My life in photos

Monday, June 11, 2012

Exploring new continents, CA, US, June 2012

I thought Europe is the only interesting place on the Earth.
With its old towns and nice people, its mountains and warm seas, historical sights and modern infrastructure.

That is not true...

Europe is just one of our 6 continents.
Hope to explore more of them in the next few years.

It appears that the United States are not only the place to work, but also a great place to have very sharp vacation.
It was a business trip combined with a week of vacations after that.
And a crazy schedule as always with the following route -

Paris, France
New York, NY
Niagara Falls, NY
New York, NY
Silicon Valley, San Jose, CA
San Francisco, CA
Yosimite, CA
Death Valley, CA
Hollywood, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Route 1-101 (LA - Santa Barbara - SJC)
Atlanta, GA,
New York, NY

All from May, 13 to June, 5, 2012.

Looks crazy, does it?

2 points are the most impressive - Niagara and California!

Niagara Falls were included into the trip on Friday, right before the short trip weekend.

Some people said "it is not worth driving 6-7 hours one way..". It appeared to be worth spending that time..

Plus a wonderful true american motel with authentic walls and furniture - very worth staying to fill american films very well.

[Small Falls on our way to Niagara]

[Niagara Falls]

Must switch to California... It becomes boring ;)

So, this is the place I will visit again. Very soon.

I thought it is very hot there. It is hot in some places, but not everywhere. And it is definitely cold at night in Silicon Valley and at 9500 feet above sea level in Yosimite.

One morning I got up and realized that I slept in those hights where snow still stay on the ground...

[Yosimite Valley]

Surprisingly Death Valley was 115 deg F hot... :) This is 40+ C and this is where my hand sunburn came from. Interesting thing is that the is a place in the center of the Death Valley where the sea level is above the ground level. But still there is no water there. Funny though that I have found water in the parking place near the abandoned info-house in the center of the desert with a protruding tap water right from the sand...

Phhh... Too many things to mention. And no time at all....

I'll be back soon. For at least 2-3 weeks. And I will bring more people to the New World !

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Cinque. Cinquanta. Cinque cento.

1-stop flight via Zurich and we landed in Rome, Italy.
Looked like our aircraft became on fire. Smoke was rising on all the aircraft walls. In fact the temperature outside was like 28 degrees Celsius. Rome met us with stuffiness and thunderstorm.

Suprisingly I haven't found any charming and extremely wonderful places in Rome. It's nice, everything around filled with the ancient buildings. But it is all natural. Colloseum, Capitoly, St Peter's Cathedral in Vatican are the most known sights in Rome. There are a lot of interesting and shoking facts related to these places. Colloseum was covered with marble and this marble used in another buidings construction after Colloseum had been closed. So that it's not covered with it and it's hard to imagine that it was.
History is nice thing. It's better know about the history of Rome before travelling there. We did not know about it much so it was very hard to imagine how important was every place we visited.

This is our first trip to the places close to vulcans. The first we met was Vezuvy which has burnt Pompei in ancient BC years. But its ash saved ancient culture for us. So that we could walk right on the streets of the ancient port town famous for its sexual services. :)

Sicilia was the last but the sharpest and the longest point in our trip. I like you, Sicilia :)

Here is the list of things I like in Sicilia.

Landscapes. Rocks, blue see, cactuses, olive and grape fields, salt fields and small towns standing right in the clouds on the top of some mountains.
Climate. Our house owner said the weather was the same as in December. Howether there was around 24 degrees Celsius.
Tirrenian Sea. Rocky sea coast with nice bays and beaches.
Vulcans. Always magnetic and inviting.
People! They are all nice. They are interesting and charming. It's really interesting to talk to them. Someone associate StPete with the new Gazprom tower project. And they always like to hear "Russia". Funny. Well dressed and smiling.
Food. "PANE", "PANINI", pizza, pasta, cherry "pomodoro", etc.
Fiat Cinquecento. As wel as Opel Corsa. :)
and many more...

I would say that Sicilia is the best place to visit while having a rest.

[Rome]

[Napoly]

[Vulcano island]

[Etna]

[Zingaro]

[Erice, Sicilia]

[Erice]

[San Vito lo Capo]

[San Vito lo Capo!]

Sunday, April 06, 2008

A few hours in Atlanta

1. Dogwood trees
2. Baseball game
3. 4 Clubs
4. CNN Center
5. Tornado
6. $1.4M Building site
7. nice working place
8. Datacenter
9. Georgia Tech
10. American Jeans :)
11. Rich people houses district
12. Olimpic Atlanta!

and finally meeting my friends/work partners/true democracy fans....

This is actually not a full list of things I've visited/found/got/seen/discovered for 30 hours I was in Atlanta.

I love Atlanta. I was tired of New York.

It was really warm, relaxed and nice in Atlanta.

Thank you guys for your hospitality and all the sharp impressions I've got visiting you in Atlanta.

March 2008, City to work in, New York!

Well, I haven't travelled for a long time until the middle of March.
The good point is that I could notice almost everything which is different from the Russian reality because of my non-mobility.

So, New York. The city of skyscrapers, the capital of world business and the center of world democracy ;)

It moves every minute plus it starts shining in the night time. I mean movement never stop. Trafic, citizens, tourists, aircrafts, subway, elevators, lights always move to bring life to the NYC. Even Hudson, Harlem and East rivers always bring water to the Ocean.

Actually I lived on the other side of Hudson river, in New Jersey state, right in front of the George Washington Bridge. And it took an hour to get to the Port Bus Authority Terminal by bus.

I've been almost everywhere in the Southern Manhatten. Looked like the most interestng place to see. The end of March wasn't so warm, there were no flowering trees in the streets so I decided not to go to the Central Park.
I've bought city sightseing tour right in the Internet [Internet is the most popular place to buy everything as companies don't need to pay sales taxes while selling through the Internet.].
I've got to the tour start point and realized that they didn't have tours in Russian. They even didn't have any electronic audioguides in the bus. Actually they had but they were very low quality and they were in German, Spanish and Chinise. Neither of them worked for me ;)I said no electronic, but every bus contained real tour guide person. The thing is 60% of time I got a bus with tour guide in understandable English and 40% of time it was like pure quick American English :)

So, Time Square, Soho, China Town, Financial District in the very south of Downtown, WTC place and the Wall Street, Broadway and almost all the avenues on Manhatten were discovered by me.
Walking round the city by feet is the most important thing to understand it. City tour is good to discover the history and some interesting facts.
Here are a few of them:
- The Empire State Building was built for 13 months. It was build so quick because it was a depression time in the US economy and there were a lot of workers available 24/7.
- China Town is growing real fast. Most of modern China Town was populated with Eastern Europe immigrants late 80s-90s.

One of the parts of my tour was Ellis Island ferry. So, one frosty New York morning I took the bus to get to New York Port Bus Authority, then took the subway to get to the Southern ferry terminal and then realized that there was a long long line of people waiting for the same ferry. I don't know but I can assume that there were like 2 thousands of people and the line length was around 700 meters.

So, I decided not to go to the Ellis Island, the island where the Statue of Liberty is. And I wasn't mistaken as I took another Circle Line cruise round the Manhatten + Ellis Island. It starts right on the 42th street in the Hudson river pier. The most impressive pictures were made there. This is really worth visiting.

The other impressive place is the bank of the East river near Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn during the night time. I've taken some pics there as well.