Sun in the middle of Swedish winter is a sought after thing, and this photo by Flickr user mjlacey captures the seasonal beauty of sunlight on snow.
The oldest botanical garden in Sweden, Botaniska Trädgården (Botanical Gardens), located in the university town of Uppsala, was founded in 1655 and was originally used for teaching students about botany and pharmacy. Today the gardens extend over 34 acres with some 11,000 species from all over the world. Certainly worth a visit if you ever find yourself in this Swedish city.
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So much for Amtrak Joe. The government spent $1 million on two nights in Europe for the Vice President and his entourage last month, according to government contracts posted here. CNN confirmed with the State Department that the contracts are legitimate and calls them a rare look at White House travel expenses.
The eye-popping numbers: $585,000 for one night at the Hotel Intercontinental Paris Le Grand and $459,000 for a night at the Hyatt Regency London the Churchill Hotel. (Plus $321,000 for a limousine company, although Biden’s own limousine is flown over for such trips.)
The nice, round $1 million-for-two-nights number is lighting up Twitter with outrage and jabs. But the cost breaks down to about $500 per night at a five-star hotel in the world’s most expensive cities. Nothing weird about that.
So why is the bill so high? The charges cover 136 rooms, not just Biden’s. His entourage includes Secret Service, military, a medical unit, and a team that screens and serves his food, CNN reports. The room block may include reporters, though the government doesn’t pick up their tab. Some rooms might be used as office space.
Some members of the entourage stay more than one night. The contract for the London hotel is for 893 room nights, which sounds like a lot, but it averages out to 6.5 nights per room.
The cost could include paying guests to relocate, too.
CNN ran the figures by officials from past Republican administrations, all of who said the costs were reasonable. One former senior White House staffer who supervised travel arrangements told CNN that it sounds normal to have as many as 136 rooms.
The government doesn’t let hotels compete for these contracts or security reasons. Evidently it doesn’t use Priceline, either.
The bunker was found in 2011 by workers restoring the Palazzo Venezia, but its existence wasn’t revealed until now. The workers found a trap door in the cellar of a 15th-century building that led to nine rooms fortified with concrete walls up to two meters (6.6 feet) thick.
Researchers believe this was the 12th bunker Mussolini was said to have had. It was obviously never finished as there is no plumbing or electricity, only bare walls.
The bunker is 15 meters (49.2 feet) underground and could have withstood some serious bombing.
There are two escape routes in the bunker, one of which leads to a neighboring church garden. The other hasn’t been fully explored but leads in the direction of another of Mussolini’s bunkers.
While his network of bunkers protected Mussolini from Allied bombing, they didn’t protect him from his own people. He was killed by Communist partisans on April 27, 1945.
The bunker will open to tourists this autumn and will include a touchscreen display to explain its historical significance and the recording of an air raid siren to add a touch of atmosphere.
This decision is at odds with what Germany did with Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. While the exact location was known, it was decided not to turn it into a historical monument for fear that it would attract neo-Nazis. It wasn’t until 2006, and after much controversy, that a historic plaque was put up at the location.
Despite the Netherlands not quite being world renowned for their castles, Castle De Haar is a classic example of one, even complete with a moat. This shot by Dutch native Bert Kaufmann is exactly the kind that you would hope to capture yourself, where it’s easy to imagine strolls along the pond and enjoying a nice coffee from inside.
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The World Travel and Tourism Council has introduced a fun element to their Facebook page: rather than a timeline of their own milestones, they’ve designed a timeline highlighting all of the events in the travel industry. Starting in 1400 with the first passport, and ending with the 1,000,000,000 international tourist arrival in December 2012, it puts the whole development of tourism in context. The first airport dates to 1909 in College Park, Maryland, and there are now over 44,000 airfields and airports all over the world. Hilton pioneered the hotel chain concept in 1943, and now has properties in 78 countries on six continents. Expedia has been around for 17 years, and TripAdvisor just celebrated their 13th anniversary.
Check out all the travel industry milestones on WTTC’s Timeline, and be sure to click through all the years.