The Gulf of Finland on Ice July 29, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cars, Destination, Estonia, Finland, Flight Schedule, Sightseeing, Trails , 6commentsPerhaps they’re penguins, I thought. But they were too far away for me to be certain, and the blinding light could have been playing tricks on the two of us. It doesn’t help your orientation one bit when the land is indistinguishable from the sky, nor indeed when you’re not quite sure whether you’ve left the land yet. Very soon we would not be able to see the line of tall evergreens that parted beach from cloud. (more…)
My Perugia Travel Diary continue… June 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Aquarium, Art Gallery, Asia, China, Coliseum, Denmark, Destination, Dolphinarium, Egypt, England, Europe, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Gymnasium, Iceland, Istanbul, Italy, Library, Memorial, Morocco, Museum, Norway, Oceanarium, Paris, Planetarium, Poland, Restaurant, Round The World, The Nile , add a commentMass cremation pits containing ashes and charred bones indicate that he feared a plague, but Carthaginian skeletons with all their teeth have been disinterred as well as the tombs, yielding cataphracts as well as bones, of thirty Carthaginian nobles.
Spello, the most appealing of the Umbrian hill towns, is still enclosed by Roman walls with five gates, the main one bearing the legend “Splendidissima Colonic Julia Hispellum” over the arch. According to Spellan tradition, a phallus carved in the inner wall of the Porta Urbica does not celebrate Orlando’s (Roland’s) amatory prowess but the range and perfect arc of his actus mingendi. Spello is noted for its restaurants and truffled cooking, its steep, winding, and narrow streets—all one-way only—its Roman towers and amphitheater. A Vocabolaro del Dialetto Spellano, compiled by NicolettaUgoccioni and published here last year, contains, at a thumb-through guess, 20,000 words in current usage—by a population of only 6,800. (more…)
The Winter Palace: A masterpiece by Italian and French architects on Neva May 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Beach Resorts, Credit Card, Finland, Health Insurance, Library, Memorial, Moscow, Museum, Russia, Travellers Cheque , 3commentsIt is impossible to talk of the Winter Palace without first conjuring up a picture of the city of St Petersburg, now Leningrad, and of the Neva River. I know of nothing in the world more beautiful than that great expanse of limpid and tremulous water, purified by the filter of the Ladoga Lake, and constantly agitated by tiny iridescent waves, that flow impetuously between the double dam of its magnificent embankments built in the rose granite of Finland. And the powerful stream that moves between the golden needle of the Petropavlovsk Fortress and the long facade of the Winter Palace is but a very small part indeed of the great river. (more…)
The Royal Palace STOCKHOLM: One of the finest examples of French taste outside France Part 1 April 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Beach Resorts, Denmark, Europe, Finland, Russia, Sweden , add a commentThe Swedes must have felt they were well on the way to becoming a great Continental power at the end of the seventeenth century. Already, during the Thirty Years’ War, Sweden’s small but well-trained armies had distinguished themselves in central Europe under the leadership of their king, the dynamic Gustavus Adolfus. A quarter of a century later, Gustavus X had beaten the Danes by yet another stroke of brilliant generalship. This defeat did not finally settle the long drawn-out quarrel between the two countries, but it forced Denmark to give up the fertile southern part of the Swedish peninsula. (more…)
