Page 2 of 2
More Photos of South America
South America
Peru - More Photos of South America
- Details
- Written by: Richard_McKie
- Parent Category: Travel
- Category: South America
- Hits: 109945
We have 197 guests and no members online
In October 2016 we flew from southern England to Romania.
Romania is a big country by European standards and not one to see by public transport if time is limited. So to travel beyond Bucharest we hired a car and drove northwest to Brașov and on to Sighisiora, before looping southwest to Sibiu (European capital of culture 2007) and southeast through the Transylvanian Alps to Curtea de Arges on our way back to Bucharest.
Driving in Romania was interesting. There are some quite good motorways once out of the suburbs of Bucharest, where traffic lights are interminable trams rumble noisily, trolley-busses stop and start and progress can be slow. In the countryside road surfaces are variable and the roads mostly narrow. This does not slow the locals who seem to ignore speed limits making it necessary to keep up to avoid holding up traffic.
It was raining in the mountains on Easter Saturday.
We'd decided to take a couple of days break in the Blue Mountains and do some walking. But on Saturday it poured. In the morning we walked two kilometres from Katoomba to more up-market and trendy Leura for morning coffee and got very wet.
After a train journey to Mount Victoria and back to dry out and then lunch in the Irish Pub, with a Cider and Guinness, we decided against another soaking and explored the Katoomba antique stores and bookshops instead. In one I found and bought an unread James Bond book. But not by the real Ian Fleming.
Ian Fleming died in 1964 at the young age of fifty-six and I'd read all his so I knew 'Devil May Care' was new. This one is by Sebastian Faulks, known for his novel Birdsong, 'writing as Ian Fleming' in 2008.
Japan has 55 nuclear reactors at 19 sites. Two more are under construction and another twelve are in the advanced planning stage. Net Generating capacity is around 50 GW providing around 30% of the country's electricity (more here).
As a result of Japan’s largest earthquake in history on March 11 and subsequent tsunami all reactors shut down automatically as they were designed to do but cooling systems associated with two sites had been damaged.
Three reactor sites are adjacent to the earthquake epicentre and two were in the direct path of the tsunami. The Fukushima-Daiichi plant belonging to Tokyo Electric Power Company was particularly hard hit. It lost all grid connections, providing electricity, and its backup power plant was seriously damaged.