re: What sights,landmarks or buildings left you in awe

Kauai, photographs can't capture the beauty of that island.

I must be a really jaded person because I have been to a lot of places and rarely have I ever thought "Wow".

St Peter's basilica was nothing special to me. I say that to people and they think I am insane.

Seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time at a distance was pretty awesome, though.

The black sand beach on the Road to Hana in Maui was pretty breathtaking.

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The really interesting part of this is that the Via Conciliazione was not there until the Mussolini regime. Certainly it is inspiring and beautiful. Think, however, prior to 1929, that to get to Piazza San Pietro and the basilica, you had to navigate through the Borgo, in an out the rabbit warren of a neighborhood until you came upon either the walls of the Vatican, or the front of the Piazza or the outer side of Bernini's collonnade and there was the piazza.

The Great Pyramids of Giza.

The first thing you notice about them is that they are one of the few things are bigger than they appear to be in photos.

And then you try to wrap your mind around how old they are. You can stand at the same spot that Julius Caesar stood where he was looking at something older to him than the Colosseum is to us

...by a half a millennium.

Cathedral in Milan
Hong Kong harbor from Victoria Peak

Mt. Rainier, Yosemite Valley, Hwy 1 of the California coast, Rocky Mountain National Park

View from atop Mt Titliss in Switzerland
View from atop Mt Keystone in Colorado
Columbia River Gorge in Oregon
Seeing the Antikithera Mechanism in person in Athens
The Acropolis in Athens
View looking down from the Temple of Poseiden to the Aegean Sea on the Island of Rhodes in Greece.
Inside the Roman Coliseum in Italy
Looking down a canal in Venice at all the dozens of bridges.
St. Peter's Basilica in Rome
The Duomo in Florence
The view from the Eiffel Tower
The White Cliffs of Dover along the English Channel
The view from the top of the Empire State Building
The view from Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado
The first time I stepped onto the field in Jerry World (AT&T Stadium) in Dallas
Solar eclipse reaching totality in Tennessee

The star spangled banner at Smithsonian

I was very impressed to learn that the Empire State Building was erected in about a year, and it’s still standing.