Raul
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Holy Week in Malta: A Wonderful Experience
More Details: Holy Week in Malta: A Wonderful ExperienceOn this Good Friday, I recall a unique and quite accidental experience during Holy Week 2006. We had traveled to Italy and were planning to experience Easter Mass at The Vatican. Because of my friends had a colleague from the U.S. who was traveling back to his home country of Malta for Easter, we asked…
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Monticchiello: Charm in the Middle of Tuscany
More Details: Monticchiello: Charm in the Middle of TuscanyA few years ago, in one of my trips to Italy, we spent a few days in Tuscany.  We opted to rent apartments in a small mountaintop town called Monticchiello, a charming place, sandwiched between Pienza and Montepulciano (lucky folks!!!). We truly lucked out: the town was quaint, quite small, and its location was central…
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Chattahoochee River Hikes: Island Ford
More Details: Chattahoochee River Hikes: Island FordAtlanta is well known for traffic, a massive airport, CNN, Coca-Cola, conventions, and Gone with the Wind. It seems almost cliche-ish when defined in these terms and I can certainly understand that these form or inform people’s image of the South’s “Gate City,” as it was known in the mid 19th century. What local residents…
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Photos of the Week: Ships Awaiting Canal Crossing – from the Air
More Details: Photos of the Week: Ships Awaiting Canal Crossing – from the AirThe Panama Canal, of which I have written about before, is a marvel of engineering. Not only the lock system but also the massive works required to create the channel and the man-made lake that serves as the holding pond for the ships in the middle of their passage. Ships await passage in either side…
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The “First Cousins” Capitals: Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm
More Details: The “First Cousins” Capitals: Copenhagen, Oslo and StockholmIt has been an interesting exercise to try to think of the Scandinavian countries and come up with a good and succinct outline of what makes them different from each other without requiring a degree in history, architecture, and other similar fields. So I decided to not be that ambitious and limit this to taking…
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Admiring History on the Rocks in Petra, Jordan
More Details: Admiring History on the Rocks in Petra, JordanI first went to Petra, Jordan back in 1998 on a day trip from Sharm-el-Sheikh at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. If you know the lay of the land, that may sound impossible. Well, not if you take a flight from Sharm-el-Sheikh to Aqaba, Jordan and then hop on a bus. …
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Travel Inspiring Reads – In the Empire of Genghis Khan
More Details: Travel Inspiring Reads – In the Empire of Genghis KhanStanley Stewart shares with us in his book about his travel through the lands of Genghis Khan. Even before he gets to Mongolia, you get to enjoy his anecdotes from traversing what is to me an obscure corner of our planet: Central Asia. And, I may add, a part of the world I am dying…
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Photo of the Week: Bats on a Wall in Louisville
More Details: Photo of the Week: Bats on a Wall in LouisvilleA few years back, I went to watch a friend do his first Ironman in Louisville, Kentucky. During the bike ride, when we had ample time to kill, we went to the place where the Louisville Slugger bats are made: Hillerich & Bradsby Company. It was neat to see how the bats are made and…
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Piedmont Park: An Oasis in the Middle of Atlanta
More Details: Piedmont Park: An Oasis in the Middle of AtlantaAtlanta is a city of greenery and a lot of that comes from its many parks. Many neighborhoods have a park and some, like mine, more than one. The parks are mostly local to each area though open to anyone as they tend to be city property. They range from just a wild natural area,…
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Visiting Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park in Zanzibar
More Details: Visiting Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park in ZanzibarMost people likely think of Zanzibar (Tanzania) for its beaches and resorts. Or perhaps also for its very unique history and architecture. Or maybe as the birthplace of Freddie Mercury. However, get off-the-beaten-path and you will discover Zanzibar has other interesting places to explore.  One such place for those who like things to do outdoors…
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Photo Ode to a Departing Winter
More Details: Photo Ode to a Departing WinterYes, it is spring already in the northern hemisphere. However, as the news just shared with us, there is at least one more cold spell before we are free-and-clear from winter (right around when this post goes out). Winter in the U.S. this year was pretty brutal. From Boston, to Chicago, to Atlanta, it seems…
