Saudi Arabia is planning to construct a mirrored building that will be 656 feet wide, 1,640 feet tall, and 105 miles long. It’s called The Line. It will house 9 million people in a eco-friendly paradise. It’s part of a $500 billion Saudi building project called NEOM being plaanned in the country’s Tabuk Province. It’s become a controversial initiative from the start because around 20,000 people will be forced to relocate by its construction – along with the unknown environmental impact of such a structure.
Tens of thousands of people arrive at the coastal city of Durban South Africa for the annual Durban July – Africa’s biggest horse-racing and fashion event. Much like the pomp surrounding the Kentucky Derby, Durban also turns into an impromptu fashion show.
I think we forget the amazing collections of historical artifacts we have on the internet. The limitations of Covid has left me doing a lot of traveling and bucket list visits to famous places via Youtube and online streamers.
I started looking up filming locations for a favorite movie of mine – The Grand Budapest Hotel. Pre-soviet eastern block countries had amazing architecture. In my searching, it turns out Wes Anderson tried to capture the feel for the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel from old Photochrom prints.
The Photochrom Print Collection is available for free from the Library of Congress and has thousands of early prints of European and North American images from the 1890’s to 1910’s.
It makes me wonder what amazing artistic creations people can make using just the free resources we have at our fingertips today – plus some imagination.
Rome is a lovely town for visiting – but it’s always interesting to see how over-tourism has changed things over the years. I remember going to Rome and having pretty much free reign to walk around the whole Colosseum. It looks like now you need to reserve your slot far in advanced through a new CoopCulture website that lets you buy tickets in advance. In fact, it’s the ONLY way to get tickets for the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Colosseum, and several other key cultural sites. There is no longer on-site ticket sales.
It also appears that the much vaunted Scavi tours under St Peter’s also have online information now as well, but it appears they still prefer a phone call or fax.
The owner stipulates that interested parties must spend a night on the island before he’ll consider an offer. There’s also the fact it can get pretty dicey in New England winter storms from October to May when it’s ‘Not fit for man nor beast’ with storms, ice, and potential flooding. A friend only managed to stay there 3 days before coming back in the winter. There is also no running water, showers, nor heat. Bathroom facilities are an outhouse. Still, it’s a rare find because the structure could never be built with today’s new zoning laws.
I’ve been to Japan twice and loved each time I went. With the age of the internet, live streamers, and travel streamers – you can visit anywhere in the world at any time without leaving the comfort of your own home.
Over my 20 years of international travel, one thing I’ve learned is that you can never visit the same place twice. Time marches on in every country, every city, and even every life. Places you visited one year are gone and replaced the next. Cultural trends you loved in one place have been replaced with the latest new thing. Nothing stays the same.
That’s why I love checking up on the places I liked visiting using Twitch, Youtube, and other streams. Thankfully, we’re moving beyond the era of screaming, idiotic streamers into something more refined. I prefer streams from people that live in the countries and travel like locals and not tourists and Instagram influencers. The latter often rarely have any real curiosity or respect for a culture. They do culturally rude/insensitive things, forcing their way through a place with money and brashness. They pressure the goodness of kind locals just to get the shot they want and then go on to culturally pillage some other location for likes. They rarely leave a place or people the encounter better – or actually learn anything about the cultures that produced what they’re traveling through.
Here’s a few of those better channels. Do you have some?
Fascinating project that scans Wikipedia and reports the most famous person from just about any city and town on a big global map. Even my own tiny home town of about 3000 people had an entry. While many places have people famous for politics, sports, music, Nobel prize winners, and so forth, you might also discover that the most notable person from your town might have been a pretty terrible person – name recognition is fickle.
I think I have a new bucket list location. The Exumas (travel infohere) are a district of the Bahamas, consisting of over 365 islands, also called cays. Renown for sapphire-blue waters, deserted cays, swimming pigs on Big Major Cay, and ultra-excusive resorts (like David Copperfield’s Musha Cay that rents for $50,000/night). It’s a real paradise on earth that draws people the world over.
As of August 1, 2022, Scottish Pladda Island is for sale via Knight Frank. Besides the 27 acres of island, it also houses a working lighthouse, walled garden, lightkeepers house, various outbuildings, stone landing jetty, and even a helipad – for any offers in excess of £350,000 (approx. $426,000 USD).
There are some caveats. The lighthouse is still owned and operated by the Scottish Northern Lighthouse Board and they have right of servitude and access to the lighthouse and solar array for inspection, maintenance, repair, and renewal. They maintain right of access to tie up boats at the jetty and land helicopters. There is no power or water supply to the island. A well exists but the pump and storage tank must be replaced. None of the houses have been lived in for some time and renovations will be required.
However, for the cost of a house in a major city, you might just own your own Scottish island.
Latin based languages share a massive amount of common and overlapping words. RobWords offers these 3 tricks for English speakers to scuttle through the French language. I find these kinds of tips super helpful for a casual traveler. As always, these are not hard and fast and some require some lateral thinking to make the connections – but it’s good enough to really improve your muddling through the French language.
French words that start with an ‘É’ can often be replaced with an ‘S’. Examples: épice -> spice étranger -> stranger épouse -> spouse éponge -> sponge
Vowels with a caret ‘âêîôû’ – remove the hat and add a ‘s’ Forêt -> Forest Tempête -> Tempest(e) Arrête -> arrest(e) Hôtesse -> Hostess(e) Hôtel -> Hostel Hâte -> Haste Pâte -> Paste Hôpital -> Hospital Maître -> Maistre Côte -> Co(a)st (the side/coast)
Replace the ‘GU’ that starts some words with ‘W’ Guerre -> Wuerre -> War Guillaume -> Willaume (William)
Put them together and:
L’écureuil étudie guillaume le guerrier à l’école dans la forêt.
We translate as:
L’ scureuil studie willaume le werrier à l’scole dans la forest.
becomes:
The squirrel studies william the warrior at school in the forest.
