Laguna Beach Bikini

I have been in southern California for the winter. But springtime is almost here. So for me it is time to get back on the road and being my travels for 2010.

The first leg of my journey is from San Juan Capistrano, California to San Diego, California. The distance is just about 50 miles, and it takes just under two hours by Amtrak train. The train is the Pacific Surfliner which starts in San Luis Obispo, goes through Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Orange County and ends in downtown San Diego.

I have ridden this route before and it is a very pleasant journey. The train is rarely crowded, except around holidays, and the scenery is excellent. And my tickets was not expensive, about $18 one way.

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After spending about three weeks in San Diego I moved again. I traveled by Amtrak to Irvine Amtrak Station and then took four local buses to Laguna Beach. OCTA buses 86, 70, 89 and 1. (OCTA stands for Orange County Transportation Authority.) An all-day pass on OCTA costs four dollars.
Actually the way I [...]

Photo courtesy of Amazing Travel Photos
Perfect weather year round, Blue skies, blue Pacific water–what more could you ask for? San Diego is one of the nicest cities in America to live. Or to visit.
San Diego is home to the San Diego Padres baseball team, the San Diego Chargers American football team and the United States [...]

Everyone knows that the USA is a land of immigrants. Around the end of the 19th century and early 20th century there were massive waves of immigrants from Europe. Many came from Italy and Eastern Europe and settled all throughout America. As a result, many U.S. cities from New York to Chicago to San [...]

A few organizational notes here. The Roving Photographer column, which is my personal travel blog, is now a part of Travel Planet. Travel Planet also has a section for food and drink called Bon Appetit, a section for covering travel accommodation called Hotels & Hostels and a section covering transportation called Planes & Trains. So [...]

Photo courtesy of Amazing Travel Photos
“All Aboard! Next stop San Diego!”
The Amtrak locomotive is sitting in San Diego’s Santa Fe station which is the main railway station. It is located right downtown in beautiful sunny San Diego. I had just stepped off the train with all my bags and saw this incredible sight of the [...]

At the beginning of November I flew from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Orange County’s John Wayne Airport on Continental Airlines. The route went through Houston, Texas, which is a Continental Airlines hub, and then Newark Airport on the east coast before flying to California. Total travel time was about 28 hours.
In California, everything is spread [...]

Well, it is time to say Adios to Argentina. I fly from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Newport Beach, California. Google maps can’t show direction across continents, but Argentina is on the east coast of South America way down in the south. It is something like 6000 miles from Bs. As. to Newport Beach.
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I [...]

The bridge is the Puenta de la Mujer Bridge (Bridge of the Women) at Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires. It was designed by Santiago Calatrava and built in 2001. After arriving at my accommodation in downtown Buenos Aires, I took a walk from my hostel down to the waterfront. It was a beautiful spring day [...]

I spent the month of September in the American midwest. Overall the weather was very nice. But at the end if the month the weather turned cold and wet. This is a clear sign that winter is on its way, so it seemed like a good time to head for a warmer climate. I heard [...]

While I was visiting Cleveland I observed a group of young people exercising as group in front of the Town City Center in downtown Cleveland. Many were wearing red jackets or sweatshirts. The group turned out to be City Year.
City Year is a corps of young people, aged 17 to 24, that spend a year [...]

The term Rock-and-Roll was coined by Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed back in 1951 when he would play black Rhythm & Blues records on the radio for a white teenage audience. Now Cleveland is home to the rock and roll Hall of Fame. So, yeah, Cleveland rocks!

I am visiting the midwest for a few weeks [...]

I do a lot of traveling and have a mobile telephone number from the local carrier in most countries I visit. I do this by purchasing a SIM card with pre-paid minutes from a local provider, which in many places might be Vodaphone, and installing the SIM card into an unlocked quad-band phone. (Not long [...]

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The next leg of my travel is through the American midwest. But instead of flying I took an Amtrak Train from Penn Station in New York City to Cleveland, Ohio. The distance is about 750 km or 465 miles.
The train was the #49 Lake Shore Limited which travels daily from New York’s Penn [...]

I left the former USSR and now I am back in the USSA. I was behind the “iron curtain” for over a year. Now I am back behind the golden curtain–the Big Apple, New York City. I flew into JFK airport in New York and stayed in midtown Manhattan near Penn Station on 34th Street [...]

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I have to take care of some business back home, so I returned to the U.S. on Saturday. I flew on Aerosvit Flight 131 from Kiev, Borispol Aeroport to New York’s JFK airport. Aerosvit flies direct from Kiev to JFK five days a week. I booked the flight a few weeks [...]

I am in Kyiv, Ukraine for about two weeks. Kyiv is the Ukrainian spelling. The Russian spelling is Kiev. (Actually they both use the Cyrillic alphabet.)
Regardless of how you spell it, we are here in Kyiv for photography. We took an overnight train from Lviv. It left at 10:47 PM and arrived the next morning [...]

For most of our time in Lviv, I was staying in an apartment on Rynok Square. Rynok means “market” in Ukrainian and Rynok Square is the main square in the old city. It is where you see most of the tourists.
But I am spending my last day and night in Lviv at the old Hotel [...]

Now we are settled in Lviv for the next month or so. We found a place in the center of the old town of Lviv right on Rynok Square. Rynok means market in Ukrainian. Old building, very interesting. I will try to post some photos.
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We were in Lviv last year and were impressed [...]

Well we left Prague for the summer. On Sunday night we took an overnight train from Prague to Lviv, Ukraine. No, the picture above is not our train. Here is the route that Google maps came up with.
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The actual route we took skipped Brno but instead went through Pardubice, Olomouc and Ostrava. The [...]