The landmarks you've already seen and forgot to count

Here's a quick test. Think of a city you've been to more than once. Now list the landmarks you saw there.

Most people get one or two, and then remember three more a week later in the shower. The bridge you crossed in a cab. The famous building you could see from the conference hotel. The tower you went up because it was raining and everything else was closed.

Landmarks are strange that way. They're the most photographed places in the world, and the easiest to forget you saw.

You don't have to have been there this year

A landmark stamp doesn't care when you went. Open the stamp, tap "I've been here," and it's collected, whether you were there this morning or on a school trip decades ago.

The Trevi Fountain in Rome is one of mine.

At the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

That one tap does more than it looks like. A landmark collects the city and country around it, and the continent above that. Check in at the Golden Gate Bridge and you collect San Francisco, California, the United States and North America too.

If the landmark was part of a trip you already logged, you can attach it to that moment instead, and it collects the same way. Then the bridge lives with the weekend and the people who were there.

Go through one city at a time

The easiest way to find the landmarks you've forgotten is to pick a city and look at everything there is to see there.

The New York City guide is a good place to try this. The Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building are all there. Most people who have spent a weekend in the city have walked past more of them than they think!

The United Kingdom is mostly London landmarks, and France is mostly Paris, which makes both quick to check. Arizona is the opposite: canyons and rock formations people drive hours for, which are hard to forget once you've seen them.

Two of my Paris landmarks are the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Pyramid.

At the Eiffel Tower.

At the Louvre.

The ones I forgot were the ones I grew up with. I'm from South Dakota, and I didn't think to check in at the Corn Palace, the Badlands or Mount Rushmore until I went looking.

Landmarks on a border

Some landmarks don't belong to just one place. Niagara Falls sits on the line between New York and Canada. Victoria Falls is shared by Zambia and Zimbabwe.

For a landmark like that, the stamp has a "Where you were" section that lists only the places it touches. Tap the side you saw it from. You can tag more than one if you crossed over.

Keep the ones you haven't seen yet

Landmarks make good goals. Save the ones you want to your Bucket List in Pond Passport, and when you finally get there and check in, the stamp moves into your collection on its own.

Each landmark stamp also keeps the people who were with you and a note, so you can write down the thing you'll want to remember.

Table Mountain in Cape Town is a landmark stamp too. I hiked it to the top, so I could also tag Hiking, an Adventure stamp, to Cape Town.

On top of Table Mountain.

How to start

Open YourPond, pick the city you know best, and check in at every landmark there you've actually seen. Then add who you were with.

Pond Passport is free, on the web and in the YourPond app for iPhone.

Browse the landmark stamps · Stamps by place · How Pond Passport works