When it comes to amazing feats of civil engineering, it's hard to surpass China these days. From the Three Gorges Dam to the Beijing National Stadium, it seems like there's a new monument to people power every other week. One of the latest big projects to be unveiled is the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, a 35-kilometer long bridge that connects Shanghai and Ningbo. Billed as the longest trans-oceanic bridge in the world, it shaves 120 kilometers off the trip between the two municipalities and gives people the thrill of driving vast distances over open ocean in a car.
The bridge has been open to the public since May 1, but you might not be able to get a really good look at it for another year or so. That's because a service center complex at the halfway point is still under construction, leaving drivers with no place to stop and stare. But when it does open, it could be pretty sweet: plans include a hotel, shops, and rest area as well as a funky-looking observation tower. The tower is sure to be a hit among visiting Americans, because, as the Onion points out in a recent item, U.S. tourists just love going to the tops of things.
A couple of hard-up potheads stood guard at a bridge in Boulder, Colorado, police say, charging joggers and bikers a $1 "toll" to cross. That is, until one passerby--an off-duty sheriff's deputy--refused to pay. In an attempt to shake down the officer, one of the modern-day trolls hit him with a golf club, which as you can imagine didn't end well.
Once in custody, the pair explained to police that they were having a bad acid trip. But why were they hustling money on the bridge? They didn't have enough cash to buy a lighter for the joint they planned to smoke.
While police don't find the antics very entertaining, one local biker loves the story:
As far as funky-shaped bridges go, the Langkawi Sky Bridge takes the cake as far as we're concerned. We're not really up with the latest bridge-building technology and can't really believe that it stays up, but we still plan to try walking over it the next time we hit the north of Malaysia.
It's been open since late 2004 (so it's had plenty of chances to fall down), and hangs there some 2,200 feet above sea level. The view is, obviously, pretty spectacular, but you have to be the kind of person who can keep their eyes open while slightly petrified to be able to enjoy this view.
The Tower of London must be making a mini-comeback these days thanks to popular movies like Elizabeth and The Other Boleyn Girl as well as that Showtime mini-series The Tudors. How else to explain the ridiculously long queues on Easter morning in the freezing rain?
We hit up the Tower that day for those exact reasons--Easter and the freezing rain--hoping that those factors would culminate in a perfect storm of the tourism sort that would leave the place virtually empty. No such luck.
However, we amazingly had the foresight in our red-wine hangover haze to order our tickets online from our hotel room--The Baglioni Hotel in Hyde Park had free ethernet--and thus were able to skip the lines and move our shivering body along through the complex.
The only thing we couldn't do? Stay warm and dry. And the line to see the Royal Jewels was insanely long. Since we had seen the Tower and the jewels before (eight years ago), we decided to abort our tour and hit up the restaurant on-site, the New Armouries, for some tea and scones. There we listened to the rest of our audio guide we had purchased. It was totally geeky but we stayed warm.
Admission: £16.50 per adult. £9.50 per child under 16. Audio Guide: £7 per adult. Special discounts are available for students.
What do you see in this picture? That's right, only one bridge. A blossoming city like Dubai definitely needs a lot more than one. Or so think developers and even Sheikh Mohammed, who's given a new bridge his seal of approval.
Come 2012, Dubai will be the proud home of the world's largest arch bridge. It will be built to some rather impressive statistics: one mile in length, 670 feet in height, and twelve lanes wide, it'll carry some 4,000 vehicles per hour and will cost a mere $817 million to build.
Work on the mega-bridge is due to start next month but it'll be four years until we can cross it. By which time some other Dubai developer will probably have trumped it with the world's biggest, most colorful and least useful bridge. Just a prediction.
We always say to beware of thieves when traveling, but we're usually expecting them to steal a wallet or passport. But the recent crime wave in Europe that we've been following seems to be all about stealing really, really big things.
This month, a bridge was the target again, this time in the town of Cheb in the west of the Czech Republic, very close to the border with Germany. A railway bridge weighing four tons, thankfully on a currently unused piece of track, was mysteriously taken away.
Police believe the thieves would have sold it for scrap. We think souvenirs might be in order too, a bit like chunks of the Berlin Wall. So watch out for men in a Prague square offering you genuine Soviet-era railway remnants.
Singapore might be the land of no spitting, but at least it's in the middle of a permanent summer. And while Singapore city itself is mostly shopping, shopping and a bit of eating between shopping, you can get away to Sentosa Island if you need a bit more of a holiday feel.
Sentosa Island, just a short hop across the harbor from Singapore itself, is home to all kinds of attractions, including Underwater World (and the overrated Dolphin Lagoon), restaurants, rides and resorts.
With yet another large resort on the way--set to open in 2010 and draw some 15 million visitors a year--another access route to the island is necessary. That means doubling the size of the current bridge joining Sentosa to the mainland. If they add any more lanes, it'll stop being an island.
We thought it was weird enough when a bunch of thieves stole a beach in Hungary last month. But head a bit further east and the criminals in Russia are even more heavyweight: They steal bridges.
The deal is that a gang of thieves in Khabarovsk worked through the night to dismantle and take away the 38-foot-long car bridge. This netted them about 200 tons of scrap metal which police figure they're planning to sell. To thwart a repeat offense, they're going to replace the bridge with a concrete version.
But imagine the surprise of locals last week when they drove along the road and got to the spot where the bridge had been just the day before. It was en route to a power station and it's unlikely that any tourists got caught out by the inconvenience of the sudden lack of a bridge, but it's food for thought. Any scrap metal enthusiasts out there want to try dismantling the Golden Gate or the Sydney Harbour Bridge without anyone noticing?
The Tower of London must be making a mini-comeback these days thanks to popular movies like Elizabeth and The Other Boleyn Girl as well as that Showtime mini-series The Tudors. How else to explain the ridiculously long queues on Easter morning in the freezing rain?
