Tourism - 2

As you may have noticed from yesterday's post, John and I headed off to Kyiv (Ки́ев) for the weekend for our brief but memorable visit to the site of the Chernobyl disaster.

While our stay in Kyiv was only concomitant to the tour to Chernobyl and Pripyat, the city seems quite lovely and the trip itself certainly wasn't uneventful!

On Friday, 25 April 1986, engineers at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Station were preparing to shutdown their forth reactor for maintenance. They took the decision to use the maintenance window to test certain emergency safety systems, in particular those related to keeping the core cooling systems operational.

Engineers at the time were concerned that any major disturbance in the power grid would cause a peak in electricity demand from the reactor that would provoke it to overload and shut-down automatically for safety. Sadly, this safety precaution could have also shut down the water pumps that kept the reactor's core cool, and the engineers believed that the backup power generators would take too long restore power to the water pumps, causing a melt-down situation within the reactor.

The engineers had a plan to use the momentum of the turbines from the power plant to generate electricity for the water pumps while the backup generators would start up. This was a great plan on paper, but it hadn't been successfully proven on the equipment for many years since the plan was developed. Naturally, another test was required.

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One last day in the Ardennes before heading back to reality — that is to say, home and ultimately work.

So it hasn't been so much of a road-trip, with two long stop-overs in picturesque locations, but at least it's been a holiday!

Ahh, Belgian weather! It's amazing sometimes how you can cross the border into this small country and suddenly the weather turns sour.

That's not to say that the weather here is always bad like everyone says, but it does seem to be overcast more often than not.

With the car ready to go, and us not really willing to actually pay for the hotel room, we spent our last morning in Chamonix and decided to continue driving north.

This was my last chance to exploit the sales in the area, so after one last coffee I headed over to the Aigle shop to pick up a heavily discounted winter jacket that should come in handy in a few months' time.

Still in Chamonix today, and I've been deliberating whether or not I want to go paragliding at a nearby paragliding school since we arrived. Chamonix in the summer also offers hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing… and an adventure park!

Chamonix has a lot to offer, but when you're not sure if you're leaving today, or tomorrow, or in a few days' time, it's very difficult to plan what you want to do. Given the price and the timing, I sadly dropped the paragliding idea and we went for the very adult decision of going to Les Planards adventure park!

We awoke in our free hotel room to spend a day roaming the touristy yet placid and beautiful town of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, wedged in the heart of Chamonix Valley between Mont Blanc, Le Brévent and Aiguilles Rouges.

With last night's tartiflette digested, the day was spent generally vegetating around the town while we waited for news on the car that broke down yesterday. We returned to the tourist information office to exploit their free Wi-Fi and did a little bit of shopping.

This morning we were in Avignon — a city once full of religious old farts popes and anti-popes — indeed quite a powerful place, if I understand correctly. After consuming what can barely be described as the dregs of breakfast from the Etap, we headed out into the town to investigate.

However, we had a slight conundrum to deal with first…

Awoke this morning with a goal of getting the real part of the road-trip started. Now that the wedding was over, it was time to decide which way back to Brussels we were going to take. Specifically, we were trying to decide which side of France to traverse.

Armed with the 2€ road atlas that Scott and I bought on a whim just prior to taking our trip and a coin, it was decided relatively adventitiously that we would return via the Eastern side of France…

After a long sleep-in, we awoke to a boiling hot day in Aigua Blava. Since we could see Wedding HQ from our rear terrace, we noticed things were a little bit hectic over there. This isn't really surprising, considering Cath & Max were to be wed today!

We decided to head into Begur for some lunch, but indecision kept us from choosing a place to sit down for lunch…

After catching the last remnants of breakfast, and a brief visit to the ATAC in Aumont-Aubrac for some bottled water (and some other… stuff…) we headed back on the A75 through the Massif Central.

While heading over a ridge, I noticed a bridge in the distance that appeared somewhat familiar, if not somewhat enormous. An excited idea popped into my head that it could be the Millau Viaduct — the very bridge Scott and I were looking for when we were crossing back into France from Spain…

Being invited to Cath & Max's wedding in Spain, Aline and I took it upon ourselves to take a little holiday. Living in Belgium, it seemed perfectly logical to go on a little road-trip — there and back.

Two years ago Scott and I embarked on a road-trip that had many ups and downs but taught me many things about how a road-trip can be conducted. Scott has fortunately maintained his website, Smile in Europe, which contains a few photos taken along that particular journey.

Continuing the theme of tourism in my home town, my father and I visited Eureka Tower, tallest building in Melbourne, Australia, and the world's tallest residential building (if you disregard spires). This building is 91-stories high, at 297.3 metres, and officially opened on October 11, 2006.