Since 1997, I travel with a focus on visiting World Heritage Sites. I usually take 4 larger trips each year, and there are also many weekend trips in Europe to survive the rest of the year.

My remaining travel plans for 2018 include:

• 3 WHS in Czechia (October)
• 3 WHS in and around Cairo, Egypt (October)
• 1 WHS in the south of France (November)
• North Vietnam & South China (December/January)

Uplistsikhe Cave Town is another easy day trip from Tbilisi. I visited it on my last afternoon in Georgia. From Tbilisi’s Didube metro and bus station I took a shared taxi with destination Gori – the driver was calling for passengers at the metro exit. 5 of the 6 spots in his car were quickly sold, but the final one proved to be difficult. I had planned to arrive at Uplistsikhe at about 16.30 to have 1.5 hours at the site until it would close for the day, so I was not prepared to wait indefinitely. In the end I paid up another 5 lari to get the taxi going.

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The Tbilisi Historic District is part of the Tentative list of Georgia. It’s a small neighbourhood in Georgia’s capital that can be explored on foot. The rest of the city is of course much bigger: over a million people live there and one moves around the easiest with the subway that still dates from Soviet times. I went several times to Didube metro station for example, to take buses to Mtskheta and Gori from the eponymous bus station. A ticket costs a mere 0.5 lari (0,17 EUR).

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The David Gareji Monasteries and Hermitage are located in the far southeast of Georgia, right on the border with Azerbaijan. There is no public transport that goes all the way there, but every day at 11 o'clock a special shuttle bus (The Gareji Line) departs from the Pushkin statue in the center of Tbilisi. This will take you to the monastery for 25 lari (8 EUR), and will return 3 hours after arrival. You cannot reserve this bus and I was afraid that it would be very busy on a Saturday when I had planned to visit. It was, but in that case they just send another bus.

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The 17th century fortress of Ananuri is part of the Tentative List of Georgia. It was the castle and seat of the Dukes of Aragvi, a feudal dynasty which ruled the area from the 13th century. It lies some 70km north of the capital Tbilisi, along the Military Highway that leads up to Vladikavkaz in Russia. On the first day of my trip to Georgia I visited Ananuri as part of a full day tour along that 213km long historical road.

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When I told my colleagues that I was going to Gdansk for a long weekend, the conversation quickly veered off to Lech Walesa. We hadn’t heard from him in a long time. Had he died already? A quick Wikipedia search turned out he is alive and kicking, working the lucrative lecture circuit in the USA. His hometown is on Poland’s Tentative List under the label of Town of Memory and Freedom. Reminders to various periods in Gdansk’s history, starting from the Hanseatic era, are brought together under this flag. During my stay I mainly focused on the part called the Gdańsk Shipyard associated with the emergence of Solidarity movement, together with the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers.

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