Category: Travel

Stories about travel (either in the US or around the world)

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Prague – June 2014

I just got back from a trip to Prague this past weekend.  It is a long story about why I went involving a piece of brand new equipment, power outages, and a fried motherboard.  Anyway, here’s a link to the set on Flickr of the pictures I took (most of clouds) and below is a selection:

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Mezhyhirya

Also while I was in Ukraine, I took some time to go visit Mezhyhirya.  It was the former home of the former President of the Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.  I didn’t get to go in the house (but could have had I been willing to pay about $20).  But this place was posh.  Post to the poshest.  I’m serious…this place is the modern equivalent of Stourhead.   Here’s some pictures, but you can find the rest in the flickr set.

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[Update 2014-05-24 18:50:34] Here’s a der spiegel article that has 360 degree views inside some of the buildings.

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Maidan Nezalezhnosti

I just got back from a trip to Ukraine.  One of the places I went while I was there was Maidan Nezalezhnosti.  For those who may not know, around the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, this was the scene of protests against the government then in power.  I went in May and, while most of it has been turned into a memorial, there are still protesters there.  A few pictures are below…the rest can be found in the flickr set.

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Longest Flight?

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Today on Fox News, I saw this article about the longest plane rides you can take today.  Here’s the summary:

* United Airlines Flight 117/118 – Newark to Hong Kong (16 hours, 8,078 miles)
* Qantas Flight 7/8 – Sydney to Dallas (16 hours, 8,575 miles)
* Cathay Pacific Multiple Routes – Newark/New York to Hong Kong (16 hours, 5 minutes, 8,078 miles)
* South African Airways Flight 203/204 – Johannesburg to New York (16 hours, 15 minutes, 7,954 Miles)
* Qatar Airways Flight 77/78 – Doha to Houston (16 hours, 20 minutes, 8,016 miles)

That got me wondering about the longest flight I ever took.  Turns out it was  in 2007 when I flew from JFK to BKK on Thai Airways Flight 973.  According to Wikipedia, that flight was 8,676 miles and scheduled for 17 hours.  I remember it…we flew north out of JFK, almost over the Noth Pole, south over China (and some interesting deserts) then on to BKK.

I think the next runner-up was when we flew from Cairo to JFK on TWA in 1996 (I think).  That was something like 14 hours/

How about you?  What’s the longest flight you’ve ever been on?

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Sky

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A few days ago, the kids and I went out for a walk.  This is a picture that I took made up of an auto panorama made by google when my shots were uploaded.