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Hear the enchanting stories behind some of the World’s most captivating sights – from Beijing’s Forbidden City, Salzburg’s Eisriesenwelt Ice Cave, and Germany’s Berlin Wall to Italy’s Bridge Of Sighs, England’s Stonehenge, and Edinburgh’s Calton Hil. Below are some of the stories you will discover for yourself while on a Globus Vacation.
Asia Travel Stories
 The Forbidden City: The largest imperial palace in the world – is situated in the center of Beijing and covers more than 178 acres of land in China. As an ancient Chinese legend goes, “the God resided in the heavens, known to all as the “Purple City.”” During the 17th Century, Chinese emperors claimed to be the sons of the God in an effort to justify their absolute power, and thus their homes would be considered a forbidden area to the common people. As a result, “Purple Forbidden City” became the official name for the emperor’s palace.
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Australia Travel Stories
 Great Barrier Reef: For nature-lovers, a visit to the Great Barrier Reef is a quasi-religious experience. The 1600 mile long organism, which can even be identified from space, is actually a web of 2,900 self-contained reefs that lie between 40 and 100 miles off Australia’s north-east coast. From a plane, the Reef looks like a giant blue rash, but beneath its placid waves lie canyons of brilliant coral, each one a mini-galaxy of sea life, including wildly colored fish and anemones, giant turtles, moray eels, sharks and manta rays so large they can blot out the sun’s light as they pass overhead.
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Austria Travel Stories
 Vienna: Beneath the golden façade of Vienna’s Hapsburg palaces and gleaming baroque buildings, lies a secret past. Throughout the course of history, this picturesque “gateway to the East” has been a hotbed of espionage, with 007-types hiding in the shadows of its grandiose veneer. The most famous of these spies was one Franz Kolschitszky, who in the 17th century was paid in coffee beans for spying on the Turks. He in turn opened Vienna’s first café, the Blue Bottle. Orson Welles famed movie, The Third Man, tells of a post-war Vienna teeming with spies.
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Central Europe Travel Stories
 Budapest in the Moonlight - An evening along the Blue Danube: A few hours in Hungary’s culturally-rich capital, and you’ll understand how it came to be known as the “Paris of the East.” A day or two of soaking in Budapest’s complex history, intricate artwork and ornate architecture, and you’ll be ready for a relaxing evening with the Danube’s calm waters as your backdrop. If your plans leave you with a bit of daylight, take time for a stroll around picturesque Margaret Island, Budapest’s answer to Central Park.
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England Travel Stories
 Stonehenge: Built in several stages starting around 3,000 BC, Stonehenge remains one of humankind’s biggest mysteries. While science is still trying to determine the purpose behind this famous prehistoric monument, it is generally assumed to be some sort of astronomical observatory that reflects the changing trajectory of the sun through the sky and the seasons.
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France Travel Stories
 Notre Dame: Europe’s most famous cathedral, whose twin Gothic towers loom above France’s most beloved river, the Seine, actually owes a lot of its international success to the author Victor Hugo. Back in 1831, when Hugo wrote his classic novel about a hunchbacked bell-ringer at Notre Dame who falls in love with a beautiful gypsy, the medieval cathedral had fallen on hard times. During the Revolution in 1789, it had been seized, looted of its treasures and converted into an atheistic “Temple of Reason.”
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Germany Travel Stories
 Berlin Wall: The top question of any visitor to Berlin is - Where’s the Wall? In short, it’s gone. After Die Wende (the term used to describe the reunification Germany), the 155-kilometer ring around West Berlin went the way of most useless masonry – it was torn down to make space for new construction. (Berlin has been a construction site for years, its skyline pierced by building cranes). The longest existing piece of the Wall (one kilometer) is on Mühlenstraße, but perhaps not for long. In the 90s, artists painted murals on the concrete and created what became the open air East Side Gallery.
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Italy Travel Stories
 Across The Bridge Of Sighs: The world’s most poetically-named bridge, Il Ponte dei Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs, was built in 1614 so that prisoners of the Venetian state could be transferred in secret from the Doge’s Palace to the so-called Nuovi Prigioni, or New Prisons. The wistful name was actually conceived by the English poet Lord Byron in the early 1800s that imagined the horror of prisoners taking their last glimpse of Venice before going underground to captivity.
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Scotland Travel Stories
 Old Calton Graveyard: Below Edinburgh’s Calton Hill you can see Old Calton Graveyard featuring a stone watchtower that dates back to the 17th century. It was from that tower that Irish grave robbers William Burke and William Hare watched for funerals. Upon a funeral’s end, they took out their spades and dug up bodies to supply the Royal College of Surgeons with fresh cadavers for research.
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Southern Europe Travel Stories
 Ancient Olympia - The Origin of the Games: While centuries of weather and wear have left the site of the original Olympic Games in Olympia, Greece, in ruins, you can easily imagine the 30,000-seat stadium packed with fans. As you venture here, a palpable sense of the incredible feats that occurred on this hallowed ground will overtake you. The first Olympic Games were part of a religious festival held in honor of Zeus in 776 B.C. and were open to all male Greeks (and later, Romans). Athletes traveled to Olympia from as far away as Iberia (Spain) in the east and the Black Sea (Turkey) in the west.
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Switzerland Travel Stories
 The Matterhorn: Although it is not Switzerland’s tallest mountain (14,692 feet, the Du Four Peak is15,634 feet), it is its most famous. Dominating the ski Mecca of Zermatt, the Matterhorn has been drawing vacationers and mountaineers to this pedestrian only town since the mid1800s. Located on the Italian border in the German-speaking zone, this is where the country’s tallest mountains soar over Europe.
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