Travel – Page 7 – David Enzel

CDG Terminal 1: ‘The Camembert’

August 15, 2025April 23, 2024

Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) opened on March 13, 1974. It has three terminals. Terminal 1 (shown above) is the oldest terminal. It was inaugurated on March 8, 1974 by French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer (1916-2007), after eight years of construction.

Designed by the young architect Paul Andreu (1938-2018), this first terminal featured an innovative design of brutalist architecture. It has a central circular building linked to seven satellites. Designed to facilitate the distribution of passenger flows, this singular structure earned the terminal its nickname, which is still used today, the Camembert.

The first Air France flight from Paris-Charles de Gaulle took off on April 30, 1974. The Caravelle F-BHRA, the first aircraft of its type delivered to Air France, took off for Belgrade and Sofia, with a crew led by flight captain Henri Cibert.

Paris-Charles de Gaulle is the busiest airport within the European Union. In 2022, it handled 57,474,033 passengers and 34,657 aircraft movements, thus making it the world’s ninth busiest airport and Europe’s third busiest airport (after Istanbul and Heathrow) in terms of passenger numbers.

Sources: Air France | Wikipedia

More of Washington’s Cherry Blossoms

August 16, 2025March 25, 2024

I went back on Sunday March 25th to enjoy Washington’s cherry trees. It was a cold morning without any clouds in the sky. The blossoms were still beautiful.

Mineo’s Pizza, Pittsburgh

August 9, 2025March 23, 2024

In 1954, Giovanni Mineo came to Pittsburgh from Sicily where he had worked as a baker. Riding a street car down Murray Avenue, he found a rental space for his pizzeria at the original location of 2130 Murray Avenue. On September 13, 1958, he introduced pizza to the primarily Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood. In the 1970’s, Mineo’s moved next door to the current location of 2128 Murray Avenue and his teenage sons Dominic and Giovanni Jr (“John”) began working with their father. Although Giovanni died in 1996, sons Dominic, John, and manager Gary Robinson hold true to his traditions and recipes.

I grew up eating Mineo’s pizza at least once a week. I loved it as did most students at Taylor Allderdice High School, the local high school.

Now that I live in Washington, I go as often as I can to Giuseppi’s Pizza in Rockville, Maryland for a similar Pittsburgh experience, including lots of Pittsburgh Steelers paraphernalia on the walls.

Washington’s Famed Cherry Trees in Peak Bloom

August 16, 2025March 17, 2024

Washington’s Cherry Blossoms hit peak bloom today. This was about two weeks earlier than normal. I had the pleasure of being at the Tidal Basin at sunrise to welcome Spring. It was a glorious day.

Exuberance in the Heart of DC: H Street Festival

August 16, 2025February 27, 2024

The H Street Festival began as a modest block party with about 500 participants more than a decade ago. Today, it draws over 150,000 people and stretches across 11 blocks with 14 themed stages. The festival showcases a vibrant mix of music, dance, youth performances, fashion, poetry, heritage arts, and family-friendly activities.

The streets were alive with energy — a joyful, exuberant celebration of community and culture.

Library of Congress

August 11, 2025February 24, 2024

The Library of Congress in Washington, DC is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.

Congress moved to Washington, D.C. in 1800 after holding sessions for eleven years in temporary national capitals in New York City and Philadelphia. Also in 1800, as part of an act of Congress providing for the removal of the new national government from Philadelphia to Washington, President John Adams approved an act of Congress providing $5,000 for books for the use of Congress—the beginning of the Library of Congress.

However, in 1814, the British burned Washington, destroying the Capitol and the small congressional library in its north wing. Former President Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his comprehensive personal library of 6,487 books to rebuild the Library of Congress. Congress accepted his offer in 1815. Jefferson’s concept of universality is the rationale for the comprehensive collecting policies of today’s Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress is among Washington’s top attractions. Every Library of Congress visitor must reserve timed-entry pass. Passes are available here. It’s worth planning ahead as slots fill up.

Sources: Library of Congress | Wikipedia

Paris: Musée Picasso

August 11, 2025December 30, 2023

The Musée Picasso is an art gallery located in the Hôtel Salé in rue de Thorigny, in the Marais district of Paris, dedicated to the work of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The hôtel Salé is probably, as Bruno Foucart wrote in 1985, “the grandest, most extraordinary, if not the most extravagant, of the grand Parisian houses of the 17th century”.

The museum collection includes more than 5,000 works of art (paintings, sculptures, drawings, ceramics, prints, engravings and notebooks) and tens of thousands of archived pieces from Picasso’s personal repository, including the artist’s photographic archive, personal papers, correspondence, and author manuscripts. A large portion of items were donated by Picasso’s family after his death, in accord with the wishes of the artist, who lived in France from 1905 to 1973.

Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986) (shown above) was best known as the muse and second wife of Pablo Picasso. Their marriage lasted 11 years until his death, during which time he created over 400 portraits of her, more than any of Picasso’s other loves. Here, she poses with her striking portrait created in California. The photograph was made by David Douglas Duncan (1916-2018), an American photojournalist, known for his combat photographs and for his extensive domestic photography of Pablo Picasso and his wife Jacqueline.

United States Air Force Thunderbirds

August 9, 2025December 30, 2023

On September 17, 2022, I saw the awe-inspiring “Thunderbirds” air demonstration squadron of the United States Air Force (USAF) perform at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, the home of Air Force One. The Thunderbirds squadron was was created in 1953 and is based in Nevada.

The USAF Thunderbirds are the third-oldest formal flying aerobatic team (under the same name) in the world, after the French Air Force Patrouille de France formed in 1931 and the United States Navy Blue Angels formed in 1946.

The Thunderbirds Squadron tours the United States and beyond performing aerobatic formation and solo flying in pristine, specially marked aircraft.

The Thunderbirds have performed at over 4,000 airshows worldwide, accumulating millions of miles in hundreds of different airframes over the course of their more than fifty-four years of service. Flying high-performance fighter jets is dangerous. And when flying in extremely close formation, the danger is compounded.

In total, twenty-one Thunderbirds pilots have been killed in the team’s history. Three fatal crashes have occurred during air shows, two of them in jets.

The Thunderbirds perform aerial demonstrations in the F-16C Fighting Falcon. Over 4,600 aircraft have been built since production was approved in 1976. Although no longer being purchased by the U.S. Air Force, improved versions are being built for export customers.

‘Art on Call’

August 16, 2025December 30, 2023

From 2000 until 2009, Cultural Tourism DC led “Art on Call”, a city-wide effort to restore Washington’s abandoned police and fire call boxes as neighborhood artistic icons. Cultural Tourism DC partnered with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the District Department of Transportation on this initiative. The project is now managed by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Musée Jacquemart-André

August 18, 2025December 30, 2023

The Musée Jacquemart-André is a private museum located at 158 Boulevard Haussmann in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The museum was created from the private home of Édouard André (1833–1894) and Nélie Jacquemart (1841–1912) to display the art they collected during their lives.

Édouard André, the scion of a Protestant banking family, devoted his considerable fortune to buying works of art. He then exhibited them in his new mansion built in 1869 by the architect Henri Parent, and completed in 1875.

André married a well-known society painter, Nélie Jacquemart, who had painted his portrait ten years earlier. The couple travelled in Italy, amassing one of the finest collections of Italian art in France. When Edouard André died, Nélie Jacquemart completed the decoration of the Italian Museum and travelled in the Orient to add more precious works to the collection. Faithful to the plan agreed with her husband, she bequeathed the mansion and its collections to the Institut de France as a museum, and it opened to the public in 1913.

Source: Wikipedia