Taj Mahal

Perhaps the most famous tourist attraction outside of Disney Land (kind of hard to beat the Mouse) is the Taj Mahal. This is for a very good reason. It is an architectural wonder like nothing I have ever seen. It’s marble so white that I wished I had remembered my sunglasses, and the story behind it something that is just twisted enough to make a great mini-series on CBS.
According to the “Lonely Planet” guide book, (my Bible for this trip), the Taj Mahal was build by Emperor Shah Jahan as a tribute and mausoleum to his second wife who died in childbirth. I’m sure his first wife is still bitter about the whole Taj thing to this day. In any event, construction began in 1631 and ended 1653 putting both the Boston ‘Big Dig’ and the new San Francisco Bay Bridge projects to utter and complete shame.
In total, more than 20,000 people worked on the Taj Mahal though most historians believe none of them were part of a union as many had there hands cut off when the project was done to ensure the Taj Mahal’s beauty would never be challenged.