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Masdar – The City of the Future?
Masdar was created by the Emir of Abu Dhabi, who commissioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston to research renewable energy sources. As a result, the concept of a self-sustaining, zero-CO2 city powered entirely by renewable energy emerged. To test this idea in practice, an area approximately 17 km southeast of Abu Dhabi (near Abu Dhabi International Airport) was selected. The project began in 2006, with an estimated cost of $22 billion and an expected completion date of 2016. However, due to the economic crisis, the final completion date was pushed to 2040. In Arabic, “Masdar” means “source” and refers to the technological innovations to be implemented in…
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Tavira, Algarve – simply Portugal!
Tavira is the most beautiful town in Algarve region – such opinions can be read on most websites, blogs or forums dedicated to Portugal. Personally, I won’t be original regarding this matter, as I fully agree with this. Tavira is halfway from Faro to Spanish border. It’s only 30 kilometres away from Faro and Spain. Despite a good location, Tavira is visited by far less tourists in comparison to the famous resorts located in western Algarve. This enables the town to preserve its authentic local character. The city has been under the reign of Moors for several centuries, which is reflected in an interesting architecture. The central point is the…
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Athens – weekend break in Greece
It was a long weekend, and I had no plans. I started browsing the web in the hope that I could find a cheap flight, which would be as near as miracle during the “high season”. To my surprise, the cheapest flight was to Athens. As it turned out, my journey didn’t end in the capital of Greece. The airport in Athens is connected convinently with many Greek Islands. My choice was Corfu, find out more about this green island here. Even though the trip to Athens wasn’t planned, I’d been thinking about it for a long time before. I wanted to confront the negative views of the Acropolis with…
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Armenia – Yerevan, even more Eternal City
A very long time ago, the moment I saw on TV the culinary program about Armenia, I knew that one time I would go there. Actually, it’s hard to tell what made me interested in Armenia. Perhaps the traditional cuisine I saw in the show, maybe beautiful views with the mountain Ararat in the background, or maybe information about the difficult political situation was the result that Armenia was added to my bucket list. However, it took me quite some time to decide finally to go there. Armenia once again reminded me of herself in Lviv, in the wonderful Cafe Virmenka. The taste and smell of coffee brewed on the…
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Azerbaijan, Baku – Mad Max in the shade of glass houses
Azerbaijan has always been the most mysterious country of the Southern Caucasus for me. While Armenia and Georgia seemed culturally close, in the case of Azerbaijan, even the name of its capital – Baku, sounded orientally. In fact, the Caspian Sea, actually the world’s largest lake, was an important communication route between the East and the West over the centuries ago. Actually, I hadn’t known what to expect from Azerbaijan. This country had seemed to me isolated from the rest of the world and expensive. However, Baku turned out to be a very cosmpolitan and cheap city. Apparently, my notion was caused by the high cost of obtaining a visa…
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Girl on a Trail – meet Lisboners!
After returning from Portugal, without hesitation I knew what would be the subject of the first post about this place. This time I won’t focus on the wonderful Lisbon’s architecture, beautiful viewpoints, yellow trams or sentimental rhythms of the Fado heared during the walk in Alfama. Of course, all these elements form the unique climate of the capital of Portugal, but mainly the people of this city will remain in my memory. In fact, they create this city and its specific atmosphere, without them Lisbon certainly wouldn’t be such a cheerful place. What are the people of Portugal like? It might seem that Portuguese, like Italians or the Spanish, have…
