As you know, we’ve cruised a few times, and covered it here, and though we’ve cruised the now-somewhat-beleaguered Carnival Cruise Lines, we had no issues during our short trip. In fact, we really enjoyed our time on board the Imagination, and liked the Carnival experience more than the Royal Caribbean in some ways. (Given there’s so much discussion on differences between the two, we may have to do a comparison sometime.)
However, given Carnival’s recent issues with their ships and the fact that we’re hoping to do a Carnival cruise shortly …

For those looking for a good recap of last season – or at least one from Daenery’s POV – check out Adam WarRock’s remix of theMarySue’s Game of Thrones hip-hop song. Only one more day to go!

During our first 2012 visit to Disney World we visited Epcot and took in all of the must-sees that Nicole remembered from her childhood visits. Which of course meant a stop by Imagination! where Eric Idle in his role as the chairman of the Imagination Institution greets you for a tour of the facility before everyone’s favorite fictitious dragon Figment hijacks the visit. Located on the western side of the Future World area, the pavilion was originally opened back in 1982 and over the years has undergone three significant evolutions. …

Thanks to its favorable position between the sea and a fertile plain surrounded by two swamps that cut it off from the inner lands of Sardinia, Cagliari has been inhabited since prehistoric times. Established around the seventh century BCE as part of a string of Phoenician colonies across the island the city was first known as Karalis and was an important port at the time for trade with Africa. And it was due to this opportune positioning that made it such a valuable prize. By 238 BCE the island had …

While earthquakes weren’t all that an uncommon in Lisbon, the city suffering a handful of significant occurrences each century, the earthquake of November 1, 1755 proved especially devastating as it was one of the largest cities in Europe at the time and left an indelible mark upon the collective community. Voltaire would even write about it both in a poem he produced shortly after the quake, and then again in his 1759 novel ‘Candide.’ Even a hundred years later it would still find its way in poetic works like Oliver …

While we were visiting Montreal for the CSAtweetup of Curiosity’s landing we discovered the Star Wars Identities exhibit that the Montreal Science Centre was hosting and with that admission had general access to the rest of the centre. Up on the second floor at the back of the main building we came across an installation that reminded us of our favorite Portuguese inventor Pietro Proserpio. Created to commemorate the centre’s opening in May 2000 the pataphysicist Florent Veilleux designed his Electricity-to-Water (PTEEM) and Water-to-Wind (PTEVM) transformers to bring attention …

Due to budget constraints experienced by NASA, the Russian RKA, the Japanese JAXA, the European ESA, and the Canadian ASC-CSA in the early 1990s their respective projects (the Japanese Kibo laboratory, the Soviet Mir-2, the American Freedom, and the European Columbus) were merged together into a single multi-national program managed collaboratively by the participating space agencies. The station’s ownership and use is laid out in a series of intergovernmental treaties and agreements that divided the station into two areas. Russia retains full ownership of the Russian Orbital Segment and is …