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Special Interest

Special Interest

Big birds

Chernobyl: Accidental Wildlife Sanctuary The accident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant resulted in complete abandonment of a huge territory in Belarus as well as land on the Ukrainian side, creating the largest ever experiment as to what nature does when people leave. 30 years later the area is the nearest that Europe has to a…

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We’ll leave the light on

When the Romans built things, they built them to last.  Just take a look at Rome itself, with the Parthenon and its companion buildings. But here is another rather spectacular example of the Romans building things to last. The Tower of Hercules is an ancient Roman lighthouse on a peninsula about 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi)…

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Harvest your own vegetables, golf

From the back of a pickup truck, I watched dust fly as we drove along a narrow road through one of Kauaʻi's last sugar cane fields and past a long-abandoned mill. It was the early 1980s, my first trip to the island and, after a few days in Honolulu, it was quite a change from…

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Mule love this

Yes, really - the village sounds like something from a 19th-century storybook, however, it seems to be reality. In fact, Clovelly has been named one of England’s most beautiful villages! The ancient fishing village is uniquely special due to its traditional architecture, donkeys and views over the Bristol Channel, which attract endless tourists. You can…

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Let’s get bent

Before ancient Egyptians built the Great Pyramid of Giza, with its impossibly straight sides, they worked on other variations of the structure. One such predecessor, which has rounded sides, is now welcoming visitors. Read more here courtesy of TravelAndLeisure.com Fly to Egypt in utter comfort with Etihad. Click above. You can't beat that view. Click above…

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Quito is neato!

With a rich pre-Colombian history, Ecuador's capital was founded on the ruins of an Incan city but offers everything a modern traveller might need. It remains the least-altered historic centre in Latin America and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Quito’s important sites include baroque gems like San Francisco and Santo Domingo monasteries, as…

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Robo cops

Do you find yourself going non-linear when it comes to those freaking crank / automated / scam calls that distract us to exhaustion? You're not alone.  Luckily, Google comes to the rescue again with not one, but two nifty services that you may want to look into. Read more here courtesy of USAToday.com Best Buy have all sorts…

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Tubular dwells

The tube houses of Hanoi  Narrow residential houses, known as ‘nha ong’ in Vietnamese or ‘tube houses’, found in an urban area of Hanoi. Tall, thin and brightly colored, Hanoi's "tube houses" dominate the city's streets as 9 million people compete for space in Vietnam's bustling capital. Although Vietnam saw a number of villas and…

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Art depot

If the name "art depot" strikes you as one of those fly-by-night operations that appear in dying shopping malls, or in sketchy weekend flea markets, you'd likely be right. But, in this instance, you'd be wrong.  Did you know that most museums only showcase around seven percent of their collections at any given time? …

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Ahh . . . go climb a tree

The pandemic has inspired many  to jump into nature. Over the last 360 days, we have attempted new nature activities like kayaking and spelunking, sought out remote hideaways, and found inner peace on long hikes. Maybe we even hugged (or spoke to) a few trees, because we were just so elated to be out of…

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Jeronimo Ødger

Europeans generally like being with each other, visiting each other's countries, and sharing all that it means to be European. But, as you know, it wasn't always like this.  There were headlong battles over land, domains and royalty.  These conflicts left scars. But it isn't what you may think.  In fact, there is a day in August…

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The great ones steal

Always brash and cheeky, Pablo Picasso was never short on attitude.  And here is a humorous example of that modus operandi. His maxim that lesser artists borrow while the great ones steal is to be illustrated in Britain with a historic pairing of two artworks (David Sanderson writes). The National Gallery is collaborating with an American…

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Juan O’Gorman

Walking through the quiet old streets of Mexico City’s San Ángel, a neighborhood hugged by old ash trees and immense colonial style buildings, there’s one edifice that doesn’t quite fit in. Two square houses, one blue and the other one red, are linked  by a narrow bridge and fenced in by immense cactus plants. Most…

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Kenya call me a taxi?

No matter where you look, the world is getting bigger and better - and sometimes in places where you might least expect it.  It's time to change our worldview.  The future is now. A Kenya Airways subsidiary might just be flying “ultra short-haul” in the future through a partnership with Embraer subsidiary Eve Urban Air…

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You wanna Botswana?

It’s the remarkable and divers landscapes of Botswana’s parks and reserves that make this country such a noteworthy and unforgettable safari destination. In the North, there are the shimmering waterways and green floodplains of the Okavango Delta. Dominating the soul of the country is the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a remotes but beyond belief sandy…

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Crumbly Corinth

We would imagine that many of us were educated in more or less the same ways, using the same topics and walking away from it with ever-lasting notions about what history was all about. We've moved on in our knowledge, of course, and every day bring a new enlightenment.  Modern science and technology are turning…

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