Travel&Vacation

Growing up near New York City, school field trips to the Bronx Zoo were a regular thing; I don't think a year went by in elementary school when we didn't go to the zoo.  Additionally, with grandparents who were members, there were a lot of non-school trips there as well. The Bronx Zoo is a place I remember fondly, and consequently, on a recent trip back to the area, I went with my wife (who also grew up going there on a regular basis) and my two-year-old daughter, who had never been.  The day started out well enough, with my daughter going through the Children's Zoo, examining all the various birds and ducks and wallabies.  Though she was a little young to read about all the animals, she had no trouble trying to perform the same six-foot standing jump a
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Great service, courteous & friendly staff, a wonderful view from room. You get what you pay for. I would definitely stay here again. There’s a restaurant that has a delicious lunch buffet at a reasonable price. If you’re a drinker, the bar has an all you can drink deal for 2 hours. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone traveling to Okinawa. Lastly, its best to book at least two weeks prior to you arriving, as they book very quickly, especially during the tourist months. okinawa touristy modern stylish

New York City Parks Department tours kick ass. A few weeks ago we had a special bus tour of Fresh Kills, the huge Staten Island landfill, now closed, capped, and being planted in preparation for eventual conversion to parkland, but not generally open to the public at this point. This weekend, another Urban Park Ranger took us through the old fort at Fort Totten, a Civil War-era granite fortress on the Willets Point peninsula on the north coast of Queens. A short distance across the water from Fort Totten, on a spit of land jutting south from the Bronx and now in the shadow of the Throgs Neck Bridge, is Fort Schuyler, which dates from the 1830s and is now the SUNY Maritime College. The two forts were built to defend against a British naval attack on New York City from the east via Long
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I put the car into tyre ruts that lead into water that looks like turnip soup. Wheels spin. A cold wind blows from the north. Spaghetti-western clouds hang in the sky. I've bogged the car and done a good job of it. Emus skitter across a glimmering quartz field, their feathered skirts dancing the Charleston, and I think anew of our national emblem. I think also of high-school geography and of James May, the muddling co-host of Top Gear, and imagine him out here, coming unstuck like this. Such is the gamble of a long drive to a geographic oddity; a spot where in 1880 a Department of Lands surveyor, John Cameron, drove a wooden post into the red earth to mark a British colonial limit on an unknown land. It was a point of reference – where NSW, Queensland and South Australia join.
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The Minnesota State Fair is a fun place to walk around and spend money on strange foods on a stick. The fairgrounds have a number of buildings showcasing 4H projects (those kids are amazing!), art, science and technology, dairy products and the different livestock. The dairy building has live butter carving and you can see all the butter busts in a rotating showcase. They have all the usual fair foods – cheese curds, pronto pups (corn dogs), and mini donuts – as well as the unusual foods – deep fried candy bars on a stick, ostrich and alligator on a stick, corn on the cob, and pizza on a stick. It is a great place to eat delicious greasy, artery clogging food. You can walk past old tractors, see a lumberjack show, sit on lawn mowers and in new cars, pick up free things (pens, bags,
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In Germany, the word “schloss” means castle or “manor house.” These are historic structures, many first built during the Roman times near the very best vineyards in the land. The idea was to create a grand estate to showcase the quality of the vineyards and the wine. With wineries in San Ynez, California considered old at twenty, a 650-year-old winery seems very ancient indeed. Yet this is the age of Schloss Schonborn in Germany’s Rheingau region, which goes back to 1349. Owned by Paul Graf von Schonborn-Wiesentheid, it is the largest family owned estate in the Rheingau comprising some 125 acres (50 hectares) of top vineyard sites. The winery has recently been modernized with stainless steel tanks. Many of the wines produced here make their way to Asia and
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