The world is ours to explore

The Mima Mounds — thousands of low domed hummocks scattered across an open prairie south of Olympia — have defied scientific explanation for more than 150 years. Theories include glacial retreat patterns, seismic resonance during the 1700 Cascadia earthquake, and an enormous, centuries-long colony of pocket gophers. The current consensus is gophers, but no one is entirely sure.

Also known as Coronation Park, this large green space in the centre of Ipoh is a good place to take a breather. It holds one of the last surviving specimens of the *ipoh* tree from which the city takes its name (the tree's sap was once used by the Orang Asli to poison their blowpipe darts), plus an artificial lake with feedable fish, a small Japanese garden with koi ponds, and a children's playgro

Arlington House, also known as the Custis-Lee Mansion, stands on a hill within Arlington National Cemetery, offering one of the finest views of Washington across the Potomac. Built between 1803 and 1818 by George Washington Parke Custis (stepgrandson of George Washington), it became the home of Robert E. Lee after his marriage to Custis's daughter. Lee left the house in April 1861 to command Conf

Built in Neoclassical-Greek Revival style, this firehouse operated from 1861 until 1938 — long enough to see the transition from horse-drawn wagons to motorized engines, all running through the same small arched entrance.

A 3rd-century Roman villa buried by a landslide in the 12th century and excavated in the 20th, the Villa Romana del Casale holds the largest and best-preserved collection of late Roman floor mosaics in the world. The rooms cover more than 3,500 square metres and the mosaics are astonishingly varied — hunting scenes, mythological figures, a long corridor of athletes, and the famous panel of girls i

Jiaohe is one of the oldest, largest and best-preserved earthen cities in the world. Rather than build walls and dig moats, the founders chose a 30-metre-high island of compacted clay between two river branches — and then quarried streets, temples and houses downward from the surface, leaving the walls in place. The natural cliffs handled the defence. Mongol cavalry finally took it in the 13th century.