Same. I spent 5 nights below the rim during a backpacking trip and it was amazing. I’d love to make it back but there is so much more of that area to explore. We did an early spring trip this year to explore Zion and Bryce and loved them as well.
Couple of things come to mind immediately…
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My wife and I hired a couple local chefs to do a food tour of Florence. All of the places we went were interesting and worthy of the stops and stories, but in particular the Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio was an outstanding experience. As non-Italian speakers and tourist unfamiliar with local customs, we would never have know how to do what our chef guides did. They went stall to stall, buying the best thing from each and then at the last stall where the bought some meat, they had arranged for the owner to cook everything they had assembled. It was truly a feast.
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In Seville, we again hired a guide, but this time a local historian. He took us on a walk through the cathedral, explaining things as we went, but then quickly detoured to go through the neighborhood where he lived. We checked out all the little stores, learned what to order at which restaurants, what places to avoid. We even went to his church to look at the various shrines and effigies that he and his fellow congregants carry around in whatever parade it is that that sort of thing happens. I felt like I knew a lot more about daily life there that I ever would have as a self-guided tourist.
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In Madrid, we went to the Reina Sofia instead of the Prado, as I was more interested in seeing some modern art after a long trip seeing various antiquities. My first time seeing a number of the contemporary greats, particularly being excited to see a number of Rothko canvases. But the stunner was seeing Guernica in person. The museum cleverly routed me through a series of rooms with information about the Spanish civil war, what led to the bombing, news reports and photos, and an array of Picasso’s trial sketches and detail explorations. Then I turned the corner and BOOM, there it is. It is huge beyond what I had expected, and after being saturated with stories of the violence of the bombing, the impact is like a gut punch. It’s the only time I think I’ve ever seen a crowd of tourists that size be totally silent. It’s just like there’s no air in that room. Its standing in front of 30 feet of visceral horror.
Way too many of those to list. Velvet Underground at the Unicorn, Sun Ra at the Corcoran, Jeff Beck Group opening for Big Brother and the Holding Company, Paul Bley with Steve Swallow and Lee Konitz, the Pogues at the Opera House, Sonny Rollins at Montreux, Annie Ross and Jon Hendricks at Scullers, the Stones debuting new guitarist Mick Taylor… and oh yeah, Woodstock…
The story above about seeing Guernica in person reminded me of my visit to Milan and seeing Leonardo’s Last Supper.
It’s genuinely awe-inspiring. I’m not religious but I was humbled into silence. Magnificent.
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence is also spectacular and surpassed expectations. We spent five hours and explored barely half of the place. Kind of quirkily organized, but that makes it unpredictable, so you feel like you’re constantly stumbling across things.
Sometimes I go to an attraction for one specific thing…if I see that, everything else is gravy. Such was the case when I went to the Bonneville Fish Hatchery to see “Oregon’s most beloved fish”, Herman The Sturgeon. I did indeed get to see the 10ft long, 89 year-old fellow–a most impressive specimen, I must say.
The rest of the hatchery was pretty cool too, with exhibits scattered around the nicely landscaped grounds. And an extra bonus: it’s right next to the Bonneville Dam visitor center where you can check out the fish ladder, the underwater viewing areas, the power plant turbine room and get a great view of the dam and Columbia River Gorge.
The Colosseum and the Pantheon. Staring up at that dome. Looking at the center of the Colosseum from the stands. I don’t know why those were my “I’m really here, seeing this in person” sites, but they were.
Small little museum, but I thought the Garst Museum in Ohio was excellent.
The Acadian Cultural Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. I thought it would be some old, outdated museum. It is outstanding.
The Meteor Crater. We must have spent half-an-hour just staring at the Crater.
Many of mine have already been taken, but just a very few not mentioned yet:
Point Lobos, the jewel of the California coast.
Mesa Verde in Colorado and Canyon de Chelly (Chelly is pronounced shay) in Arizona. The latter which is a bit like what you would get if the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde had a baby.
For the architectural works of man, I’m not sure the Alhambra in Granada, Spain will ever be topped.
And for a much smaller and more intimate experience, the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. Whatever your view as to whether they should be repatriated or not, for me that exhibit falls into the category of things like the Grand Canyon. Insomuch as I didn’t particularly expect either to impress, but for whatever reason they kinda made my jaw drop when I finally saw them in person. Although I like art and art museums and can find art moving, I’m not used to having a really strong emotional reaction to them. I don’t know quite why I was so awestruck by old marble friezes and maybe that wouldn’t translate for many people. But it was the highlight of the British Museum for me and I love that whole monument to rampant colonial aggrandizement.
We just took the before-hours Greek tour at the British Museum and had the Elgin Marbles room to ourselves (12 people) and the guide. It was quiet, amazing, and inspiring. We came back later when the museum was open and it’s a very different experience.
The Pantheon just absolutely blew my mind. I wish the bronze entryway hadn’t been torn off centuries ago, but it was still an epic experience.
We were also lucky enough to go to the Coliseum as a new area was opened up. We got to take a tour through the tunnels and other works that would have once been below the competition floor, so to speak.
Jokulsarlon, Iceland. The glacier lagoon. Driving from our hotel in Reykjavik toward Hofn we came over a hill and, unexpectedly, there it was. It was on my list to see but I hadn’t been thinking about where it was, we were just poking along rubber-necking on our way to our next hotel. Breathtaking. We parked and walked around, took tons of pics, watched seals playing. Wondered why we were the only ones there…until we realized it was 11pm… 
I’ll always remember that.
Both times I checked them out it was near closing hours and neither crowded nor noisy. I imagine that had some impact on the experience.
So many great ones mentioned, I have been fortunate to see a large percentage of them, but just a few more.
The Galapagos Islands. It will cost you many, many bucks, but it will be worth it.
The Terra-Cotta Warriors of Xian, China. Oh, the Great Wall is a can’t miss and will awe you, but I was dumb-struck at seeing this museum and grounds. If you go to China to see the sights, you have to see this one.
The Colosseum in Rome is very cool, but you know what we were surprised to have enjoyed even more?
The Amphitheater of El Jem in eastern Tunisia, the largest Roman-era colosseum in North Africa. It’s smaller than the one in Rome (seating capacity 30-35k, compared to 60-70k), and it’s not quite as well preserved. But unlike the one in Rome, you can go literally everywhere that’s still standing, without limitation; and it’s not swarming with tourists. When we were there, we saw maybe a dozen other people around the entire place, and otherwise had it largely to ourselves.
Our kids found it absolutely thrilling. We climbed to the highest surviving level and got a phenomenal view of the amphitheater and the surrounding town; we ran around the central space and pretended to be gladiators; we played hide-and-seek in the underground spaces.
If you ever find yourself in Tunisia, this is a must-see.
The Fish River Canyon in Namibia is pretty great, it is the second biggest canyon after the Grand. Lovely 4 or 5 day hikes, but hot and dry. You can’t hike it in the rainy season because of the possibility of flash floods. In the winter, when it is hottest, the river can completely dry up, so I have drank some water from mostly stagnant pools that was a deeper shade of yellow/green than most beers.
The highlight: because it is so hot, we got up before dawn every day, rested at noon. One early morning I was down at the river collecting water, in the pre-sunrise morning light, and a flight of 18 pelicans came downstream at low, low altitude. Totaly silent until above me when I could hear the wind rustling through their feathers.
Speaking of early mornings, and it is a bit of a cliché, but the Taj Mahal in Agra at dawn is impossibly beautiful
You get an hour or two before the tourist hordes arrive.
(Waking at dawn was not hard, there was clearly a Muslim festival/holiday - I did not investigate which one. The mullah at the local mosque sang prayers all night. The poor man was going hoarse at the end. I should have found him and paised his staying ability, even though it affected my sleeping ability)
Fast forward from 1977 to 2023, and my wife and I just saw the movie of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. The technology available for mega concerts these days is simply unbelievable. A huge video wall larger than an IMAX screen; runways and stage floors composed of thousands of square feet of interactive video screens, and incorporating raising and lowering platforms; and the PixMob LED bracelet system for the audience, which lets the lighting designer turn the audience into a canvas for lighting effects. It’s been around for a while, but I had never seen it before. Here’s a video that explains the tech.
When traveling in Italy we spend a night in Verona, with tickets to see an opera performed in a 2000 year old Roman arena. We’re not opera fans, we don’t speak Italian, and the performance started at 8:00 PM and ran until midnight. We were prepared to bail at the first intermission if it wasn’t interesting enough.
As it turns out, it was spectacular and immersive. Opera makes it fairly easy to follow along the storyline without knowing the words, the singing was amazing, a full moon rising over the arena walls on a hot summer night, the hushed silence in the arena after an aria, interuped by a lone Italian voice yelling out “Bravisimo!” and the audience going into thunderous applause.
It finished at 11:30, almost no one had left early, and the crowds headed out to get gelato from the street vendors.
In October of 2021, my sister, wife and I got on a plane in Atlanta, heading for Boston. From there we got on an small Icelandair plane to Reykjavik. Five hours on a cramped plane, where I could never get comfortable or fall asleep. Landed in Keflavik at 6:30 in the morning, and took a bus to our hotel. We couldn’t check in until 3:00 pm, but the hotel let us stash our luggage. By this point, we’d all been awake for roughly eighteen hours, so my wife and sister elected to nap in the lobby. The two friends we’d met in Boston and I decided to visit Reykjavik’s semi-famous Penis Museum (the passion project of an eccentric genius whose dream it was to collect a penis from every type of animal that lived in Iceland. Including the naked plains ape – we were assured the two specimens displayed came from willing donors, eek – and what was matter-of-factly presented as a troll’s penis).
Made our way back to the hotel to finally check in, then get on a bus for a tour of the then-erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano. A hour later, we stumble off the bus, into subfreezing mud and rain that was blowing sideways. Exhausted, cold, and wet, I trudged up a small ridge to see…
A smoking field of cooling lava, probably a half mile wide, with glowing lava falling down a mountain like a waterfall. Steam, where the freezing rain hit the molten rock. Black lava cooling into fantastical shapes. A not-unpleasant smell of burning sulfur.
We spend probably two hours walking along the lava field, picking up pieces of rock that were literally a month old. In some of them, the minerals had crystalized to small diamond-like jewels. (Unlike Hawai’i, Iceland permits visitors to collect and keep lava.)
It was one of the most magical, amazing things I’ve ever in my life seen.
I do so many events, & so many events year after year that a lot of them, while incredible, either tend to blur (was it this year or that year) or are, 'Oh yeah, I’m doing ___ again". But there are two that stand out.
First was a ‘stumble-upon’; I wanted to do something at night while I was in Krakow but I don’t get Polish, the letters are the same as in English but they’re not even pronounced the same. K’s sound like ‘sh’ W. T. F! so a play or a movie would be out because I wouldn’t understand what they were saying; same with a concert, unless I could find classical music. While walking around during the day I took notice of a poster on a telephone pole, for the circus - that night. Score! So much is visual that I could go & enjoy it even though I didn’t know what they were saying. Not only did they pull adults out of the audience to teach them a Rockettes kick line, I would have kicked (sorry) ass at that but the last bit was the performers walking around & taking kids from the audience & bringing them into the circle to sing a song - an Italian circus, in Poland, singing We are the World in English! Mind. Blown!
The second was the first time I went to see Tribute in Light. I told my then-gf I’d be in probably around 2-3am. At 3 4am I was still in the city shooting it & had one more place on my list to go, & she’s an hour drive away. As I was finally getting close to her house I looked at the time & made a short detour over to the bay where I got an epic sunrise timelapse to cap it off. I go back every Sept & add a new place to view/shoot it from, this year was from above.
I was also lucky enough to get one of the two best photos I’ve ever taken that night, one that I’ve never seen like it anywhere else.
Trollstigen and Geiranger Fjord, Norway. The most scenic drive I’ve ever taken. Really, Norway in general is the most scenic country I’ve ever visited, but that part in particular is especially breathtaking.