Paris is one of the more expensive cities in the world but not on the first Sunday of the month when many of the cities museums are free- yes free. And we are not talkin B grade museums, the most popular ones are in on the act too, including the Louvre, home to the Mona Lisa and the Musee d’Orsay and even the Musee National Picasso. Now if museums are not your stuff, why not visit one of the Arc de Triomphe, or Notre Dame they are free too between October the 1st and March on the first Sunday.
You have probably noticed Tripandom loves a good Disney Story well here is a real exciting one. The Disney corporation has just announced that it will spend squillions on its California Adventure park in Anaheim to bolster visitor numbers. They plan to give the park a huge overhaul and ad some great new attractions including a Toy Story attraction, 3 Cars attractions where you will be able to visit Radiator Springs and a Little Mermaid attraction. It is not yet known if it will be similar to the Mermaid attraction at DisneySea in Tokyo. It is expected the attractions will start coming on line late 2008 and be complete in around 5 years. The company has also just started work on a huge expansion of its California Hotel & Spa resort.
On the banks of the River Thames The Tower of London is one of London’s most popular tourist attractions. The history of the tower dates back to 1078 and has had dozens of rebuilds and extensions and just as many uses. For most of it’s life it has been a fortress but has also been a prison and home of torture and execution. The fortress has also been an armory, a mint, somewhere to house public records, even an observatory and a zoo. Today it is the home of the Crown Jewels which have been kept in the tower since they were stolen from Westminster Abbey in 1303. The burly Beefeaters guard the tower along with ravens which have been kept at the tower for over 100 years. Legend says that if the ravens ever leave the tower the British Monarchy will fall- Good Old Lizzie better hope they don’t find a better place to live.
To celebrate the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989 La Grande Arche was commissioned as a modern interpretation of the Arc De Triomph which is Paris’s most important war monument. The Grande Arch was designed by Danish Architect Johann Otto Von Spreckelsen and is a nearly perfect cube with a height of 108m a depth of 112m and width of 108m. The huge concrete structure is covered in marble from Italy and glass. Inside the arch houses an exhibition centre, government offices and viewing platform with views across Paris. Visitors rise in a glass lift which runs along a very impressive scaffolding like structure in the centre of the structure.
Anglesea on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road has a very unique Golf Course where you play your 18 holes with herds of Kangaroos watching on. Established in the 1950’s the golf club is one of the premier clubs in the region. The club is visited by hundred’s of visitors every day who stop by for a close up look at these beautiful animals. The kangaroos don’t seem to care too much about the flying balls and can be often seen enjoying the sun right in the middle of the green while golfers are trying to play shots.
During the Vietnam War in the late 1960’s early 1970’s the area of Cu Chi was heavily bombarded by the American’s using their huge B52’s and monstrous fire power. The Viet Cong in the area moved their offensive underground in an expanded tunnel system first used during the war with the French in the late 1940’s. The tunnels were an incredible maze holding hospitals, storage for food and weapons, schools, weapons factories and command centres not forgetting hundreds if not thousands of people. They stretched over 200km through the country and had an amazing array of booby traps and security mechanisms built in for protection. The entrances doors were in many cases no bigger than a A4 piece of paper and very well disguised.Today the some of the tunnels remain and have been widened to allow visitors to experience the conditions and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people. Many small tourist operators from Ho Chi Min City offer day trips to the tunnels which are about 70 km out of town.
Mount Prometheus is an active volcano on Mysterious Island which can be found off Tokyo Bay in Japan. Well its not quiet active, although it spits lava and smoke out and makes some pretty deep bellowing noises. It’s also not a real mountain, it’s made out of a lot of steel and concrete- in fact it is the centerpiece of DisneySea at the Tokyo Disneyland Resort. The mountain is a ride based on the Jules Verne novel Vulcania. It is a fast moving (75km) an hour journey to the centre of the earth in a drilling capsule designed by Captain Nemo. The three minute ride is one of DisneySea’s most popular, people queue up for hours to experience the ride which travels through mine shaft which goes to the Earth’s core, well at least into the bowels of DisneySea.
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In the late 1950’s a milkshake salesman came across two brothers Mac and Dick McDonald running a small but innovative hamburger restaurant in Bernardino, California. He got friendly and ended up going into partnership with the brothers and later buying them out in 1961 for $2.7 million dollars- the rest is history. Now McDonalds is the worlds biggest restaurant chain stretching to the four corners of the globe. The first branded McDonalds was opened in 1955 at Des Plains in Illinois, after decades of modifications and change what was left of the original building was demolished but a faithful replica of the original building has been built on the site using the original blueprints. It has been transformed into a museum with plenty of photos, memorabilia and presentations from the famous franchise. Strange thing is you can’t buy your favorite hamburger there, but there’s a nice new McDonalds just across the street.
A new attraction has opened in the West Rim of Grand Canyon, a about 2 1/2 hours drive from Las Vegas and is sure to be a huge hit with tourists. Its a glass skybridge which horseshoe like walk is suspended 4000 feet above the Colorado River. Over 200,000 visitors have walked the bridge since it opened in March this year and now other tourist facilities are popping up to cater for the visitors to the area.
The skybridge has met with mixed reation, some people love it while others think it the $75 enterance fee and no camera policy stinks expecially when the only photo you can get of you on the bridge costs $25. For more information: www.grandcanyonskywalk.com Read the rest of this entry »
ASIMO the amazing walking robot built by Honda is one of the feature exhibits at the Miraikan Emerging Science Museum in Odaiba the futuristic city in Tokyo Japan. ASIMO or the ‘Advanced Step in Innovative MObility” robot is an incredible humanoid robot which can even walk up stairs. It is hoped that with constant upgrades one day the robot will be able to take visitors on guided tours around the museum.
The museum has an amazing array of technological feats, many of them Japanese, including robotics, interactive displays featuring the Linimo Maglev 300km plus train, space and mining exploration and plenty of hands on interactive educational entertainment for people of all ages.
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