July 02, 2004

Monkeys! How many of the World's Top 100 Wonders have you seen? (SideDish score: 23) Courtesy of Howard Hillman, an interesting chap who's been "impartially researching travel wonders for 30 years."
posted by SideDish 20 years ago
  • Oh dear. 4 Chartres, Alhambra, Louvre and Cordoba. I need to get out more.
  • Three, and those are only because I live in New York. Shit.
  • Embarassingly, four, as well. A pretty good list, though, and one that seems to cover the entire world, both natural and man-made, ancient and modern.
  • Six, but why the hell isn't Niagara Falls on the list, or did I miss it?
  • Four for me as well, Great Barrier Reef, Met, NY Skyline, and the Statue of Liberty. Good to know that I'm seeing the world.
  • I've seen 11. But through the power of television I scored a perfect 100.
  • yeah birdie that's one cool thing about TV, isn't it? i love michael palin's travel series!
  • Make that six. I'm still exploring this great site.
  • Three, Carlsbad caverns, SF Bay and the Grand cayon. Hmmmm....perhaps I need to get out more also.
  • Wow, SideDish, I didn't realise he had made so many. I've seen 80 Days and Pole to Pole, but wasn't aware of the others. So, let's all hear it then, what are the 23?
  • what can i say, i get around. ;-D the sad thing is how many of them are tourist traps. like the great wall. i had imagined it as a stark, dramatic place -- no way. it's full of busloads of tourists grabbing up I CLIMBED THE GREAT WALL t-shirts to have their photos shot. sheesh.
  • Five. Gah. And they're in NY, Paris and London. How painfully obvious. Having said that, I was pleased to see that some of my Irish favourites - The Giant's Causeway, The Cliffs of Moher - got into the top 200 of his top 1000 list... although the Causeway surely desevres a top 100 ranking. Then I noticed that Oxford University gets in, while Cambridge doesn't. And I got angry. The dude soooo needs to visit King's College Chapel. Harrumph.
  • I'm on the low end too, fellow monkeys, with 6. But this link gets me excited for the return of one of my favorite television shows of all time, The Amazing Race. They have visited many of the sights on this list.
  • 30, or at least it will be thirty by September. Sadly that includes only three in the US. Maybe I should get out of my house more.....
  • 8
  • I'm the lamest of the lame. Only 2: the Grand Canyon and Chichen Itza. Must travel more. Must make more money to travel more.
  • I'm only 4 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, and I can see it from my office window! w00t, I am gazing at one of the 100 wonders RIGHT NOW!
  • 17. But I have to take issue with some of them. Rio panoramic views and Rio carnaval both in the top 100? meh. Rio gets one, methinks, not two. Better carnval can be found elsewhere in Brazil. (Echo SideDish's comment about tourist traps.) San Francisco Cityscape? again, meh. If you can see it through the fog. me cranky this morning. Too many foggy days in a row here in SF. Missing from the top 100 list: Angel Falls.
  • Great list: Pleased to make 14 - but in the main that's because London, Paris, New York all have more than one entry. Very good to see Victoria Falls in there ...
  • 22... that last vacation really boosted the count. And am still kickin' myself for missing #100... crap.
  • Now how did I miss that? OK, up to 5 now.
  • I was going to say a paltry 17 but maybe not so paltry. Though: likewise they're all the main US/London/France ones. [and Flashboy: nice as King's is, and beautiful St.John's tower, at least you can see Christ Church Meadows without needing to bribe porters = why I like Oxford better] There was a similar book published late last year, about all the 'top sights' from the around the world but as usual, I can't remember the name of it ...
  • 22 - Most when i was a kid because my father served with the UN peace keeping forces, so i got to move about quite a bit!
  • fucking zero. fuck.
  • I have learned that Antartica is no longer off limits. sweet. They got tourist traps there, too?
  • Chichen-Itza and Teotihuacan. That makes two. 3 if I count a recent local exposition of Qin Terra Cota Warrior statues.
  • Blech. Only 7. They should have an abbreviated list for poor students.
  • They should have included Tul
  • 17. All the Florence and Paris stuff (not Chartres, though), the BM, the Matterhorn, the Met & NYC, SF, and the Sahara. I didn't count TheGrand Canyon as I've only seen it from the air, flying in and out of Phoenix.
  • 0. But it is a cool site. Kudos.
  • Bah, just 7 here, though three in Turkey, so at least they weren't all in the USA. It does seem a quick trip to Italy and a stop in Paris may get one around 30 though ;)
  • freethought, I'm joining the club. 0 here too.
  • Flagpole. I have been there. And it's not nearly as impressive as Chichen-Itza. But the lizards are cool!
  • Zero. On the plus side, I have been in 78 different McDonald's.
  • bernockle wins!
  • Hey, why is everyone so down about this? Think of the wonders of the world in our lives; a hug and kiss from a loved one, spring flowers, babys and puppies and kittens, sunsets and the stars at midnight- come on, people, cheer up! (scored four. blech.)
  • 31. Mostly thanks to being an Army brat with a Dad who treated vacations like field exercises, with the goal being to conquer as many sights as possible in any given day. They're all in Europe or America though.
  • I've seen 30 of them, mainly thanks to a couple of trips that my parents took me on when I was a teenager. The trip to Egypt was especially spectacular--my unscientific look at the list indicates that Egypt has more Wonders than any other country, which seems about right. The older I get, the more I realize how lucky I was to grow up in a family with the means and the inclination to show me the world. (Also, I now live in London, and it's much easier to hop over to the rest of Europe than it was when I lived in the US.) My wonders: Great Pyramids; Grand Canyon; Karnak Temple; Colosseum; Jerusalem Old City; Canals of Venice; Abu Simbel; St. Peter's basilica; Egyptian museum; Valley of the Kings; Sistine Chapel; Tower of Pisa; MOMA; Florence; Pompeii; Amalfi coast; Prague old town; New York skyline; the Sphinx; San Francisco Bay; Nile cruise; Stonehenge; Statue of Liberty; Ponte Vecchio; British museum; Las Vegas strip; Dead Sea; Eiffel Tower.
  • I want to see the Great Zimbabwe, but I don't think they included it. I think I had only one of the list, the New York skyline (post 911). But then again, they didn't include Niagra Falls, or the CN tower, which is still the tallest free-standing structure in the world (for a few months - and no, it's not really a wonder. Just home town pride). I will have seen the British Museum by the end of the Month, but I don't really think of that as a wonder of the world. It contains wonders, like the Rosetta stone, but I don't think museums really count as wonders. Wonders ought to make you gasp and, well, ...wonder.
  • I've seen 5 - The Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, SF Bay/Cityscape, the Las Vegas Strip & Kennedy Space Center. One of my major goals is to travel more - there's not a single item on that list I wouldn't love to visit. I'm kind of surprised not to see Yosemite on the list - there are some *spectacular* views there....
  • 9 for me (in the US, Spain and Greece.) And, while the momuments/wonders are spectacular, the things I really loved, when travelling or moving to new places, were finding the small, relatively unknown treasures and people watching. Well, actually, finding really good food may have taken one of the top spots, but it's really the memories of the people which stick with me.