Eilat nestled into the valley it shares with Jordan Eilat is a city of hotels and flashing lights, beaches and cultivated palm trees. Though gambling is outlawed, boats rest in the Red Sea, advertising an “off the shore” roll of the dice. The city rests in a valley surrounded by desert mountains on two sides.
(ExplorersWeb.com) In previous years, ExplorersWeb have published one big Year in Review on January 1st. This year we are cutting it up in sections, to be posted every day until the awards, with the compiled report to go up early 2010. Part 1 : – ExplorersWeb Year 2009 in Review: Farewell to friends.
Uneventful – that’s how the flight from San Juan to Houston could be caracterized as. Which is not necessarily a bad thing when you’re referring to a plane right? Still haven’t gotten out my camera.
Winter has finally arrived. Snow, temps around -15C and a beautiful sunny day. Unfotunately meteo service forecasts temperatures up to +9C and rain for Christmas week , so today was ideal chance to make some winter pics – and the destination was Bohinj lake.
Fall of Berlin Wall 20th anniversary includes Heidelberg packaging exhibition…we’re talkintravel.
東京都庁舎, Tōkyō Tochōsha , 1991 2-8-1, Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 163-8001 Architect: Kenzo Tange Visitor Centre Observation deck via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Metropolitan_Government_Building via: http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH
In going back to work – both the full-time job and the writing work — after our trip I haven’t put any time into my own blog about our trip. (and a lot of it was covered in short bursts on Twitter, anyway.) But I do want to share some highlights in photos. I’m afraid my photo workshop instructor in Paris won’t be best pleased, as I didn’t take a lot of time to work on each shot.
A few years ago, I had a chance to observe a small joint Czech-Slovenian military exercice and had a chance to come up-close-and-personal with their main cargo helicopter Mil Mi-171Sh. There were also some separate tank exercises and attack helicopter exercises going on and at one time, the mighty Hind helicopter pilots positioned themselves behind a T-72
Before I can talk about the great parts of the trip, like spending the night with Brian’s family in Slovakia, watching the Christmas tree lighting in Cesky Krumlov, or finding the best beer ever in Prague, I have to get my whining over with about our flight back. So this past summer I spend hours researching airfare, trying to pinpoint the flights and planes that would give us the best combination of seats and connections. We finally chose a routing that put us on Air France coming home — mainly because of the 2-4-2 configuration that would allow us to sit together in a two-seat row, and the in-seat TVs that could help us forget for an hour and a half at a time about the hell that is flying coach for nine hours.
We’re still in Prague. We get a brief recap of the season (and I’m totally calling BS at this point, for the first time in Race History – more on that later), and we are off to Vegas, Baby! Briefly…if you’ll remember from the last episode, there was a 2 hour time difference between the 1st team to leave the pit stop (Megan & Cheyne) and the last team (Brian & Ericka). They are still in first and last place, respectively, but there is now a 4 hour time difference. Granted, Brian & Ericka had that speedbump, but that couldn’t have taken but an extra half hour. I think it shows what great racers Megan & Cheyne really are. Of course, the time doesn’t mean crap, because I’m sure all three teams will be on the same flight to Vegas, but…I’m just saying. It looks like the teams were all super smart this time. They’ve lightened their load and are carrying the smallest amount of things that they can. The big backs are gone, and it is ON. Roadblock – who’s ready to climb down the mountain? I’ll do it. One team member must do a face-first rappel 62 stories. Easy-peasy