a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
Three amigos and I went on a quick road trip to Leavenworth and Wenatchee on Sunday. We overnighted in Wenatchee.
Here are my pictures of a ride today on the new northbound extension of the Sound Transit light rail system to downtown Lynnwood.
Here’s a beautiful view from this morning, of the south end of Lake Union.
I took the picture from the seventh floor of a building off Fairview Avenue North.
Our weekend on Kitsap Peninsula was over, and we took the Bainbridge-Seattle ferry to get back to the city late this morning.
Airbus has released the results of a study that documents which air routes to African cities are underserved (extracts from the report below).
Factors at play are constraints on the number of flights due to bilateral agreements that are in place, challenges with capacity at airports, and economic variables such as the profitability of these routes.
Just in general, Airbus reports that the expectation is for air travel worldwide to increase by about 4.1% over the next 20 years, which would mean some 1,180 new aircraft need to be built, and 15,000 additional pilots would be needed.
My weekend in San Diego and California was over on Monday morning, and I took Alaska Air back to Seattle.
The sun came out this morning, but was gone again by late afternoon.
Even so, it was great to walk along the surf on Del Mar’s main beach.
Here are today’s pictures— from the Del Mar area north of San Diego.
I was off to San Diego for the weekend on Friday.
Happy Friday.
I have been keeping tabs on the Norwegian Sun every few days, ever since I had stepped off the ship eleven days ago.
She left the Falkland Islands yesterday and is headed for Punta del Este in Uruguay. She will arrive there on Sunday (the dotted line).
From there it is just over 90 nautical miles (about 100 miles) to the port of Buenos Aires in Argentina, for the completion of the 14-night sailing out of San Antonio, Chile.
Here’s a cute picture that was posted on the ‘Terrible Maps’ account on X.
(Argentina has more than three times the land area that Chile has).
[Image: Rebecca Blackwell/AP/picture alliance]
The vessel runs nearly 1,200 feet (365 meters) from bow to stern.
The ship— which is embarking on a seven-day island-hopping tour through the tropics— was officially christened on Tuesday with help from soccer star Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami teammates.
The Icon was built over a period of 900 days at a shipyard in Turku, Finland. It comprises of 20 decks and can accommodate 7,600 passengers at maximum capacity and a crew of 2,350.
There will be 50 musicians and comedians as well as a 16-piece orchestra on board as the ship goes on its sold-out inaugural voyage.
The $2 billion (€1.84 billion) Icon features the latest technology and, despite its gigantic size, claims to be more eco-friendly than some smaller cruise ships.
The Icon is powered by what the Royal Caribbean Group says is eco-friendly Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).
Some experts, however, say LNG systems can leak damaging amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere.
– Reporting by dw.com
The flights that brought us home to Seattle went without incident.
It was 10 hours from Santiago to Dallas-Fort Worth, and then some 4 hours to Seattle.
On the way to Santiago International airport, just about 10 miles away from here.
It’s summer at 33° South in the Southern Hemisphere, and only a little snow is visible on the Andes Mountain Range in the distance, only some 50 miles away across the border with Argentina. The Andes Mountains form the longest continental mountain range on the planet.
We were late off the ship this morning due to a delay with the crew processing our luggage.
So we had to scramble to find a replacement driver that could take us around the area before we head out to Santiago airport for our red-eye flight out to Dallas.
It all worked out— we did a whirlwind road trip out to Valparaiso, to a restaurant with live music for lunch, to wine farm, another stop for pisco and beers, before we headed out for the airport.
Alas— our journey at sea and around South America has come to an end.
The Norwegian Sun has just arrived at the port of San Antonio and we will disembark shortly.
We will take a long-haul red-eye flight from Santiago to Dallas at midnight, to catch the flight that will take us home to Seattle on Tuesday morning.
We arrived at the port city of Coquimbo this morning.
Our excursion today was a bus ride along the shoreline into the neighboring town of La Serena, followed by a drive inland to the commune of Vicuña (pop. 25,000).
Norwegian Sun is making her way down south along the Chilean coast, and we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn* today.
*The Tropic of Capricorn lies 23° 26′ 22″ (23.4394°) south of the Equator and marks the most southerly latitude at which the sun can appear directly overhead at noon.
Our self-directed excursion into Arica this morning took us up the steep path to the top of the hill called Morro Arrica.
At the top there is an enormous Chilean flag, a museum and a statue called Christ of the Peace (a reference to the Treaty of Lima in 1929 that settled lingering territorial disputes between Peru and Chile).
The Norwegian Sun continued her journey along the Peruvian coast towards Chile today. That’s the Silver Nova from the Silversea luxury cruise line out at sea with us.
We should reach Arica— just south of the border with Peru— early in the morning.
We arrived at the cruise terminal on the Paracas peninsula near Pisco this morning at 7 am.
Our excursion was to nearby Paracas National Reserve, an area with protected desert and marine ecosystems.
Most of the area is a moonscape with no vegetation.
It is really part of the Atacama Desert— the driest nonpolar desert in the world.
I caught this one digging a little crab out of the sand at the edge of the surf.
[Wikipedia]
