Towers can be things of beauty. Or a tower can be historic. On the other hand, it may be a great structure to climb and take in an impressive vista. Or it might be two or three of the above.
If a place I visit has a tower worth noting and/or climbing I probably wrote about it here. And, if it was worth climbing and there were no restrictions agains climbing it (I’m an obedient Canadian), I probably climbed it.
I don’t know why, but I love climbing towers to take in views. Even if they have narrow stairwells that tax my minor case of claustrophobia or open areas that challenge my major case of acrophobia, I usually fight the fear and do it.
Maybe I do it just to prove to myself that I can still do it at my now advanced age. Some of those towers have a few hundred steps and no elevator.
Anyway, if you want to read about a visit to a tower somewhere you can probably do so by clicking one of the links below.
I was still traumatized by The Tragic Credit Card Incident of 2025™️ from this morning. Nevertheless, I persisted and visited the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum...
I arrived in Kyoto after a three-hour Shinkansen (high-speed rail) journey from Adawara Station (the closest Shinkansen station to Hakone). I’m already having second thoughts...
The forecast high today in Sydney, Australia is 35°C. I decided to stick with indoor activities and little outdoor walking.This morning, that included St. Mary’s...
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager
1 minute
_gid
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity
24 hours
_ga_
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gali
Used by Google Analytics to determine which links on a page are being clicked
30 seconds
_gac_
Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together.
90 days
__utmx
Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test.
18 months
__utmv
Contains custom information set by the web developer via the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated every time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
2 years after last activity
__utmz
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
6 months after last activity
__utmc
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
End of session (browser)
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
__utmt
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utma
ID used to identify users and sessions
2 years after last activity
Jetpack's built-in visitor analytics. It records page views, referring sites, search terms, and outbound link clicks, and also carries the shared visitor-tracking library used by Jetpack Instant Search and WooCommerce Analytics.