In Hong Kong, the first museum dedicated entirely to the June 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, China, the June 4 Memorial Museum (5/F Foo Hoo Centre, 3 Austin Ave., Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, P.R. China; phone +852 2459 6489, http://64museum.blogspot.hk [in Chinese only]), opened in April 2014.
Shaped like a ship with sails unfurled, the Macau Maritime Museum (1 Largo do Pagode da Barra, Macau, P.R. China; phone +86 853 2859 5481, www.marine.gov.mo [in Chinese and Portuguese only]) is located in the Square of the Barra Pagoda.
The first floor contains historical artifacts of traditional Macanese fishing and sailing, the second floor focuses on Portuguese sailing and the third floor displays modern sailing technology. An aquarium gallery has four large tanks showing different aquatic environments: riverbed, harbor, coral reef and shipwreck.
Paris passes
I agree with Rick Steves’ recommendation about using city passes to keep from standing in long ticket lines in certain cities in Europe (Oct. ’15, pg. 54). During a week-long visit to Paris in September 2015, I found a Paris Pass* to be very useful. I bought the 6-day pass, though I didn’t get the full value from it because I didn’t have time to visit all of the attractions for which admission was included.
In Macau, more than 200 pieces of antique sound and video equipment are displayed in the Museum of Vintage Sound Machines (No. 13-15 Rua das Estalagens, Macau SAR, China; phone +853 2892 1389), located within Tai Peng Electronics & Appliances.
Exhibits include gramophones and phonographs that play original cylinders and records, hand-cranked music boxes, manual telephones and tube radios.
Book a visit at least one day in advance by phone or by emailing antique@tai-peng.com. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Admission, MOP30 (near $3.75).
Memorializing slavery and the slave trade in the Caribbean, the Mémorial ACTe slavery museum (Darboussier, Rue Raspail, Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, FWI; phone +590 590 25 16 00, www.memorial-acte.fr/home-page.html) opened on the French-Caribbean island of Guadeloupe on July 7.
It was at the midpoint of our “Exploring Scotland & Ireland” tour when we got to visit the Titanic Experience Museum (1 Olympic Way, Queen’s Rd., Titanic Quarter, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT3 9EP, U.K.; phone +353 21 481 4412, www.titanicbelfast.com).
Traveling with Collette (Pawtucket, RI; 888/292-3150, www.gocollette.com), Aug. 5-16, 2015, we had experienced the chilly, windswept Scottish Highlands, attended the Military Tattoo in Edinburgh and enjoyed a smooth crossing on the Irish Sea, and we were now in Belfast. I was really looking forward to this.
Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, is worth three days of your time if you’re traveling to that part of the world. Staying in the atmospheric and historic La Candelaria neighborhood puts you within easy walking distance of the majority of the city’s attractions. There is plenty to see and do there.
3,300 fossilized footprints from three species of dinosaur — an herbivorous ornithopod similar to a duck-billed dinosaur, a chicken-sized carnivore and a tyrannosaurus-type carnivore — which paleontologists have determined were created during one predatory event, have been preserved in a climate-controlled building at the Lark Quarry Conservation Park on Winton Jundah Road, southwest of Winton, Queensland, Australia.
In Shandong Province in eastern China, a $48 million restoration of the Temple of Kongfuzi (Confucius) began on July 18 in the city of his birth, Qufu, and is expected to take three to five years. Kongfuzi was an important politician, philosopher and religious leader in ancient China whose work inspired the philosophical system and religion known as Confucianism.
