LA pier

With a lot of gratitude to the wonderful people in my life, I continue to travel around the globe.
Here, I present to you the Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles.

As I learned, Los Angeles is a city of 18 million people! Almost twice the population of Greece!

Fun fact about Los Angeles, even though they do have a metro, they also call "metro local" the bus service. When I expressed my sincere "WHY???" to a local he seemed a bit puzzled. It was not strange for him at all :)

L.A. is a mosaic of cultures and people with beautiful weather. I will definitely go back one day!

Arizona art

We had a discussion about Arizona today, and it reminded me of the nice ~10 days I spent there a few months ago. This sunset was a beautiful goodbye from the mountain.

Coming up... I hear that Krakow is amazing this time of the year!

Panorama

Next time you find yourself in LBT, have a look out from the window. You have a handy guide (click on image to enlarge) to spot all the visible mountain peaks including some useful information such as height and distance. :)

Such a cool idea!

Dead

Something else I witnessed for the first time in my life while in Arizona was a dead cactus. Apparently, they can die of old age or due to all the expected reasons fire, humans etc. A rotting cactus is a sad sight though. Spotted on the way up to mount. Lemmon.

In the background you have the city of Tucson.

The Largest Binocular!

The Large Binocular Telescope - LBT is located at Mt. Graham in Arizona, USA.
It consists of two 8.4m diameter telescopes under one roof, and operates in the optical and infrared.

In the picture you see one of the two telescopes. The whole structure is so big that it was impossible to take a picture of the whole thing with my lens. I should have bought that fish-eye lens I wanted some months ago!

I was amazed by the smooth movement of this gigantic instrument and I am grateful for being there. We managed to get some good data and hopefully I will inform you about the results soon!

Cactus

Cactus spotted in Tucson, Arizona. Very interesting place this is. More fun facts about it in the following days, for the moment the jet lag is calling me.

Wild duck

The wildlife of Penn State... I want one please!

traffic lights: State college

Day 2, in Pennsylvania. Even though the green traffic light is the legendary little person crossing the road, the red traffic light is different.

Two things come to mind:

Halt!! Put the cot down slowly! (from an old greek commercial...)

and which was that movie where the famous phrase was heard: "talk to the hand" ?

Tomorrow, back in Europe.

Cool and fresh

Having a long layover? No problem! You have the chance to entertain yourself with a brand new camera!
Spotted: Philadelphia airport, not surprising right? ;)

p.s. I was severely tempted...

On the other side of the pond

First view of the magnificent Cape Cod. The other side of the Atlantic Ocean is full of surprises!

Penn's Cave

Penn's cave is the only all-water cave in America! (says google)

I present to you a stalactite from this cave. We had a very nice tour of the cave by boat. Our guide explained to us many interesting things (and other less interesting). I captured this lantern like impression of the thousand years old solidified water, while he was pointing at this stalactite with his torch.

Bully squirrel

What a cute little squirrel having breakfast! Right?
Well, few moments before this picture was taken this little guy was chasing away two crows from his food! Spotted at PennState campus.

p.s. More news on the greek revolution later tonight by Kostas. The gathering at Syntagma is very massive today.
p.p.s. The crows in the US are not as noisy as those in Germany.