Highmoon's Ponderings

From CSMonitor.com:

Another new country for Europe
Montenegro voted to break from Serbia, with 55.4 percent in favor

The joyful fireworks and street parties that exploded in the streets of Podgorica on Sunday night, as Montenegrins celebrated a vote in favor of independence, found few echoes Monday in other European capitals.

Read the full article here.

 

One thing is for certain, this World Cup will be the last one for the Serbia & Montenegro team. We’ll see how they perform once the games begin on June 9.

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Posted by Daniel M. Perez to Destination: Earth Travel Blog at 5/23/2006 12:41:00 PM

In the past week Airbus took on its maiden flight their new A380 jet, the world’s biggest passenger jet ever made. The new Airbus A380 has two internal decks for passengers, and can carry up to 555 people in separate classes or up to 800 in an all-economy configuration. Airbus has stated that 159 orders for the new jet have been received, and Singapore Airlines will be the first to take the jet on a commercial flight on its Sydney-Singapore-London route.

This new plane is huge, and Heathrow Airport has already rigged one of their gates to handle the A380′s double deck configuration. Perhaps this will mean lower air fares? One can hope! Check out some pics of the Airbus flying over England taken by regular folk on the steets.

And on another rather strange concept from Airbus, who seems to be bent on pushing the envelope as far as passenger jets go, we get the standing-room only airplane. It seems Airbus has been pitching this idea to the Asian carriers first, though none seems to have gone for it (yet). The idea is that instead of seats, you get these recliner platforms to which you are strapped. I can somewhat see the advantage, but I’m far from convinced. What I truly wonder is, will you still be able to recline those 3/4 inch, and will is still make no difference? More at the New York Times.

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Posted by Daniel M. Perez to Destination: Earth Travel Blog at 5/21/2006 01:38:00 PM

Today was an anomaly: by 1:00 PM my wife and I were done with all the chores we had to do today and had the rest of the afternoon free of any other engagement. The day was beautiful, the temperature in the high 80′s and a killer breeze was flowing in from the east, so we got in the car (we got my father-in-law’s Lexus 330 for the weekend, since he’s out of town) and started driving, determined to go somewhere, anywhere.

We took Biscayne Blvd. (US 1) to Downtown Miami, and kept going south until we reached Coconut Grove. We hadn’t been to the Grove in almost a year, and as we looked around at all the changes that have taken pladce, we suddenly remembered there was one place right in the Grove that we had been wdanting to visit, The Barnacle Historic State Park. For the last 10 years that we had been visiting the Grove we had seen the sign to the Barnacle, but never really knew what it was cause it was always closed at the times we hung out at the Grove.

The Barnacle is a 115-year old house in the heart of Old Miami, right in front of Biscayne Bay, the oldest house in Miami-Dade still standing on its original site. It was built by Commodore Ralph Munroe, a New Yorker who moved down to the Miami he had fallen in love with in 1877 for the sake of the woman he loved. His wife had contracted tuberculosis and though the hotter climate helped her somewhat, she died in 1881. Monroe returned the year after and opened a hotel on Biscayne Bay, and in 1886 he purchased 40 acres of bayfront property for $400. In 1891 his house was completed, a one-story, solid wood, octagonal structure which he called the Barnacle. In 1908 the whole structure was raised and a new first floor was inserted underneath in order to accommodate the Commodore’s new family with his second wife, Miss Jessie Wirth.

The house has since stood on the same spot, seeing Miami grow, withstanding hurricane after hurricane, including the two most disastrous storms to hit Miami, the 1926 hurricane and Andrew in 1992.

Munroe displayed an incredible foresight more than 100 years ago as well. The Barnacle stood in the middle of the original Miami Hammock, and Munroe only cut a path wide enough for one vehicle in order to preserve the most of the natural habitat as possible. Today, with only 5 acres of the property’s original 40 remaining a part of the park, the Barnacle remains one of the few (if not the only) places where the original hammock remains.

The house is incredibly beautiful, too. It is an airy structure with large windows that let in a great amount of light and a wonderful breeze. The first floor is the public area of the house: the living room, the dining room, kitchen and study.

Read more…

From (my own) Destination: Earth Travel Blog: “No More Sieges ForYou”

London’s Heathrow Airport recently released a new set of “enhancements to security procedures.” Among these are common sense measures such as advising travelers to check in as much luggage as possible, and going to security as soon as possible after checking in. They also list things that can speed up the security check process, such as removing any sharp objects, removing laptop computers from their cases and removing any overcoats, among others.

To help travelers even more, they include packing tips, listing items that should not be in your hand baggage lest they be removed if discovered. The list includes obvious candidates like scissors (except where both blades are round-ended or less than three centimetres), razor blades (except those set in a plastic moulding), and knives with blades of any length, but then they go to list other less obvious items, such as household cutlery (including large spoons/tablespoons, though small teaspoons are ok), walking/hiking sticks (how big is your handbag?) and, my personal favorite: Catapults.

 

Yes, folks, that’s correct, you cannot take your catapults in your handbags at Heathrow. If you want to lay siege to a city, you must check your catapults in your hold baggage. Weirdly enough, Heathrow does not make any mention about packing ballistae or trebuchets in your hand baggage, so you may still have a chance to pull off that siege you were planning.

Now, of course I’m being facetious, as I know that in American English what they mean is a slingshot, but just the thought, the mental image, of someone trying to put a catapult into their handbag, and often enough so that Heathrow Airport would have to specify it by name in their security enhancement, makes me laugh.

You can see the new security enhancements at Heathrow Airport here.

I was just having lunch when there was a knock on the door. It was UPS delivering two envelopes from Rail Europe. Our train tickets for the Benelux have arrived; any five days of unlimited train travel within one month anywhere within Belgium and the Netherlands. Our trip just got one step closer to reality.

It is a commom symptom once one returns from a trip, and for me it is greatly felt after European travel: I don’t want to rejoin reality. The thing I most enjoy about traveling is that utter disconnection from everything that is your regular life: groceries, TV, cooking, bills, emails, work. As I sit at the office wondering exactly how slow can a minute be, I avoid work by checking my emails and catching up on last week’s news for my other work, Highmoon Media. Frankly, I almost feel like ditching everything. Almost. I won’t, of course, and I’m sure by Monday I’ll be back to normal, but then again there is a certain sadness because by Monday I’ll be back to normal. All I want to do now is curl up on my couch and finish my journal from the trip before the memories fade even a little. Maybe on Sunday I’ll have a chance to do that and thus enact the transition back into regular life.