Budapest-Nyugati Railway Terminal

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Budapest-Nyugati pályaudvar (Budapest-Western Railway Terminal) is one of the three main railway terminals of Budapest, Hungary. It lies at the intersection of Grand Boulevard and Váci Avenue.

The station was planned by August de Serres and was built by the Eiffel Company. It was opened on 28 October 1877. Previously another station stood in its place, the end station of Hungary's first railway line, the Pest–Vác line (constructed in 1846). This building was pulled down in order to construct the Nagykörút - Grand Boulevard which is now smaller than the outer ringroad (Hungária körút - Hungary Boulevard) and the recently opened motorway ringroad M0 (2008).

The station gave name to the immediately adjacent Nyugati tér (Western Square), a major intersection where Teréz körút (Theresia Boulevard), Szent István körút (Saint Stephen Boulevard), Váci út (Váci Avenue), and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út (Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Avenue) converge. The square also serves as a transportation hub with several bus lines, tram 4 and 6, and a station of the M3 line of the Budapest Metro.

Hungarian State Railways runs regular service between the station and Budapest Ferihegy International Airport's Terminal 1. The trip takes approximately 25 minutes, costs 365 HUF, and runs 2-3 times per hour.

Beside the train station and partially above its open area there is the WestEnd City Center shopping mall.

Portions of the 2011 film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol were filmed, and took place, in and around the station.

Wikipedia - Budapest-Nyugati Railway Terminal

Navajo Bridge

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Navajo Bridge crosses the Colorado River's Marble Canyon near Lee's Ferry in the US state of Arizona. Apart from the Glen Canyon Bridge a few miles upstream at Page, Arizona, it is the only roadway crossing of the river and the Grand Canyon for nearly 600 miles (970 km). Spanning Marble Canyon, the bridge carries northbound travelers to southern Utah and to the Arizona Strip, the otherwise inaccessible portion of Arizona north of the Colorado River, which includes the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.

Prior to the construction of the first Navajo Bridge, the only river crossing from Arizona to Utah was at nearby Lee's Ferry, where the canyon walls are low and getting vehicles onto the water is relatively convenient. The ferry offered only unreliable service, however, as adverse weather and flooding regularly prevented its operation.

Wikipedia - Navajo Bridge

Keukenhof - the Garden of Europe

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Keukenhof ("Kitchen garden", Dutch pronunciation: [ˈkøːkə(n)ˌɦɔf]), also known as the Garden of Europe, is situated near Lisse, Netherlands, and is the world's largest flower garden. According to the official website for the Keukenhof Park, approximately 7,000,000 (seven million) flower bulbs are planted annually in the park, which covers an area of 32 hectares.

Keukenhof is located in South Holland in the small town of Lisse, south of Haarlem and southwest of Amsterdam. It is accessible by bus from the train stations of Haarlem, Leiden and Schiphol. It is located in an area called the "Dune and Bulb Region" (Duin- en Bollenstreek).

Keukenhof is open annually from the last week in March to mid-May. The best time to view the tulips is around mid-April, depending on the weather.

Wikipedia - Keukenhof

Monte Corona

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Monte Corona is a 609m high extinct volcano on the Canary Island of Lanzarote (Spain), near the village of Yé in the municipality of Haría. Its eruption around 4000 years ago covered a large area of the northeast of the island with lava, creating the Malpais de la Corona and two of the island's most-visited geological attractions, the Cueva de los Verdes and the Jameos del Agua.

Wikipedia - Monte Corona

Lake Vostok - Antarctica

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Lake Vostok (Russian: озеро Восток, lit. "Lake East") is the largest of more than 140 subglacial lakes found under the surface of Antarctica. The overlying ice provides a continuous paleoclimatic record of 400,000 years, although the lake water itself may have been isolated for 15 to 25 million years.

Lake Vostok is located at the southern Pole of Cold, beneath Russia's Vostok Station under the surface of the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is at 3,488 metres (11,444 ft) above mean sea level. The surface of this fresh water lake is approximately 4,000 m (13,100 ft) under the surface of the ice, which places it at approximately 500 m (1,600 ft) below sea level. Measuring 250 km (160 mi) long by 50 km (30 mi) wide at its widest point, and covering an area of 15,690 km2 (6,060 sq mi), it is similar in area to Lake Ontario, but with over three times the volume. The average depth is 344 m (1,129 ft). It has an estimated volume of 5,400 km3 (1,300 cu mi). The lake is divided into two deep basins by a ridge. The liquid water over the ridge is about 200 m (700 ft), compared to roughly 400 m (1,300 ft) deep in the northern basin and 800 m (2,600 ft) deep in the southern.

The lake is named after Vostok Station, which in turn is named after the Vostok, the 985-ton sloop-of-war sailed by one of the discoverers of Antarctica, Russian explorer Admiral Fabian von Bellingshausen. The word восток means "east" in Russian, and the name of the station and the lake also reflects the fact that they are located in East Antarctica. The lake was discovered and named by Russian geographer Andrey Kapitsa based on seismic soundings made during the Soviet Antarctic Expeditions in 1959 and 1964 to measure the thickness of the ice sheet. This was one of the last major geographic discoveries on Earth.

On 5 February 2012, a team of Russian scientists claimed to have completed the longest ever ice core of 3,768 m (12,400 ft) and pierced the ice shield to the surface of the lake. Samples of the freshly frozen water in the ice well are expected to be collected at the end of 2012 when the new Antarctic summer starts. The Russian team also plans to send a robot into the lake to collect water samples and sediments from the bottom. Unusual forms of life could be found in the lake's liquid layer, an ecosystem sealed off below the ice for millions of years, conditions which resemble those of the hypothesized ice-covered ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Source: Wikipedia - Lake Vostok

Mole Antonelliana

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The Mole Antonelliana is a major landmark of the Italian city of Turin. It is named for the architect who built it, Alessandro Antonelli. In Italian "Mole" (literally, "size") indicates a building of monumental proportions. Construction began in 1863, soon after Italian unification and was completed 26 years later, after the architect's death. Today it houses the National Museum of Cinema, and it is believed to be the tallest museum in the world.

Wikipedis - Mole Antonelliana