Bill Murray's Blog, page 101
June 10, 2016
Bonjour St. Pierre et Miquelon
St. Pierre, the main town on the islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon, French territory within view of Newfoundland, Canada. Passports required and Euros spent. France in north America. Not too big, though. 21 people on today’s flight from Halifax. Had to call a taxi to leave the airport.
June 7, 2016
Road Trip
On 2 wk #travel-induced #DigitalDiet, w/ limited input. Pls take care of world. NE #Canada, #Greenland, #Iceland. #Photography here. Cheers!
— Bill Murray (@BMurrayWriter) June 7, 2016
I’ll put photos here, and please follow @BMurrayWriter. Cheers for now.
Picturesque Gangtok, Sikkim
Here are five shots from Gangtok, the very picturesque capital of Sikkim, a former kingdom now part of India, tucked in between Nepal and Bhutan in the Himalayas, up against the Chinese border. Click to enlarge.
And finally, Mt. Kangchenjunga, the World’s Third Highest Mountain, along the Road to Changu (Tsomgo) Lake, Sikkim. That’s quite a drive.
May 20, 2016
Audiobooks Now Available
I’m happy to say that as of yesterday both my print books, Common Sense and Whiskey and Visiting Chernobyl, are also available on Audible.com as audiobooks, narrated by me:
Common Sense and Whiskey: print version – audio version
Visiting Chernobyl: print version – audio version
Look for a brand new book in late summer, about travel in the far north, Svalbard, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, maritime Canada, Finland. See previous post.
Time for a Northern Road Trip
Just about time to get the show on the road. We’re a couple weeks away from one last reporting trip to maritime Canada, Iceland, and Greenland ahead of my next book, due at the end of the summer, about travel in the far north. This time we’ll visit St. Pierre et Miquelon, a French territory (passports, Euros) that’s line-of-sight with Newfoundland. We’ll take a spin around Newfoundland and a little bit beyond, to the northern tip and Quirpon Island, and visiting L’Anse aux Meadows, a wintering spot for Norse explorers several hundred years before Columbus. We’ll spend some time on the east coast of Greenland to complement our previous trip the west coast, and we’ll fill in a couple of blanks on our fourth trip to Iceland. Coverage here starting soon.
May 8, 2016
May 6, 2016
Twenty Cities Quiz
Friday quiz time. Some of these cities are nice and easy to recognize, others are pretty much impossible. When you’ve made your guesses click at the bottom to see how you did. And please brag on yourself in the comments. The numbers correspond to the photo above them. Good luck.
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Now if you’re ready, get the answers.
1. Havana, Cuba
2. Milan, Italy
3. Quito, Ecuador
4. Bergen, Norway
5. Antananarivo, Madagascar
6. Bhaktapur, Nepal
7. Trick question: Berlin, WEST Germany on New Years Eve 1989. Those people are standing on the Berlin Wall.
8. Vilnius, Lithuania
9. Phnom Penh, Cambodia
10. Verenna, Italy
11. Torshavn, Faroe Islands
12. Thimpu, Bhutan
13. Jerusalem
14. Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
15. Gangtok, Sikkim, India
16. Minsk, Belarus
17. Yerevan, Armenia
18. Gdansk, Poland
19. Riga, Latvia
20. La Paz, Bolivia
May 3, 2016
St. Helena Flight
Here’s video of that first Comair flight to the remote island of St. Helena, 1200 miles west of Africa in the south Atlantic Ocean. They mean to make it a weekly flight in time. As the island newspaper has it (pdf), the shaly-looking landing encountered wind shear, causing authorities to rethink things. Back to the drawing board for now.
Here’s video of that first Comair flight to the remote is...
Here’s video of that first Comair flight to the remote island of St. Helena, 1200 miles west of Africa in the south Atlantic Ocean. They mean to make it a weekly flight in time. As the island newspaper has it (pdf), the shaly-looking landing encountered wind shear, causing authorities to rethink things. Back to the drawing board for now.
April 26, 2016
St Helena Airport Opening Postponed – Again
The site of the long-sought, still unrealized airport.
So close!
This has got to be frustrating for all concerned. Intrepid little Atlantic Star airlines has been sending out emails for months with news of one problem after another involved in getting the air link to St. Helena Island up and running. At the time of our visit to St. Helena aboard the RMS St. Helena in December 2009/January 2010 they were already working and planning for this new airport and still today the Royal Mail Ship is the only regular transportation to the island, around 1200 miles west of Angola.
Hang in there, Saints.
(Here are some photos of St. Helena Island, one of the more remote corners of the world.)
