Last night when I was contemplating how we should spend our time together this morning, I thought that it’s been several weeks since we’ve travelled together and maybe now, before the snows come, would be a good time for it. So, I checked into some things and I think you’ll enjoy the places we’re going to visit today! So, hop aboard the Filomobile and let’s go to …
Krong Ban Lung, Cambodia! There is a simply gorgeous lake here, but also a couple of interesting tidbits.
It’s believed that 4,000 years ago, a volcanic eruption created a crater that, over time, filled with water. The lake was once surrounded by thick forest on all sides, but today only a thin layer remains, with most of the land having been farmed.
The waters of Yeak Laom are crystal clear, and they stand in stark contrast with the bright green in the background—if you visit during or shortly after the rainy season. Exotic birds and butterflies are common sights, and wild pigs may also come around.
Although the lake is considered sacred by the local people, swimming or playing in the water is common for both locals and tourists. Wooden docks with steps have been built to facilitate access. In 2018, bureaucratic procedures were started to register Yeak Laom and the land around it as state land to better protect the environment. Other measures to protect the lake forbid people from using detergents, gambling, or having arguments while in the lake. Okay, now the detergents I get, but gambling or arguing???
In February 2016, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand was planning to pay a visit to Yeak Laom, and in preparation for her visit, as toilets are not common in the area, a special toilet was constructed for the princess to use during her visit. An air-conditioned toilet. At a cost of $40,000. That she never used. That was thrown away after her two-hour visit, during which the urge never hit.
It took 10 labourers 19 days to build the eight-metre square toilet. It has silver railings up its white-washed steps and an all-white tiled roof. This area of Cambodia being a particularly poor region, I’m sure this toilet is far more luxurious than most of the homes in the five villages that surround the lake. The building was allowed to remain after the princess’ visit, but the toilet was disassembled and thrown out. Why?
“If you have a king—well, just, normal people can’t use the king’s toilet.”
Ah, arrogance is world-wide, isn’t it? But isn’t this lake just beautiful?
Next I thought we’d travel over to France … Équihen-Plage, France, to be precise, for I am told there are some interesting holiday homes made of boats. Upside down boats, that is. You’ve heard of houseboats, yes? Well these are upside-down boat houses! Ah … we have arrived … let’s take a look …
Équihen-Plage is a fishing port and farming village some 3 miles south of Boulogne on the English Channel coast with a population just under 3,000. The tradition of the boat houses began after World War I when old boats unworthy for the sea were dragged up to high ground and turned upside down. The hull, which now became the roof, was covered in tar to ensure that it was watertight. A door cut out on the sides provided entry, while windows let in air and light. Even then, the interior was dark and stuffy. The entire length of the boat served as a single room. Space for cooking and sleeping were shared.
During the Second World War, nearly all the boathouses got destroyed, but their legacy lingered on. In the 1990s, about sixty years after their disappearance, the village decided to revive the ancient heritage and erected a couple of upturned boat houses and fitted them with modern facilities to entice tourists. They can be rented now with prices starting from about three hundred Euros, or $340 USD.
All this traveling is making me a bit hungry … what about you? Ready for a little bite before we head to our last stop? Let’s just pop over to Nottingham … yes, the place of Robin Hood and the evil sheriff, but that isn’t the theme of the restaurant we’re going to. Remember the Edgar Allen Poe story, The Pit and the Pendulum? My dad read that one to me when I was … oh, probably 7 or 8 … and I had nightmares for days … er, nights. Anyway, in the town of Nottingham is a restaurant named The Pit and the Pendulum that sounds intriguing.
Wow … this place is creepy, isn’t it? But it’ll be fun. Let’s take a peek at the drink menu …
Y’know … on second thought … I’m not all that hungry after all … perhaps we can grab a pack of crackers on our way to …
The former mining town of St. Blazey in Cornwall, England, home of the world’s largest greenhouse. For fifty years, a clay mine on the edge of the English town had slowly been abandoned, until in the late 1990s when a new concept was proposed for the area called Project Eden. 
A near polar opposite to the crater left by the old mine, the Eden Project was designed as a massive greenhouse complex, consisting of two biomes bubbling off of the ground and reflecting both a tropical and Mediterranean climate. After the deep depression left from the mine was filled in with thousands of tons of soil, construction began and the two largest greenhouses in the world were created over two and a half years. Inside the hexagonally-patterned biomes are over one million different plant species, each one reflecting the climates of their respective biomes.
The Tropical Biome features rubber plants, bananas, and bamboo stalks towering above visitors in the nearly four-acre dome. The Mediterranean Biome is only 1.6 acres, but is similarly filled to capacity with olive plants and grape vines.
Along with stunning flora, cascading waterfalls and footpaths wind past massive boulders and ponds and even a few statues can be found carefully placed around the Mediterranean biome. Although the greenhouses are the central attraction of the complex, the grounds of the Eden Project are also covered in temperate plants that can grow in an uncovered atmosphere. 
And now, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m tired and ready to go home, perhaps for a 10-minute nap, a hot cup of coffee, and a bit of time spent with a good book. I hope you’ve enjoyed our little jaunt today … we’ll do it again soon! Have a great weekend … don’t forget, just 24 days ‘til Christmas … better get shopping! I have mine mostly finished … no muss, no fuss … all done online! 
And so it happened that 17-year-old Jamal went over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house for dinner! 
Since the heartwarming story first broke Dench has named Hinton as her ‘honorary grandson,’ which is quite fitting. The two stayed in touch, and last year, he was invited back for Thanksgiving 2017. In an interview with the Arizona Republic last year Dench said, “It was really nice having everybody here, we got to laugh about last year and reminisce about how it all blew up on our phone and how I had to change my number. We had a laugh and a good time.”
Hinton finds the dinners and his newfound family meaningful. “The world is becoming a better place than it used to be. With all the Donald Trump going on and all the racial comments going on, it’s kind of good to see there’s still good people out there.” Dench gave her new ‘grandson’ an open invitation for all future Thanksgivings at her house, so this is a tradition likely to live on for a lifetime.
Bolwoningen (“ball homes” or “bulb homes”) is but one of the country’s housing experiments. The giant orbs stand in stark contrast to the conventional abodes located right across the street.
But to humans accustomed to living within more standard houses, dwelling within a concrete globe can feel unnatural. The buildings are best suited for single people or childless couples, as space inside is tight (592 square feet/55 square meters). The lowest level includes storage and central heating installations. A spiral staircase leads to a bedroom. Keep climbing the stairs, and you’ll then arrive at the level housing the toilet and shower. The highest part features a tiny living room and kitchen area.
Though interest in and funding for additional ball houses dwindled, this settlement is still going strong. People still live in Bolwoningen, and tourists have been known to wander by to gawk and gape at their unusual homes.
This magnificent example of public art is based at a location which was, from the 1990s until the early 21 century, a derelict industrial factory site between the Chesterfield railway station and the River Rother. The derelict factory was demolished and replaced with a housing development. This spiral sculpture is a result of the Chesterfield Borough Council’s planning policy, which encourages all large developments to include up to one percent of the total investment for public art.
Liz Lemon, the sculptor behind the artwork, used the land as inspiration, as the area is known for both Goniatite and gastropod fossils. She also paid homage to the land’s industrial past. Because the factory that formerly stood at the site built turbines for many of the world’s large hydroelectric dams, Lemon designed the sculpture in metal with a high precision finish to reflect the former factory’s dedication to high-quality engineering. Manthorpe Engineering completed the construction.
The resulting sculpture is about 25 feet high. The spiral form was created from many sections of stainless steel sheets that vary in thickness, and the way it fits together is evocative of the types of pipework construction used in the hydropower plants that the former factory worked on. The artwork has five rows of “portholes” of reducing size all the way around the spiral. The internal cavity houses blue and green fiber optic lights that are switched on at night.
The name of the bar is Yurei Izakaya, named for ghosts known as yurei, and its decor, menu, and staff blend Japanese folklore with plenty of haunted house kitsch. The food and drinks are made to look like bloody eyeballs, impaled bodies, and various yokai (mythological monsters). Most reviewers rate their meals—which are standard izakaya fare—as average, so don’t be expecting 5-star dining – it’s all about the atmosphere!
This house was the former home of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Argentina’s seventh president. He was also the author of one of the country’s most important pieces of literature, Facundo, which is not only a testament to his political views, but also a reflection of Argentina’s history.
Sarmiento also carried out some ambitious policies regarding education and had a tremendous influence on Argentina’s school systems. He trained new teachers and built new buildings for public schools. He successfully passed a sanction that guaranteed schools would be free and separate from religious teachings and opened various free libraries.
Sarmiento lived with his family in this house after his tenure as president (1868-1874), until he died in 1888. He chose a quiet abode in Tigre, a city within the delta around the La Plata River. Trees he planted still stand around the property, and the house still holds some of its original furniture. The building, which became a National Historic Monument in 1966 is encased in glass to protect it from the elements and now functions as a museum.
As the tale goes, Uppspretta studied everything he could about his native Iceland and discovered that his homeland was actually colonized by the Norsemen. Which meant he had to journey to Norway to find a wife, of course! As puffins are not really meant for lengthy flight it’s not surprising he didn’t reach his destination, but instead landed in the middle of the Netherlands. Highjinx ensued and, finally, upon returning to Iceland, he did eventually marry a Norwegian puffin and became Leader of the Puffins of Iceland.
Uppspretta’s tale is captured visually n vibrant, vivid color on a disused water tower hiding in plain sight in Keflavík, Iceland. How on Earth did it get there? Two words: The Toyists.
Uppspretta’s legend was authored and painted by 11 Toyists from five different countries during the summer of 2013. It took seven weeks to complete due to foul weather. Uppspretta is The Toyists’ first piece of art outside of The Netherlands. Other works include The Dot (a giant painted spherical gas container) and Dreams for Breakfast (on the Hotel Ten Cate), both in Emmen.
Isn’t he just adorable? It is too early to tell the sex of the chick just yet, but a blood test to determine gender will be done when the chick is a bit older. Personally, I think it’s probably a girl. And as for Sphen and Magic, according to Tish Hannan, the supervisor of the aquarium’s Penguin Department …
A male Qinling golden snub-nosed monkey rests on a stone, joined by a female from his group. Both are watching an altercation down the valley between the lead males of two other groups in the 50-strong troop. It’s spring in the temperate forest of China’s Qinling mountains, the only place where these endangered monkeys live. To show both a male’s beautiful pelage and striking blue face, Marsel had to shoot at an angle from the back. It took many days observing the group to achieve his goal.
Old Mathoja was dozing when they finally found her, lying along a low branch of a nyala tree in Botswana’s Mashatu Game Reserve. Mathoja means ‘the one that walks with a limp’ injured when she was a cub, but otherwise she is a healthy, calm eight-year-old. The morning light was poor, leaves kept blowing across her face, and her eyes were only ever open briefly, making it hard for Skye to compose the shot he was after. Finally, a shaft of light gave a glint to her eyes, helping him to create his memorable portrait.
It was not looking good for the northern water snake, clamped tightly in the jaws of a hungry hellbender, but it was a remarkable find for David. Drifting downstream in Tennessee’s Tellico River, in search of freshwater life (as he had done for countless hours over the past seven years), he was thrilled to spot the mighty amphibian with its struggling prey. The hellbender has declined significantly because of habitat loss and degradation and its presence indicates a healthy freshwater ecosystem.
It was a hot summer day, and the waterhole at Walyormouring Nature Reserve, Western Australia, was buzzing. Georgina had got there early to photograph birds, but her attention was stolen by the industrious mud-dauber wasps. They were females, digging in the soft mud at the water’s edge, then rolling the mud into balls to create egg chambers for their nearby nests. A female builds her external nest completely out of mud, cylindrical chamber by chamber, which cement together as the mud hardens.
On a night dive over deep water in the Atlantic, far off Florida’s Palm Beach, Michael achieved a long-held goal, to photograph a flying fish so as to convey the speed, motion and beauty of this ‘fantastic creature’. By day, these fish are almost impossible to approach. Living at the surface, they are potential prey for a great many animals, including tuna, marlin and mackerel. At night, they are more approachable, moving slowly as they feed on planktonic animals close to the surface.
A male jaguar sharpens his claws and scratches his signature into a tree on the edge of his mountain territory in the Sierra de Vallejo in Mexico’s western state of Nayarit. The boundary-post has been chosen with care – the tree has soft bark, allowing for deep scratch marks that are a clear warning, backed by pungent scent, not to trespass. Alejandro set up his custom-built camera trap six metres away and after eight months the jaguar eventually returned to refresh his mark.
A large Alchisme treehopper guards her family as the nymphs feed on the stem of a nightshade plant in El Jardín de los Sueños reserve in Ecuador. Unlike many treehoppers, which enlist the help of other insects (mostly ants), this species is guarded by the mother alone. She lays her eggs on the underside of a nightshade leaf, covers them with a thin secretion and then shields the clutch with her tiny frame.
The secretive indri ( Indri indri) of Madagascar, the largest living lemur. It is also critically endangered and highly evolutionarily distinct with no close relatives, which makes its branch one of most precarious on the mammal evolutionary tree. In the likely event that the indri goes extinct, we will lose 19m years of unique evolutionary history from the mammal tree of life.
A chinstrap penguin nesting at Spigot Peak with mountains and glaciers of Orne harbour in the background, at Gerlache Strait in the Antarctic. Greenpeace is conducting scientific research and documenting the Antarctic’s unique wildlife to strengthen the proposal to create the largest protected area on the planet, an Antarctic ocean sanctuary.
Researchers examine a bat for body size and fat. Scientists are working across the western US and Canada, capturing and studying thousands of bats to better understand their hibernation habits and which are best suited to survive a deadly plague now decimating bat populations.
Pacific walruses rest on an ice flow in the Chukchi Sea, Alaska. A lawsuit making its way through federal court in Alaska will decide whether Pacific walruses should be listed as a threatened species, giving them additional protections.
Nellie’s Tree in Aberford, Leeds, which has been voted England’s tree of the year. The beech tree was grafted into an N-shape to woo a woman called Nellie almost 100 years ago, the Woodland Trust said.
Worse yet: He had no insurance. He was devastated … but before he knew it, along came his bearded buddies to help, and this humorous piece turns now into part ‘good people doing good things’!
Todd attended special education classes at Gresham High School, where he became best friends with Shane Bemis, who was serving as a student-aide to the special ed classes. Bemis became a mentor for Todd, who says, “Shane would always stick up for me against bullies.” Today, Shane Bemis is the mayor of Gresham and he and Todd remain friends.
The reason this story is in the news today is that last week, the town of Gresham threw a parade in Todd’s honour, culminating in the unveiling of a Todd Kirnan statue! Right on main street! Hundreds of people turned out …
The funicular was inaugurated on June 4 1898. Celebrities, including famed opera star Giuseppe Verdi, attended the grand opening. The celebrated attraction ran safely up until September 2, 1944, when retreating soldiers set off explosives that damaged parts of the tracks. Service didn’t resume until 1949.
Wave! Just a short ten-minute trip … look at that view! Breathtaking, isn’t it?
And here we are … the village of Montecatini Alto! Let’s take a stroll down the streets of this ancient village, shall we? At one time there were gates all along these walls, with a “porta” or door corresponding to each one of roads that entered into the castle. Today many of these roads bear the name of the door or gate. Some of the 25 towers have remained, built into more modern structures such as the main square, S. Maria a Ripa’s convent or the bell tower of the church and the fortress.
See that clock tower in the back? That’s the De’ Lemmi Tower, one of the more interesting towers with a 19th century clock in the style of “Roman Clock” with only 6 numbers on the face. Here you will see displayed 12, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10.
And lets pop into this café for a cup of coffee before we head to our next destination, shall we? Now wasn’t that a peaceful place to be … I already feel better.
Well, there are still several things I want to see here in Italy before we head back, so let’s go to Cappanori, for there is a tree I want to show you. Yes, Joe, I said a tree. Yes, I know you have trees in your backyard, but not like this tree!
The old oak inspired another story, too, this one more familiar to children around the world. Carlo Collodi once sat beneath its behemoth branches while penning several chapters of The Adventures of Pinocchio. It inspired the scenes where the famous puppet meets the Cat and the Fox and where he is later rescued by the Blue Fairy after being hung. As such, one of the tree’s other names is Quercia di Pinocchio (Pinocchio’s Oak). Now, it just so happens that within this area there are other sites related to the story of Pinocchio. And since, for some strange reason I seem to have a fixation with Pinocchio these days, let’s go visit them!
Welcome to Collodi, home of Pinocchio Park! Although Disney’s version from 1940 featured the same basic premise as the original, Collodi’s Pinocchio was a dark fantasy tale that presented an entirely different world than the story that was embraced by families and children throughout the 20th century.
And last, but not least, I want to show you one more thing before we begin our journey home. Here in Collodi, stands the tallest wooden Pinocchio in the world! 
He stands 63-feet-tall, and this statue is very special. Constructed in 2008, it is dedicated to the UN convention on the rights of a child, an international human rights treaty that protects, among other things, the cultural rights of children. The occasion was marked with a written call for the European Constitution to include the principles from UN Declaration of Children’s Rights, particularly its concerns about education and culture.
Well, folks, it is time to say ‘good-bye’, or more appropriately addio, to Italy, for it is Saturday morning and I know you all have plans. But we will be back! I love Italy, don’t you? I hope you all had fun today … I certainly did! And to keep you occupied on the journey home, here’s a bit of fun …