Tagged With "Royal Swedish Opera House"
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Re: England's Thames Path: Kew Palace
Fascinating stop! As I seem to recall, George was one of your ancestors? Do I remember this correctly?
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Re: England's Thames Path: Kew Palace
"...George was one of your ancestors?" No, though no doubt related somehow. But he is a favorite, seems kinder & more interesting than most of them.
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Re: England’s Thames Path: Kew Gardens
My wife Diane and I spent almost an entire day at Kew Gardens. So much natural beauty to see. We arrived from central London at the Kew Station in mid-morning and didn't leave until almost dusk. At one time our son had a possibility of being transferred to London and I recommended getting a place in the Kew Garden area for the beauty and quiet. One of my photos from Kew.
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Re: Minneapolis in the winter
You would not be disappointed in a visit to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. They have free admission to a giant collection over all periods and styles. The Mill City Museum displays the flour milling history of the city. The American Swedish Museum is really neat - all about the unique Swedish heritage of that area. Ja, sure, you betcha. have fun
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Re: Nature in England: Snettisham Bird Reserve
Love seeing birds in large flocks, like you experienced here! Wonderful experience!
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Re: Where in the World is TravelGumbo (#85)
This is a difficult one, but the recent clues may help. Famous cultural centres at one end of a country with palm trees in the past few years are few. I can think of Sydney Opera House and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Maybe this building is in Southern Spain, although I don't know where.
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Re: How a super-ship manages 12-hour turnaround
Sometimes when I'm in Vancouver I head to Canada Place to watch the cruise ships coming and going. You actually get to see the belly of the ship being loaded. The dozens of palates of food that go on is amazing. Would you have thought a cruise ship would consume 3 massive containers of potatoes in a week? 2 of onions? Might even have been more, that's all I saw. It is truly a model of efficiency.
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Re: Left Hand Drive Vs Right Hand Drive Countries
The Swedish experience is fascinating. Here's a link to more details. What makes it especially fascinating is that Sweden had always had cars with the driver and steering on the left, initially American imports, but had driven on the left. I would have expected a surge in minor accidents at the time of the change, but instead, the article says, the accident rate dropped sharply because drivers were now better placed to deal with oncoming traffic!
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Re: Stockholm's "blue hall", where the Nobel awards reception dinner is held each year
Why blue? It looks more Andalusian than Swedish to my eye.
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Re: Stockholm's "blue hall", where the Nobel awards reception dinner is held each year
Garry's got it right. It was initially to be painted blue (like the Swedish flag), but the architect so loved the look of the space he left it as it was when made. Still, the name stuck. Sort of like Tunnel Mountain in Banff, which was to have a railway tunnel blasted through, although the rail was diverted and no tunnel ever made.
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Re: Midland Provincial Park, Alberta
My Grand Father worked in UK Coalmines around the 1900s . Stories he could tell were both amazing and scarey. Miners were exempt from War Service during WW1 as they supplied an "Essential Service". Women were employed at the Mines but never went below ground. Mules were used below ground - pulling bogeys - and never came back to the surface during their lives.
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
I've often advised travelers with jam-packed itineraries to step back and leave themselves time to take a walk in a park or sit there a while, experiencing what the locals see and do. That is absolutely excellent advice. I hope that most people were wise enough to take your advice. Many of my best trip memories are made of such stuff. Thank you so much, PHeymont, for this walk in the park. It is just what my jangled nerves needed today.
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
I suspect a walk in the park is a habit acquired over time and familiarity with a place. I have a feeling, too, that the urge to go at top speed is the initial and overriding one. Or is it years and not travel experience that slows us down enough for such places to finally come into focus? Looking back over the decades I think maybe it's the latter.
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
I do think people's perspectives and priorities change with time. For example, I care little about a bar or nightlife scene in most of my destinations nowadays; that mattered more to me when I was much younger. I have always loved walking in parks because of the beautiful gardens, etc. But I think i'm much more into people watching in these places than I used to be. One of my favorite places to visit is the provincial park a short block from my home. It's grand to go for a walk in it, see...
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
Maybe travel advice of the very concrete sort then, hotels, trains, etc. is the most satisfying for all concerned. A suggestion to slow down just may not compute, something for each of us to discover on our own. So PHeymont may be preaching to the choir...may he continue.
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
Good advice is good advice. People can accept it or ignore it. I'm all for freedom of choice. But sometimes an alternative needs to be presented in a clear way, as PHeymont has nicely done in this piece.
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
I don't disagree. Just pointing out the nature of human beings and, like world peace, we can wish for it while not actually expecting everyone to join in. But lessons are learned from war too and how would we feel about every tourist in town flocking to OUR park.
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
I've mentioned in other pages that I love wide open spaces - like the State Delaware Park - but the designer of New York Central Park rung a Bell with me. Frederick Olmsted came to Liverpool to check out the "Peoples Garden" and he wrote in 1850 : "Five minutes of admiration, and a few more spent studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty, and I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with...
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
It is clear that the "dumb" animals always seem to know the best places to hang out. We can never have enough parks. Nice to read that Frederick Olmsted also knew a good park when he saw one. Thanks for that info GarryRF
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
Garry's note about Olmsted's travels (and he was quite a traveler) set me off on a quick look to find the park he was referring to (which I didn't; apparently "people's garden" was a description rather than a name?) and found that Liverpool has more parks and especially top-class parks than any British city besides London. The article also mentioned that for reasons of health—and keeping social unrest down—the city commissioners set out on a park-building spree starting about 1833. Many...
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
Another Park from the 1850s. People would escape Liverpool for the day and travel north to Hesketh Park. 20 minutes on the train. This is taken in Mid-Winter.
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Re: Sometimes a Trip is just a Walk in the Park
Originally Posted by Grouchy Gumbo: The last pic is of my cousin Priscilla, who lives in Prospect Park. I see that you gave her a little gnosh. Not that she needs it. She seems to be putting on a little extra "winter coat" this year. She has a fine home. I would really like to visit the park sometime. Grouchy, I'm curious how a squirrel manages long distance travel to visit relatives. Maybe you can enlighten us mere mortals.
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Re: Gumbo's Pic of the Day, Aug. 10, 2014: How DO they DO that?
I remember seeing those two buskers during our time in Verona in August, 2012. They did present a very creative look in a land of creative street entertainers. Verona was a fantastic place for us to kick back and do not too much. Piazza Bra in the evening was like watching the Veronese living room in action. Many nights we would take our gelato to the steps across and to the left of the restaurant section and just watch the world pass by. This was during the Opera season, which brought many...
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Re: Gumbo's Pic of the Day, Apr. 2, 2014: Looking Across Time
Bercy is the one, and the one I had the hardest time recalling. But! SMH, as they say these days, I realized that it is actually No. 7! I left out the Gare d'Austerlitz. The 6 came from a reference online, which I since realized was old enough perhaps not to include Bercy, which was a freight station until 1977, when it was reconfigured to handle overnight sleepers, especially those on which you can take your car with you. The two no-longer operating stations are Orsay (of course) and...
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New gonzo cruise ship even has sky-diving!
In the race to think up more features to add to cruise ships, Royal Caribbean is looking up...with a top-deck skydiving simulator on its newest ship, Quantum of the Seas, which has just started operating out of the New York area. Would you believe...
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Gumbo's Pic of the Day, December 13, 2014: Gödöllő
The Royal Palace of Gödöllő sits on the outskirts of Budapest and it was there I was taken one day by streetcar from the center of the city by dear friend, Zoli. A serious photographer with a wonderful eye, he and I walked all...
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Going to Jukkasjärvi? There's a VERY cool new hotel there.
In fact, what's just opened in this Swedish town is the 25th annual seasonal ice-hotel, crafted fro hundreds of tons of ice and snow, to accommodate 16 suites. The designs, different for each room, come from 42 artists from around the world. For...
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Books That Send You Packing...
The thread on films here started me thinking because I'm more likely to think about going someplace because of a book than a film. I've seen elsewhere about people traveling inspired by mystery novels with really local characters like Inspector...
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Verona: More than Romeo & Juliet
Verona from the hills, looking toward St. Anastasia and the Ponte Pietra My visit to Verona last summer was almost an accident—but a lucky one. It wasn’t on the original plan for our three weeks in Northern Italy, but online...
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How a super-ship manages 12-hour turnaround
Today's (Mar 22) NY Times has a fascinating article on the "backstage" operation involved in getting 6000 passengers off a ship, washing 93,000 pounds of linens, loading up all the food and water, and getting the next 6000 passengers out to...
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Cruise lines drop Puerta Vallarta over violence
Recent street fights between armed drug gangs and Mexican police and troops in Puerta Vallarta have cancelled several cruise's port calls, and curtailed others. Royal Caribbean's Jewel of the Seas, Disney's Wonder and Celebrity's Infinity have...
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Booking.com's new venture: services for hotels
Booking.com's new plan: work both sides of the front desk at hotels. Photo: Wikimedia / opera cadet Booking.com, possibly the biggest busiest on-line hotel booking site, is trying out a venture on the other side: Their...
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Visiting Sicily: An introductory overview
Travel guru Rick Steves likes to say (and I'm paraphrasing) that Italy either gets better or worse as you head south from Rome, depending on what you like. If you like a quieter people, trains running almost on time, etc. head...
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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Where Gumbo was #233
Jonathan L reveals a museum whose architecture and its collections both qualify as modern art.
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Nov. 3, 2017: Auditorio Adan Martin, Tenerife
Ian Cook shares some beautiful images and the history of the beautiful modern opera house in Santa Cruz.
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IKEA in India: No Swedish Meatballs!
IKEA is opening soon in India, but cultural considerations mean it won't be serving its famous beef and pork Swedish meatballs.
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Sept. 22, 2017: Flowers at the Petit Palais, Paris
After viewing an exhibition at the Beaux Arts era Petit Palais, PHeymont enjoyed a visit to its flower beds as well.
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Top 10 Things to Do in Birmingham
Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK with a population of approximately 1,000,075 at the latest count. With a distinguished history based on its manufacturing heritage this proud city is now a magnet for tourists from all over the world and whether it is shopping you love, attractions or festivals and events, Birmingham and its surrounding area has everything you can think of. Murder Mystery Events If you are thinking of taking a weekend break in Birmingham why not try a Murder...
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Ikea school for Italy quake town (or is it Skøöl?)
Ikea and its employees put up the funds for a new earthquake-proofed school in an Abruzzo town devastated by earthquakes in the past two years.
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Why Zurich Is The Place To Be In Summer
Roger T makes an excellent case why Zurich (especially during its short but beautiful summer) should be on your travel list!
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July 29, 2017: Late night fruit, Catania
Late in the evening, PHeymont and his wife found a vendor selling juices and smoothies, and providing the only splash of color.
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Eastern Europe Rail Odyssey: Budapest to Kiev
Do you love unusual train journeys as much as Wilbur does? Check out this fascinating adventure through eastern Europe.
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Swedish Royal Guards can't get birds out of their hair
Common terns have taken to 'bombing' Sweden's Royal Guards, but a plan to kill them has stirred up controversy
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Red Squirrels
Ian Cook shares some great photos and a detailed natural history of the charming Red squirrel, whose population is declining.
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July in France: More than Bastille Day
France has a wealth of summer events for almost every taste.