TRAVEL DAY!!

12 of 12 for June is another travel day! This time to Prague!! I was VERY excited about this trip, I am taking my mom, for her first trip outside the US and going to see an international theatre festival, which is awesome. No theme for me this month since the day is a theme in and of itself. For reference this project was created by Chad Darnell, and you can see more entries at his blog.
Getting ready, doing the last few minutes of packing and gathering. This is the view into my suitcase. That's my "big" camera, not the one I use for this project.

My other last minute preperation, printing up materials for geocaching. there are a TON in Prague.

Quick lunch. Our flight is at 7:45, but it's an 1:30 travel time to the airport on the subway, (I refuse to pay a taxi $50.) and since it is an international flight they ask us to check in 3 hours in advance.

Mom and Mark just before we head out.

About 2 hours later we make it to the AirTrain the connection between the subway and the airport.

In line at the SwissAir check in. We waited here for 45 minutes before we realized that this wasn't the line we had to be in. That laine was around the corner out of our line of sight.

In the terminal you can begin to see the problems ahead. That's our plane in the distance. It is half an hour past boarding.

We finally board an hour late, and begin to push back. We don't get very far.

Two hours on the runway. We have now officially missed our connecting flight from Geneva to Prague, no matter how fast this plane flies.


Mom entertains herself reading guide books while we wait out taking off.

The flight info on screen at the time of our take off, about 11:30. We still have a long way to go, and problems to deal with when we get there.

Midnight in NYC by my watch, so the 12th is officially over. As you can see we didn't make it very far. When we arrived in Geneva we were told that there were no more direct flights to Prague for the day. We flew to Zurich where they took my carry-on away, saying it was too large, even though I had already carried it on once. A few minutes later I realized my boarding passes for the next flight were in it, so in Zurich that took some dealing with because we had paper tickets, not electronic ones due to the snafu earlier. We finally arrive in Prague at 8pm the next day, and even though in real time we had been traveling for 24 hours counting the train, we were only 6 hours behind schedule in Prague.

UFOs

I've always been fascinated by the possibility of exterrestrial life (sidenote: the Harvard News Office released a story this week about the potential for life on Mars), stimulated in part by a childhood prank to a UFO reporting agency. Are UFOs real? Perhaps. I don't know. Fact is, if enough people corroborate the same story, are they lying?

A few hours ago, I uploaded a photo to Flickr showing a night shot of Boston's Custom House, taken from Christopher Columbus Park. Due to a pair of light bulbs in the foreground, it appears the moon is shining above. That "moon" is really glare from the lights.

The glare got me thinking about UFOs, which led me to a January 2007 story in the Chicago Tribune about an unidentified flying object that allegedly hovered over O'Hare Airport, as witnessed by airport personnel, before shooting back into the clouds.

During a roadtrip to the Canadian Maritimes a few years ago, I visited the Chapel Hill MuseumWikipedia provides more details.

I bring up O'Hare and Shag Harbour as examples of dozens of people independently sighting the same object. How can one be skeptical?

By contrast, when individuals report sightings, how can one not be skeptical?

According to the National UFO Reporting Center, UFO sightings in Massachusetts were reported in Wakefield, West Bridgewater, Springfield, Norton, Middleboro, Randolph, Worcester, Foxboro, Florence, Northampton, Brewster, and Lynn. And those reports are only from the beginning of April.

What bothers me is these UFO sightings are reported on an individual basis 95% of the time, usually anonymous. Unless the sighting is independently confirmed by other people in other locations and unknown to each other, where is the proof the sighting is not a prank, like my childhood episode? in Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia. Housed in a converted church, the museum provides general information on the town as well as press clippings and alleged photos of a UFO crash in the harbor in 1967. UFOlogists compare the incident to Roswell.

Belly Dancing in Istanbul

We went to Istanbul a few years ago over the Valentine’s day weekend. February in Istanbul…it’s freakin’ cold! It’s a beautiful city and the Turks were very friendly and helpful bar the usual 1 or 2 locals anywhere you go in the world who try to rip you off or take you for a ride. That’s exactly what a cab driver did there so be careful with those crazy cabbies in their shitty little yellow cabs.

There’s quite a bit to see there,especially in the Old Town where the Mosques, Ayia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and other attractions are really fascinating. There’s so much history there. The apple tea, for tourists, is also quite nice when it’s cold out.

We took a boat ride along the Bosphorus. It wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world but it was kind of fun to see the nice palaces and buildings along the shoreline of a famous waterway. It’s worth doing if you are in Istanbul for a few days.

While there we also went to a belly dancing evening which was good fun. The dancers were clearly interested in the tourists from the richer nations as the American and Brit were constantly offered to come on stage and paid more attention to than we were. It’s for the tip at the end you see. Might be bigger, might not. Anyway, they fed us and danced for us and it was quite a nice evening. At the end though, the place turned into a strip club. Sitting there with my would-be wife, a waiter came to me after the show with a “free” entry card to the upstairs strip club. Dude, I’m attached or does that not bother you?? No big deal, we just laughed it off and even more so as we left when we realised the belly dancers were also the strippers.

Ukraine

When in central Europe be sure to consider visiting Ukraine that lies in the south east of Central Europe and is a newly formed independent country that borders Russia, Byelorussia as well as Moldova and Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and finally Poland on land. Ukraine also has Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey as its neighbors on the sea. The country itself is largely flat and without many trees and is best described as being a “steppe”. However, there are mountains know as the Crimean Mountains as also the Carpathians in the west, though you can be sure they do not rise too high into the sky.

Tourists to Ukraine will find the climate appealing as it is mostly moderate and even winters do not see any extremes of weather though you would appreciate the regular falling of snow when rivers and lakes freeze up. Such a favorable climate has helped the Ukraine into having many agricultural areas where wheat, maize, corn as also buckwheat are often grown as too is red and green vegetables and many fruits, melons and the tasty berries. In fact, Ukraine is also a major producer of sugar, which is more than sufficient for home consumption with plenty remaining to be exported, which is why it is one of the main centers of sugar production in the world. There are also many natural resources found in the Ukraine.

The country owes its independence to the popularity of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika especially around 1988-89 in which year the country saw the formation of the “People’s Movement of Ukraine”. Two years later, the country achieved its independence and much was expected of it in terms of economic wellbeing though it had to go through a severe economic slowdown that saw it reeling under the weight of five digit inflation during the 1990s. However, it turned the corner in 2000 and has since grown steadily in economic terms.

Ukraine is also the forty-fourth largest country in the world and is also Europe’s second largest and it currently also enjoys the status of being among the thirty largest economies of the world. Its population consists mostly of Ukrainians who constitute about 77.8 percent with another 17.3 percent being Russians with minute amounts of Belarussians, Moldovans, Crimean Tartars and Bulgarians and Hungarians along with Romanians, Poles, Jews, Armenians and Greeks and Tartars making up the remainder of its population.

As far as religion is concerned, the major religion in the country is Eastern Orthodox Christianity that is made up of three Church bodies and a lesser religion practiced in the country is Eastern Rite Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Most of its culture is an amalgamation of its eastern as well as western neighbor’s influences as seen in the architecture and music and dance of Ukraine. It is also a country with a pronounced food culture that goes back many thousands of years and the diet of the average Ukrainian would include pork, chicken, beef and fish and mushrooms. Also, included in the Ukrainian food are many potatoes, grains and also vegetables accompanied by various types of bread.

Ecoescape green travel guide

Whether you want to live the retro life in a vintage American caravan, pretend you're an ewok living in a treetop house, or explore some of the UK's new generation of organic pubs you will find it in Ecoescape's green travel guide. The handy book provides information on the UK's many eco-destinations, with tips and ideas on how to have a responsible, sustainable vacation within the British Isles. It also encourages you to travel green by providing details of bus routes and train stations. In this age where we are encouraged to reduce our carbon footprint, and reject air travel, it's good to know there are so many quirky and exciting destinations on our doorstep. The green guide is £3.65, but is available for £2.99 (including p&p) during June from ecoescape.org

Travel: We gotta get outa here….

With the massive disappointment, stemming from the brilliant weather last week and the change to our normal coldish, wetish June, I’ve been getting friends asking me how best to use the internet to get out of Northern Ireland for a week’s break! So I said I’d post a few sites and that maybe readers might post their favourites as well!

So here goes - but remember that the best deals may already be gone and that you must read the terms and conditions on these sites very carefully.

That said, you can still grab a bargain if you keep looking!
First port of call is to plump for a straight flight to anywhere sunny and the budget airlines are where you start.

Try:-

• Easyjet - From Belfast International - to loads of destinations across Europe.
• Ryanair - From City of Derry - to London Stansted, Glasgow and from there to loads of places across Europe.
• Jet2 - From Belfast International to Barcelona, Pisa, Toulouse etc
• Aer Berlin - From Belfast International to mostly German destinations plus Stansted.
• British Airways - Used to be a contender but pretty useless now.
• BMIbaby - Fine little airline but only good fro UK hopes to Manchester, Heathrow, Cardiff, Birmingham
• Zoom - if you fancy a wee Belfast to Canada jaunt!

And then you’ll need a hotel!

You have loads of choices here. You can use the airlines recommended links from their sites and they can be good or… you could spend some time checking out the hotels on the web, drop their booking desk a wee email and hang around to see what comes back. On a recent fishing like this trip like this I saved myself £200 on the accommodation alone. So I’d suggest typing this into Google: Hotels + YOUR destination (eg Rome) and see what happens! Nothing ventured - nothing gained eh!

You should always do a wee comparison with an established site to see how you are doing. Try this one as a tester.

Hotel Connect

Caution!!!!!!

That is how you might start but remember that you have to be careful with all these things - the stupidest things tend to bite. So read the documentation really well. I remember a bloke standing at an Easyjet gate arguing that he really didn’t need a passport to travel to Spain. You do and he didn’t! An expensive mistake to make. Read TWICE - click ONCE is a good motto to have.

Hapy surfing and I hope you find a bargain.

Any more tips out there Northern Ireland?

Paris Travel. Monet: Inspiration

Claude Monet's HouseClaude Monet is said to have seen the village of Giverny while passing by on a train. He immediately fell in love with the place and made it his home from 1883 until his death in 1926. The house and the surrounding gardens were the inspiration for some of his most famous works; a walk through the grounds will transport any visitor familiar with the great Impressionist’s works from canvas to reality. The house and meticulously maintained grounds are today overseen by the Claude Monet Foundation.

The grounds, especially in the spring and summer when everything is in bloom, are truly incredible. The water garden and Japanese bridge both make for some wonderful reflective photography; don’t forget to take your camera. A fun game we played was to try to take photos of the grounds that were composed the same as some of Monet’s prints. Clos Normand, the Monet family house on the property, is also worth a stroll, as the hallways and stairways are filled with prints. The collection also gives visitors insight into Monet’s interest in Japanese prints.

The village of Vernon is the closest access point to Giverny by train. Either walk (very pleasant during nice weather) the 5 kilometers or take a bus to the house and gardens. There are bus tours that run from Paris to Giverny as a half day trip (include Versailles for a full day). Giverny’s proximity to central Paris (about 80 kilometers up the Seine) is both a blessing and a curse, as the grounds can often be overrun with school groups and tourists. Try for the middle of the week to avoid some of the hordes. Consider going on a rainy day with an umbrella if you really want some tranquility.