Writing this blog on the return flight from Spain to the US, my challenge in writing is to choose which aspects of the trip to highlight. There are more stories than I have the time or space to relate at length. Thus, my brief listing . . .
Mount Fuji was an impressive site as our ship approached the Shimizu harbor. Mount Fuji is Japan's highest mountain, an active volcano in a perfect conical form.
After spending six weeks in Mumbai, India, we were lucky to spend two nights in Instanbul, complements of Turkish Airlines because we had traveled business class. We spent one full day at the fabulous Topkapi Palace.
Until today’s port visit, Cadiz was just a name I had encountered sometime in the past. I didn’t know anything at all about it. Now at the end of the day, I feel enriched by learning about this city, as well as having visited an historic village named Vejer de la Frontera.
Flying from Beijing to Shanghai, Susan and I boarded the Viking cruise ship Yi-Dun. We had the pleasure of a Shanghai city tour in which we viewed an ancient garden containing ornate buildings from the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The skyline of Shanghai is impressive, containing the world's third tallest building, the Shanghai Tower with 128 floors, at 2073 feet high. (The world's tallest building is Dubai's Burj Khalifa at 2722 feet high. The second highest is the Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at 2227 feet.)--source Wikipedia
Once again as I arrive in Europe, I’m overwhelmed with the long rich awareness of history and the rich culture. This is the first time I’ve visited Portugal. Susan and I are traveling with our friends and regular travel companions, Bill and Linn, from Georgia...
The Vietnam War, as it is known to Americans, is known in Vietnam as the American War. Vietnam has suffered through wars with the French and the Chinese. But Vietnam's victory over the US military in 1973 demonstrated the limits of US military hardware against a people defending their home territory. The US faced this lesson again in Afghanistan. The United States of America's military budget is larger than the combined military budgets of the next nine countries. We cannot trust that we will remain safe in the world solely because of our tremendous military expenditures.
Stockholm is one of my favorite cities in the world. It is very beautiful, the historic capital of Sweden. I've visited Stockholm over a dozen times, enough to learn a respectable fluency in the Swedish language (which is much easier than German). It's also home to dear old friends. Seeing them was the goal of this visit. I share insights comparing the Swedish and American healthcare and political systems.