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Author: Chris

Climate Change and Travel

Climate Change and Travel

We planned to travel to Western Australia a few years ago, but the itinerary for our tour was drastically changed due to devastating wildfires in the country. We ultimately cancelled the trip. Just recently, we took a Canadian Maritimes tour that would take us into Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. A few weeks before our trip, we weren’t sure it would even happen. There were wildfires in Nova Scotia resulting in evacuations, including ones near Halifax. But…

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Zion National Park

Zion National Park

I want to start this post with a bit of an overview of the three national parks we visited on our America’s Canyonland tour. Each of these parks are part of the “Grand Staircase,” an area beginning at the Grand Canyon, going on to Zion and ending at Bryce. Our itinerary was a bit out of order as we ended our trip in Zion. The Grand Staircase is a sequence of sedimentary rocks that ascend from the Grand Canyon to…

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Bryce Canyon National Park

Bryce Canyon National Park

We traveled next to Bryce Canyon National Park, another highlight of our trip. On our way, we made a quick photo stop to see Balanced Rock. It is near Lee’s Ferry in Marble Canyon. The National Park Service explains how it came to be: Thousands of years ago a huge rock boulder broke from the cliff above and tumbled to a stop here. The hard conglomerate boulder compressed the softer dirt directly beneath, making it resistant to erosion. The boulder…

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By Air, Land and River

By Air, Land and River

After leaving the Grand Canyon, we drove to the Glen Canyon and Lake Powell area, where we had a half hour flightseeing experience. We were on a small plane holding about 12 passengers, each of us with a window seat. The afternoon before, we had visited the Carl Hayden Visitor Center adjacent to the Glen Canyon Dam. The Visitors’ Center was named for Senator Carl Hayden who at the time was the longest serving member of Congress – in fact,…

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The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon

We left Scottsdale and began driving to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. On the way, we made a lunch stop in Sedona, Arizona. Sedona is famous for its red rocks. I found this explanation of how these beautiful formations came to be. Before the red rock was turned into rock, it was all soft mud and sand. Over a 320 million year period changes in nature helped transform the sand and mud into something more beautiful than we…

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Scottsdale, Tempe and Phoenix

Scottsdale, Tempe and Phoenix

We took Tauck’s America’s Canyonlands tour in October of 2022. On this tour we would visit the Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon, Lake Powell, and both Bryce and Zion National Parks. We arrived a day early for our tour and booked an independent, half-day tour that introduced us to the Scottsdale/Tempe/Phoenix area. We first visited Papago Park and the Sonoran Desert where we saw the iconic Saguaro Cactus. The Saguaro is a tree-like cactus that can grow up to 40 feet…

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Matthias Church and Fisherman’s Bastion

Matthias Church and Fisherman’s Bastion

We spent most of our time in Budapest on the Pest side but took a taxi to the Buda side to see Matthias Church and the Fisherman’s Bastion. Matthias Church, officially known as the Church of Our Lady or the Church of the Assumption of the Buda Castle, is a Roman Catholic church located in the Holy Trinity Square in front of the Fisherman’s Bastion. The church was originally built in 1255. It has been called Matthias Church (referring to…

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Andrássy  Avenue, Budapest

Andrássy  Avenue, Budapest

We walked down Andrássy Avenue, a boulevard dating back to 1872. It is lined with expensive stores and old mansions, many of which are now embassies. Andrássy Avenue is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The first two pictures below show statues that have graced these buildings for many years and now welcome shoppers. The first statue is outside Gucci’s and the second is outside a luxury watch shop. Next is the Hungarian State Opera House. It opened in 1884 and…

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Shoes on the Danube Promenade and the Hungarian Parliament

Shoes on the Danube Promenade and the Hungarian Parliament

It probably seems that the Shoes on the Danube Promenade and the Hungarian Parliament are two very dissimilar topics to include in the same post. I did so because the memorial is just south and across the street from the Parliament building. It would be easy to see them both on the same morning or afternoon. The Shoes on the Danube Promenade is a tribute to the 20,000 Jewish people who died here at the hands of the Arrow Cross,…

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Dohány Street Synagogue, Budapest

Dohány Street Synagogue, Budapest

The Dohány Street Synagogue, also known as the Great Synagogue, is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in world. It is actually a complex consisting of the Great Synagogue, the Jewish Museum, Heroes’ Temple, a graveyard, and the Raoul Wallenberg Emlékpark, also known the Holocaust Memorial Park. We visited all of these, but I will start by describing the Great Synagogue. After the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, synagogues became a center of Jewish religious life. A…

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