Places Aksel Wants to Go

Giant pigeon houses packed into city streets in Egypt.

The deadliest diving spot in the world is also a stunning geological marvel.

Charnel house at the foot of Mount Sinai.

Brightly painted boulders scattered throughout the Sinai Desert.

The ruins of a medieval castle that once belonged to one of the most powerful families in the Netherlands.

A statue of the second-tallest Dutchman in history.

Elegant marble and old vaults fill this historic Dutch bank turned office space.

This serene bamboo walkway allows Buddhist monks from remote temples access to the nearby village.

This golden temple is surrounded by hundreds of stone tablets that comprise the "world's largest book."

Medieval irrigation channels built into the sides of mountains provided Valais with water for hundreds of years.

Started as a kitchen garden, now the second largest botanical garden in the world.

Indents in the pavement are all that remain from a grisly death machine in Paris.

High atop the Eiffel Tower is a small apartment built exclusively to entertain the science elite and make the rest of Paris jealous.

The fairy tale castle of the “fairy-tale king,” this was also the inspiration for Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty.”

This colorful but controversial ceiling has been likened to a 21st-century Sistine Chapel.

Sited in an Inner Mongolian desert are the remnants of an important trade stop along the Silk Road.

Claude Monet was baptized in this lavishly ornate Paris church.

Famed for its pie, this eatery has a hidden tunnel that allowed Catholics to secretly walk to church during the Reformation.

A remote forest of stone pillars along the Lena river.

Five mile wide circular ring of rock in the Russian Far East is a curious geological oddity.

Intricate wood carvings on an island in Siberia.

The mummified remains of Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, Russia's most important Buddhist.

Bioluminescence in the reefs of the Maldives causes the sea to glow like a starry night sky.

For nearly 2,000 years this church has been waging war on local snakes by importing cats.