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Showing posts from July 7, 2024

Tolin's 2024 World Cruise blog posts, Day 117, May 5, 2024, St Malo, France

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Saint-Malo  is a historic French port in  Ille-et-Vilaine ,  Brittany . The  walled city  on the  English Channel  coast had a long history of piracy, earning much wealth from local extortion and overseas adventures. In 1944, the Allies heavily bombed Saint-Malo. The city changed into a popular tourist center, with a ferry terminal serving the  Channel Islands  of  Jersey  and  Guernsey , as well as the  Southern English  settlements of  Portsmouth ,  Hampshire  and  Poole ,  Dorset . The famous transatlantic single-handed yacht race  Route du Rhum , which takes place every four years in November, is between Saint Malo and  Pointe-à-Pitre  in  Guadeloupe . The population in 2017 was 46,097 – though this can increase to up to 300,000 in the summer tourist season. With the suburbs included, the metropolitan area's population is approximately 133,000 (2017). The population of the commune more than doubled in 1967 with the merging of three communes: Saint-Malo,  Saint-Servan  (

Tolin's 2024 World Cruise blog posts, Day 115, May 3, 2024, A Coruna, Spain, A Coruna & the Old Town

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A Coruña ; also informally called just  Coruña,  is a city and  municipality  in  Galicia , Spain. It is Galicia's second largest city, behind  Vigo . The city is the provincial capital of the province of  A Coruña , having also served as political capital of the  Kingdom of Galicia  from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and as a regional administrative centre between 1833 and 1982. A Coruña is located on a  promontory  in the  Golfo Ártabro , a large gulf on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the main industrial and  financial  center of northern Galicia, and holds the headquarters of the  Universidade da Coruña . A Coruña is the Spanish city featuring the tallest mean-height of buildings, also featuring a population density of 21,972 inhabitants per 56.9 square mile of built land area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Coru%c3%b1a City Hall A Coruna's architecture – galerias and the glass city Galicia has a wealth of buildings featuring most of the architectural styles found in Europe

Tolin's 2024 World Cruise blog posts, Day 114, May 2, 2024, Leixoes, Portugal, The Art of Filigree

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  Porto,  also known as  Oporto , is the  second largest city  in  Portugal  after  Lisbon . It is the capital of the  Porto District  and one of the  Iberian Peninsula 's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire  municipality of Porto , is small compared to its metropolitan area, with an estimated population of just 237,559 people in a municipality with only 16 square miles. Porto's metropolitan area has around 1.7 million people  (2021)  in an area of 925 square miles, making it the second-largest urban area in Portugal. It is recognized as a  global city  with a Gamma + rating from the  Globalization and World Cities Research Network . Located along the  Douro  River estuary in northern Portugal, Porto is one of the oldest European centers and its core was proclaimed a  World Heritage Site  by UNESCO in 1996, as the "Historic Centre of Porto, Luiz I Bridge and Monastery of Serra do Pilar." The historic area is also a National Monument of Portugal

Tolin's 2024 World Cruise blog posts, Day 112-13, Apr 30-May 1, 2024, Lisbon, Portugal, Queluz Palace, Sintra, & Seaside Vistas

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Lisbon  is the capital and largest city of  Portugal , with an estimated population of 548,703 as of 2022 within its administrative limits in an area of 38.5 square miles. Lisbon is mainland  Europe 's westernmost capital city (second overall after  Reykjavik ) and the only one along the Atlantic coast, the others (Reykjavik and  Dublin ) being on islands.  The city lies in the western portion of the  Iberian Peninsula , on the northern shore of the River  Tagus . The western portion of its metro area, the  Portuguese Riviera , hosts the westernmost point of  Continental Europe , culminating at  Cabo da Roca .   Lisbon is one of the  oldest cities in the world  and the second-oldest European capital city (after  Athens ), predating other modern European capitals by centuries. Established by pre-Celtic tribes and later Phoenicians,  Julius Caesar  made it a  municipium  called  Felicitas Julia , adding the term to the name  Olissipo . After the  fall of the Roman Empire , it was r