Not a surprising fact considering the property, a Habsburg summer palace, was designed to rival Versailles.Even in a city of architectural splendour, Vienna’s Schonbrunn Palace manages to stand out without much effort.  It was created with the lavish arrogance of a successful empire; designed as a statement, a trophy. It was little wonder that the royal family was partial to the property, spending the better part of the year here.

Today the Schonbrunn Palace is a World Heritage Site. It manages to maintain a perfect balance between cultural landmark and vibrant tourist stop. Not everyone realizes the magnitude of the property and the options it offers; I for one thought I’d see it all in a couple of hours. Instead I spent the entire day there and just barely managed to fit it all in. For those of you who are planning a trip to or are on your way to Vienna, skipping a visit to Schonbrunn is not a reasonable option.

Here are my ten reasons to put the Schonbrunn Palace at the top of your Vienna itinerary:

Palace Tour
The Habsburgs were an extravagant lot. A walk around the palace’s luxurious halls and rooms, a viewing of the precious artwork it holds, and the history it has inspired is a testament to this very fact. Being a history buff, I especially enjoyed seeing the living chambers of Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth (Sisi), as well as the rooms that embody the special touch of Maria Theresa (mother of Marie Antoinette). Each room holds authentic period furnishings and art. In addition, various guestrooms and staterooms, like the great gallery which is decorated in a lavish white-gold rococo style, have been opened to the public. For the sheer dazzle effect, this tour is a must!

Palace Park
As with the stately palace, the palace park, too, is an ornate example of extravagant design. A number of walkways and trails shoot out in various directions, taking you deeper into the woods, past sculpted trees and park accents. Despite the crowds, you can always find a peaceful spot to rest under the rustling leaves of well placed trees. And as you relax in the beauty of the park, you will certainly enjoy watching young parents and their children playing in the park’s maze, a real labyrinth and playground.

Fountains and Accents
What is a palace park without a little bling? These grounds are accessorized with Roman ruins and statues of several Greek and Roman gods. They bring the same touch of opulence to the outdoors as is experienced indoors. The most elaborate feature of the park is the majestic Neptune Fountain at the foot of a hill and facing the palace. It is a composition of Neptune riding in his shell chariot which is flanked on either side by a nymph and Thetis, the goddess of the seas. Around them a number of strange and majestic mythological creatures stand, carved in white stone.

The Palm House
The Palm House dates back to the early 1880s and is one of the last of its kind in Europe. It was designed to create an environment that supported the growth of rare and exotic plants and herbs from across the world. It is comprised of three pavilions, each supporting a different ecosystem: temperate, tropical and cold climates.

The Gloriette
The Gloriette sits like a Baroque tiara above a hilltop overlooking the palace and the palace grounds. Constructed in 1775, the Gloriette was a resting stop for guests touring the palace grounds. Today it has been refurbished and now holds a café that allows visitors to have a bite along with stunning, sprawling views of the property.

Carriage ride
It’s easy to get nostalgic at Schonbrunn and to slip into daydreams of what life must have been like for the Habsburgs. And while that decadent lifestyle no longer exists, snatches of it have been preserved. Take the horse driven carriage ride through the property, for example. There is nothing more romantic than sitting comfortably in a buggy and viewing the property to the soothing rhythms of clip-clopping horse hooves on the cobbled pathways, much like Maria Theresa once did.

Carriage Museum
Guaranteed, this isn’t for everyone. But car enthusiasts and kids will fall in love with this quirky museum. Housed in the old riding school, the Carriage Museum (Wagenburg) displays a selection of imperial carriages, coaches, sleighs and sedans. Exhibits range from ornate imperial coaches, miniature carriages for the young royals, to a car that was used to drive off the last emperor into exile in 1920.

The Palace Orchestra
The Orangery at Schonbrunn was designed to shelter orange and lemon trees (and other plants) during winter. It soon developed as a popular venue for a range of palace festivities. This, for example, is where the likes of Mozart performed. Today, the talented palace orchestra performs some of Mozart’s best music. If you have an ear for music, this is an event you’ll truly enjoy. Tickets tend to vanish within hours and the only way to score a ticket is to book it in advance.

The Palace Zoo
I expected a small zoo, something created for the sake of royal indulgence. Instead, I spent several awestruck hours at the expansive Tiergarten (zoo). Constructed in the 1750s on the grounds of a smaller zoo, tiergarten is designed to accommodate a variety of animals – from polar bears and pandas, to rhinos and tigers – all of whom are housed according to their home environment. I spent a good half hour in front of the panda enclosure alone, willing Fu Long, the panda, to flash me a smile. He had other ideas; he sat with his back to me, furiously chewing on a bunch of leaves.

A Royal Meal
The palace property serves up a number of good dining options, from eateries up along the Gloriette to cafes and restaurants closer to the palace, each offering the perfect antidote for a tourist’s exhaustion. I highly recommend taking an early dinner here as there is something magical about having a meal at the palace behind a dipping sun. If you are short of time, skip the meal and stop by the Court Bakery and stock up on some Viennese apple strudel.

Many of the development locations are currently off the usual tourist trail. So, if you’d like a little different view of London, before the rest of the world catches on, then try a walking tour of the Olympic sites and get a glimpse of history in the making.

Special walking tours have been created to show people around the key sites and access special development viewing areas. The tours are led by Blue Badge Guides; they are available in multiple languages, and they offer a great way of witnessing the transformation of under-developed real estate into an exciting London Olympic Park.

The walking tours are proving to be quite popular, especially of the main Olympic Park area in East London. There are now tours every Saturday and Sunday, starting at 11am from the Bromley-by-Bow underground station (on the District, Hammersmith and City lines).

Historic London
This tour route takes you along the Lower Lea River Valley, on a tow path and past the old locks. In addition to the Olympic 2012 sites, you also get a glimpse of some of London’s Victorian and Georgian industrial heritage, which offers quite a contrast between old and new. For example, the walk takes you past Three Mills Island, on the River Lea, which is the site of former working mills and is one of London’s oldest industrial areas.

Three Mills Island is London’s oldest surviving industrial centre and is home to a grade I listed House Mill. The mills ceased operating in 1941due to heavy bombing in the area and are believed to be some of the largest and most powerful tidal mills in the world. The mills date back to the 11th century and were mentioned in the Domesday Book.

The House Mill is owned and operated by a charitable trust, the River Lea Tidal Mill Trust, and is open on Sunday afternoons - from April to October - for guided tours. If you want to find out more about the history of the building, then it’s suggested that you return to the building upon completing the 2012 site tour.

The island is also the home to 3 Mills Studios (made up of Bow Studios, 3 Mills Island Studio, and Edwin Shirley Productions), the largest working film studio in inner London, where many TV shows, films and music videos are made.

New London and the Olympic Park
In contrast to the historical and industrial areas of Three Mills Island, as the walk wends on, you reach the modern development that will eventually become the Olympic Park.

The development is on a vast scale – 500 acres – and it’s hard to imagine just how big it is until you see it for yourself. Workers on the site, for example, don’t walk from location to location, they’re driven around in buses, as the area under development is so large. And this reclaimed, regenerated land will soon become the largest urban park developed in Europe in over 150 years.

A special visitor centre and viewing platform has been created to ensure that you can safely see what’s going on, as each construction site is not open to members of the public. In fact, at this stage, it is pretty much just a giant construction site, so you’ll need to exercise your imagination to envisage what it will be like on opening day. And it is, of course, very interesting to watch the ever changing structures move toward their final shapes, all the while modifying the London landscape.

The tour encompasses a number of venues, to include: the main 80,000 seat Olympic Stadium where much of the of the action will take place, and where dreams will be made and hopes lost; as well as the Aquatic Centre, the massive International Broadcast Centre, the Olympic Village and the Velodrome.

The walking tour lasts about two hours and numbers are restricted to 20 to 25 people for each tour. You do have to book your place in advance, but you pay in cash on the day of your tour.

Northern Bucharest offers pleasant walks along stately avenues where you can see pre-war mansions, well-tended parks, and interesting monuments and museums. Providing a reprieve from the towering apartment blocks typical of the Romanian capital, it is the city’s wealthiest area, home to several embassies, upmarket hotels and business facilities.

You start getting a taste of a different world as you advance north from Piata Romana – a square in the downtown – and go up Bulevardul Lascar Catargiu. This street, whose statue of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus is a reminder of Romania’s Latin heritage, is lined with the type of houses that would have been lived in by local gentry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many are in a style that has come to be known as the national architecture, called Brancovenesc: a chunky, somewhat Mediterranean look with turrety roofs, spiralling columns, terraces and colonnades.

Lascar Catargiu leads you to the massive asymmetrical space of Piata Victoriei, an intersection with a parking lot at its center, from which major roads thunder off in different directions. The vast, police-guarded concrete slab on the eastern side is Palatul Victoriei, the government headquarters, erected in 1937. On the northern side of the square is the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, which holds a very good collection of traditional furniture, clothes and icons.

From here on, we are interested in the two dead-straight, tree-lined avenues that go north from Piata Victoriei: Soseaua Kiseleff to the left, Bulevardul Aviatorilor to the right. Between them near the bottom is a pretty green area, Parcul Kiseleff, but that is nothing compared to the huge parks that snake their way across the north of the city, to which both these roads will ultimately lead you.

If you take Kiseleff, a road named after the commander of Russian occupation troops who created it in 1832, you will soon find one of Bucharest’s nicest places to eat and drink. Casa Doina, on the right side of the road, offers calm, shady terraces clustering around an antique mansion. Founded in 1892, it was renovated to its current splendor in just the last few years and is located on the corner of Strada Ion Mincu, a slightly quieter street that is worth a quick diversion for its nice villas. A little further up Kiseleff, on the left, is one of the road’s most beautiful mansions, recognizable by the flags of the Dutch bank, ING, for which it is now the local base.

Moving along, about a mile up Kiseleff’s length, is a circular intersection dominated by the Arch of Triumph (Arcul de Triumf). Modeled after the famous Paris landmark, it commemorates Romania’s achievement of sovereignty in 1878. While an arch has stood here since that year, the current one, 88 feet tall, dates from 1935. Its adornments include relief portraits of Ferdinand and Maria, Romania’s king and queen from 1914 to 1927. Further up the road on the left is the World Trade Center, a business area that includes an exhibition plaza, an upmarket shopping complex, and the distinctive flat square of the Sofitel hotel.

The final arresting sight on Kiseleff is what is now called Casa Presei Libere (house of the free press), the headquarters of several media outlets. Many still call it by its original name of Casa Scanteii, after the communist newspaper (“The Spark”) that was edited from here. Built in 1956 in the same wedding-cake format as some state buildings in Moscow, it is Bucharest’s one example of Soviet-style architecture, as opposed to home-grown communist architecture. Measured to the top of its central tower, it is 340 feet high.

By now we have reached the huge expanse of Herastrau Park, a green zone that borders a large system of lakes. Locals come here on weekends and holidays to cycle or roller-skate, splash around in a hired rowboat, or just gaze at the flowers while enjoying refreshments sold from the stalls. At the point where Kiseleff joins the park, don’t miss one of Bucharest’s best tourist attractions, the beautiful Village Museum (Muzeul Satului). This large, open-air museum contains reconstructed cottages from different parts of rural Romania, many with original walls and doors.

The other broad road leading to the parks from Piata Victoriei, Bulevardul Aviatorilor, features a 1935 monument commemorating Romanian aviators. Later, at the point where Kiseleff meets the arch, Aviatorilor has another site bearing witness to Romania’s love affair with France; a big, round intersection named Piata Charles de Gaulle. A statue of de Gaulle, the French leader during World War II and after, stands here. The middle contains a circular sculpture (dating from the 1990s) with a cross-shaped pattern of holes, known as Crucea Mileniului (Millennium Cross).

One other road, while less grand than the two boulevards, also provides an interesting northward route from central Bucharest to the parks area. This is Calea Dorobantilor, a pleasant, lively street of homes and offices, including many old villas. It buzzes with restaurants near its southern end, while further north, the road contains the Socialist-era Romanian television building, a not unattractive specimen fronted by well-tended gardens full of glittering, abstract sculptures. The building still houses the state television company.

Ok, so I’ve come around to accepting that there are other things to do in Naples than eat pizza. It was tough though, and took something as tremendous as Naples Underground, or Napoli Sotterranea, to prove it to me. It’s as creepy as any underworld tale, but there’s a friendly guide to take you through the twisting, winding passages below the streets of Naples.

There are a number of tours, each beginning in different parts of the city, with each tour revealing different sections of Naples Underground. The tour my girlfriend and I took featured the underground remains of a Greek-Roman theater. It began in the vincinity of the Duomo di Napoli (directions are offered here). The small gift shop at the ticket office has a window in the floor that offers a glimpse in to the world below. English language tours leave throughout the day, and when we arrived without reservations, we only had to wait 15 minutes for the next tour. The tour cost is 9 euro per person. While the price had kept me away during previous visits to Naples, I can now attest that the experience is well worth it.

We followed our guide down a deep, long stairway until reaching a series of large rooms with towering ceilings. Our guide explained the ancient method of constructing homes in the area over 2400 years ago, which created the underground city that we were now walking through. The inhabitants dug large holes to excavate stone that they then used to construct houses. The large holes were subsequently used as wells. After enough people had populated the area, there were so many wells that they were connected to create massive underground aqueducts. At one point, the aqueduct was so large that it connected Naples to Rome, a distance of nearly 140 miles.

The aqueducts were eventually closed down when cholera swept through Europe and they were never again used to provide drinking water. During WWII, some of the people in Naples decided to use the underground city as a bomb shelter; creepy toys and graffiti from that time period can still be seen. A few of the rooms are still used today, some for biology experiments, and some to serve as a venue for art shows. There were also rooms with water in them, making for a stunning visual experience.

My favorite part of the tour was the candle-lit trip through some very narrow passages. This part of the tour, however, may not appeal to people of large bearing or those with claustrophobia. Everyone in the group is given a candle and taken on a short journey through thin passages and into a room that features some pretty incredible sights. I’m going to leave those sights a secret, however. I can’t give it all away! The tour guides are very good at creating fun surprises and I wouldn’t want to ruin the anticipation and excitement for readers who will one day take the tour.

Though the underground city has been mapped for over fifty years, the endeavor still struggles to raise enough money to unearth more of its incredible remains. When our guide showed me a map that depicted the size of the underground city, I was amazed to find that it stretched well beyond the current borders of Naples. Our tour, we were told, includes less than 1% of the giant, Naples Underground.

Fleas are responsible for the charm that draws admiring visitors to Siena. That’s because the damage they caused back in 1348 left the city crippled, unable to change, and stuck in the Middle Ages. The dreaded Black Death, brought by flea-carrying rats, struck Europe’s crowded cities and decimated entire populations. Half the people of Siena died. Unlike Florence and Milan, the city never recovered its former glory. What that means for tourists today is a city that looks as it did centuries ago, with medieval architecture and magnificent art. And, now it’s combined with Italian gusto and a Sienese flavor all its own.

The heart of Siena is the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, where everyone comes to drink espresso and eat gelato at sidewalk cafes while watching the world go by. Twice in the summer, crowds gather to watch the Palio, the exciting, historic horse races sponsored by the various contrada, or neighborhoods. On one side of the Campo is the City Hall and Tower. There’s an interesting museum here and, if you climb the 300 steps to the top of the tower, fantastic views of the Tuscan landscape. From the Campo, narrow streets, alleyways and steep steps wind past quaint buildings and landmarks.

One of Siena’s major attractions is the Duomo, a Baroque cathedral that is amazing. Striped marble, inlaid mosaics, gilt carvings, frescoes, statues – they’re all here, and not to be missed. You can rent an audioguide, useful for understanding some of the array before you. Across from the cathedral is Santa Maria della Scala, a museum that was once a hospital. The frescoes show what health care was like in the 15th century (better than you might think).

There are numerous other churches and museums, and a theater where you can watch a brief film on the history of the Palio. It gives the flavor of the wild drama and ritual around the traditional horse races. This university town also offers numerous concerts and cultural events. When you want to tour the Tuscan countryside, try something different: the Nature Train. The old-fashioned train travels through some of Italy’s most beautiful land, the hills of Tuscany. Rides are available on Sundays, May through October.

One of Siena’s most pleasant hotels is the pricey Palazzo Ravizza, which I love for its garden. It has hand-painted tiles and local marble in the bathrooms, traditional furnishings, and sketches of travelers from past eras. The formal garden, overlooking the Tuscan olive trees and vineyards, is a wonderful place to relax after a day of sightseeing.
Villa Elda, less expensive, is a 10-minute walk from Piazza del Campo. It has 11 rooms and an Art Nouveau atmosphere and is another fine lodging choice. There’s a rooftop terrace as well as a garden.
For some good Sienese restaurant ideas, take a look at Recommendations for Tuscany Restaurants.