the most architecturally impressive big city in the US. Walk around its central area and you will come across monumental eye-catching buildings on nearly every block. The Great Chicago Fire that destroyed much of the city center in 1871 gave a huge impetus to rebuilding, which was supercharged by the technological advances in construction, especially the introduction of steel-reinforced structures. That led to the advent of a new type of building, the...   view more

Unsurpassed quality of its historic and artistic treasures aside, it is very likely the most satisfying city in relation to my traveling preferences. I like to walk and see what awaits me beyond the next turn, hoping to find something to admire. Central Rome, like practically nowhere else, offers me something every few hundred steps, be it a grand church, a gorgeous square, a lovely fountain, a quaint corner, an amazing edifice of uncommon distinction and/or age, you get the...   view more

Ironic detective stories by Joanna Chmielewska used to be fairly popular in the country of our births when we were young. One of them, Dead Man’s Tale, jumps between various locations in Europe with a short but prominent chapter taking place in Taormina, which is introduced by the protagonist as “the best resort in the world”. That had made such a lasting impression on us back then that when planning our very first trip to Sicily more than 30 years later, we could do no other but mark...   view more

Syracuse is geographically closer to Noto than Catania is, but it enjoys a separate World Heritage recognition as an exceptional record of the development of Mediterranean civilization over three millennia. The WH site is actually a three-part collection that includes the archaeological park of Neapolis over a mile northwest of the city center, and the Necropolis of Pantalica good 25 miles out of the city. On our trip, we budgeted time solely for the island of Ortigia (sometimes spelled...   view more

The second-largest city in Sicily was even less of a certainty on our itinerary than Palazzolo Acreide. It is part of the same Val di Noto World Heritage site as Ragusa, Noto, Scicli, and since a big city always requires a bigger allocation of time, we initially considered leaving it out altogether in favor of additional smaller destinations. Barely any grand-trip-around-Sicily list of recommendations calls Catania a must...   view more

While Scicli is fairly off the beaten path, Ragusa is a common popular feature on Sicilian itineraries. How can it not be?! Just look at this perspective of a quintessential Sicilian hilltop...   view more

In the south-eastern part of Sicily, eight towns comprise the World Heritage serial site of Val di Noto, recognized as a great rebuilding achievement in the decades following the devastating earthquake of 1693, which resulted in surpassing examples of Baroque town planning and architecture. It is a varied collection, ranging from entire historic centers in some of the towns to just a couple of named churches in...   view more

Quick show of hands – who has Palermo on their must-see-in-your-lifetime list? The capital and largest city of Sicily does not enjoy a highly-recommended status among the travelers (and, like any other place in the South of Italy, is nowhere near the list of most-visited destinations in the country). It shows signs of habitual neglect all over its historic center. Garbage in the streets is an unavoidable constant. Few, if any, points of interest are of can’t-miss quality. Driving is...   view more

For reasons both of my own doing and outside of my control, the Old City of Acre did not get a fair shake from me. I initially planned to visit it with a guide, in the early part of my itinerary, and give it 3-4 hours. In the end, I visited it on my own, towards the end of my stay in Israel, and left for my next scheduled stop after barely two...   view more

Trips to a number of West Bank destinations are fairly easy to arrange through a variety of travel channels while touring Israel. Given the number of holy Christian sites in the region, there is daily a steady stream of visitors that sustain a significant percentage of West Bank’s GDP. My trip itinerary included half a day in Bethlehem, with the main justification of visiting a World Heritage site therein but also with a desire to take a peek at the Palestinian Territories in...   view more

A day and a half was my itinerary allotment to see Jerusalem’s Old City. That appears to be enough to see all of the major points of interest, although in a city with such wealth of historical context, you will feel like you rushed through some of the sights no matter how much time you give...   view more

The Bauhaus Movement of the first half of the 20th century left an indelible mark on Tel Aviv, as German and other European émigré artists applied the concepts of the modernist school during the growth of the young metropolis from 1933 onward. There are over four thousand examples of that school of architecture that comprise the World Heritage...   view more

Tel Aviv was my base for the entirety of my two-week stay in Israel. In between day-trips, I gave myself one full day of dedicated exploration of the city and two more days for taking it slow and easy. From the tourist point of view, that is more than enough to get a good feel for a city of a relatively modest...   view more

The second part of our Croatian itinerary had Dubrovnik as the base. Similarly to Split, we gave ourselves only one full day for exploration of Dubrovnik proper but returned every evening for a meal and a stroll, so managed to acquire a certain level of familiarity with the town. Objectively, Dubrovnik has to be considered an impressive walled town, well deserving its fame as “the Pearl of the Adriatic”. And yet, for me, it left less of an impression than Split, with whom it shares the honor...   view more

In a not widely known quirk of geography, a tiny sliver of the Dalmatian Coast belongs to Bosnia and Herzegovina, making it impossible to travel by land between Split and Dubrovnik without entering and then quickly exiting Bosnian territory. The border checks are comparatively relaxed on this stretch, never creating holdups of the kind that take place on the Croatian/Montenegrin border (more on which in the...   view more

While in Croatia, we technically only explored sights on the Dalmatian Coast. This historic region today encompasses counties with seats in Split, Dubrovnik, Šibenik, and Zadar, all of which featured on our itinerary. The latter is the northernmost of great Dalmatian towns. Wait a second!, says an attentive follower of my travels. The title of this post does not refer to counting World Heritage sites. Is it possible that you prioritized seeing a place that does not hold the WH...   view more

For the first part of our adventure in Croatia we were based in Split. We budgeted only a single day for exploring the town, but we also returned to the city core every evening for 5 nights, so by the end of that stay we could plausibly claim a pretty intimate familiarity with this great...   view more

The very first adjective to use to describe Porto has to be colorful. Yes, the city has a lot of history and quite a few significant monuments and points of interest – which is the main reason why it as a whole is a World Heritage site – but it’s the color variety of the building façades that will be your overriding impression. Nowhere that is better illustrated than in this fairly iconic shot of the Ribeira district from the opposite side of the Douro...   view more

Coimbra is the fourth-largest city in Portugal, and its former capital for a bit over a century quite a few centuries ago. As any city over a thousand years old, it is not without charms, but on balance it falls short of making an exceptional impression. It is nice, but no more than that. It does, however, have a claim to fame that puts a visit here high on the agenda for a traveling itinerary in...   view more

Spontaneity has not been much of a feature of my traveling exploits lately, but the Christmastime trip to Washington had a bit of spontaneity in it. Just a few days before the departure, while discussing the itinerary, I suddenly recognized that I was afforded a chance for a self-guided photo-walk around the city while the rest of my family would be engaged elsewhere. So I took my camera and on the morning of December 25th somewhat unexpectedly found myself walking around the National Mall in...   view more

My writing skills being what they are, I frequently struggle with finding original or at least not overused ways to express my positive impressions of places and points of interest. The places that do not click with me are never unappealing in the direct sense – it is just that they fail to produce enough knockout wow moments and pale in comparison to other places on balance. Given that I am always happy to have the opportunity to see something with my own eyes and form my own opinions, how do...   view more

Milan, a renowned Mecca of shopping and fashion, is rarely considered to be a sightseeing destination. That reputation is largely deserved, as even the most ardently patriotic locals are likely to agree that their city is not at all pretty. Impressive buildings pop up here or there, some residential streets are lined by fetching rows of houses, but sore spots and haphazardly incongruent architectural solutions abound. And yet, walk the central streets of Milan enough, and you will regularly come...   view more

Vienna is the grandest of the European capitals, offering so much exterior visual gratification that you may be wholly forgiven for never stepping inside any of its edifices, palaces, or museums. In fact, I feel that you can do Vienna justice with only a few major-time-investment stops. Conversely, if you decide to explore in depth every single point of interest and museum, you may require an uncommonly long stay in the Austrian...   view more

A day set aside for exploring Edinburgh offered me a chance to see sights that I did not manage to see three years ago, and just to walk around town. On-and-off wet snowfall conspired to make the walk challenging, but I can nonetheless share a few highlights captured in between...   view more

Albi, in the southern France region of Occitanie, is hailed on the World Heritage list as a complete ensemble of urban development dating from the Middle Ages. The height of town’s prosperity and importance falls on the later part of the 13th century, when a powerful local bishop built Palais de la Berbie and commissioned the construction of St Cecilia Cathedral. Albi’s architecture of that and subsequent periods is remarkably...   view more

Graz’s recognition on the World Heritage list is primarily due to the treasure trove of its architecture in the historic center. It is literally one of those towns whose streets you want to explore over and over again. I started my acquaintance with the town at Schloss Eggenberg, located some distance from the center but included in the World Heritage...   view more

University town of Alcalá de Henares is recognized on the World Heritage registry for being the first such planned town and a model for subsequent others. As is often the case with so recognized locales, it is cute and lively without having any knockout features: just a really nice place to be. Here is one of the main courtyards of the university, Patio de Santo Tomás de...   view more

We tacked a few hours of San Francisco sightseeing at the beginning of our recent trip to the California wine country. That time is hardly sufficient to explore anything in depth, but as this was not our first visit to the city – just a first one in many years – we were able to hit a number of highlights and re-compose our visual appreciation of this brilliant...   view more

I have been to Catalonia and Costa Brava many times in the last dozen years but never visited Girona until this year. I have to admit I was underestimating it as a destination to my own loss. It is incredibly colorful and agreeable to walk around. And visual perspectives such as this one are to kill...   view more

Counting the places I have visited is probably my only concession to any appearance of being vain. I have a couple of counts going. One, well documented in this blog, is my opportunistic chase after World Heritage sites. The other is the count of different countries that I set foot on. Seeing as Costa Brava is within a day-trip distance from Andorra, this year I finally added the small country to my...   view more

An attractive city to the south-west of Barcelona, Tarragona’s claim to UNESCO recognition revolves around its Roman past, as evidenced by a significant number of architectural remains. The long history of the city means that the medieval, Renaissance, and modern architecture in the center coexist with remnants of Roman glory. Here is a not exactly successful attempt to peek at one of the city core pedestrian streets through an opening in the ancient...   view more

Charming is the word I would associate with Charleston first and foremost. The city has a number of impressive edifices and well-maintained historic mansions, but it is the simple charm of its streets lined with a mix of architectural styles that stays with you as the lasting impression. Here is a fragment of one of the most atmospheric streets in the heart of town,...   view more

To a certain degree, my visit to the sanctuary of Orta – the second part of my exploration of the serial Sacri Monti WH site – was coincidental with another target. Although I prioritize World Heritage properties in my itinerary, I also sprinkle in other destinations that I expect to be interesting, and Orta San Giulio, with its island in the middle of the lake, was one such target, regardless of the attendant Sacro Monte. Let’s recall what Isola San Giulio looks like from the heights of...   view more

At the end of my photo-essay of Mykonos seven years ago, I included three different focal-length perspectives of the town of Naousa, as seen from the deck of a cruise boat. Those shots for years informed our desire to make Paros a target for a return visit to Greece. When we did get to set foot on Paros, we chose Parikia rather than Naousa as the base of our stay, and it turned out to be a serendipitous decision. Naousa is prettier than Parikia around the waterfront, but it is also much more of...   view more

For our week-long stay on the Cycladic island of Paros, we rented a gorgeous villa at the edge of Parikia, the island’s capital. Every evening, we went on a volta around the compact old center – you may be more familiar with the equivalent Italian term passeggiata – and probably walked every street and alleyway within its boundaries by the end of our stay. And one morning, I did my habitual early-hours walkabout with the camera. As in any Cycladic settlement, white walls accentuated with...   view more

I doubt that any of my readers have heard of Íznik before, let alone included it on their real or potential itineraries around Türkiye. When people think about Turkish destinations beyond Istanbul, what comes to mind is Cappadocia, the Turquoise Coast, or maybe Safranbolu or Pamukkale. Hardly ever anything in the Marmara region of the country. But all of those great destinations require non-trivial travel from Istanbul, and I did not want to introduce additional flights into my plans. Instead,...   view more

I love vivid colors, both in nature and in architecture. While the great cities of the world usually awe us with their amazing edifices (and just an occasional splash of color), the smaller towns are more likely to be called pretty because of the hues in their palette. And I adore pretty towns. It was easy for me to fall in love with...   view more

Scicli is enough off the beaten track so a fair portion of the WH-focused community considers it a favorite among the towns comprising Val di Noto serial site. It is bright and clean, its compact central area is easy on the eye, and the ratio of locals-to-visitors is higher than elsewhere even in non-Covid...   view more

You would have to go all the way back to mid-January for my last post not related to overseas travel, and even that was an output of a multi-day trip. Appearances notwithstanding, we do occasionally get out and about for short trips in our local area. Here is a recap of one such occasion back in May. Our destination that time was Doylestown,...   view more

The historical province of Périgord, which roughly corresponds to the modern Dordogne department, is informally divided into 4 “colors”. Our base was in the southeastern Black Périgord, where the flow of the Dordogne river is the most picturesque, and the places like Sarlat, Beynac, La Roque-Gageac, Belvès, and others are located. The Vézère valley is also part of the Black Périgord, encroaching onto the larger central region called White. The latter is anchored by...   view more

Besalú announced itself as a contender for the title of the most attractive little town the moment I caught the sight of it from across river Fluvià. It definitively has one of the most impressive approaches, highlighted by its famous bridge that dates from 12th century. My photographic skills do not properly convey the majesty of the perspective, but here are a few...   view more

I have a nagging feeling that if there was one place on my Peruvian itinerary that I did not have enough time for, it was Cuzco. Due to the arrival and departure timings, in Cuzco I had less than the day-and-a-half allowance for...   view more