Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Nik Cap asks, “You may have answered this in some form or another; Visiting the Seven Wonders in the World are on my bucket list, but besides the Seven Wonders of the World, are there Seven little know or overlooked wonders that should also be be on the list?”

First, Nik, I assume you are talking about the New Seven Wonders, not the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, because there is only one of them still standing.

The short answer is, yes, there are a whole bunch of places that are overlooked. A good place to start would be the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. There are currently over 1,100 natural and cultural sites. I’ve personally been to over 400. I’d say 9 out of 10 are worth visiting.

Not everything has to be an ancient ruin. There are some incredible sites which are part of the history of the Industrial Revolution. You can find many of these in Europe, especially in England.

There are incredible Roman ruins that are almost never mentioned. You can find fantastic sites in Southern France, Jordan, Algeria, and Spain.

There are some amazing national parks that almost no one visits. Nahaanni National Park in the Northwest Territories of Canada and Torrengat Mountains National Park in northern Labrador are two of the greatest parks I’ve ever visited, and they both get fewer than 1,000 visitors a year.

Most people visit places because they know about it. That is why everyone visits the same few places…because they don’t know anything else.

If you do just a little bit of research, you’ll find a plethora of great, underappreciated places almost anywhere you visit.