Life's Little Adventures

Vienna's Great Ferris Wheel

 

 

This is a SAMPLE ENTRY from my current app "Vienna Travel: the City & Great Day Trips." The complete app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch may be downloaded at Apple's iTunes App Store. This app takes you to many unusual places within daytrip range of Vienna, and within the city itself — along with the popular favorites. It is also available on Google's App Store for download to most Android devices under the name "Vienna & Beyond Travel Guide."

Vienna: Wiener Riesenrad

The Wiener Riesenrad in VIENNA'S PRATER, one of the oldest and surely the most famous Ferris wheel in the whole world, is not far from downtown. Fans of classic movies will remember its starring role in The Third Man, a film noir of 1949 that defined what suspense is all about. This is a must-see for just about every visitor to Vienna.

Built in 1897, first slated for demolition in 1916 and severely damaged in World War II, it has survived to this day and is now better than ever. Located near the entrance to Vienna's great Prater — described in a separate entry under Amusements — it towers some 212 feet above both arms of the Danube and provides a sweeping panoramic view of the city and its surrounds.

A recent development is the outfitting of a few luxury cabins, which include fancy meal service and must be arranged in advance.

In The Third Man, the movie that made the Riesenrad famous, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) and his erstwhile friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) are riding alone in one of the cabins as it nears the top. Martins then accuses Lime of causing the death of hundreds of poor souls by selling tainted penicillin on the postwar black market, and asks "Have you ever seen any of your victims?" Looking down on the people far below, Lime responds by asking Martins if he would feel any pity if one of those tiny dots stopped moving forever. "If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax."

Back on the ground he adds something to the extent that the Italians under the Borgias had many years of wars, terrorism, murders and bloodshed, but wound up producing Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. "In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly." Okay, not quite accurate. The Swiss never made cuckoo clocks, and in the past they were anything but peaceful. But the point was made.

Getting to the PRATER and its Riesenrad is easy. Take U-Bahn subways U1 or U2 to Praterstern, or commuter trains S1-S3, S7, or S15 to Wien Nord. Streetcars 0 or 5, and bus 80A go there also. By taxi, ask for Praterstern. Or just walk there.

Touch photo in upper left. It will then fill the screen and morph into a DIAGRAM MAP showing the relationship of the Prater to the Altstadt. Touch that to remain on screen, THEN slide a finger from right to left to see more photos. Touch in upper left to return to text.

There are numerous restaurants and cafés nearby, and in the adjacent Wurstelprater Amusement Area.

MUCH MORE HERE

A Miniature Journey by Steam

This is a sample entry from my current app London Travel: a Guide to Great Day Trips. The complete app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch may be downloaded at Apple's iTunes app store. This app takes you to many unusual places within daytrip range of London, along with the popular favorites. It is also available for Android devices on Google's play store, under the name London's Backyard.

Names in BOLD FACE CAPITAL LETTERS are actually links to separate entries within the app for those attractions. These are not active on this blog.

 

A ride on the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway is a pure delight. There are no famous sights along its 14-mile length, just the exhilarating joy of being hauled across the Romney Marshes aboard a miniature steam train. This fun-filled day trip is the perfect antidote to a steady diet of cathedrals, castles, and stately homes.

Opened in 1927, the railway is one of the most popular attractions in southern England. Its one-third-scale locomotives are faithful replicas of famous engines that once served on the main lines. 

Over 300,000 passengers, not all of them children by any means, are carried each year in the diminutive coaches. Join them and you'll be glad you did.

Trains leave about twice an hour from London's Charing Cross Station (CHX) for Folkestone Central Station (FKC), with a journey time of about 90 minutes. Service is reduced on Sundays, and some trains split enroute. Return trains run until mid-evening. From Folkestone you can travel the five miles to Hythe by taxi or Stagecoach Bus, which offers a combo ticket with the steam line.

By Car, take the A20 and M20 roads to Newington/Stanford (Junction 11), then the A261 to Hythe. The total distance is 68 miles southeast of London.

Good weather is necessary to really enjoy this trip. The local Tourist Information Centre in Folkestone, T: (01303) 258 594, W: discoverfolkestone.co.uk, is near the harbor. The entire trip is in the county of Kent.

DINING:

Meals and snacks are available at the Heywood Buffet in the New Romney station, and the Light Railway Café at the Dungeness Station. Drinks — including the RH&D Celebration Steam Ale — and snacks are served on the miniature bar car attached to some of the trains (50p extra fare).

In addition, picnic tables are available at the New Romney, Dymchurch, and Dungeness stations.

A few nearby restaurants and pubs are:

LA TAVERNETTA

THE BRITANNIA

TOUR:

Touch photo in upper left. It will then fill the screen and morph into a DIAGRAM MAP. Touch that to remain on screen, THEN slide a finger from right to left to see more photos. Touch in upper left to return to text. NUMBERS on the map correspond to numbers in the text.

Those coming by train will begin their trip at Folkestone Central Station (1). From there walk a few blocks southeast to the Folkestone Bus Station (2) on Cheriton Gardens. You could, of course, take a taxi directly from the train station to Hythe, a distance of about five miles.

The Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Light Railway Station in Hythe (3) is next to the Royal Military Canal, which was built as a defense during the Napoleonic Wars. A short walk along its banks is a pleasant diversion if you have a wait before the next train departure.

Take a careful look at the posted schedule (also on their website) and decide whether you want to go just to New Romney, or make a stop there and then continue on all the way to Dungeness. Note that a few of the miniature trains are hauled by diesel traction, in which case you may want to wait for steam.

A ride from Hythe to New Romney takes about 35 minutes, stopping at Dymchurch and St. Mary's Bay along the way. New Romney (4) is the headquarters of the railway and has several interesting things to see, including yards, engine shops, and the fascinating Toy and Model Museum, located above the Heywood Café. Here you can relive childhood dreams with vintage toys and a fantastic computer-controlled model railway in OO gauge, and do it free if you have an "All Stations, All Day" ticket for unlimited travel. There is also a buffet serving anything from drinks to full meals, and a gift shop.

Continuing on to Dungeness (5), the rails follow very close to the sea. This is a lovely and sparsely inhabited region, a perfect spot for the nuclear power plant at the end of the line. Getting off there, you may visit the Lifeboat Station and perhaps climb to the top of the Old Lighthouse. Built in 1901 to a height of 143 feet, it is open to visitors whenever the trains run. Time permitting, you might want to stop by the Brittania Pub.

Those traveling back to London via Folkestone will probably want to see a bit of that town before they leave. From the bus station it is an easy walk to The Leas (6), a promenade with magnificent maritime viwes. The harbor (7) is in the oldest part of town. Return via the quaint and narrow High Street, then head back to Central Station by bus, taxi, or on foot.

To see the rest of this and the other 24 daytrips out of London, download of the entire "London Travel: a Guide to Great Day Trips" app on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch at Apple's iTunes app store, or for Android devices download on Google's app store as "London's Backyard."

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What's New?

Here's what I'm up to now. My current — and most challenging — "Little Adventure" is to develop a fresh approach to travel apps for the iPad, iPhone, and iPodTouch, as well as for many tablets and smartphones using the Android operating system, and later as e-books.

What's so special about that? There are plenty of travel apps out there, many of which are free. Well, mine are too, and can take you to some quite unusual places that are usually overlooked, as well as to the familiar. And they are loaded with background information, plenty of photos, links to videos, attraction websites and multiple sources of up-to-date information.

But best of all are the MAPS. So far, over a hundred "Diagram Maps" have been specially created just for this project. These show you exactly where everything is and how to get there, and the simple design and bold type make them easy to read on even the small iPhone screen. In addition, for every Day Trip and attraction entry there is an embedded Google Map with even more detail.

Most of the many restaurant recommendations have direct links to the establishment's website so you can study their menu in advance.

I began this project in November 2010, and had the first one online in January 2011. Since then I have completed four more, and am nearly finished with a fifth. 

WHY NOT CHECK THEM OUT? CLICKY.

Vienna Travel: the City & Great Day Trips

Innsbruck Travel: the City & the Alps

London Travel: a Guide to Great Day Trips

London's Backyard for Android

Paris Travel: the City & Great Day Trips 

And coming soon: Philadelphia Day Trips.

And here now: Assisting Avedon, my first non-travel app, recalling my experiences with the famous photographer Richard Avedon in the 1950s and 60s. Check it out on Apple's iTunes site.

My app publisher, SUTRO MEDIA, has literally hundreds of travel apps covering all corners of the Earth.

Click on Sutro's website for more information about them.

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Offbeat Adventures

The Offbeat Adventures Thread was becoming too large, so here's an index to all of its files. Just click on whichever one you want.

Climbing Mount Fuji, 1959 — My Army Buddies And I Conquer The Volcano

The Little Studebaker That Couldn't — A 1957 Trip To Kyoto Where Everything Went Wrong

How I Got Started In Travel Guides, Part I — A TV Idea Leads To Other Things

How I Got Started In Travel Guides, Part II — A New Idea In Printed Guides

How I Got Started In Travel Guides, Part III — Great Trips/Europe Is Born

It's Off To Portugal And Spain For Great Trips/Europe

Fossicking In Australia's Outback — Hunting For Sapphires And Rubies

East Berlin In 1969 — Visiting The Commie Capital

Visiting Yugoslavia In 1965 — An Unplanned Journey That Changed My Life

Our Own Photo Studio, Part V — Touring The Pacific For Pan Am

Our Own Photo Studio, Part VI — Working For The Railroad

Working For The Airline — Flying High With Air France

Sailing The Greek Islands — A Week On A Small Sailboat

Bicycling In New York — Braving The Traffic And Finding A Speedway

Bicycling in Holland — A 32-mile ride through the countryside.

Hiking the Appalachian Trail. Four 15-year-old kids take off on a Grand Adventure in 1950.

Camping in New York State's Adirondacks. I join the back-to-the-earth movement around 1973.

Rocky Mountain High. A recent 2007 trip to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains.

Innsbruck Mountain Walk. An easy 8-mile hike in the Austrian Alps, taken in 1979 but still valid.

Defiling a Castle in Spain. Under the guise of shooting fashion photos in 1964, we do a bra ad in the Alhambra — then flee the country.

Silent Night and the Salt Mines: A trip to Hallein in Austria explores inside salt mines deep under the mountains, then discovers the origins of a favorite Christmas carol.

Ironbridge Gorge, England. A visit to the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

Photographing Chicago. The Band, not the City. We travel to a remote ranch in the Rockies.

Japan Revisited. Beginning of a lengthy vacation in Japan.

Japan Revisited, Part 2. Continuing the adventures.

Texel, Holland. Relaxing on a peaceful island not far from Amsterdam.

Pluckley. The most haunted village in England.

New York City's High Line. An abandoned elevated rail line that cuts through Manhattan's Lower West Side has been transformed into a hiking trail with a view.

Stoke Bruerne Canal Walk, England. An 8-mile walk along a towpath to the most colorful old canal village in Britain.

Entering a Time Warp and Re-Uniting with an Old Friend. Returning to my earliest origins. 

McSorley's Old Ale House. A 2010 visit to New York's oldest Irish pub,

Revisiting Ground Zero. A Sept. 2010 visit to New York's World Trade Center site.

More coming, stay tuned.

SO, just what Little Adventure am I up to now in 2013? Why, just the most challenging one of them all! CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT.

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COME JOIN THE FUN!

Enough of my just talking about myself! Maybe you've had a little adventure you'd like to share? I'd love to get other contributors on this blog, and maybe have it evolve into a small forum of offbeat escapades.

HERE ARE THE TYPES OF LITTLE ADVENTURES I'M LOOKING FOR:

Mostly travel related, exploring our world, even if it's your own backyard. Or little adventures in learning, cooking, making things, raising kids, sports, whatever. Even adventures of the mind.

THESE ARE THE NO-NOs:

Theme Parks, anything Disney (unless you outfoxed the mouse and had fun doing it).

Guided Tours of any type (unless something really strange happened).

Cruises (unless the boat sank).

Casinos (unless you have a secret way with blackjack that always wins).

WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?

Satisfaction, a tiny amount of fame, and if this blog ever gets enough hits to attract advertisers you'd get a small share of the loot. And, who knows, you might be in a future book (with your permission, of course).

HERE'S HOW TO SUBMIT:

Send by e-mail to my address on the "ABOUT" page. I am the sole judge of what's appropriate and will deep-six anything that borders on pornography or is otherwise offensive. If your entry would benefit from photos, diagrams, or maps I will get back to you. If necessary, I will make the graphics myself from your data, subject to your approval. Short submissions are usually better than long ones, but not always. If you have your own blog or website, I'd probably want to link to it and would ask that you link to mine.

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SO, just what Little Adventure am I up to now in 2013? Why, just

the most challenging one of them all! CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT.