Costa Concordia grounded off the coast of Italy last January and work has been ongoing since then to clear the area of all things cruise ship related. Taking a cruise ship that has fallen over on its side and getting it back upright is apparently a gigantic job that has never before attempted. This week, Costa Cruises, along with its salvage company, launched a website with detailed information, plans and images relating to the Costa Concordia wreck-removal project.
Parbuckling is the technical term for the process of rotating the wreck into an upright position and is said to be one of the most complex and crucial phases of the removal plan. The Parbuckling Project website gives step by step illustrations that show just exactly how the salvage team hopes to make that happen.
The site’s main features include background information about the project and the companies involved, up-to-date news, multimedia assets including videos, 3-D animations and pictures, thematic insights and technical details.Just completing the initial phase, anchoring and stabilization of the wreck has been done to prevent any slipping or sinking.
The next phase of the removal plan prepares the false bottom on which the wreck will rest after rotation in two separate phases.
First grout bags will be positioned and filled with cement to create a stable base for the hull.
Next, platforms will be fixed in place and a crane will be used to install water-tight structures called caissons on one side of the wreck.
Then the parbuckling happens, lifting the ship up on one side. To balance the wreck, more caissons will be installed on the other side, refloating the ship which has been resting on the platform shown above.
Its a never-been-done feat of engineering that takes technology from a number of unrelated fields to make it happen. Costa promises that the Parbuckling Project website will be constantly updated to reflect the different phases of the plan as the work progresses.
Getting the ship out of the way can’t come soon enough for environmentalists who recently found and rescued giant mussels from under the wreck, as we see in this video.
I love to travel but I hate to see the sights. Have you ever found yourself running around looking for obscure museums and other tourist attractions while on a trip and wondered what the point was? I prefer to spend my travel time on the road the same way I enjoy my leisure time at home: wandering around, meeting people and indulging my curiosity when I stumble upon something of interest.
Depending on who your travel companion is, it might be a struggle to avoid sightseeing. My wife, for example, is much better at sightseeing than I am. I enjoy museums, but I prefer strolling through, stopping to read only the most interesting exhibits. She, on the other hand, is often quite content to read every word on every plaque in the entire place while I roam around looking for a bench and a newspaper to pass the time.
Our biggest tourism incompatibility, though, is our divergence on archaeological sites. I’m more of a history buff than my wife is. In fact, I like to read history books and, with some rare exceptions, she does not. But I hate schlepping around archeological sites and she loves it. These places, by their nature, lack shade and somehow it always seems to be 100 degrees when you visit them. I’m not ashamed to admit that when given the choice between visiting Pompeii this summer and eating at the world’s best pizzeria in Naples, I chose the pizza and I don’t regret it. (I can read a book or watch a documentary on Pompeii, but reading about pizza isn’t the same)
My worst nightmare is being part of a guided tour where I’m herded around and lectured. If the guide is outstanding, it’s barely tolerable for me, but most of the time I’m looking at my watch or searching for an emergency exit I can slip out of. If the attraction only offers guided tours, I’m most likely to give it a pass. I’d much rather look around on my own and have a guidebook or brochure I can read at my leisure. For me, travel is all about freedom and having to abide by someone else’s schedule and tastes is not my cup of tea.
I’ve been to London twice in the last decade. On the first trip, I ran around like a mad dog visiting all the “must do” sights listed in my guidebook and, while I enjoyed many of the attractions, I felt tired and ready to go home after three or four days of hardcore sightseeing. I went back in August of this year on another four-day visit but this time I made a point of visiting just one real tourist attraction-the British Museum. The rest of the time I just picked a neighborhood that sounded interesting, took the tube there and wandered around.
If I saw something of interest, I went in, but I wasn’t out searching for specific attractions. I spent a lot of time walking on quiet, residential side streets, taking the pulse of the city and its residents. It was a stark contrast to my previous visit because when you “see the sights” in any city, you’re surrounded by fellow travelers, who know little about the place you are trying to digest.
I enjoyed my second, non-sightseeing trip to London infinitely more than the first and by the end of the four days, I wanted more, not less of London. I’m not suggesting that people visit Cairo and skip the pyramids or travel to China and pass on the Great Wall, but if you just run around from one tourist attraction to the next, you won’t get much of a flavor of what a place is really like. Take my advice and don’t obsess over seeing the sights. You’ll save some money and you might have a better time too.
Tijuana. Chernobyl. Sicily’s mafioso strongholds. Cairo’s Garbage City. The contaminated holy waters of Varanasi, India. Bosnia. Norway’s frozen tundra. These might not be the places you’d like to visit on your next holiday, but you will want to read about them in the latest edition of “The Best American Travel Writing(2012),“ which came out on October 3.
I’ve been an avid reader of this series, which is edited by Jason Wilson, the author of “Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, Obscure, and Overrated in Spirits,” since it debuted in 2000. Each year, there are stories that resonate with me and others that make me wonder how they qualified for such a prestigious anthology. Everyone has their own taste, and I for one, would have featured Jeffrey Tayler’s essay in “World Hum” about the travel memories conjured from an old address book, Gadling contributor David Farley’s fascinating account of his time in Minsk, or any number of other stories that appeared here on Gadling over a few of the selections in this year’s collection.And longtime readers of this series can’t help but notice how it seems to get slimmer and slimmer each year. This year’s book weighs in at just 222 pages, the leanest ever, while most of the previous editions of this series tipped the scales in the 300-400 page range. Bigger isn’t always better, and I don’t know if the trend is a sad commentary on the genre or if the publisher is simply trying to keep the price from rising above the current $14.95, but I hope the collection bulks back up in the future.
But BATW is always worth a read and this year’s edition, edited by the author, William T. Vollmann, has a host of standout pieces. The best travel stories are almost always about the kind of places mentioned in the outset of this post – unlikely tourist destinations – and BATW 2012 underscores that reality. Here’s a brief rundown of my favorite pieces from this year’s volume.
Tourists have been permitted to visit Northern Ukraine’s Chernobyl Exclusion Zone since January 2011, but I still think Henry Shukman is nuts. In the aftermath of the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, 2 towns and 91 villages around the site were evacuated and some 600,000 workers engaged in a massive cleanup operation that left many stricken with cancer and other ailments. According to Shukman, some 2.7 million people around the region were affected, but these days, the 1,660 square foot exclusion zone is a “big untamed forest” where wildlife is making a comeback.
Shukman’s research is impressive and he tells a great story, but the highlight for me was his willingness to drink samogon, a local moonshine produced in the exclusion zone. I wouldn’t have done it, but I certainly enjoyed living through his experience.
I’m not sure I’d want to spend a lot of time in the garbage dumps of Cairo, but Woods’ story about the city’s zabaleen- Coptic Christian recycling entrepreneurs was surprisingly fascinating. According to Woods, the zabaleen turn 80% of what they collect into postwaste, salable materials. Woods’ account of how the zabaleen have survived despite the entrance of multinational waste management firms is a must read.
I have deep roots in Sicily and have traveled all over the island, but I’d never heard of Addiopizzo, an organization that supports businesses which refused to pay protection money (pizzo), until I read Swick’s informative and beautifully written story. Swick takes us to Zen 2, Palermo’s worst slum and introduces us to brave Sicilians who are standing up the mafia, despite the risks.
What do you want from Tijuana my friends? You want to meet a girl? As soon as I read that lead, I knew I was going to like this story, and it was actually even better than I bargained for. Curtis’s account of his trip to the now gringo-free T.J. in search of an obscure sports museum is hilarious.
But it’s also full of perceptive observations about how the U.S. media portrays all of Mexico as a “bloody slaughterhouse” rather than dissecting the crime problem as the “complicated, regionalized” issue that it is. Americans have mostly abandoned T.J. but Curtis concludes that the violence that scared thrill seekers off may now be “mostly a creation of the American mind.”
India’s holy city of Varanasi, Pico Iyer tells us, is like a “five-thousand year old man who may have put on a fcuk shirt and acquired a Nokia but still takes the shirt off each morning to bathe in polluted waters and uses his new cell phone to download Vedic chants.” Well then, just how polluted are those holy waters?
They “flow past thirty sewers, with the result that the brownish stuff the devout are drinking and bathing in contains three thousand times the maximum level of fecal coliform bacteria considered safe by the World Health Organization.” Iyer, who lives a reclusive, unconnected lifestyle in Japan, knows how to tell a story and this is a characteristically rich, insightful piece from one of the world’s great travel writers.
Jenkins has made a career out of embarking on trips that sound dreadful but are great fun to read about, and this account of his 100-mile cross-country skiing adventure across Hardangervidda National Park in Norway with his brother is no exception. Jenkins is the rare writer with the fortitude to persevere against winds and cold that kept them to a pace that, at one point, brought them just 14 miles down the path after seven hours of grueling exertion. The story also contains some thought-provoking insights into the Amundsen-Scott race for the South Pole in 1911.
When trying to make your travels extra special, the accommodation can really make or break the ambiance of your vacation. Vacation rentals can help with this by allowing you to stay in all types of unique properties, from the bizarre and architecturally innovative to luxurious and historical castles.
While some of these properties feature rich history, others are more modern with medieval architecture and luxurious amenities. Either way, these castle vacation rentals will make you feel like a king or queen.
For a more visual idea of some top castle vacation rentals from around the world, check out the gallery below.
The grounded cruise shipCosta Concordia may not be on trial itself but court proceedings began this week, looking for answers to what happened. More than 100 lawyers representing survivors and the families of passengers and crew members who died in the January event are on hand to plead their case.
The proceedings will be based on evidence from the ship’s black box recordings, navigational details and conversations recorded on the bridge of the ship. Making up part of the 270 pages of documents before the court is Captain Francesco Schettino’s testimony that his ship was not too close to the island of Gigio. Schettino maintains that he was simply following company policy to “salute” the island.
Thirty-two people died after Schettino allegedly took the ship off course and dangerously close to the Tuscan island of Giglio on the night of January 13. The ship then ran aground and capsized. Hearings this week will help decide whether to put Schettino on trial for manslaughter among other charges.
“We want to look him in the eye to see how he will react to the accusations,” German survivor Michael Liessen, 50, who was attending with his wife said in a ClarionLedger report.