Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal has a great light show, called Aura, which was well worth it (pictures not allowed during the show though):

The next morning, I went around town for a few pictures in the many churches and couple of museums:

I went to check out the museum of modern art, and it was disappointing:

The observatory allowed or nice pictures:

Next was the much better Museum of Fine Arts, which was worth a good 3H, although I only had 2H-ish:

They had a special exhibition on Egypt and mummies, that was pretty good:

Last, I went to meet my friend Nicholas Zin and we went up to Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal:

Then came the fantastic Porsche Ice Force+ Program at Circuit Mecaglisse North of Montreal

And on the way back to the airport, I stopped at Montreal's Ecomuseum Zoo. It was quite cold, but cool to see animals happily frolicking in the snow:

After that Grand Palais' expositions on Toulouse Lautrec and Greco. We started with Toulouse Lautrec:

I actually like Greco, he's different enough to be interesting to me

After the expos, we took a few pictures outside, and some more when we came back to see Palais de la découverte the whole day:

grand palais

We then went next to the louvre for the little Xmas houses:

we got a seared foie gras sandwich, yum

We then finished up with pictures around the louvre and walked out nearby streets to a subway station that was meant to take us home, but didn't because of the strikes:

On my last day in Paris, I went to the Google office for a bit (few people were there because of the stupid strikes), and then went to walk nearby Printemps and Hausmann department stores for their Xmas decorations and terrace views:

I then had a show by the eiffel tower theatre, took a few shots while there:

the incapable government, has now put the tower behind airport security gates. Pathetic...

And then, I had to walk quite a while before I found an open subway station to get home. Sigh...

This was not our first time in Micronesia, we had been to [Truk Lagoon|perso/diving/post_2018-12-01_Diving-Truk-Lagoon-with-Truk-Odyssey.html] before, but first time in Palau, which is another world top diving destination. In the process we got to learn about the country too, which used to belong to Germany, then Japan (peacefully), and less peacefully during WWII.
The US liberated the country in a bloody battle at Peleliu, and eventually Palau opted for independence from the US and became a young republic 25 years ago. There are lots of signs left that this used to be a US territory, including the use of the dollar, gallons, NOAA weather station, and more.

On our first day, we did a kayak/snorkel tour to Nikko Bay with Sam's Tour

the tour did include visiting a japanese outpost

On our 2nd day, we boarded the Palau Siren for an 11 day diving tour of Palau. During that time on the Palau Siren, we had a half day Peleliu tour, which recounted the history of the US landing to liberate the Island from the japanese.
Unfortunately, the Japanese were well equipped and fought to the last one, infliciting significant losses to the US. Taking the place over too 74 days instead of the planned 4 days. The island has left over Japanese buildings, tanks, and amphibious vehicles for the beach landing:

found a nice hermit crab on the beach

also, plenty of small ones

runway that the americans wanted to capture

lots of crickets in the caves

thousand man cave was last on our tour

they drunk lots of beer

lots of bats live in there, now

one of the caves' exits

After our time on the Siren was over, we had one more day in Palau before flying out, so we took Sam's Palau Cultural day tour of Palau. We learned more about how Palau became a county with many states within it, and a bit about how it's ruled.
We saw the nice Nikko hotel before leaving for the day:

We then arrived to a cultural house where state leaders gather to conduct business

Next, was a hike to a waterfall:

the japanese built a train to shuttle out the boxite they were mining

and eventually we arrived

jennifer found a small snake on the way back

On the north side of the island, they have some monoliths that are around 2000 years old:

they also had yummy young coconuts

Last stop wsa the new congress that had just been built, partially financed by Taiwan and the EC. It looked like a mini Washington DC and was very pretty:

Even though Palau is not that big, each state within it, has its own license plate and while they drive on the right as per US influence, most of the cars also have a steering wheel on the right (wrong side) because they are second hand from Japan:

And that was it for Palau, it was then time to go to the airport and fly home