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In our journey roundup this week: the Japanese metropolis firebombed by the US simply hours earlier than the finish of World War II, the mysterious origins of the world’s solely non-rectangular nationwide flag, plus 4 lifetime buddies recreate the picture they took on a UK seaside greater than 50 years earlier.
East Anglia was chosen by Lonely Planet as one of its top places to visit in 2025 and now there’s another excuse to go to this underexplored English area simply three hours from London.
After a five-year-long, $37 million makeover, Norwich Castle Keep has reopened with all 5 flooring open to the public for the first time.
The Twelfth-century citadel was commissioned by William the Conqueror, and greater than 900 Norman artifacts have been loaned by the British Museum to create its first medieval gallery exterior of the UK capital.

Norwich Castle Keep was one of the first castles constructed after the Norman Conquest of England – that’s the battle depicted in France’s Bayeux Tapestry (at present present process its personal refurb) – and was a present of dominance and status.
Its sturdy 900-year-old partitions had been constructed with Caen limestone imported from Normandy, France, in a long-lasting testomony to Norman energy. If you’re wanting to discover past the UK’s most fashionable vacationer hotspots, this could possibly be a very good place to begin.
Bodrum Castle, on Bodrum Peninsula in southwest Turkey, is a Matryoshka doll of historic marvels.
The Fifteenth-century citadel was constructed by the Knights of Saint John, who fortified it utilizing stones from the close by 4th-century BCE Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Since the Sixties, it’s additionally been house to one of the world’s few Museums of Underwater Archaeology, with greater than 3,000 years of seafaring reveals and historic shipwrecks on show. Dive in deeper with our interactive timeline of Bodrum.
And in case you’re visiting the seaside anytime quickly, you could be on this roundup of the best water shoes of 2025, from our companions at NCS Underscored, a product opinions and proposals information owned by NCS.

At one level in the Seventies, Kodak was accountable for 90% of movie and 85% of digicam gross sales in the United States, giving the firm an enormous stake in individuals’s trip mementoes in the twentieth century.
Kodak launched the first digital digicam in 1975, however failed to sustain with the expertise that it invented, with the 133-year-old firm this week saying that it might need to cease operations.
In honor of the heyday of print pictures, listed below are a pair of our favourite tales of classic picture recreations.
Four younger ladies carrying mini-skirts and flip-flops posed at an English seaside resort in 1972. More than 50 years on, the lifelong buddies gathered as soon as extra to recreate it. Check it out here and admire the consideration to element.
Three US {couples} met on trip in Mexico in the Nineties and have become shut buddies for 30 years and counting. The male halves of the {couples} recreated their favourite picture from the 1994 journey at the very same spot on the seaside at Cabo San Lucas. This one’s a bit deal with for our NCS subscribers: Take a look at the wraparound sun shades and fanny pack.
Twelve hours earlier than World War II ended, the US firebombed the Japanese metropolis of Kumagaya. Eighty years on, the scars stay of this air raid, which one survivor describes as “utterly foolish.” To mark the anniversary, NCS visited the metropolis and met with the individuals who lived by way of the bombing.
Deep in the forests of Lithuania, an deserted secret nuclear missile base displays the political dynamics of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. This once-classified web site was visited by some 35,000 individuals from throughout the world final yr and the dim underground maze nonetheless offers off an eerie feeling.
“Dark tourism,” the visiting of websites related to tragedy, is an oft-debated subject, with a superb line being walked between commemoration and sensationalism. The UNESCO World Heritage checklist acknowledges locations thought-about vital to humanity and scenes of atrocity are generally half of that.
The debate was ignited as soon as once more in July when Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge torture websites had been added to the checklist, 50 years on from the Communist authorities’s rise to energy.

The condo she purchased is ideal. The proprietor simply has to die first

Dream Paris residences on the market at cut price costs. The catch? Someone must die.
This “haunted” Venetian island is to grow to be a locals-only haven.
Tourists received’t be allowed on this city park.
This is the world’s solely non-rectangular nationwide flag.
Here are the mysterious, mathematical origins of the way it happened.
This hilltop city is one of Europe’s smallest international locations.
It’s additionally one of the most unusual.