Like a crushed beauty queen, the Statue of Liberty was relegated to the runner’s-up lounge to weep with the Easter Island statues after the “new” seven wonders of the world were revealed over the weekend. Read the winner’s list, though, and you’ll see she had some tough competition. Edged out by the likes of the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan, and Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer, she really has nothing to be ashamed of.

Although I’ve been to a lot of wondrous places, I’ve been to only three that made the list: the Roman Coliseum, Chichén Itzá, and, most recently, Machu Picchu.

When I was 17 and participating in a cultural exchange in Mexico, I scrambled up the very steep and very teensy Chichén Itzá pyramid steps without once looking down. At the top, I almost lost my footing--an entire Mayan world was laid out before me, dizzying at the height, staggeringly preserved, and surrounded by miles of untouched Yucatan jungle. I squinted and tried to see all the tourists below as the ancient villagers, and for a second (maybe the vertigo) it actually worked.

Years later, in the crushing heat of a Rome July, I dodged the Vespas to enter the Coliseum. Amid the stands, I thought about what it might have been like during the gladiator days (this was before the Russell Crowe movie) to be swept up in the crowd’s thirst for blood. As someone who won’t even swat a fly, it’s hard to imagine, but context is everything.

When I arrived at Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes, I’d been sick and feeling weak in the thin air. No matter. The mist on the mountains and the precariously perched architecture were exhilarating. I wandered in and out of stone structures where echoes of a once-thriving Incan civilization whispered on the wind of what once was (and no, I don't think that was just my stomach growling).

I’m curious about public reaction to the world’s new list of wonders. Do you agree with the winner's list, or are there other places you’d like to have seen make the cut?