In transit - Kalymnos, Greece

Haven't had any time to edit photos from Tenerife, due to a 1 day stopover in Ljubljana. My next destination - the climbing paradise on Kalymnos. Expect a report on Tenerife soon as I edit the photos. (1500 of them :S)

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In transit - Tenerife, Canary Islands

A stands for Playa de las Americas

Here's where I'm going right now. I'll try and send some updates :)

Misja Pec (Meeshya Pech)

Over the weekend, Slovenia's Youth Climbing Team was unleashed onto one of Slovenia's best known sport climbing crags. Their mission? Fight for Nutella (the chocolate spread). What the coaches hope will become an annual event, proved to be the perfect setting for a bit little photography.

As always, the true scope of this crag is hard to capture unless you stand right in the middle of it; unfortunately that's also the hardest spot to take photos. So if you want to see more of it ... you'll just have to come visit :)

Panorama of the eastern face

The Team

The Prize/Cup

Izzy - Pikova Dama 8b (Winning Climb)

Domen - 16 years old and climbed an 8c+ the day before

Some Italian guy we deemed the Neanderthal :)

Miha - Mrtvaski Ples 8b

FIS Ski Flying World Championships - Planica

1 Day back in Slovenia and this is how I break it in. The largest ski jump slope in the world and the setting for this years Flying World Championships. Enjoy.

Surf Dubai

Surfing in Dubai is rubbish ... but at least you can do this :)

Wild Wadi Water Park - Link

The Emirates Palace

(click to zoom in)

Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi

The most luxurious hotel I have ever seen. No expense was spared building this place. A pattern that seems to repeat in this corner of the world. It cost USD $3.0 Billion to build and it spans 850,000m2. The largest room, The Palace Grand Suite, has 680 m2. If you can't picture that, imagine a 26m x 26m square, or half the white house (look at red square in photo below).

Standard room (60 m2) - usd $400
The Palace Grand Suite (680 m2) - usd $11,500

Better start saving...

I took a few photos but you can't really appreciate this place from the ground so I've made a Google Earth screenshot as well.

Oh ... and did I mention it's a 7 star hotel :)

(Emirates Palace grounds)

(680 m2 - half the main White House building)

Sheikh Zayed Mosque

Built in honor of the late father of the UAE - Sheikh Zayed, this is the largest mosque in the UAE. It's built entirely of marble from Italy, Greece and Brazil (plus some others). It holds the record for the largest dome in a mosque, the largest chandelier in a mosque and the largest single piece carpet in the world. I recommend you take a guided tour of this place, since the attention to detail is amazing and you will miss all of these small things if you just stroll through.

A few interesting facts:

• The marble in the courtyard is always cold, even if the ambient temperature is 40 degrees C.
• Most of the gold (and there is a lot) is 24 carat.
• It cost 1 billion dollars to built and it still isn't finished.
• The chandelier weighs 9.5 tones and is suspended from 3 steel cables, each capable of holding 11 tones.
• The carpet was made in Iran by 1200 weavers and was brought here in 9 separate pieces. It was then woven together on site by the same 1200 workers. Don't quote me on this but I think it weighs around 40 tones. It was made out of wool from New Zealand.

Make sure you check out the location and layout of the mosque in the satellite map above. Do you know which direction it's facing?

Panorama of Sheikh Zayed Mosque on CleVR.com