Boarding Gate 101

Sculptor Juan Pascual de Mena started working on this fountain way back in 1780. The marble statue of Neptune has a trident in one hand and a coiled snake in the other. The fountain is located at Paseo del Prado, a few steps away from the Prado Museum in Madrid.

The prang ,  or spire, of Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn) in Bangkok is decorated with mosaic made using pieces of porcelain and sea shells. 

This ride will cost a few euros, but considering that Via Veneto is one of the most stylish streets of Rome, some people wouldn't mind "arriving in style".

The Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore is the largest Marian church in Rome, thus the name Maggiore (major). The church was built after the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. which declared Mary as the Mother of God.

An NYPD police car passes a busy intersection in Times Square. 

Motorbikes are primary transportation mode for the locals of Shanghai, and their function go beyond just transporting the rider. Moving over-sized cargo, like this door frame, are included as well. 

Capiz , a kind of mollusk with translucent mother-of-pearl shells, is often used in making windows in buildings during the Spanish era until about early 20th century in the Philippines.  A good example is this building in Vigan.

The Beaux-Arts Grand Staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ascending these steps from the Great Hall will bring you to the European art collection of the museum, which includes works by van Gogh and Degas .

The lobby of the Empire State Building. The three-story high Art Deco lobby features an aluminum relief of the building. 

Flat Stanley (originally a character of a book written in 1964 ) was a school project for Gavin, the son of my colleague in the United States.  Drawings of Flat Stanley are to be sent to different parts of the country by the kids in the class, and the drawings will be photographed together with a landmark. The pictures will then be presented by the kids to the class, as a way of teaching them geography. Gavin's was the only one sent outside the United States, to me; here Flat Stanley was in a beach in Caramoan.

Strangely, the Barcelona Olympic Stadium was built way back in 1929, but wasn't used for the Olympics until 1992. Prior to that, it was used for football matches and concerts that require a seating capacity of about 60,000 people.

Saying 'Hi' to the camera while wreck diving in Coron, Philippines. Coron has a number of wreck diving sites - all of them Japanese warships that were sunk during the Second World War.  The bow of this ship - a gunboat/submarine chaser named Tamakase - is located about 4 meters underwater. The dive site is known as East Tangat Wreck. by Kin Enriquez

There's a section in Liberty Island - where the Statue of Liberty stands welcoming immigrants during the 19th and 20th century - with this quite ironic sign. Manhattan is the cluster of skyscrapers in the distance.

This mosaic floor, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was discovered in 1996 in a construction site in Lod, Israel. The mosaic, featuring exotic animals and fishes, probably belonged to a house by a wealthy Roman, dating to about 300 A.D.  The mosaic was on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Met Museum was venue for its first public exhibition. by Kin Enriquez

The empty, bullet-riddled shell of a building in Corregidor, stark reminder of the destructiveness of war.

Just to give you an idea of how clear the waters around the islands of Caramoan are.

This sea turtle ( pawikan   in Filipino)  is a resident of the marine sanctuary in front of Dive and Trek resort in Bauan, Batangas, and it is a delight to run into him while scuba diving in the area. Another picture of the turtle here .

This is the birthplace and ancestral house of Padre Jose Burgos, a secular priest who was accused of mutiny by the Spanish colonizers in 1872. It was located in Vigan, Ilocos Sur .  Burgos was executed - together with two other priests, Jacinto Zamora and Mariano Gomez -  by garrote. Their execution inspired Jose Rizal , the national hero who was also executed by the Spaniards, to write the novel El Filibusterismo , which was published in 1891.  The building is under the administration of the National Museum of the Philippines.  by Kin Enriquez

One of the scores of beaches that dot the islands of Caramoan, Philippines

The skybridge that connects the Petronas Twin Towers. The 58-meter long double-decker bridge, located 170 meters up, connects the 41st and 42nd floors. It (the 41st floor level) is open to visitors. 

A pair of moccasins, the traditional footwear of Native Americans. They are usually made from deerskin or other kind of soft leather and  pimped up with colorful beads.  St. Louis Art Museum. 

The playground of the rich in Manila Bay.

Looking down from the rim, those ant-like figures below are actually people on the beach in Mt. Pinatubo crater lake.

A drizzle did not deter us from going in to snorkel in Barracuda Lake (a resident barracuda is said to have given the lake its name) in Coron. That's one of my companions in mask and snorkel.

A child peeks over the bench of the tram that took us around the fortress island of Corregidor.

The dome of the neo-Romanesque Manila Cathedral .  The cathedral was built in 1953, the eight structure on the site that dates back to 1571.

The remnants of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo  eruption   - pyroclastic materials called lahar - are still apparent on the trail going to the crater of the volcano . 

Times Square is dubbed the "Crossroads of the World".

Fried crickets on sale at a street food stall in Chatuchak, Bangkok.

The Spain Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo

The Disney Castle at dusk. 

Our boat, docked at Banol Beach in Coron, Palawan . 

This is probably the most opulent room I've slept in during my travels so far - a suite at  The Venetian Macao . We were upgraded to this room when the one we booked was not available.  

The 492-meter Shanghai World Financial Center, at night. The supertall has an observation deck at the 100th floor of the building - 474 meters above ground. 

Front view of the Sphinx of Hetsepsut, the fifth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty , on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A sphinx is mythical creature with a body of a lion and a human's head. Egyptian sphinxes were guardians to the entrances of temples. by Kin Enriquez

Me and my friends white-water rafting in Cagayan de Oro

Pizzerias like this are good places to find cheap eats in New York City. A slice (big enough to for somebody like me) cost from $2.75 to $5.50, and a Coke will set you back another $1.75. Perfect way to satisfy a hungry traveller after walking along the streets of Manhattan for hours.

Sapin-sapin is a dessert popular in the Philippines, especially in Luzon island. Made from glutinous rice flour and coconut milk, sapin-sapin (which means 'layered' in Tagalog)  is served with toasted coconut flakes on top as merienda , or mid-day snack. 

The riverside quay in Singapore that is now a popular tourist attraction, with nightclubs and restaurants dominating the area. 

A girl waves to the crowd during a parade in Shanghai.

The driver of a horse-drawn carriage waits for passengers in Manhattan.

This one's in one of the houses lining up Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis.

A tradition during baseball games in the United States, the seventh-inning stretch is the time for patrons to take a short break, stretch their legs, and get snacks after the middle of the seventh inning.  The song Take Me Out to the Ball Game is also sang by the audience.  This one is during the game between St. Louis Cardinals and Houston Astros.

To celebrate Edgar Degas's 178th birthday (yesterday), here's one sculpture done by the Impressionist artist: Woman Putting on a Stocking . Bronze, 1895-1910. At the Met Museum

A passenger looks out the window of Bicol Express , a train service that connects Manila to the Bicol region in the Philippines, just as the train is leaving the station.

The first car to ever grace the Philippine roads was this 9-horsepower, 2-cylinder 1904 Richard Brasier roadster, brought into the country by the trading firm Estrella del Norte in 1904. On display at the Mind Museum Taguig, on loan from Pilipinas Shell. 

The lighthouse in Bolinao, Philippines, at 101 feet in height, is the second tallest in the country.

The Poland  Pavilion  during the 2010 World Expo  has a paper cut-out design reminiscent to the Polish folk art of paper cutting. 

A signpost  in Corregidor lighthouse points the way to other cities in the world and how far are they from the place.

30 Rockefeller Plaza is the centerpiece of the Rockefeller Center (which has 19 buildings in the complex) in Manhattan. The Art Deco building, also known as GE Building (RCA Building before that), has 70 floors and is 266 meters in height. It has an observation deck, named Top of the Rock, which is open to the public. The TV show 30 Rock is named after the building, where the NBC studio, the producer of the show, is located.