In fact, not a landscape at all. These are jelly fish, which all sit together in what might be called upside down (relative to the orientation of other species) on the sea bed.
These ones were photographed in one of the hemispherical tanks that are part of the Jellies as Art exhibition at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Uploaded some photos from my visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium a few weeks back (heading home from Big Sur). The frogs were something I hadn’t seen there before. In the Flickr stream though you’ll find some jellyfish photos. What visit to the Monterey aquarium would be complete without the clichéd orange and blue jellyfish? But there are also some other types from the Jellies as art exhibition area that you might not have seen.
Oh, and don’t miss the otter photos.
Tried to blog about this a couple of days ago, but that was when Flickr was having problems, and blog posting seemed to be one of the things that wasn’t working!
Schmap have now launched a version of their online city/region guides formatted for the iPhone. This is a very handy tool since you can access it over the iPhone’s cellular connection while you’re actually traveling (I don’t normally carry my laptop around when on vacation, but I do take my mobile phone with me).
No special URL needed (though I’d like it if one was available); the site will automatically give you the iPhone version when you visit from Mobile Safari.
As seems to be the case in many airports these days, there is Wi-Fi coverage all over the lounge area in Terminal 3 at London’s Heathrow, but you’d better make sure you have a full charge on your batteries if you plan to use it as even at the dedicated BT and T-Mobile hotspot ‘zones’ the power sockets have no juice.
And forget finding sockets anywhere in the main waiting areas – there’s none to be found (they’re all hidden under special covers in the floor). I have to wonder what the point of providing the Wi-Fi is if they don’t also provide the power for the laptops.
Still, it did work well for a quick connection from my N95 earlier – I connected to the BT Openzone, fired up Truphone and made some free international calls to let people know I’d arrived safely!
On the way back from Big Sur the other day I stopped off at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and spent a few hours enjoying the aquarium in relative peace (compared to the normal weekend crowds it was very quiet).
These unusual jelly fish are part of the Jellies: Living Art exhibit.
Yellow sandy beach, waterfall, clear blue water and a beautiful sunny day down at Big Sur. What could be better? Well, it would have helped if the trail from the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park parking lot to the observation deck had been open, but as it happens you can get almost the same view from the road above the cove.
This is the Nokia N95’s take on the view; the ones from my 20D will be coming later (once I have them off the camera). The rest of the day was spent driving back along the coast towards Monterey, where I stopped off at the aquarium, then back down south a little into Carmel for the sunset and dinner.
Another weekend at home this weekend, so I posted a few more photos from my trip back to England over Christmas & New Year. There are more in the Flickr stream too.
Last weekend we did a day trip up to Sugar Bowl, and I spent some of the time up there taking pictures, mostly at the Judah lodge area.
This shot, taken from the Judah lodge patio area, shows tiny people skiing (and snowboarding too) down one of the runs back to the lodge area. Even with the longest lens I have, they still look tiny on the slope.
My Flickr stream has more pictures from Sugar Bowl, including some photos of contestants in a ski & snowboard jumping competition that was going on there.
Tied up right next to the Alameda ferry terminal on Main Street is the mega-yacht Ulysses. She is 192′ long and able to house 14 guests in 7 staterooms, in addition to a crew of nine.
Interestingly, she has an unusual history. Just prior to being launched from the New Orleans shipyard that built her, she was almost totally destroyed by fire. After buying her remains from the insurance company, her original owner, New Zealand businessman Graeme Hart, had her taken to Brisbane, Australia and refitted totally.
Now she is in Alameda, California, at the Bay Ship yard, along with another ship from the Trinity stable: Pangaea.
So, my recent trip to Toronto was booked on the United Airlines website, and I ended up with three flights (I went via Las Vegas on the way out) all with UA flight codes, although two of them were operated by Air Canada. As is pretty much the norm for United, the flight they operated was late leaving San Francisco (they had to perform last minute repairs at the gate while we sat on the aircraft). That, combined with the 30 minute interval between inter-terminal shuttles at Las Vegas, meant I missed the original flight I had been booked on up to Toronto.
The Air Canada check-in desk staff kindly moved me on to the next flight, and all went well from there. Now I get back and discover that United had credited me with the mileage for SF to Las Vegas, and Toronto to SF, but had missed the flight that was changed. On the rare occasions that their website manages to show past itineraries, I can see the change recorded there, so they know what happened. But apparently they aren’t smart enough to handle the mileage credit too.
So I call customer service to be told that I need to send the boarding pass and a copy of the E-Ticket receipt (which is almost impossible to get to on their website because of repeated errors) to them. Since it is hard to get at online, I ask if they can send me a copy of the receipt since I can’t seem to get to it. “No, sorry, you need to call a different number for that.” OK, can I file a complaint about the ridiculousness of a system where I need to print something generated by a United database and send it back to United? “Yes sir. Let me give you the number for that…”
And why am I sending any of this information to them on paper? This was an online booking, made on their website. They already know that I was moved onto the next flight (because they were late getting to Las Vegas – and from what Air Canada told me, that’s not unusual). They already credited me the miles for 2 out of 3 segments. How hard can this be to fix online?
Is there anything I can do without calling another number? No, apparently not. The customer service desk is apparently just a telephone directory for United’s many other numbers. All he could do was give me other numbers to call. And the first person I spoke to managed to cut me off when I asked to be transferred to her supervisor. The only thing other than a number that I managed to get is an email address for the complaints – customervoice@united.com if anybody is interested.