Short trip to Japan

Grok Headline matches for Short trip to Japan

Short Trip to Bombay?

Short Trip to Bombay? 08/23/2004 02:34 PM
Bombay's been stinking for a while, but it can always get worse.

A short trip in a small airplane

A short trip in a small airplane 04/09/2004 04:11 PM

Friday, March 26:  BED to GAI plus some training.  Stop at TEB for lunch with Lynn and Olivia.  Stay in Bethesda with parents.

Sunday:  GAI to Oklahoma City (KPWA has the cheap gas)

Monday, March 29: to http://www.cowboyhalloffame.or g/ at 0900 to see the Bierstadt paintings, in the afternoon to KABQ, stay with Susie Atlas

Tuesday, March 30: to Sedona (KSEZ), 5000' high with a 5000' runway, rent car, maybe we can see the Roden Crater?  Andy says that Jerome, AZ is an interesting town.

Thursday, April 1: to Los Angeles (KSMO), visit new Frank Gehry concert hall, see Harry Gittes

Friday, April 2: can tour the concert hall 9-3 either today or Saturday, all performances sold out but call (323) 850-2000 to check last-minute tix.

Saturday, April 3, 8 pm:  scored tickets on Craigslist (thanks to the kind folks commenting for this idea) for Shostakovich concert at LA Phil.

Sunday, April 4:  to Catalina Island and then at sunset to KMYF in San Diego, dinner with Christopher

Monday, April 5: tour of www.salk.edu (Louis Kahn building, call in advance to reserve, set for 12:00), dinner with Gittes family

Tuesday, April 6:  to Marfa, Texas (http://www.chinati.org gives tours Wednesday-Sunday); stay http://www.hotelpaisano.com/

Wednesday, April 7: tour of Chinati, fly to Huntsville, TX

Thursday, April 8: talk at SHSU.edu, fly to Ft. Worth, TX (KFTW)

Friday, April 9: visit Tadao Ando Modern Art Museum and Japanese Garden, fly to KCHA?

Saturday, April 10: fly to GAI

Sunday, April 11: fly to BED

Open questions for readers:

1. what's a good place between GAI and KPWA to stop for fuel and maybe an airplane museum or something else interesting and close to the airport?
2. where to stay in Sedona, AZ and also a good hotel in Ft. Worth close to the art museum and botanical garden?
3. is it practical to fly to Catalina Island for the day and do anything?

Japan trip report

Japan trip report 08/22/2004 06:09 AM

Itinerary:  Narita-Nikko-Sendai-Northeast Coast (Matsuhima-Shizugawa-Taro-Kuji-Mutsu)-ferry from Oma to Hakodate-Toyako-Sapporo-Asahikawa-Sounkyo-Ikeda-Kushiro-Akanko-Mashuko -Otaru-Niseko-ferry from Hakodate to Aomori-Hirosaki-Morioka-Hiraizumi-Ichinoseki-Utsunomiya-Tokyo Akasaka

Favorite roadside attractions:

• 70m-high statue of the Buddhist bosatsu Kannon in Kamaishi on the NE coast of Honshu
• Snow Museum, which could easily have been designed by Liberace, in Asahikawa (Hokkaido)
• two enormous Japanese Cranes having a late lunch in a farmer's field on the SE coast of Hokkaido then taking off, circling, and landing in another corner of the farm; there are only about 800 of these birds on the planet
• underground public aquarium in Kuji, the Mogurampia, built into a coastal oil storage facility

And now onto some themes that recurred in my mind...

This trip impressed upon me how deep is the Japanese love affair with concrete.  They've really become the poets of this most modern of building materials where a guy such as Tadao Ando can find many peers.  Some of the most beautiful minimalist artworks were the concrete mesh nets that stabilize hillsides.  These comform to the waves and bumps of the hill and are anchored by enormous pins of steel or concrete.  The mesh size is about 6'.  My favorite concrete building was the Iwate Museum of Art in Morioka.

The overall security of Japan presents a startling contrast to the U.S.  I didn't notice it that much on previous trips, all of which were before September 11, 2001.  Except in Tokyo and on the Shinkansen (bullet train) there doesn't seem to be any thought given to terrorism or even crime.  There are hardly any foreigners in Japan to begin with so a group of 19 Saudis wouldn't have been able to go anywhere without being watched.  There are no ID checks even on the Shinkansen.  You can park your car at the airport curb, even Narita, and walk away for 10-15 minutes without anyone complaining.  You don't see gun-toting thugs near public buildings.  People carry $1000+ in cash in their wallets without a second thought.  Every car has a $2000 navi system ripe to be stolen and yet there aren't car alarms.  Luxury hotels don't bother with electronic key cards.  You can eat in almost any restaurant (except the ones listed in Lonely Planet) and not get food poisoning.  The Japanese can even enjoy the rich social life described by Paul Theroux in Africa without worrying about dying as the AIDS infection rate here is around 0.02% (source).

America really is the land of luxury when it comes to space and consumerism.  From my house in Harvard Square I can drive 20 minutes and get to miles of trails through semi-rural woods, lakes, and farms in Lincoln, MA.  To get similarly away from it all in Japan would require flying to Hokkaido, renting a car, and heading into a national park.  Real estate prices here remain savage, a good warning perhaps to Americans as we head for a population of 420 million in the year 2050, nearly all of which will be concentrated on the coasts.  A CD is $22, a DVD is $35+.  For a tourist here only a few weeks it isn't so bad.  Your wallet suffers death by paper cuts ($4 for parking at a temple, $8 to go in, $40 in expressway tolls to get to the next temple) but you know that you'll be heading home soon to your spacious apartment and nearby Walmart.  The Japanese just have to resign themselves to being bled for the rest of their lives.

The Japanese are able to overcome almost all of their natural limitations with hard work and competitive drive.  The Olympics are going on right now and the Japanese are currently in third place for the number of gold medals, which is remarkable when you consider the lack of genetic diversity in the population.  Craftsmen in various small towns could get by selling average-quality goods to average tourists but instead work late nights to win competitions.  Shamisen players compete and at concerts the people sitting next to me would periodically whisper "Grand Champion" when a certain artist came on stage.  A chef in the tiny provincial town of Ichinoseki could have had a nice little rice dumpling restaurant but instead worked like a demon until he became famous throughout Japan for making the best rice dumplings (he spoke pretty good English too but I learned of his fame only from other tourists).

Economically this is a country that should be nowhere.  Japan is famously lacking in natural resources and space.  The nation was closed to the West and modern technology until the mid-19th century.  Japan lost more than 3 million people and nearly all of its physical assets during World War II.  Yet by dint of nearly every worker trying his or her hardest the country is almost as rich as the U.S.  An American engineer working for a Japanese automaker has been over here for a year.  The mechanical engineers working for his company back in the U.S. are among the best, brightest, and hardest working American engineers.  "I hate to admit it," he said, "but the guys here in Japan are even better.  They're older and they know more and I thought they they would slack off but they work even harder and are more dedicated to getting it right."

Most disturbing part of the trip:  watching an old movie of an Ainu (the native people of Hokkaido, related to Mongolians) community event in which a bear was chained to a pole and then shot with arrows.  The bear would roll around trying to get the arrows out and then would be shot some more.  Maybe not that different from the bullfights beloved by Spaniards but just horrible to see.

Best hotel room:  Akasaka Prince Hotel, 18th floor, sweeping corner windows, comfy sofa underneath the windows, huge bathtub, architecture by Kenzo Tange, across the street from the 400-year-old Japanese garden in the New Otani Hotel, adjacent to a public park with koi pond, and 2 blocks from the Suntory Museum of Art (fantastic Daimyo show right now).  All for $115/night thanks to (a) being on my own (double rooms are often simply 2X the price of a single), and (b) orbitz.com.

Best hotel surprise:  Hotel-onsen Kanyo in Shizugawa on the NE coast of Tohoku.  Stopped the rental car at sunset to tank up and asked the gas station manager where to find a hotel.  He said "just one kilometer farther up" and an enormous concrete hotel appeared.  The staff spoke not a word of English, the room was Japanese style, the hot spring bath was outdoors, and the pool was big enough to swim laps.

Memorable scenic views:

• Mashu-ko, a crater lake in eastern Hokkaido.  In general the Japanese have heavily developed their seacoast ("the sea is where you go to get dinner") but left lakeshores alone.  This lake is a lot like Oregon's Crater Lake but not nearly so high in elevation.
• the city of Hakodate (Sapporo) from the top of the ropeway (cable car) and also the surrounding mountains and coastline at sunset
• cliffs and rocks of Rikuchu-kagan National Park, a not-very-developed coastline in NE Tohoku
• cliffs in the Geibikei Gorge (near Hiraizumi) viewed from the flat-bottomed boat while beautiful koi swam alongside and begged for food from the tourists
• various spots along the highway in Daisetsuzan National Park (Hokkaido)

Places in Japan that I'd like to visit next time:  Nara, Shikoku, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Okinawa (plus repeats to Tokyo and Kyoto to see friends and familiar sights--see http://www.photo.net/travel/ japan/ for some snapshots from earlier trips)

Joi Ito is a short, straight,
37-year-old, Japanese guy who lives in
Japan

Joi Ito is a short, straight,
37-year-old, Japanese guy who lives in
Japan 01/10/2004 09:02 PM

Many people seem to think I'm a woman because my name is rather gender neutral if not feminine. I am a short, straight, 37-year-old, Japanese guy who lives in Japan. I've noticed some people are very careful not to reveal their gender on their blogs. Others are clear. Others probably fake it. I'm sure danah can give us a list of people for whom it is much more complicated than "are your male or female." Anyway, I suppose I should make it more clear, but where? Picture in my "about section"?

UPDATE: I just posted a picture. I hope this helps. I just realized how few pictures I have of myself...

Short Men with Short Dreams

Short Men with Short Dreams 03/14/2005 05:39 PM
This will just be a quickie. New iPod photos and iPod minis were released today. Cheaper, bigger, whatever. The thing...

Japan Hot Stocks-Nippon Shinpan, Yahoo
Japan, Alps, NTT DoCoMo

Japan Hot Stocks-Nippon Shinpan, Yahoo
Japan, Alps, NTT DoCoMo 02/17/2004 09:19 PM
Forbes Feb 18 2004 1:52AM GMT

Japan Hot Stocks-Bridgestone, Yahoo
Japan, Nissho Iwai-Nichimen

Japan Hot Stocks-Bridgestone, Yahoo
Japan, Nissho Iwai-Nichimen 05/11/2004 10:16 PM
Forbes May 12 2004 2:25AM GMT

Japan Hot Stocks-Yahoo Japan, Nissho
Iwai-Nichimen, Casio

Japan Hot Stocks-Yahoo Japan, Nissho
Iwai-Nichimen, Casio 05/11/2004 10:16 PM
Forbes May 12 2004 2:25AM GMT

Japan Hot Stocks-Vodafone Holdings,
Nippon Shinpan, Yahoo Japan

Japan Hot Stocks-Vodafone Holdings,
Nippon Shinpan, Yahoo Japan 02/17/2004 11:53 PM
Forbes Feb 18 2004 4:22AM GMT

Japan Hot Stocks-Yahoo Japan, Mitsubishi
Motors, Toshiba, UFJ

Japan Hot Stocks-Yahoo Japan, Mitsubishi
Motors, Toshiba, UFJ 04/25/2004 10:03 PM
Forbes Apr 26 2004 2:40AM GMT

Japan Hot Stocks-Yahoo Japan, Alps, NTT
DoCoMo

Japan Hot Stocks-Yahoo Japan, Alps, NTT
DoCoMo 02/17/2004 09:06 PM
Forbes Feb 18 2004 1:23AM GMT

Welcome to Road Trip USA

Welcome to Road Trip USA 07/31/2004 05:02 PM
Welcome to Road Trip USA

roadtripusa.com
track this site | 3 links

$10 raffle for a trip to Zero G

$10 raffle for a trip to Zero G 04/05/2005 04:48 PM
Xeni Jardin: Yuri's Night founder, recently minted 3D science movie star, and astrobiologist Loretta Hidalgo tells Boing Boing:

The industrious kids at MIT are raffling off a trip to Ft Lauderdale to ride Zero-G's 727 microgravity jet. The organizer is a member of Zero G Corp.'s flight crew. Everyone always tells him they wish they could fly in zero gravity, too -- so he created a raffle so that one of them could!

Included in the prize: airfare (based on a R/T to the takeoff site in Ft. Lauderdale on Song airlines from Boston), and hotel. The raffle is need-not-be-present-to-win so anyone in the US can enter. Drawing will held on Saturday April 9th [extended] on April 16th. The organizer is Stephen Steiner, an MIT Grad Student in Material Science and an Aerogel genius. He can be reached at ssteiner [at] transuranium.com.

Link to raffle details.

Previously on BB: James Cameron's new 3D film Aliens of the Deep, and Zero G -- Xeni's Wired News and NPR reports. Image: Xeni on a Zero G flight during which Loretta was a crew member (shot by Jim Campbell)

acid trip

acid trip 01/07/2004 02:01 PM
acid trip
wow. [ via newstoday ]

Field Trip

Field Trip 01/30/2004 03:07 PM
Get out of the house with this week's educational freeware. You'll be going places and learning new things.

Join me for my informative and entertaining picks in this week's Freeloader Friday.

Like Pixels? Check out MacDesign

"Acid trip 1"

"Acid trip 1" 01/07/2004 06:08 PM

Red Sox Trip Tigers 5-3 (AP)

Red Sox Trip Tigers 5-3 (AP) 08/27/2004 10:42 PM
AP - Manny Ramirez singled and scored before leaving with a bruised knee, and the streaking Boston Red Sox beat the Detroit Tigers 5-3 Friday night for their 10th victory in 11 games.

The trip has begun

The trip has begun 03/13/2003 10:20 AM
Hi there A travel letter from Cape Town, South Africa. The airplane companies are not funny... The problems started right...

The trip has continued

The trip has continued 03/13/2003 10:20 AM
Hi The trip is now on is 17th day. Sorry for not keeping You updated, but we have literally been...

Road Trip, Anyone?

Road Trip, Anyone? 11/12/2003 01:30 PM
Love Shack!

Road Trip USA

Road Trip USA 07/31/2004 02:12 AM
Road Trip USA. This simply titled site is one of the better travel sites I have seen for back-road ramblings around the USA. Not only are the routes described some of the best, the writing is extensive (at least book length), of high quality and obviously by someone who has traveled every single mile personally. I only wish I had it on my last trip. Recommended for the arm-chair or car-seat traveler alike.

Trip Mapping with PHP

Trip Mapping with PHP 11/07/2002 08:59 PM
Do PHP and cartography go together? David Sklar thinks so. In this article from the PHP Cookbook coauthor, he demonstrates how to plot your trips with PHP and census data.

Trip advice is just a few clicks away

Trip advice is just a few clicks away 04/17/2005 10:34 AM
Chicago Tribune Apr 17 2005 12:57PM GMT

Trip to Argentina from December 10-31

Trip to Argentina from December 10-31 01/07/2004 04:18 PM

I decided to push back the round-the-world trip and instead spend December in Argentina.  My flights into and out of Buenos Aires are fairly fixed but everything else is open and I would appreciate suggestions.  Here's the plan so far...

Dec 10:  leave Boston.
Dec 11:  arrive Buenos Aires at 10:07 am
Dec 12,13: sightseeing B.A.
Dec 14:  Sunday trip to Colonia, Uruguay via ferry
Dec 15:  leave B.A. for Iguazu Falls, stay at fancy Sheraton with view
of falls?
Dec 17:  fly from Iguazu Falls to Bariloche (Lake District), rent car
Dec 25:  fly to Ushuaia (the southernmost town in Argentina), take a few tours
Dec 31:  fly from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires in time to catch 10:55 pm
flight to Miami

Thoughts?

Symbolic and perilous bus trip

Symbolic and perilous bus trip 04/07/2005 12:44 PM
Defying militant attacks, passengers in divided Kashmir cross a "peace bridge" at the India-Pakistan border, opened for the first time in 58 years.

Off to Kauai this morning for a day
trip!

Off to Kauai this morning for a day
trip! 02/01/2005 09:43 PM

I am off to Kauai this morning for a business meeting. It is a down and back and I should be home in time for a late supper you all play nice and I will be back in tonight.

Day trip boy drowns in stream

Day trip boy drowns in stream 08/02/2004 06:47 AM
Emergency crews fail to save a seven-year-old boy whose body was found in a stream.

On my upcoming trip to San Francisco...

On my upcoming trip to San Francisco... 06/17/2005 03:22 PM

So here's the plan - I'm flying to San Francisco on Saturday and I'll be hanging around until the 26th with all my geek hipster friends. But don't take that to mean that I'm busy all the time - I'm keen as ever to see (and meet) as many neat people as possible. When I go to San Francisco, I normally try and set up some kind of drunken evening at the Tonga Room - because the rain and the thunder and the tiki stylings and the lounge act are all so cool. But I am also aware that the cocktails are terrible and that maybe I've milked the experience as much as I can. So, guys, does anyone have any better ideas?

While I'm at it, I might as well put out another call - are there any glorious geek events, any particularly cool exhibitions or bars that I'd regret not going to? It's not every day I get a full week in my spiritual homeland to reconnect with the mothership. So what should I be doing?

Of course, no trip comes without its inconveniences, and this one is particularly poignant - while I'm on the flight to SFO I'll be missing the big reveal in the final episode of Doctor Who. This is doubly galling since I'm currently enduring hundreds of lunatic comments on my Doctor Who and Bad Wolf post. Regular visitors to the site may be getting bored of hearing about this, but things are way out of control - the post has received seven hundred comments as of now, and sometimes they come in at the rate of one or two a minute. The whole thing's starting to remind me of Kottke's famous Matrix meltdown. All of which is a roundabout way of saying don't spoil it for me until I've got my hands on a copy.

Anyway, as of this evening, I'm either in pre-flight limbo or stuck in some terminal interzone, and I'm hoping to take the opportunity to catch up with all the notes and writing I've been doing recently but haven't had a chance to post to my site. So more later...

Cat Survives 30-Day Trip in Shipping Box
(AP)

Cat Survives 30-Day Trip in Shipping Box
(AP) 04/15/2004 01:06 AM
AP - A business owner opening a shipment of 400 bird cages sent from China got an additional order he didn't expect — a severely undernourished cat.

Why I haven't bl0gged about by trip to
Iceland

Why I haven't bl0gged about by trip to
Iceland 09/10/2004 11:27 AM
Simple. No connection. I tried keeping a paper blog on my trip to Iceland. But it didn't really work out. Frankly, it was mostly crap.

Then again, when I read my older entries, 90% of them are crap, too. (Which is normal, according to Sturgeon's Law).

When you write a blog entry, you just write it and fire. You don't go back and re-edit. Once you publish it, there's no taking it back. It's there in the Google cache, and in the Internet Archive forever. And if it was important to someone, it will be dug up. There's surprisingly little entropy in the Internet.

But that's actually cool. You see, this kind of a writing style forces you to write better the next time. You just can't go back and tinker with your text until you're happy with it. You have to learn to let go of your creation, so that you don't just keep doing the same old stuff all over again. So you learn.

The internet allows us to produce more crap than ever before. But at least we'll be better at doing it. :)

Trip to New York. Part II.

Trip to New York. Part II. 01/09/2004 09:45 PM
We'll be in New York again from the 31st to the 6th and are trying to find a reasonably priced hotel to stay at that has true high speed internet access -- in-room WayPort or WiFi and NOT WebTV. Any...

Our trip back to Boston

Our trip back to Boston 06/05/2005 11:56 PM

Julian and I arrived back in Boston this evening in our new Cirrus SR20, N707WT.  The trip back was a good illustration of the pluses and minuses of small airplane travel.  Although I was fairly tired after 10 hours of flight training all day Friday and Saturday morning we departed Duluth Saturday afternoon in order to stay ahead of a line of thunderstorms.  After gazing down at the interesting colors in Lake Superior and the top portion of Lake Michigan we stopped in Pellston, Michigan near where Lakes Michigan and Huron meet and then departed for an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight around the top of Lake Huron and over Toronto into Buffalo, New York.  The lake and the city lights were quite beautiful from 7000' above sea level.  We did an uneventful instrument landing system (ILS) approach through some rain into Buffalo.  It was dark by then so it was nice to have the centerline and touchdown-zone lighting.  The FBO at Buffalo found us a $52/night hotel and we collapsed until 9:00 am this morning.

From Buffalo to Boston is only about 2.5 hours but one must cross the Berkshires (3000' high) and the forecast was for moderately low clouds, ice in those clouds, rain, and a really low freezing level due to the cold temps on the surface (only about 48 degrees in Albany today).  It wasn't safe to go under the clouds given the numerous obstructions from towers, hills, and mountains.  The Cirrus doesn't have a turbocharger so it wouldn't have been able to climb over the top of the clouds, forecast to 20,000'.  We waited on the ground in Buffalo until 3:00 pm for some of the rain to dissipate on the RADAR and for some of the temperatures aloft to warm up.  We decided to fly to Albany at 7000' and if we picked up any ice we'd go to the minimum enroute altitude (5000') and see if that was above freezing.  If it wasn't we'd continue to descend and land in Albany where we knew that the temperature would be above freezing.  We would not continue across the Berkshires where it would be impossible to descend as far or as quickly due to the mountains.

We entered the clouds about 2500' above the runway at Buffalo and broke out about 6000' above sea level.  This was a great illustration of the advantages of an instrument rating.  Instead of bumping around near the ground we were above the clouds in smooth air.  Gradually, however, we approach a wall of higher clouds.  This was the rain system we'd seen on the RADAR and that we could also see in our airplane, which has a receiver to get weather information from the XM radio satellites (this instrument runs from the Avidyne multi-function display, which had failed during a training flight and restarted automatically but then crashed and got stuck on our trip into Buffalo, so we didn't have much confidence in this).  At 7000' the main outside air temperature (OAT) gauge showed +4 degrees C.  This is the one associated with the engine-monitoring system and in most Cirrus airplanes is the only one enabled.  We had met a mechanic on Saturday, however, who knew how to reenable the OAT gauge on the primary flight display (PFD), which has its probe farther out on the wing.  This read -2 degrees C.  We asked Air Traffic Control to ask some of the airliners for temperature reports at 7000' and we learned that it was probably much closer to -2 than to +4. 

Heading towards Albany we picked up a little frost on part of the wing as the temperature dropped to -4 degrees C (or +2 if we believed the standard instrument).  We asked for 5000' and the temperature rose and the frost came off.  We asked for a routing closer to Hartford, Connecticut to stay over lower terrain and into warmer air.  ATC gave us the new routing over Westover Air Force Base in Western, MA.  The rest of the flight was uneventful though almost solidly in the clouds the whole time.  My landing wasn't quite as smooth as the ones that I had done in training though by no means was it hard.  The primary flight display (PFD) did not like the little bump, however, and drew red X's across its electronic attitude indicator and gyro compass, telling us not to trust them and to refer to the backup "steam gauges".

Our total flight time from Duluth to Boston was about 7 hours despite slight headwinds almost the entire way (this is unusual when going west to east; it is supposed to be a tailwind).  The Cirrus is a fast little plane that is economical to operate and reasonably priced.  But we couldn't fly on our schedule and we never knew whether we were going to make it through Albany or not.  The minimum airplane that is practical for transportation as opposed to recreation is something like a Piper Malibu with a turbocharger to climb above the clouds and de-icing equipment sufficient to earn FAA certification for "flight into known icing".  The Malibu would have climbed over the top of all that weather and then come down into Boston.  We never would have had to turn on the de-icing gear.

Thoughts on Cleveland Trip

Thoughts on Cleveland Trip 05/02/2004 10:21 PM
I had fun this weekend in Cleveland. I haven't had a chance to post (or even upload) the 200+ pictures taken with my camera yet. Kasia really wants a crack at fixing some of 'em up anyway (she's good with the Photoshop, unlike me). So, until you can see photos of semi-drunken people you don't know in dark places you don't know, I leave you with a few things from this weekend. It's possible to get nearly a dozen people...

Netflix Gets Trip to the Woodshed

Netflix Gets Trip to the Woodshed 07/22/2004 09:49 AM

Photos from the Thanksgiving Trip

Photos from the Thanksgiving Trip 12/17/2004 06:35 PM
Photos from my small airplane trip down the East Coast for Thanksgiving are available at ht tp://philip.greenspun.com/images/200411-thanksgiving-trip/ (a lso 100+ unedited (bleah) pix of some young cousins at http:/ /philip.greenspun.com/images/200411-frankel-girls/ ).  All of these were taken with a Canon EOS 20D and 16-35/2.8L or 70-200/2.8L IS lenses, recently purchased from Adorama.

The Road Trip Effect 1.3

The Road Trip Effect 1.3 03/29/2005 05:06 PM
Create video travel logs of the places you visit.

Suggestions for a trip to Portugal?

Suggestions for a trip to Portugal? 03/17/2005 03:24 AM

I'm considering a trip to Portugal on Friday March 25.  A friend is coming with me and she has to return on Sunday April 3.  I have more flexibility and could stay on.  Some questions for Portugal veterans...

• Is the end of March a nice time of year to be in Portugal?
• Can one stay the whole eight days in one hotel in Lisbon and make day trips or would it be better to stay in several different places (and, if so, what are one or two favorite places)?I don't want to spend too much time in transit.
• If we are going to be moving around, is it best to rent a car?

Thanks for the help!

All Aboard! But Don't Relax. Your Trip
Is Already Over.

All Aboard! But Don't Relax. Your Trip
Is Already Over. 04/22/2004 09:12 AM
Shanghai's new magnetic levitation train, the world's first in commercial service, can reach a speed of 268 m.p.h.

New York Trip report

New York Trip report 06/01/2004 12:49 AM

Here's what I learned on my trip to New York City:

• the old Continental-powered Piper Malibu is a lot quieter and smoother than the newer Lycoming-powered Piper Mirage (flew down from Boston in a couple of for-sale Malibus)
• the Petra exhibit at the Museum of Natural History is inspirational--it might be time to take a leaf from Indiana Jones's book and head over to Jordan
• there are several good shows at the Metropolitan, as usual
• the Whitney Biennial was one of the best in a long time.  At least 20 percent of the works were charmingly creative.  The show just ended but it might still be worth taking a trip to the Whitney because they've concentrated the best of their permanent collection on the fifth floor and also brought in some Thomas Hart Benton murals from Connecticut.  [If you want to get into the Biennial for 2006 just take a page from one of Edward Tufte's books and blow it up to wall size, then reverse it and stick it next to the first enlargement... that's what one of the artists in the exhibit had done.. without credit to Tufte.]
• the RM seafood restaurant on 60th between Madison and Park is fantastic and for the summer does a weekday $20 3-course lunch menu that is as good as any meal I've had in Boston at any price, www.rmseafood.com
• seeing Shrek 2 with a 4-year-old girl is fun but the movie is disappointing after Shrek 1.

No New York experience is complete without at least one cabbie story.  The fellow who drove me to LaGuardia Airport was a Coptic Christian from Egypt (the Copts are the descendants of the original Egyptians who built the pyramids, etc.; after the Arab invasion of 640 A.D. they've survived as a minority within their ancient homeland).  Fully trained as a lawyer in Egypt, he came to the U.S. 12 years ago.  "The Muslims were making it harder and harder for Christians to survive.  I was just starting out so I decided to start in the U.S.  Of course the situation in Egypt is much worse now for Copts than it was back then."  He couldn't work here as a lawyer easily because Egyptian law is based on the Napoleonic code rather than cases.  "I got a degree in networking from NYU and worked at a French bank in mid-town until 2001 when they downsized their IT department."  Since then he has been driving a cab.  How does he like living in New York compared to Egypt?  "I came here to escape the Muslims but now they are coming to America.  They may appear to accept American values but 15 years from now you'll see that they haven't.  They can't stop fighting Christians and they hate the West because it represents Christianity.  Americans don't understand anything about Islam."

Grok Description matches for Short trip to Japan
GrokA matches for Short trip to Japan

Short trip to Japan

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: