The first day of my vacation in Florida was the only day when it was not supposed to rain, so Kerrie and I decided to take advantage of the favorable weather to go to her favorite theme park of all times - The Cypress Gardens. It was shut down about two years ago after 62 years of operation. People were lobbying the state to buy it, but finally some rich millionair bought it and opened it again two weeks prior to our visit.

There was an indoor butterfly pavillion where the temperature was much warmer than outside, which Kerrie found very comfortable. There were several kinds of butterflies. One of them looked like a zebra. Here is the special video report by Kerrie:

Due to the recent hurricanes and the fact that the park has been closed for more than a year, there were not as many plants as there used to be. But still it was great to see some exotic plants that I have not seen before. One of them is the Banyan Tree which is quite huge. Parts of the tree's branches came down to the ground and became new roots! On certain parts of the tree, other plants found a home.

There were some other interesting trees that seemed to be happy to grow right out of the water and some preferred to grow sideways instead of upwards. Some parts of the park looked like wild jungle.

There were various shows in various sections of the park. One worth mentioning is the moving statue with fountains of water coming from its the head and hands. It actually was a real person dressed in an amazing costume through which the water was going through to the head and hands. Have a look at the video and see several pipes coming from behind the dress as the woman came down the stairs after the show:

The biggest show of the park is the ski show. When first Kerrie mentioned this to me, I thought that was some ski show on artificial snow, but later she told me that in Florida skiing implies water skiing. Here is a video clip of one of the acrobatic moves: Also as part of the show there was a hang glider who was launched by a tow boat and was able to fly up pretty high. He was cruising in the sky to the sound of music and was able to land on the beach right when the music ended. Amazing timing! Check out the video of his landing:

The latest addition to the park was the rides. They were not as thrilling as the ones in Great Advanture in New Jersey, but still were fun. The great thing was that there were almost no lines and you could go on a ride twice without getting out. Some roller coasters were not designed to fit someone of my size, but I found out about that after I came down from the ride. Kerrie cannot tolerate roller coaters for an extended period of time and I was ready to protect her precious dress from an accident. She did find her ultimate ride though - the one that made her look like a princess in a palace.

Here are all of the photos taken at Cypress Garden.

I wish I could take another vacation to document my Grand Canyon vacation... Anyway, I have finally finished my review of the trip. I am still waiting for James to give me the photos from the flight to Grand Canyon from Las Vegas which were left on his laptop. I will add them as soon as he gives them to me.

Click here for my review of the Grand Canyon trip

Review of my stay in Las Vegas

I am back from my trip to Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. I had a awesome time at both. I took hundres of photos and dozens of videos and am in the process of sorting them and uploading to my website. It will take several days until I fully finish this process. For now here is the beard that I grew during the nine days at Grand Canyon.

This is my last post before my departure. I will spend 9 days hiking and rafting down the Colorado river. I will be in complete wilderness sleeping in a tent. This also means that for all that time I will have no access to electricity and internet. So I will not be able to post any new content in my blog during the trip. But when I return I am sure I will have plenty of photos and videos of my trip that I will post on the site. I am taking 3 batteries for my camera to ensure I have enough for the trip.

Three of my friends and I are going to meet a larger group of people who come from all over the country to experience the Grand Canyon with the help of Moki Mac River Expeditions, Inc.. The Grand Canyon trip will be from August 31 through September 9th. Then my friends and I are going to spend 3 days in Las Vegas. I will be back in New York on September 13.

It has been quite a cold Spring this year, so appropriately, my friends and I went hiking to Cold Spring. There was a huge group of students from the International House going there as well. We all met at the I-House entrance early in the morning. Everyone besides my 3 friends and I took the Metro-North train to Breakneck Ridge which dropped them off right at the beginning of the hiking trails. Since one of my friends had a car, we drove instead of taking the train. The timing was perfect. In a matter of minutes after we parked the car on the side of the road at the final destination, we saw the I-House army coming from the train station. Just before getting into the woods, the guide of the group probably wished he had a megaphone as he was announcing the lack of bathrooms in the forest.

The start of the hike was quite difficult. We had to climb quite a steep mountain. Some of the members of the group needed help to get through some of the tricky parts of the climb. The hard work got paid off by the spectacular views of the Hudson River valley that we saw from the top of the mountain. The road on which we drove looked just like from an airplane. I brought the American Flag with me to celebrate the upcoming Memorial Day holiday. (Just kidding)

We ate lunch, took a nap without the fear of sliding down 1000 feet and separated from the rest of the I-House group since they could not keep up with our professional hiking pace. Several times we got confused which way to go. Fortunately there were some fellow hikers on our way who had a map.

Click here for all photos.

During my trip to St. Petersburg I only had a chance to take photos during one evening as I was walking to St. Petersburg University to find a book that a friend of mine wanted me to get there. This was around 7:30 at night, but at this time of the year the city gets as dark as at midnight. During the night the buildings and bridges in the center of the city are beautifully lighted up. I am not sure when they started doing that, but they did not do that when I was living there.

I'm off to St. Petersburg until December 11th...

Today I returned from my vacation in Norway where I visited my friend Marianne. The trip was a lot of fun. At that time of the year there was plenty of snow so we did some skiing, and sledding.

Marianne lives in Bergen. Her parents have a nice house just 15 minutes away by car from the town center. Bergen is a very cute town with lots of hills. It is located in the valley between two mountains. If you look at it from the top, you can see that part of it's shape is similar to Manhattan if you take aside the abscence of tall buildings. Buildings in the center of town have the typical European look with high ceilings. Although there are some wide open areas, but some streets are quite narrow. The primary means of public transportation are buses. What reminded me of St. Petersburg are the Trolleybuses - electrically powered buses. They look almost the same as the Russian ones, just a bit less crowded. The outskirts of Bergen are situated on the slopes of the mountains and consist of mostly wooden residential houses. There are some cement apartment complexes as well.

The pictures from the trip are here.

I was in Munich for several months to work on a project for my company. I was there in June and December 2002 and January 2003. The complete collection of photos and videos that I took there can be found here. On my way to Munich in June British Airways decided to put in the business class even though I had 1st class tickets. I am not sure why, perhaps because I came in to the airport late and all 1st class seats were taken. I enjoyed the comfortable seats and the personal TV screen where I could choose what to watch. After the plane landed in Munich, it literally took 15 minutes to go through the customs control, pickup the luggage and go out from the airport to the taxi stand. The Munich airport is quite big, but the process of arriving and getting out to the street is very efficient. This city fascinated me with it's beauty. With it's antique buildings, broad squares, arches, fountains, underground passages, and trams it reminded me of St. Petersburg. What was impressive after coming there from New York City is how remarkably clean Munich is. There was hardly any garbage on the streets. Once I bought some chestnuts from the street vendor there and when I was trying to get rid of the shells, I had to wait until I found a garbage can not to litter such clean streets. Funny that in Munich almost no one crosses a street on red light, even if there are absolutely no cars on the street. That I found frustrating. When I came to a red traffic light and there were no cars, I would also look around for people. If I did not see either, I would cross the street knowing that I would not get any dirty looks from the locals. The cars on Munich streets are definitely smaller than the ones in New York. I think it has something to do with high gas prices in Europe and smaller cars are more efficient on gas. One particular car I found really cute. It was called Smart Car. When I saw it I thought of many times I was looking for parking spaces in New York and saw some space between cars which were just too small for my Nissan Altima, but if I had that little Smart Car, I would have no problem parking it there. The number one alternative to cars are bicycles. This is a typical "parking lot" with tons of bicycles. Many sidewalks in Munich have a separate section for bicycles. I've experienced the pain of how long some German words are. For the life of me I could not pronounce the street my hotel was on for a long time. After the hotel attendant repeatedly pronounced the name of the street, I finally got it. An amazing site is a typical German beer garden. Hundreds of people gather there after work to drink beer from huge glass mugs and socialize. It's similar to American "happy hour" event, but in a beer garden everyone is sitting at a table. I guess it makes it more difficult to mingle around. But seems like most people come with friends and stay together as a group. There are so many people, that a truck is driving around to pick up the empty glasses.