Sunny Isles Beach in Florida

21 December 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida Reading Time:  9 minutes

Oleta River State Park and the skyline of Sunny Isles Beach © panoramio.com - Richard Mc Neil/cc-by-3.0

Oleta River State Park and the skyline of Sunny Isles Beach © panoramio.com – Richard Mc Neil/cc-by-3.0

Sunny Isles Beach (SIB, officially the City of Sunny Isles Beach) is a city located on a barrier island in northeast Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The city is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Intracoastal Waterway on the west. Sunny Isles Beach is an area of cultural diversity with stores lining Collins Avenue, the main thoroughfare through the city. It is renowned for having the 14th tallest skyline in America despite its relatively low population.   read more…

Nassau on New Providence

1 October 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  18 minutes

Nassau welcome gateway © BrokenSphere/cc-by-3.0

Nassau welcome gateway © BrokenSphere/cc-by-3.0

Nassau is the capital and largest city of The Bahamas. With a population of 274,400 as of 2016, or just over 70% of the entire population of The Bahamas (≈391,000), Nassau is commonly defined as a primate city, dwarfing all other towns in the country. It is the centre of commerce, education, law, administration, and media of the country. Lynden Pindling International Airport, the major airport for the Bahamas, is located about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of the city centre of Nassau, and has daily flights to major cities in Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and the United States. The city is located on the island of , which functions much like a business district. Nassau is the site of the House of Assembly and various judicial departments and was considered historically to be a stronghold of pirates. The city was named in honour of William III of England, Prince of Orange-Nassau.   read more…

Walvis Bay in Namibia

17 September 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  8 minutes

Oyster farming © Olga Ernst/cc-by-sa-4.0

Oyster farming © Olga Ernst/cc-by-sa-4.0

Walvis Bay is a city in Namibia and the name of the bay on which it lies. It is the second largest city in Namibia and the largest coastal city in the country. The city covers a total area of 29 square kilometres (11 sq mi) of land.   read more…

Jacksonville in Florida

13 September 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  12 minutes

Riverside and Avondale © Ebyabe/cc-by-sa-3.0

Riverside and Avondale © Ebyabe/cc-by-sa-3.0

Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida, and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968. Consolidation gave Jacksonville its great size and placed most of its metropolitan population within the city limits. As of 2020, Jacksonville’s population is 949,611, making it the 12th most populous city in the U.S., the most populous city in the Southeast, and the most populous city in the South outside of the state of Texas. The Jacksonville metropolitan area has a population of 1,523,615 and is the fourth largest metropolitan area in Florida.   read more…

Hamilton on the Islands of Bermuda

23 July 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  6 minutes

Front Street © JoeyBagODonuts/cc-by-sa-3.0

Front Street © JoeyBagODonuts/cc-by-sa-3.0

The City of Hamilton, in Pembroke Parish, is the territorial capital of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. It is the territory’s financial centre and a major port and tourist destination. Its population of 854 (2016) is one of the smallest of any capital cities. According to Numbeo, Hamilton, Bermuda holds the record for the highest cost of living index in the world with the cost of living rate in Hamilton being at 147.42 as of 2021.   read more…

São Miguel Island, the largest island of the Azores

30 December 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  8 minutes

Fonte de Buraco Belvedere overlooking the village of Maia © José Luís Ávila Silveira/Pedro Noronha e Costa

Fonte de Buraco Belvedere overlooking the village of Maia © José Luís Ávila Silveira/Pedro Noronha e Costa

São Miguel Island, nicknamed “The Green Island” (Ilha Verde), is the largest and most populous island in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. The island covers 760 km² (290 sq mi) and has around 140,000 inhabitants, with 45,000 people residing in Ponta Delgada, the archipelago’s largest city. The ancient laurisilva forest has mostly been replaced by cultivated fields and imported trees and plants, such as the ubiquitous cryptomeria trees. There are some hot springs (caldeiras), generally located in the center of the island, in the area stretching from Povoação to Nordeste. The highest elevation on São Miguel is the Pico da Vara at 1,103 metres (3,619 ft). Lying at the eastern end of the island, it is the focus of a Special Protection Area containing the largest remnant of laurisilva forest on the island, which is home to the endemic and critically endangered bird, the Azores bullfinch. Whale watching tours, starting from Ponta Delgada and Vila Franca do Campo are available. One may see sea turtles, dolphins and humpback whales.   read more…

Lower New York Bay

7 December 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, New York City Reading Time:  7 minutes

Brighton Beach © Billy Hathorn/cc-by-sa-3.0

Brighton Beach © Billy Hathorn/cc-by-sa-3.0

Lower New York Bay is a section of New York Bay south of the Narrows, the relatively narrow strait between the shores of Staten Island and Brooklyn. The southern end of the bay opens directly to the Atlantic Ocean between two spits of land, Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and Rockaway, Queens, on Long Island. The southern portion between Staten Island and New Jersey, at the mouth of the Raritan River, is named Raritan Bay. The Hudson Canyon, the ancient riverbed of the Hudson River which existed during the last ice age when the ocean levels were lower, extends southeast from Lower New York Bay for hundreds of miles into the Atlantic Ocean. The nearby part of the Atlantic Ocean between New Jersey and Long Island is the New York Bight.   read more…

Haulover Park in Florida

30 September 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida Reading Time:  5 minutes

Haulover Beach at north Miami Beach © flickr.com - Infrogmation of New Orleans/cc-by-2.0

Haulover Beach at north Miami Beach © flickr.com – Infrogmation of New Orleans/cc-by-2.0

Haulover Park is a 177-acre (72 ha) urban park owned and operated by Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation & Open Spaces Department, located in metropolitan Miami, just north of Bal Harbour, Florida. The park is located on a shoal between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, just north of the Broad Causeway (SR 922) and Collins Avenue.   read more…

Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca

16 September 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Union for the Mediterranean Reading Time:  8 minutes

© BenSlivka/cc-by-sa-4.0

© BenSlivka/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Hassan II Mosque (Grande Mosquée Hassan II) is a mosque in Casablanca, Morocco. It is the largest functioning mosque in Africa and is the 7th largest in the world. Its minaret is the world’s second tallest minaret at 210 metres (689 ft). Completed in 1993, it was designed by Michel Pinseau under the guidance of King Hassan II and built by Moroccan artisans from all over the kingdom. The minaret is 60 stories high topped by a laser, the light from which is directed towards Mecca. The mosque stands on a promontory looking out to the Atlantic Ocean; worshippers can pray over the sea but there is no glass floor looking into the sea. The walls are of hand-crafted marble and the roof is retractable. A maximum of 105,000 worshippers can gather together for prayer: 25,000 inside the mosque hall and another 80,000 on the mosque’s outside ground.   read more…

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