This is the small islet of Mont Saint Michel, just off the north coast of France. It is home to a Benedictine Abbey and steepled church, which were built between the 11th and 16th centuries, and was connected to the mainland via a thin natural land bridge. Before modernization the bridge was covered at high tide and revealed at low tide.

These days the land bridge has become a causeway, which has unfortunately contributed towards a general silting-up of the bay. To prevent the water from disappearing completely, there are plans afoot to replace the causeway with a bridge (Wikipedia page).

Thanks: Tony, Mark D, Jef Poskanzer, Jerome, Holly Helterhoff, Tim, ray hollis, Mathieu, David Patrick, Christophe Roudet, Patrick R, Marc, Gwen, Marc Armstrong and Gabriel.

Here at Google Sightseeing HQ in Edinburgh, we’ve been having a mini heat-wave of late, which got us in the mood for sunbathing

Here’s some people, lots of people in fact, sunbathing on a beach in Barcelona. Not enough people? Here you go: even more people on another Barcelona beach.

Perhaps you prefer your sunbathing a little more au naturel? Try Wreck beach, a nudist sunbathing spot in Vancouver, Canada (careful you don’t strain your eyes at those pixels too much!)

Not enough sunbathing opportunities for you? How about Rimini beach in Italy? The link goes to the top of the high-resolution bit, scroll south to see the tens of thousands of parasols and sun loungers! It literally goes on for miles and miles.

Thanks to Quinn Kuiken, davide, Personne and woowoowoo.

Linking the countries of Sweden and Denmark is the Oresund Bridge which actually comprises a cable-stayed bridge, an artificial island (Peberholm) and a tunnel. The total length is 16km and is split over two levels (a railway is below the road). Marcus Rangell also added:

According to what I’ve read, the island is also a biological experiment to see how nature will develop on the island. Currently a bunch of plants have already spread to the island, some are very rare.

Thanks: Roland, Thomas, breakbeat, jensflorian, Marcus Rangell, Simone, Yann & Martin

The Temple of Heaven is a temple of Taoism in Beijing. If you zoom out a little you’ll see that the northern section is enclosed in a semi circular wall (representing heaven) while the southern section is within a rectangle (representing earth). The northern part is also higher for the same reason.

To the north is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, which is connected to the Imperial Vault of Heaven by the Vermilion Steps Bridge, or “Sacred Way”. You can see that the sacred way is split into two halves, one side for emperors and the other for princes and high officials, although I think tourists now happily walk up either side. The circles to the south of the Imperial Vault of Heaven is the Circular Altar.

Surrounding the Imperial Vault of Heaven is the echo wall, where apparently if you whisper to the wall on one side the sound is echoed right around the wall to the other side, where you can be clearly heard.

Thanks: Feng Wu

Google Sightseeing is now fully linked up to Google Earth. Every post now has a ‘Google Earth’ link as well as a ‘Map’ link. Clicking on the Google Earth link will zoom your copy of Google Earth to any of the sights listed in that post. If you don’t have Google Earth installed you can grab it here, Windows only, sorry.

We’ve also made a Google Earth ‘Network Link’ that contains all of our sights which can then be updated from within Google Earth. To use the Network Link grab this KML file. Just click that link and a new ‘Google Sightseeing’ folder will appear in your ‘Places’ section in Google Earth. Give it a minute to load the points and your shiny earth should be populated with our fantastic sights. If you want to check for new points just right click on the ‘Google Sightseeing’ folder and hit refresh to get all the newest points.

There are bound to be a few bugs to iron out so if you spot any post them here. Thanks!