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haydenandtrish · 5 years

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A tour of Brussels

From historic to hipster. Timeless beauty to rundown surroundings. Nestled within a country that was once a battlefield for World Wars, revolutions and rebellions – it has seen its fair share of bloodshed and misery. The French, Dutch, German, Austrians and British have all staked their claim to the lands at one point in time. They have rebuilt their city from the ruins of war and have created their own culture within Europe. Now an independent multicultural city flourishing with pride for their craftsmanship, food, craft beers, art galleries and more. Welcome to Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the unofficial capital of the European Union, we can’t wait to show you around.

All right, let's go. We begin in Koekelberg, north of Brussels. The outskirts of the city are more residential – just like anywhere. It is far cheaper to stay here and we were able to gain a greater appreciation and understanding for the city by being immersed in a more authentic area where few spoke English and fewer tourists were in sight. The area was more run down than the city, the cleanliness was subpar but renovations were happening down streets and we got a bargain breakfast of pastries for only 2 Euros, we can’t complain.

Anyway, back on track. Getting around. Our choice of transport in this city was the Metro. The stations are denoted on street level by a sign with a white M on a blue background. One thing to mention is that the Metro system in every city is exceptional – so far. Our Guide to the tram system. Admittedly it’s a little confusing at first, but the routes are displayed in straight coloured lines with dot points indicating each stop. So, as long as you know the destination you want, don’t freak out, take your time and read the lines until you see your stop. Which platform to be on is easy too because they will put one sign at two separate entrances and your particular stop will only be on one of them. A little tip: Google Maps is a literal lifesaver. It tells you step by step where to go and it will list your suggested stops.

All tickets purchased are valid for all public transport within Brussels including the tram, local city buses and Metro.

Ticket Price:

A single fare ticket is 2.10 Euros and valid for one hour from activation.

A full day is 7.50 Euros. Be careful with this one though as it is literally one day, it stops at midnight on the day of purchase.

If you are in town for a few days then a travel card may be of more interest to you. It is 5 Euros to purchase but you can top it up as needed. You can buy these form most Metro stations and you save up to 1 Euro per trip.

If you haven’t guessed already, Hayden and I elect to walk nearly everywhere we can. Yes, because it’s free, but also because this environment is completely new to us and we want to see every little bit. Walking gives us the freedom to make our own route, to stop where ever we want and admire every nook and cranny – and its Europe, so there’s many of those. Brussels is also a smaller city so the monuments, museums and galleries are all quite close to one another.

Food. A perk of staying outside of the main city is that it is cheaper than central. Le Familial is where we got our cheap pastries from. We ventured out for dinner on our first night at 5:45pm only to learn that most kitchens do not open until 6:30pm. Like I said in our last blog post, Europeans love their late starts and later finishes so definitely keep that in mind for your travels. We chose a restaurant/bar and ordered a couple of drinks to wait it out. Le Scenarios could also be slash night club because behind a makeshift wall was a small club with confetti all over the floor and tiny platforms for dancers. It turns out a lot of places replicate this same design so you are not short for options on a night out. For dinner we enjoyed some pasta dishes with a glass of red and a crepe covered in chocolate for dessert

We also had the best kebab shop down the road from our accommodation too. If you are a potato lover like me, you’ll die over the fact they put fries on them. But that’s not surprising considering that the potato frites (fried potatoes) originated in Belgium. We cannot remember our exact shop, but similar ones are everywhere. On that subject, you cannot miss tasting the fries, there will be a huge line, yes, but they are worth it. Thick chips with a perfectly crusted outer layer that crunches and exposes a fluffy inside. I learned that it’s because they deep fry the fries twice. They are perfect.

What to see.

Our walk started off at one of the higher points in the city and we worked our way down. We caught the Metro to Louise where we saw Palais de Justice or the Law Courts of Brussels. It was under construction when we visited but the mammoth craftsmanship was evident even behind the piles of scaffolding. We then walked over to the Infantry Memorial which was beautiful and daunting in its own right. Behind it was an incredible view of the city which also had an elevator to get down into the streets.

L’atelier en ville This place is a funky café that we thought was worth mentioning. It is a café, art gallery, clothes shop and wooden bench top store all in one. We later figured out this was the ‘hipster’ side to Brussels. So if you want a little more modern, less touristy, more artsy and more party, then this is the side of Brussels you want.

Mannekin Pis This little guy is one of the best-known landmarks in Belgium. The fun thing about the mannequin boy is that he is dressed in costume to commemorate each major celebration, event or festival. You can view all of his costumes displayed at the Museum of the City of Brussels. There are actually three little statues. One of a boy peeing, one of a girl (Jeanneke pis) and one of a dog (Zenneke). And a lot like Pokemon – you gotta catch them all, so keep your eyes peeled because they are not very big and can be around any corner.

Brussels Park There are many parks in Brussels, but this is the one we escaped into when the parade for the150 years of the tram in the city got a little too overwhelming. Its entrance is directly across from the Belgium House of Parliament too. The park is pictured below and it is incredibly busy due to the parade but it was still a nice park to be in.

Belgium Chocolate Village For 6 Euros per person, you are able to explore the Belgium Chocolate Museum. We found this self-guided tour extremely informative and delicious. We learnt about the history and process of gathering the cocoa beans, how chocolate is made, and where nearly every different style of chocolate originated from. We were able to stand in a class where the chef showed us how to create ganache chocolate, and yes, there was a taste test too. Some of our favourite moments was seeing the sculptures made out of chocolate, they were huge and the smell of cocoa was euphoric. It’s no wonder we finished our tour in the café upstairs to subdue the cravings. Hot chocolate that was made with frothed milk and chunks of dark chocolate was my poison, whereas Hayden stuck to a chocolate milkshake. However, if you are not interested in the museum and tour, that’s fine. There is a chocolate shop on nearly every block anyways. Plenty of opportunities to treat yourself.

There is plenty more to discover in Brussels, but what we were not prepared for was stumbling across a fun little parade. Just our luck. Labour Day and 150 years of the tram parade.

We continued on our walk with one destination in the back of our mind – Grand Place. It was almost humorous because I was asking Hayden to get photos of some trees because the branches were mended to create fences – honestly, I just thought they were cool. We walked alongside the tree fence around to the front and saw the most incredible looking building. I said ‘This has to be Grand place, or Kings Palace just look at the detail’. We tried to pinpoint where we were on the map to no avail. But alas, I spotted a young boy in a blue vest which symbolised he could help with information. We found out that no, this was definitely not Grand Place, instead it was Notre Dame du Sablon (Chuch of Our Blessed Lady of Sablon). A gothic-style Catholic church from the 15th century.

He went on to explain that we were standing in Rue de la Regence. The significance of this little street? It was lined with hundreds of trams. Why? Because the city was celebrating 150 years since the tram was introduced. There was every single model of tram that had ever been driven in Brussels laid out in order of year.

There was also going to be a parade beginning at 1400 hours. The trams were to be driven through the centre of the city. We walked past crowds of people, past a makeshift grandstand and behind it was at least 12 different food stalls. We got mojitos and fries and sat down to enjoy what was around us. By now we had been out for hours, and although I enjoy public things, I absolutely despise being in crowds, they just tire me out. I was ready to go home. I was a little disappointed we hadn’t seen Grand Place, but our day had been filled with so much excitement I was content.

We headed back down to Brussels Central Station ready to catch the Metro back home when we spotted an exceptionally busy street, so of course something had to be down that way. We garnered up the energy and made our way down. We stepped around the happy buskers, we admired the street markets and then we were left completely and utterly speechless... We had finally found Grand Place. And it is most definitely its namesake.

It’s incredible. A huge square that leaves you feeling minuscule. Gilded buildings that leave you feeling, well, poor. It is comprised of the Hotel de Ville (Brussels town hall) and Maison du Roi (Museum of the City of Brussels) famously facing one another and the Guild Houses completing the rest of the shape. There is detail in every little thing from the post lamps to the pillars, from the carved stonework to the gold decoration. Each building is so innately different but perfectly matching the grandness of their home. We literally spent an hour there, in that square, taking in each building, taking a million photos, looking up at the incredibleness of the Grandest place I’ve ever seen – so far ;). Being labour day, it was incredibly busy. Hundreds of people were in that square at the same time, but we never felt overcrowded. Now it was finally time to go. We had come to see what we had wanted to see. We walked back to the Metro and headed back to our beautiful Airbnb on the outer skirts of the town.

Always with love Trish

#brussels #grandplace #grotemarkt #travel #travelblog #europe #cities #eu #Haydenandtrish #trams #gold

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gingerandwry · 5 years

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Week 1

The bus ride from Paraty to Rio was easy and uneventful. The road runs along the coast, but unfortunately the view is mostly obscured by overgrowth. I caught some dramatic, beautiful glimpses, but Brazil could learn from California and Australia. Upon arrival at my Ipanema AirBnB, I took a breath then settled in for two weeks of adventure....

My friends Scott and Tony had left Paraty a couple days early to come to Rio, so I met them for drinks and dinner Saturday night. We walked to a lively, popular-with-millenials section of Leblon and ate dinner at CT Boucherie, an established steakhouse-ish restaurant that was fantastic (and a great value for how much we ate and drink). Those guys had had a big night on Friday so we all turned in early.

And it’s good we did since Scott had a full day planned for us. We started at Parque Lage for breakfast at their famous restaurant. It occupies the courtyard of a crumbling mansion (now an art school) and sits just below Rio’s most famous landmark, Christ the Redeemer. It’s a setting made for Instagram, and everyone certainly took advantage of that. The food was pretty tasty for a place that could easily half-ass it. After breakfast we walked around the park a bit and saw our first monkeys!

We then walked through Jardim Botanico, which appears to be the Beverly Hills of Rio. We walked through the Botanical Gardens as well, which are lush and beautiful. I think the most striking element were the massive tree trunks, some of which formed walls rising several feet above the ground.

From here we traveled back to Ipanema’s Praca General Osorio for the famous “Hippie Fair”, an arts and crafts market. I’m not sure what the big deal is-- it seems like every other crafts market I’ve seen. Afterwards the guys went to the beach, but I needed some literal chill time in front of a fan, so I lay low at my apartment for a while. We met up again for dinner at Zaza, a delicious Moroccan restaurant. It was the guys’ last night, but we were all pretty beat, so we called it early after a couple more beers.

Monday was shopping day, both clothes and groceries. I am not a beach person, and I was not prepared for how beached out Rio is. Even at nighttime in nice restaurants, people are in t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops. I needed some more beach wear to fit in (tho I only ended up finding one pair of shorts I liked). I met up with the guys again for lunch at Barraca do Uruguai, the most famous stand at Ipanema beach selling delicious meaty sandwiches. They had to get to the airport so we parted ways and I found myself all alone in Brazil....

On Tuesday I committed to the hard work of tourism. In the morning I took the metro to Centro, the historic center of Rio. I emerged at Rua Uruguaina into a hectic street bazaar. It was initially unnerving but a nice break from laid back Ipanema. Once I got my bearings I climbed up to Morro de Conceicao, a very old, Lisbon-esque street with cute (if shabby) townhouses, and then down to Praca Maua, the waterfront area that was revitalized for the 2016 Olympics. I first visited the Museu de Arte do Rio, housed in a beautiful colonial building attached to a gleaming modern annex. The view over Guanabara Bay is fantastic. The museum was showing two exhibits, one (”Mulheres”) featured women artists and had a lot of compelling pieces. The other was a history of samba. Once again I couldn’t understand the Portuguese captions, but there was enough music, video and glamorous visuals to make it fun nonetheless.

I walked across the plaza to Museu do Amanha (”Tomorrow”), a very modern “science” museum with a lot of interactive video displays and flashy installations for these selfie/social media loving Brazilians. The science was a bit thin; it starts with a brief history of the universe then focuses on humanity’s impact on the planet, for better and worse. But it was engaging.

I then hiked up another hill to the Mosteiro do Sao Bento, a monastery that is one of the city’s oldest buildings. Its plain, humble exterior belies an over-the-top opulence inside, a theme I found in every church I saw that day. Those early Portuguese settlers loved ornate, gilded wall reliefs like you would expect from Louis XIV.

After a tasty chicken burger at the hip Cozinha Mironga I continued toward the waterfront to Igreja de Nossa Senhora Candelaria, the biggest of the city’s historic churches. The surrounding area houses lots of current and former government buildings, most of them imposing neoclassical edifices or fanciful Baroque colonial desserts (or both). I saw the Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil (tho I skipped the current exhibition of Dreamworks art), Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Carmo da Antiga Se (which served royal functions when the Portguese throne decamped to Brazil) and Paco Imperial (the one-time royal palace). From there I walked through the extremely underwhelming (but historic) Arco de Teles into Travessa do Comercio, a charming cobblestone street of colonial townhouses, now home to outdoor cafes.

From here I cut across the hustling narrow streets of Centro to Largo da Carioca, a plaza surrounding by some atrocious 1960s skyscrapers (tho the Petrobras HQ is a marvel) and dominated by a very old church, Igreja Sao Francisco da Penitencia e Convento de Santo Antonio (phew). It’s beautifully restored and wins the gaudiest award in a very tough category. Not one inch of that chapel was left ungilded, an odd choice for an order who has taken a vow of poverty.

I then headed back up to Real Gabinete Portugues de Leitura, or the Royal Reading Room. It’s basically a library, and one of the most stunning I’ve ever seen. It’s three stories of books (over 350,000) in sumptuous but tasteful, muted decor. You can feel the knowledge surrounding you, and it makes you yearn to have more of it.

From there I veered west into Saara, a small grid of narrow streets that serves as an outdoor market and bazaar. You can probably find anything you need here and at a good price. At the end of it I found Campo de Santana, an elegant park with an odd assemblage of wild beasts-- cats, ducks, some sort of large fowl, and a cute, big rodent creature (capybara?). That was enough for one day so I headed back to Ipanema, had a big, tasty, cheap dinner at Frontera and went home to bed.

On Wednesday I headed back down to Centro to finish my tour. I started at the Museu Historico Nacional. I have a particular interest in history museums because a) I think it’s important to have some background and context when you travel; b) I’m a history nerd; and c) they are difficult to do well since good history requires a lot of text, which is not well-suited to a museum. Rio’s history museum is... decent. Housed in a well-maintained old fort, it could definitely use some refurbishing and some more engaging exhibits. After a respectable space telling the story of the indigenous people, it mostly focuses on the leaders and elites who steered the country from a Portuguese (and Dutch and French) colony into an independent republic. It has little to say about slaves, and I found no mention of the military dictatorship that ruled from the sixties to the eighties. (This is especially problematic given the current president’s favorable, revisionist view of the dictatorship.) But otherwise the narrative seems fair and accurate, if not thorough. It has almost no weighty artifacts, like original documents or “this was the actual thing that person used” items. It is mostly full of examples (of china, jewelry, slave shackles, etc.), paintings (many immense) and busts. Two awesome exceptions are a large array of carriages and early cars spanning three hundred years and an actual historic apothecary that was moved into the museum when it went out of business. I also appreciated that all of the displays had English translations tho they were riddled with errors. It made me wonder why the museum wouldn’t have them proofread before printing them up in a permanent exhibition.

From here I walked back to Praca Floriano (aka Cinelandia) which is the heart of downtown. The plaza is fairly non-descript, but it’s surrounded by some of the city’s most beautiful buildings: Theatro Municipal, Bibliolteca Nacional, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes and Camera Municipal. It was so stunning I stopped for lunch on the square and came back to see it lit up at night (when apparently the navy was attending the opera...).

After lunch I continued west into Lapa, past the iconic Arcos (an old viaduct) and the peculiar Catedral Metropolitana de Sao Sebastio. It’s a brutalist cement cone modeled after Aztec pyramids, and it looks nothing like any church I’ve ever seen (tho not far off from St. Mary’s in San Francisco, aka “The Washing Machine”). After my initial shock and repulsion, I found it growing on me, if only for its boldness and break from tradition. It’s most famous for the tall stain-glassed windows (which are impressive in their size if not beauty), but what stood out to me was the main crucifix. It’s surprisingly small and suspended in the center of the cone about 30 feet above the altar. Jesus looks so vulnerable and alone, floating in an empty void. Of all the gory crucifixion scenes I’ve seen, this more than any other moved me and actually made me sad to think about Jesus’ plight.

I then ventured further into Lapa. Nowadays it’s best known for its rowdy nightlife, and some of the bars were just starting to open up. Like much of Rio (and many Latin American cities), the area had traces of better days but now mostly looks decrepit. I made my way back, under the Arcos and headed to Cinelandia to catch the train home.

Thursday was considerably less ambitious. After a late start, I took the metro to Botafogo. Amid the usual urban grit of Rio are several beautiful old colonial mansions (as well as a notorious favela). I believe it was once an upscale artsy neighborhood that fell into decline, but some of the old buildings have been restored as museums or work spaces. Unfortunately, like so much of the city, they are hidden and inaccessible behind tall walls and fences. One beautiful exception is the Fundacao Casa de Rui Barbosa, once home to a famous writer and politician, now a museum. I didn’t go inside but the gorgeous grounds around the home are open to the public and look like a miniature botanical garden.

I made my way toward the next neighborhood, Humaita, and stopped at Cemiterio Sao Joao Batista, the final resting place for some of Brazil’s most famous residents. It’s quite beautiful and dramatic under the watchful eye of Christ the Redeemer. My last stop was Cobol do Humaita, a food market and dining hall, which are always pleasant to wander. The sun was going down so, after six days in Ipanema, I figured it was time to see the sunset on the beach. Obviously Rio faces East but the light is still nice.

Friday turned out to be my most ambitious day and, painfully, the hottest so far. I returned to lovely Cinelandia and Lapa and visited the famous Escadaria Selaron, a public stairway that has been covered in a colorful tile mosaic in tribute to the people of Brazil. It’s pretty, fun and festive and swarming with tourists. Fortunately most people turn around at the top (if they get that far) instead of continuing into the beautiful Santa Teresa neighborhood. Like Botafogo, it’s full of charming old homes in various states of (dis)repair. But these are not walled off. And they run the gamut from cottages to palaces, so there is a lot of variety, both in architecture and culture. It reminded me of Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill. Also, this being a very steep hill, there are stunning views of the city and the bay from everywhere.

There is not much to do in Santa Teresa besides admire the loveliness, which probably helps keep the tourists away. Parque das Ruinas is the main attraction-- a crumbled mansion once owned by a salon-hosting socialite intellectual. It really feels like ruins, but staircases and walkways have been installed and the surrounding grounds turned into a park. The views from the top are spectacular. The small museum next door (Museu da Chacara do Ceu) hosts a private collection. It sounded interesting but appeared to be closed for construction.

I continued walking through the main commercial area which hosts some charming little boutiques, restaurants and bars (as well as a makeshift barber and a bar perched out on one of the viewpoints). I stopped for fantastic feijoada at Bar do Mineiro and more beer at the historic Bar do Gomes. Then, rather than walk all the way back down, I opted for the bonde, a cute little cable car that runs up and down the hill.

With a little daylight left, I headed back down to Botafogo and then over to Urca for one of Rio’s premiere attractions: Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf Mountain). It stands tall at the north end of Copacabana and offers stunning views over the entire city and bay. It’s accessible by a sequence of two cable cars (gondolas), teetering at dizzying heights. It was crowded, as I expected at sunset, but not actually that bad. I stayed up there a while soaking in the “Marvelous City” and, like everyone else, taking tons of photos.

It was my first Friday night in the city, and I had nothing to do, which would have been a shame. But a guy I had been chatting with invited me to Paraiso do Tuiuti, a samba school. I demurred, concerned that I would not understand the instructions in Portuguese. But my friend then explained that it’s not a school so much as a club that performs sambas. The schools are formed in the favelas and compete at Carnaval every year. Friday night Paraiso was having a big birthday party and putting on a show for their friends.

The Paraiso clubhouse is across the street from Feira de Sao Cristovao, a kind of permanent country fair. It’s home to dozens of stalls selling all sorts of stuff, but at night, it’s mostly just restaurants and bars with a lot of karaoke. There is also a main stage with the kind of cheesy acts you would expect at a fair. And the crowd was overwhelmingly under 30, maybe 25. It was cute good times but I was not sorry to leave when my friend arrived.

The Paraiso do Tuiuti building is a big auditorium, not unlike a high school gym. A large samba band was in full swing in the corner of the mezzanine, and various people in uniforms, outfits and costumes were milling amongst the hundreds of guests. It all felt very festive, intimate and personable. A little later the performances started. My friend explained that each year at Carnaval each school performs a new samba and competes for first place (the schools are also organized like sports leagues with a top tier, mid tier, etc.). Paraiso do Tuiuti was performing their greatest hits that night in honor of their birthday (with songs going back to the 80s), and once they were done, a couple other schools-- Estacio de Sa and Mangueira (last year’s winners)-- performed as well. The whole experience was phenomenal and unforgettable-- the rhythms, the leg work, the costumes, the energy. It was a fantastic, only-in-Brazil night that a tourist can only hope to stumble upon.

Since I did not get home until 6am, Saturday and Sunday were my lazy days off before I returned to the tourist trail the next week....

#riodejaneiro #brazil #brasil #travel #gaytravel #intentionaltravel

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lsundarinfo · 3 years

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5 Best Places To Visit In the UK

The United Kingdom has lots of natural scenery, commercial centres, mountains, rivers, etc. The following are some extraordinary places which attract tourists, while travelling inside the UK, you need a valid international driver's license and international driver's permit for driving a vehicle by yourself. If you don't have proper documents, an international driver's permit, & an international driving license, you can't drive by yourself either. You need to hire a driver or use public transport. Driving without any documents is illegal in the UK. If you are a foreigner, you have to carry your passport.

t and all old passports for your own safety and peace. Take necessary everyday things before travelling along with all essential documents, and also those countries' currencies. Currencies can be converted into money exchanges, banks, and some financial institutions.

London

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London is the capital city of England, which is a place of living history. Over 20 million visitors visit London every year. If you are travelling to London, don't miss the following places:

1. Natural History Museum in London

As mentioned before, this is a land of history. This museum was set up in 1754. It is a huge museum with 80 million items in zoology and botany showcased inside the museum.

2. Hyde Park

Hyde Park is a massive 350-acre-park with man-made pools and boating, made in the 18th century. London Zoo is also available inside that park. If you are travelling with kids, they will love it.

3. St. Paul's Cathedral

The most beautiful and oldest church in London with an ancient history. This is the masterpiece of architecture

4. Covent Garden

This is a marketplace where they sell handcrafted items and are also famous for hotels, restaurants, etc. It is better if you are travelling with a UK international driving license.

5. The London Eye

The London Eye is about 442 feet high so you can see the whole city for the journey of 30 minutes. If you are travelling to the most famous tourist spot, like the London Eye, then you should have an international driver's license in London.

Lothian

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If you love nature, beaches, mountains, then this is the place you need to visit. Following are a few places that are famous in Lothian

1. Tantallon Castle

Tantallon Castle is a beautiful tourist spot with a stunning view of the sea and a castle near the beach.

2. John Muir Alpacas

If you love animals, then this is a place for you. This is the best place to travel with family. You can even play with those animals. Toddlers will love this place.

3. East Links Family Park

If you are looking for something adventurous, East Link Family Park would be best for you. Children will love this place. They will find many games and adventurous spots inside the park.

Greater Manchester

Greater Manchester is purely an industrial and city area. If you are interested in these kinds of places, then you should visit Greater Manchester.

The following are some places in Greater Manchester:

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Etihad Stadium is the most welcoming stadium for everyone. Kids will love this place. This is a complete stadium for players. This stadium includes changing rooms, tunnels for players, and a press conference room, which will give life to people and you will enjoy it. If you are a football fan, then this place is for you. People from other countries are also visiting this place.

2.The Lowry

The Lowry is an award-winning building with theatres, cafes, restaurants, art galleries, etc. They will conduct exhibitions, and it is also a fantastic spot for the family meeting or going with friends. This is a perfect city centre for people who are looking for enjoyment.

3. Bury market

Bury markets will be most active on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, with more than 350 stalls opening in recent days. You can buy food and small items available in the market. This is a very cool place for tourists to visit and shop for excellent cultural food and products.

West Midlands

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The West Midlands is a fantastic place with beautiful buildings, museums, gardens, parks, etc. The following are some places for tourists:

1.Moseley Old Hall

Moseley Old Hall has a grand old building, and it is the perfect place for kids with a treehouse, and the whole building is incredible. This is a very friendly place to visit and chill with your family or friends. If you are a foreign visitor, you should carry a valid international driver's permit.

2.Walsall Arboretum

Walsall Arboretum is famous for picnics; it is a pleasant place for family outings. Kids will enjoy this place, and they will feed ducks, play in the playground, and have a tennis court that will help you be active. This place is best for sunny days.

3.Sutton Park National Nature Reserve

Sutton Park National Nature Reserve is a place with pools, ponds, landscapes, woods, cafes, cows, etc. You will enjoy every corner of this place. Paths for long walks and visiting each place will give you pure bliss. This place is covered with green grass and nature. If you love nature, then you should visit this place at least once in your lifetime.

Kate

Kate is a must-visit city with historic buildings, bridges, beaches, etc. The following are a few places in Kate which you need to visit at least once in your life.

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1.Bluewater

Blue Water is the fourth largest shopping centre in the UK. There is blue water nearby that shopping centre. This is a brilliant place for shopping and family entertainment. You can visit this place if you are looking for a joyful spot for enjoyment.

2. Chislehurst Caves, Bromley

These caves were man-made and used in World War. These caves are 35km long tunnels. If you love history and caves, then you should visit this place.

3. Upnor

This is a small village in Kate with a beautiful historical castle. This place is famous for boating, you can visit a nearby yacht club. This is an excellent historical place to visit. Even though it is a small village, you need to carry a valid international driver's permit in your hand.

East Sussex

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East Sussex is a beautiful city with beaches and buildings. If you want to see some cultural places, then this is the place for you. The following are some places from East Sussex:

1.Royal Pavilion

The Royal Pavilion is a fantastic palace of King George. This building is a mixture of Indian and Chinese styles. This building is a historical wonder. If you enter that palace, you will feel royal pleasure.

2.The lanes

The Lane is a place with historical landmarks, food, walking areas, etc. You will find different types of shops, restaurants, etc. The main attraction would be jewellery shops. This is a fantastic place for shopping and chilling.

3.Old town hasting

Just like its name is an old town with old historical types of buildings and houses. Even shops are in the old style. Old-style house pubs are also available there. You will enjoy this place. This place is worth a visit.

Merseyside

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This is a place where history, sports, museums, culture, and nightlife are famous. The following are some different places you can visit.

1.Anfield Stadium

Anfield Stadium is a football stadium with a lot of history. There are two different histories of clubs in this stadium. If you are a sports person, then you should visit this place.

2.Southport Pleasure land

This is an exciting amusement park for kids and families. Lots of rides and activities for kids are available. Food was also provided inside the park. This is the best place for family time on weekends.

3.Model Railway Village

This is a model of a village and train which is so enjoyable for kids. The tour duration is between one and two hours. Train stations and lights are also included in this model.

Greater Glasgow

This place is perfect for history lovers because it is full of museums, galleries, arts, nature etc. The following are some places for tourists.

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1. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

There are more than 8000 objects and collections available in this museum. This tour will take about two to three hours to complete. This place is perfect for kids. You can learn the art from the 1880s in the UK.

2. Glengoyne Distillery

In this place, you will get a whisky tour, which includes the process of making it. This would be great entertainment for people. This place is not for kids. This place was started in 1833.

3. Celtic Park

It's the most welcoming place, with a walking space. Celtic Park is a historical park, and you will get a tour of 1 to 2 hours. Kids will love this place.

Hampshire

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Hampshire is a place of museums, architecture. The following are some historical places

1.Milestones Museum

The Milestones Museum is a place where it recreates the 1940s, including buildings, people, shops, streets, etc. If you visit this place, you will feel like you are living in the 1940s. If you love the olden period, then you should visit this place. This place is for everyone.

2. Sea City Museum

This is a place where you can learn things about boats and the sea. They also explain Titanic's history and Southampton's history. It takes almost 2 hours to complete the tour. The must-visit places for everyone.

3.Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

You will need a whole day to visit this beautiful place with HMS warriors and HMS victory ships, which is the main tourist attraction. This is a perfect family spot, but dogs are not allowed inside this place.

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire is a place where universities, libraries, parks, and museums are famous. The following are some places

1.Bicester Village

This place is for shopping and has a good collection of boutiques, and also restaurants are exceptional in that place. Easy walkways for extended walking. If you love shopping, then this would be a perfect place for you.

2.Garth Park

This is a perfect, peaceful place to spend time with your family. This is a good place for a picnic. Children will love this place. Garth Park has green grass floors, and trees, giving you a great experience for everyone.

3.Wytham woods

Wytham Woods is 6km from Oxford. These parks have beautiful forests, trees, and paths with huge woodland. You need to apply for tickets before visiting that place, and dogs and bikes are not allowed inside this place. If you love nature, this is the place you need to visit

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richmondinfo · 4 years

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Things To Do In Richmond VA

Richmond, Virginia, is a center of American history, with a large historical museum, an array of historic architecture and the most recent addition of many more, and a population who are both extremely wealthy and incredibly poor. The rich and famous live here, making it an exciting and diverse city that is full of many things to do and plenty of unique attractions and activities.

Patrick Henry, the famous U.S. founding father, famously said "Give me liberty, or give me death" at the opening of the St. John's Baptist Church in 1775, which lead to the Revolutionary War. The White House of Jefferson Davis, home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis during the civil war, is located in Courtland, Richmond, a neighborhood known as "The Old City." ― Google Maps

This city was once known for its textile business and has a wide array of shops selling clothing, accessories, books, and food. There are also many art galleries and museums. Many people have taken vacation rentals to this city and many of them love it. There are many great restaurants and many great places to see and do. This is one of the best cities to live in the United States.

Richmond Virginia is full of history, culture, arts and many wonderful places to visit. It is the largest city in the state of Virginia and is home to the U.S. Capitol and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Richmond Virginia is a place for the people, and for the beautiful people who make it. People come here to get rich, to buy property, to travel, to open their own business, to teach, to become lawyers, teachers and even to be doctors. People work hard to make this city into a booming city, which is a city for the people and for the rich. The people who live in this city are extremely happy, but also very proud and self-assured.

You will find many restaurants and eateries in downtown Richmond and many of them are hip, and very good. The best thing about this city is that you can eat what you want, when you want, how you want, and you are never asked for a tip. This is truly the place to go when you want to get out and have a nice meal or want to grab something from the coffee shop down the street. In fact, most people have their favorite place to get their coffee there on a regular basis.

There are many other places to visit in the city, and many of them are worth a visit. The downtown area is a great place to hang out and do some shopping. Richmond Virginia is also home to many fine theaters and it is a great place to experience history. You will find historical attractions and museums in many of the areas in the downtown area as well.

This city is truly one of the greatest places to live in the United States of America. It is home to some of the most important historical landmarks in the world and is considered a hub for all things American.

The major attraction in this city is the Richmond Raceway, which is located downtown. Many people come to the Richmond Raceway for their racing and to catch a glimpse of the world-famous horses. The horse races are very popular in this city and it is home to one of the largest races in the country. People all over the world come to see the best racing in the United States.

Another great attraction for people who come to Richmond Virginia is the many art galleries, museums and historic sites that are located in the city. Many artists have moved into the downtown area to live, and to work. This is another reason that the people in the downtown area to enjoy being so rich and famous. The people in this area are always looking out for a good time and always willing to help a friend.

The downtown area is very safe and secure and it is not prone to crime. This means that there is little or no chance that someone could get hurt when you are in the downtown area. If you are having trouble getting around, there are plenty of stores that are available to help you get around. These shops are very popular and many of the tourists in the area spend a lot of money while they are there.

The people in Richmond are extremely proud and happy and they make great citizens. They are proud and happy and enjoy living a comfortable life in the city and the people in this area make their city very wealthy and successful.

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coolhhf-blog · 4 years

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Touring Italy

Italy's lifestyle and impact:

Key civilizations have existed in Italy since prehistoric instances. in the course of history, Italy has been a chief impact on EU way of life, from the Etruscan network to the dominating Roman Empire. during the middle ages and Renaissance duration, Italy changed into the middle of artwork and science. The non-secular have an effect on of Italy has also been a long way of achieving. The Vatican is an impartial nation within Rome that is governed by the Pope (or Bishop of Rome), the seat of the Catholic Church.

Italy Tourism - something amusing for everyone:

tourists flock to Italy every year to revel in art galleries and museums, learn about Italy's many ancient landmarks, and look at the stunning outdoor scenery. Italy has a great deal to offer each individual and family. For the golfer, there are guides to be had throughout the country. golfing courses may be observed within the mountains, by the ocean, near artwork towns including Florence, Venice, and Rome, and even via the various scenic lakes of Italy.

The seashores of Italy:

fun inside the solar may be skilled by means of families at one of the many beaches in Italy. There are over 7, six hundred miles of shoreline snuggling the mainland and islands. The Mediterranean Sea offers a number of the maximum stunning beaches within the world, and plenty of vacation motels outline the coasts with solar-soaking sand, living room chairs, and umbrellas. Italy's seashores are known for their cleanliness and protection. Abruzzo, Apulia, Calabria, and Tuscany are a few of the many regions wherein beaches were recently offered with the Blue Flag, an award given to beaches that are smooth and provide safe bathing areas.

Nature Lover's Dream:

There are 20 countrywide parks in Italy, wherein nature enthusiasts can explore the outdoors and rugged terrain. Lakes, mountains, plant life, and specific animals are bountiful for the duration of Italy's parks. areas, where countrywide parks are positioned, encompass Apulia, Calabria, Sicilia, Sardinia, Tuscany, Piedmont, and the Marches. Nature fans also experience touring precise Italian botanical gardens. For the bicyclist, every vicinity offers notable bike trails for exploring the outdoors and visiting various web sites and parks.

discover artwork and history in Italy:

As one of the international's most outstanding art and history facilities, Italy offers many first-class galleries, museums, and landmarks. specific museums offering cars, leisure, technology, and generation, and archeology are scattered throughout the Italian areas to fit all tastes. Saint Peter's square is one of the most beautiful websites inside the globe and become constructed through many well-known architects, which include Michelangelo, Vignola, Raphael, and Pirro Ligorio. There are also many castles, palaces, and cathedrals that appeal to site visitors every year.

whether it's to learn about key intervals of time in records, loosen up with the circle of relatives at the seashore, or to revel in a romantic getaway, Italy has something to provide for each event!

trekking the Hills and Valleys of Italy:

carry your hiking poles for a splendid hiking journey in the excellent u. s . of Italy! Italy gives a few fabulous hiking trails in which you will find out the land's precise way of life and history, and revel in splendid meals alongside the manner.

trekking in Italy is thrilling because there are such a lot of lovely places to discover. whether it's nature you adore or the busy town existence, there are hiking excursions to be had for each. right here are a few encouraging trekking adventures to don't forget for the duration of your visit to Italy.

The countrywide park of the Gran Paradiso:

enjoy a mountainous hike thru this park's lovable terrain. you may be delivered to the park's flora and fauna, revel in challenging hikes to view the excessive mountain peaks of the Alps and spot the glaciers that surround the Rifugio Sella. you may additionally want to go to the wood village of Nex Tignet, which looks as if it came from a fairy story!

tour the Dolomites (beginning in Ortisei, Italy):

The Dolomites, wherein Mediterranean and German cultures meet, are home of a historical human being referred to as the Ladins, who stay inside the excessive valleys surrounding the Sella group massif. while hiking within the Dolomites, you will find out the well-preserved subculture and traditions of the Ladin people, view the herding pastures in Gardena Valley, and also observe karstic rock formations.

Hike hard trails while viewing some of Italy's most picturesque lakes. The lake-side towns of Stresa, Bellagio, and Lugano offer delicious delicacies, terrific purchasing, and a selection of wines. every lake is encircled by way of awesome mountain scenery, and you'll be capable of hike among breathtaking glacial lakes. This hike might include a visit to the islands of Lago Maggiore, wherein there are gardens, palaces, and fishing villages. there is also a milky-white waterfall called Fiumelatte at Varenna.

trekking at the Cinque Terre (starting at la Spezia):

The Cinque Terre is a lovely collection of oceanside villages in which Italian seafaring and traditional Mediterranean meals and subculture coincide. you can hike a few of the many cliffs and trails that surround the villages, take an excursion of nearby Pisa to see the well-known "Leaning Tower," or discover the Medieval art city of Lucca.

hiking on the countrywide Park of Abruzzo:

that is a rugged, difficult hike wherein you could explore the true wild side of Italy. The park is domestic to around three hundred forms of birds, mountain goats, wolves, bears, and chamois. do not worry - sightings of bears and wolves are rare during trekking tours. This park is the biggest national park in Italy and offers beautiful scenes of mountains, alpine pastures, and extra. make certain to go to close by villages to enjoy neighborhood cuisine and wines, and discover each town's particular history.

trekking at the Majella National Park in Italy:

As one of Italy's most up-to-date countrywide parks, Majella countrywide Park offers an abundance of flora and the natural world, a lush green gorge, and a lovable mountain village. explore the Monte Amaro, the second maximum summit in the Apennine chain, which is regionally called the Montagna Madre (or mother Mountain). different advocated hikes consist of tours in Tuscany, Le Marche, and Capri.

suggestions for trekking in Italy:

hiking in Italy is superb if you understand in which to hike and are nicely prepared ahead. right here are some hints to get you commenced.

Paid hiking excursions:

there are numerous guided trekking excursions wherein the hike is deliberate for you. these are outstanding in case you've never been to Italy or are new to hiking. full trekking tours provide hotel resorts, transportation to and from the hiking regions, experienced excursion courses, paid entrance to websites, museums, and wine tastings together with an itinerary.

Self-Guided excursions:

if you are already a skilled hiker and are familiar with Italy, you may want to take a self-guided trekking tour. consider, allow someone to knows wherein and when you may be trekking in case of an emergency.

determine what kind of hike you'd like to take in advance. if you're an amateur, you may want to try the mild trails wherein villages are close by. also, select trails you'll enjoy. Do you experience the mountain scene or lakes? Do you revel in visiting villages, farmland, or vineyards? Do you want to study flora and fauna during your hike? once you decide on the sort of hike, you could research specific trails and areas to locate an appropriate spot.

Get a trekking Map:

In Italy, most of the hiking trails aren't marked nicely. some of the markings may be found in obscure places together with on a tree or rock. it really is why you can purchase a hiking path map once you decide in which you may hike. A map that outlines the trails for you may assist you to find your manner when markings are not to be had, or now not clear.

look ahead to Hunters:

hunting is famous in Italy so that you'll need to make sure there aren't any hunters where you intend to hike. find out from a hiking tour agency where you may hike correctly, and additionally what symptoms to search for even as trekking. There are signs for "No searching" displayed alongside a few hiking trails.

Use hiking Poles for help:

Even if you sense as much as the hike bodily, use trekking poles for help. You may not recognize the stress a steep hike can put on your legs, knees, and ankles. trekking poles will help relieve a number of the pressure and prevent from many aches and pains later. Even the maximum skilled hikers use hiking poles for assist.

p.c. light, however percent accurately:

Your backpack needs to comprise the essentials in your hike, which include meals, water or drink, first resource package, and many others. however, do not percent greater than you want. Packing an excessive amount of might purpose your hike to be unpleasant due to the extra weight. make sure you have got what you want for emergency situations. this could save your life!

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exitinertianovella · 4 years

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The True Story of the ‘Free State of Jones’

A new Hollywood movie looks at the tale of the Mississippi farmer who led a revolt against the Confederacy By Richard Grant.

With two rat terriers trotting at his heels, and a long wooden staff in his hand, J.R. Gavin leads me through the woods to one of the old swamp hide-outs. A tall white man with a deep Southern drawl, Gavin has a stern presence, gracious manners and intense brooding eyes. At first I mistook him for a preacher, but he’s a retired electronic engineer who writes self-published novels about the rapture and apocalypse. One of them is titled Sal Batree, after the place he wants to show me.

I’m here in Jones County, Mississippi, to breathe in the historical vapors left by Newton Knight, a poor white farmer who led an extraordinary rebellion during the Civil War. With a company of like-minded white men in southeast Mississippi, he did what many Southerners now regard as unthinkable. He waged guerrilla war against the Confederacy and declared loyalty to the Union.

In the spring of 1864, the Knight Company overthrew the Confederate authorities in Jones County and raised the United States flag over the county courthouse in Ellisville. The county was known as the Free State of Jones, and some say it actually seceded from the Confederacy. This little-known, counterintuitive episode in American history has now been brought to the screen in Free State of Jones, directed by Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, The Hunger Games) and starring a grimy, scruffed-up Matthew McConaughey as Newton Knight.

Knight and his men, says Gavin, hooking away an enormous spider web with his staff and warning me to be careful of snakes, “had a number of different hide-outs. The old folks call this one Sal Batree. Sal was the name of Newt’s shotgun, and originally it was Sal’s Battery, but it got corrupted over the years.”

We reach a small promontory surrounded on three sides by a swampy, beaver-dammed lake, and concealed by 12-foot-high cattails and reeds. “I can’t be certain, but a 90-year-old man named Odell Holyfield told me this was the place,” says Gavin. “He said they had a gate in the reeds that a man on horseback could ride through. He said they had a password, and if you got it wrong, they’d kill you. I don’t know how much of that is true, but one of these days I’ll come here with a metal detector and see what I can find.”

We make our way around the lakeshore, passing beaver-gnawed tree stumps and snaky-looking thickets. Reaching higher ground, Gavin points across the swamp to various local landmarks. Then he plants his staff on the ground and turns to face me directly.

“Now I’m going to say something that might offend you,” he begins, and proceeds to do just that, by referring in racist terms to “Newt’s descendants” in nearby Soso, saying some of them are so light-skinned “you look at them and you just don’t know.”

I stand there writing it down and thinking about William Faulkner, whose novels are strewn with characters who look white but are deemed black by Mississippi’s fanatical obsession with the one-drop rule. And not for the first time in Jones County, where arguments still rage about a man born 179 years ago, I recall Faulkner’s famous axiom about history: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

After the Civil War, Knight took up with his grandfather’s former slave Rachel; they had five children together. Knight also fathered nine children with his white wife, Serena, and the two families lived in different houses on the same 160-acre farm. After he and Serena separated—they never divorced—Newt Knight caused a scandal that still reverberates by entering a common-law marriage with Rachel and proudly claiming their mixed-race children.

The Knight Negroes, as these children were known, were shunned by whites and blacks alike. Unable to find marriage partners in the community, they started marrying their white cousins instead, with Newt’s encouragement. (Newt’s son Mat, for instance, married one of Rachel’s daughters by another man, and Newt’s daughter Molly married one of Rachel’s sons by another man.) An interracial community began to form near the small town of Soso, and continued to marry within itself.

“They keep to themselves over there,” says Gavin, striding back toward his house, where supplies of canned food and muscadine wine are stored up for the onset of Armageddon. “A lot of people find it easier to forgive Newt for fighting Confederates than mixing blood.”

I came to Jones County having read some good books about its history, and knowing very little about its present-day reality. It was reputed to be fiercely racist and conservative, even by Mississippi standards, and it had been a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan. But Mississippi is nothing if not layered and contradictory, and this small, rural county has also produced some wonderful creative and artistic talents, including Parker Posey, the indie-film queen, the novelist Jonathan Odell, the pop singer and gay astronaut Lance Bass, and Mark Landis, the schizophrenic art forger and prankster, who donated fraudulent masterpieces to major American art museums for nearly 30 years before he was caught.

Driving toward the Jones County line, I passed a sign to Hot Coffee—a town, not a beverage—and drove on through rolling cattle pastures and short, new-growth pine trees. There were isolated farmhouses and prim little country churches, and occasional dilapidated trailers with dismembered automobiles in the front yard. In Newt Knight’s day, all this was a primeval forest of enormous longleaf pines so thick around the base that three or four men could circle their arms around them. This part of Mississippi was dubbed the Piney Woods, known for its poverty and lack of prospects. The big trees were an ordeal to clear, the sandy soil was ill-suited for growing cotton, and the bottomlands were choked with swamps and thickets.

There was some very modest cotton production in the area, and a small slaveholding elite that included Newt Knight’s grandfather, but Jones County had fewer slaves than any other county in Mississippi, only 12 percent of its population. This, more than anything, explains its widespread disloyalty to the Confederacy, but there was also a surly, clannish independent spirit, and in Newt Knight, an extraordinarily steadfast and skillful leader.

On the county line, I was half-expecting a sign reading “Welcome to the Free State of Jones” or “Home of Newton Knight,” but the Confederacy is now revered by some whites in the area, and the chamber of commerce had opted for a less controversial slogan: “Now This Is Living!” Most of Jones County is rural, low- or modest-income; roughly 70 percent of the population is white. I drove past many small chicken farms, a large modern factory making transformers and computers, and innumerable Baptist churches. Laurel, the biggest town, stands apart. Known as the City Beautiful, it was created by Midwestern timber barons who razed the longleaf pine forests and built themselves elegant homes on oak-lined streets and the gorgeous world-class Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.

The old county seat, and ground zero for the Free State of Jones, is Ellisville, now a pleasant, leafy town of 4,500 people. Downtown has some old brick buildings with wrought-iron balconies. The grand old columned courthouse has a Confederate monument next to it, and no mention of the anti-Confederate rebellion that took place here. Modern Ellisville is dominated by the sprawling campus of Jones County Junior College, where a semiretired history professor named Wyatt Moulds was waiting for me in the entrance hall. A direct descendant of Newt Knight’s grandfather, he was heavily involved in researching the film and ensuring its historical accuracy.

A large, friendly, charismatic man with unruly side-parted hair, he was wearing alligator-skin cowboy boots and a fishing shirt. “I’m one of the few liberals you’re going to meet here, but I’m a Piney Woods liberal,” he said. “I voted for Obama, I hunt and I love guns. It’s part of the culture here. Even the liberals carry handguns.”

He described Jones County as the most conservative place in Mississippi, but he noted that race relations were improving and that you could see it clearly in the changing attitudes toward Newt Knight. “It’s generational,” he said. “A lot of older people see Newt as a traitor and a reprobate, and they don’t understand why anyone would want to make a movie about him. If you point out that Newt distributed food to starving people, and was known as the Robin Hood of the Piney Woods, they’ll tell you he married a black, like that trumps everything. And they won’t use the word ‘black.’”

His current crop of students, on the other hand, are “fired up” about Newt and the movie. “Blacks and whites date each other in high school now, and they don’t think it’s a big deal,” said Moulds. “That’s a huge change. Some of the young guys are really identifying with Newt now, as a symbol of Jones County pride. It doesn’t hurt that he was such a badass.”

Knight was 6-foot-4 with black curly hair and a full beard—“big heavyset man, quick as a cat,” as one of his friends described him. He was a nightmarish opponent in a backwoods wrestling match, and one of the great unsung guerrilla fighters in American history. So many men tried so hard to kill him that perhaps his most remarkable achievement was to reach old age.

“He was a Primitive Baptist who didn’t drink, didn’t cuss, doted on children and could reload and fire a double-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun faster than anyone else around,” said Moulds. “Even as an old man, if someone rubbed him the wrong way, he’d have a knife at their throat in a heartbeat. A lot of people will tell you that Newt was just a renegade, out for himself, but there’s good evidence that he was a man of strong principles who was against secession, against slavery and pro-Union.”

Those views were not unusual in Jones County. Newt’s right-hand man, Jasper Collins, came from a big family of staunch Mississippi Unionists. He later named his son Ulysses Sherman Collins, after his two favorite Yankee generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. “Down here, that’s like naming your son Adolf Hitler Collins,” said Moulds.

When secession fever swept across the South in 1860, Jones County was largely immune to it. Its secessionist candidate received only 24 votes, while the “cooperationist” candidate, John H. Powell, received 374. When Powell got to the secession convention in Jackson, however, he lost his nerve and voted to secede along with almost everyone else. Powell stayed away from Jones County for a while after that, and he was burned in effigy in Ellisville.

“In the Lost Cause mythology, the South was united, and secession had nothing to do with slavery,” said Moulds. “What happened in Jones County puts the lie to that, so the Lost Causers have to paint Newt as a common outlaw, and above all else, deny all traces of Unionism. With the movie coming out, they’re at it harder than ever.”

Although he was against secession, Knight voluntarily enlisted in the Confederate Army once the war began. We can only speculate about his reasons. He kept no diary and gave only one interview near the end of his life, to a New Orleans journalist named Meigs Frost. Knight said he’d enlisted with a group of local men to avoid being conscripted and then split up into different companies. But the leading scholar of the Knight-led rebellion, Victoria Bynum, author of The Free State of Jones, points out that Knight had enlisted, under no threat of conscription, a few months after the war began, in July 1861. She thinks he relished being a soldier.

In October 1862, after the Confederate defeat at Corinth, Knight and many other Piney Woods men deserted from the Seventh Battalion of Mississippi Infantry. It wasn’t just the starvation rations, arrogant harebrained leadership and appalling carnage. They were disgusted and angry about the recently passed “Twenty Negro Law,” which exempted one white male for every 20 slaves owned on a plantation, from serving in the Confederate Army. Jasper Collins echoed many non-slaveholders across the South when he said, “This law...makes it a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

Returning home, they found their wives struggling to keep up the farms and feed the children. Even more aggravating, the Confederate authorities had imposed an abusive, corrupt “tax in kind” system, by which they took what they wanted for the war effort— horses, hogs, chickens, corn, meat from the smokehouses, homespun cloth. A Confederate colonel named William N. Brown reported that corrupt tax officials had “done more to demoralize Jones County than the whole Yankee Army.”

In early 1863, Knight was captured for desertion and possibly tortured. Some scholars think he was pressed back into service for the Siege of Vicksburg, but there’s no solid evidence that he was there. After Vicksburg fell, in July 1863, there was a mass exodus of deserters from the Confederate Army, including many from Jones and the surrounding counties. The following month, Confederate Maj. Amos McLemore arrived in Ellisville and began hunting them down with soldiers and hounds. By October, he had captured more than 100 deserters, and exchanged threatening messages with Newt Knight, who was back on his ruined farm on the Jasper County border.

On the night of October 5, Major McLemore was staying at his friend Amos Deason’s mansion in Ellisville, when someone—almost certainly Newt Knight—burst in and shot him to death. Soon afterward, there was a mass meeting of deserters from four Piney Woods counties. They organized themselves into a company called the Jones County Scouts and unanimously elected Knight as their captain. They vowed to resist capture, defy tax collectors, defend each other’s homes and farms, and do what they could to aid the Union.

Neo-Confederate historians have denied the Scouts’ loyalty to the Union up and down, but it was accepted by local Confederates at the time. “They were Union soldiers from principle,” Maj. Joel E. Welborn, their former commanding officer in the Seventh Mississippi, later recalled. “They were making an effort to be mustered into the U.S. Service.” Indeed, several of the Jones County Scouts later succeeded in joining the Union Army in New Orleans.

In March 1864, Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk informed Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, that Jones County was in “open rebellion” and that guerrilla fighters were “proclaiming themselves ‘Southern Yankees.’” They had crippled the tax collection system, seized and redistributed Confederate supplies, and killed and driven out Confederate officials and loyalists, not just in Jones County but all over southeast Mississippi. Confederate Capt. Wirt Thompson reported that they were now a thousand strong and flying the U.S. flag over the Jones County courthouse—“they boast of fighting for the Union,” he added.

That spring was the high-water mark of the rebellion against the Rebels. Polk ordered two battle-hardened regiments into southeast Mississippi, under the command of Piney Woods native Col. Robert Lowry. With hanging ropes and packs of vicious, manhunting dogs, they subdued the surrounding counties and then moved into the Free State of Jones. Several of the Knight company were mangled by the dogs, and at least ten were hanged, but Lowry couldn’t catch Knight or the core group. They were deep in the swamps, being supplied with food and information by local sympathizers and slaves, most notably Rachel.

After Lowry left, proclaiming victory, Knight and his men emerged from their hide-outs, and once again, began threatening Confederate officials and agents, burning bridges and destroying railroads to thwart the Rebel Army, and raiding food supplies intended for the troops. They fought their last skirmish at Sal’s Battery, also spelled Sallsbattery, on January 10, 1865, fighting off a combined force of cavalry and infantry. Three months later, the Confederacy fell.

In 2006, the filmmaker Gary Ross was at Universal Studios, discussing possible projects, when a development executive gave him a brief, one-page treatment about Newton Knight and the Free State of Jones. Ross was instantly intrigued, both by the character and the revelation of Unionism in Mississippi, the most deeply Southern state of all.

“It led me on a deep dive to understand more and more about him and the fact that the South wasn’t monolithic during the Civil War,” says Ross, speaking on the phone from New York. “I didn’t realize it was going to be two years of research before I began writing the screenplay.”

The first thing he did was take a canoe trip down the Leaf River, to get a feel for the area. Then he started reading, beginning with the five (now six) books about Newton Knight. That led into broader reading about other pockets of Unionism in the South. Then he started into Reconstruction.

“I’m not a fast reader, nor am I an academic,” he says, “although I guess I’ve become an amateur one.” He apprenticed himself to some of the leading authorities in the field, including Harvard’s John Stauffer and Steven Hahn at the University of Pennsylvania. (At the urging of Ross, Stauffer and co-author Sally Jenkins published their own book on the Jones County rebellion, in 2009.) Ross talks about these scholars in a tone of worship and adulation, as if they’re rock stars or movie stars—and none more so than Eric Foner at Columbia, the dean of Reconstruction experts.

“He is like a god, and I went into his office, and I said, ‘My name’s Gary Ross, I did Seabiscuit.’ I asked him a bunch of questions about Reconstruction, and all he did was give me a reading list. He was giving me no quarter. I’m some Hollywood guy, you know, and he wanted to see if I could do the work.”

Ross worked his way slowly and carefully through the books, and went back with more questions. Foner answered none of them, just gave him another reading list. Ross read those books too, and went back again with burning questions. This time Foner actually looked at him and said, “Not bad. You ought to think about studying this.”

“It was the greatest compliment a person could have given me,” says Ross. “I remember walking out of his office, across the steps of Columbia library, almost buoyant. It was such a heady experience to learn for learning’s sake, for the first time, rather than to generate a screenplay. I’m still reading history books all the time. I tell people this movie is my academic midlife crisis.”

In Hollywood, he says, the executives were extremely supportive of his research, and the script that he finally wrestled out of it, but they balked at financing the film. “This was before Lincoln and 12 Years a Slave, and it was very hard to get this sort of a drama made. So I went and did Hunger Games, but always keeping an eye on this. ”

Matthew McConaughey thought the Free State of Jones script was the most exciting Civil War story he had ever read, and knew immediately that he wanted to play Newt Knight. In Knight’s defiance of both the Confederate Army and the deepest taboos of Southern culture McConaughey sees an uncompromising and deeply moral leader. He was “a man who lived by the Bible and the barrel of a shotgun,” McConaughey says in an email. “If someone—no matter what their color—was being mistreated or being used, if a poor person was being used by someone to get rich, that was a simple wrong that needed to be righted in Newt’s eyes....He did so deliberately, and to the hell with the consequences.” McConaughey sums him up as a “shining light through the middle of this country’s bloodiest fight. I really kind of marveled at him.”

The third act of the film takes place in Mississippi after the Civil War. There was a phase during early Reconstruction when blacks could vote, and black officials were elected for the first time. Then former Confederates violently took back control of the state and implemented a kind of second slavery for African-Americans. Once again disenfranchised, and terrorized by the Klan, they were exploited through sharecropping and legally segregated. “The third act is what makes this story feel so alive,” says McConaughey. “It makes it relevant today. Reconstruction is a verb that’s ongoing.”

Ross thinks Knight’s character and beliefs are most clearly revealed by his actions after the war. He was hired by the Reconstruction government to free black children from white masters who were refusing to emancipate them. “In 1875, he accepts a commission in what was essentially an all-black regiment,” says Ross. “His job was to defend the rights of freed African-Americans in one of Mississippi’s bloodiest elections. His commitment to these issues never waned.” In 1876, Knight deeded 160 acres of land to Rachel, making her one of very few African-American landowners in Mississippi at that time.

Much as Ross wanted to shoot the movie in Jones County, there were irresistible tax incentives to film across the border in Louisiana, and some breathtaking cypress swamps where various cast members were infested with the tiny mites known as chiggers. Nevertheless, Ross and McConaughey spent a lot of time in Jones County, persuading many county residents to appear in the film.

“I love the Leaf River and the whole area,” says Ross. “And I’ve grown to love Mississippi absolutely. It’s a very interesting, real and complicated place.”

On the website of Jones County Rosin Heels, the local chapter of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, an announcement warned that the film will portray Newt Knight as a civil rights activist and a hero. Then the writer inadvertently slips into the present tense: “He is actually a thief, murderer, adulterer and a deserter.”

Doug Jefcoate was listed as camp commander. I found him listed as a veterinarian in Laurel, and called up, saying I was interested in his opinions on Newt Knight. He sounded slightly impatient, then said, “OK, I’m a history guy and a fourth-generation guy. Come to the animal hospital tomorrow.”

The receptionist led me into a small examining room and closed both its doors. I stood there for a few long minutes, with a shiny steel table and, on the wall, a Bible quotation. Then Jefcoate walked in, a middle-aged man with sandy hair, glasses and a faraway smile. He was carrying two huge, leather-bound volumes of his family genealogy.

He gave me ten minutes on his family tree, and when I interrupted to ask about the Rosin Heels and Newt Knight, he stopped, looked puzzled, and began to chuckle. “You’ve got the wrong Doug Jefcoate,” he said. “I’m not that guy.” (Turns out he is Doug Jefcoat, without the “e.”)

He laughed uproariously, then settled down and gave me his thoughts. “I’m not a racist, OK, but I am a segregationist,” he said. “And ol’ Newt was skinny-dipping in the wrong pool.”

The Rosin Heel commander Doug Jefcoate wasn’t available, so I went instead to the law offices of Carl Ford, a Rosin Heel who had unsuccessfully defended Sam Bowers, the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in his 1998 trial for the 1966 murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. Ford wasn’t there, but he’d arranged for John Cox, a friend, colleague and fellow Rosin Heel, to set me straight about Newt Knight.

Cox, an animated 71-year-old radio and television announcer with a long white beard, welcomed me into a small office crammed with video equipment and Confederate memorabilia. He was working on a film called Free State of Jones: The Republic That Never Was, intended to refute Gary Ross’ film. All he had so far was the credits (Executive Producer Carl Ford) and the introductory banjo music.

“Newt is what we call trailer trash,” he said in a booming baritone drawl. “I wouldn’t have him in my house. And like all poor, white, ignorant trash, he was in it for himself. Some people are far too enamored of the idea that he was Martin Luther King, and these are the same people who believe the War Between the States was about slavery, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

There seemed no point in arguing with him, and it was almost impossible to get a word in, so I sat there scribbling as he launched into a long monologue that defended slavery and the first incarnation of the Klan, burrowed deep into obscure Civil War battle minutiae, denied all charges of racism, and kept circling back to denounce Newt Knight and the simpering fools who tried to project their liberal agendas on him.

“There was no Free State of Jones,” he concluded. “It never existed.”

Joseph Hosey is a Jones County forester and wild mushroom harvester who was hired as an extra for the movie and ended up playing a core member of the Knight Company. Looking at him, there’s no reason to ask why. Scruffy and rail-thin with piercing blue eyes and a full beard, he looks like he subsists on Confederate Army rations and the occasional squirrel.

He wanted to meet me at Jitters Coffeehouse & Bookstore in Laurel, so he could show me an old map on the wall. It depicts Jones County as Davis County, and Ellisville as Leesburg. “After 1865, Jones County was so notorious that the local Confederates were ashamed to be associated with it,” he says. “So they got the county renamed after Jefferson Davis, and Ellisville after Robert E. Lee. A few years later, there was a vote on it, and the names were changed back. Thank God, because that would have sucked.”

Like his grandfather before him, Hosey is a great admirer of Newt Knight. Long before the film, when people asked where he was from, he would say, “The Free State of Jones.” Now he has a dog named Newt, and describes it as a “Union-blue Doberman.”

Being in the film, acting and interacting with Matthew McConaughey, was a profound and moving experience, but not because of the actor’s fame. “It was like Newt himself was standing right there in front of me. It made me really wish my grandfather was still alive, because we were always saying someone should make a movie about Newt.” Hosey and the other actors in the Knight Company bonded closely during the shoot and still refer to themselves as the Knight Company. “We have get-togethers in Jones County, and I imagine we always will,” he says.

I ask him what he admires most about Knight. “When you grow up in the South, you hear all the time about your ‘heritage,’ like it’s the greatest thing there is,” he says. “When I hear that word, I think of grits and sweet tea, but mostly I think about slavery and racism, and it pains me. Newt Knight gives me something in my heritage, as a white Southerner, that I can feel proud about. We didn’t all go along with it.”

After Reconstruction, with the former Confederates back in charge, the Klan after him, and Jim Crow segregation laws being passed, Knight retreated from public life to his homestead on the Jasper County border, which he shared with Rachel until her death in 1889, and continued to share with her children and grandchildren. He lived the self-sufficient life of a yeoman Piney Woods farmer, doted on his swelling ranks of children and grandchildren, and withdrew completely from white society.

He gave that single long interview in 1921, revealing a laconic sense of humor and a strong sense of right and wrong, and he died the following year, in February 1922. He was 84 years old. Joseph Hosey took me to Newt’s granddaughter’s cabin, where some say that he suffered a fatal heart attack while dancing on the porch. Hosey really wanted to take me to Newt Knight’s grave. But the sacred rite of hunting season was underway, and the landowner didn’t want visitors disturbing the deer in the area. So Hosey drove up to the locked gate, and then swiped up the relevant photographs on his phone.

Newt’s grave has an emblem of Sal, his beloved shotgun, and the legend, “He Lived For Others.” He’d given instructions that he should be buried here with Rachel. “It was illegal for blacks and whites to be buried in the same cemetery,” says Hosey. “Newt didn’t give a damn. Even in death, he defied them.”

There were several times in Jones County when my head began to swim.

During my final interview, across a brightly colored plastic table in the McDonald’s in Laurel, there were moments when my brain seized up altogether, and I would sit there stunned, unable to grasp what I was hearing. The two sisters sitting across the table were gently amused. They had seen this many times before. It was, in fact, the normal reaction when they tried to explain their family tree to outsiders.

Dorothy Knight Marsh and Florence Knight Blaylock are the great-granddaughters of Newt and Rachel. After many decades of living in the outside world, they are back in Soso, Mississippi, dealing with prejudice from all directions. The worst of it comes from within their extended family. “We have close relatives who won’t even look at us,” says Blaylock, the older sister, who was often taken for Mexican when she lived in California.

“Or they’ll be nice to us in private, and pretend they don’t know us in public,” added Marsh, who lived in Washington, D.C. for decades. For simplification, she said that there were three basic groups. The White Knights are descended from Newt and Serena, are often pro-Confederate, and proud of their pure white bloodlines. (In 1951, one of them, Ethel Knight, published a vitriolic indictment of Newt as a traitor to the Confederacy.) The Black Knights are descended from Newt’s cousin Dan, who had children with one of his slaves. The White Negroes (a.k.a. the Fair Knights or Knight Negroes) are descended from Newt and Rachel. “They all have separate family reunions,” said Blaylock.

The White Negro line was complicated further by Georgeanne, Rachel’s daughter by another white man. After Rachel died, Newt and Georgeanne had children. “He was a family man all right!” said Marsh. “I guess that’s why he had three of them. And he kept trying to marry out the color, so we would all keep getting lighter-skinned. We have to tell our young people, do not date in the Soso area. But we’re all fine. We don’t have any...problems. All Knights are hardworking and very capable.”

In the film, Marsh and Blaylock appear briefly in a courthouse scene. For the two of them, the Knight family saga has continued into the 20th century and beyond. Their cousin Davis Knight, who looked white and claimed to be white, was tried for the crime of miscegenation in 1948, after marrying a white woman. The trial was a study in Mississippian absurdity, paradox, contradiction and racial obsessiveness. A white man was convicted of being black; the conviction was overturned; he became legally white again.

“We’ve come to terms with who we are,” says Blaylock. “I’m proud to be descended from Newt and Rachel. I have so much respect for both of them.”

“Absolutely,” says Marsh. “And we can’t wait to see this movie.”

#american history #confederacy #film #popup block

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humanistauno · 5 years

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Where in Mindanao?

by: Melody Leagogo

"We travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us." Travelling sail us into a new world of discoveries and experiences and with this, we become a great story tellers. Curiosity bring us to voyage and the eagerness to look into the beauty in it, the beauty of a picture-perfect landscapes, mighty crash of deep waves beneath swaying palms and the human's creativity to fabricate such stunning piece of art. Admit it, there's always a feeling of eager enthusiasm when having our luggage pack and full knowing that we are ready for the next trip. Sometimes we need to be a naive like a sea goer wandering in endless flow to uncover new things and endure new ways on how to live life to its finest. Sharing escapade with your family and someone you love is the best way to indulge memorable moments like this. A decade has passed but one of my unforgettable moments still fresh as we conquered the Island born of fire, Camiguin Island way back December of 2014.

Camiguin is in everyone's bucket list. Whether you are a Thalassophile- a person who loves sea, as monkey as adventurous you are, or someone who love to keep an eye on as the sky blend into darkness with a calm wave within the sea's wide, then Camiguin Island will satisfy your longing. The humble Island of Camiguin was placed at Bohol sea about 10 kilometers off the northern coast of mindanao specifically off-coast of Balingoan Port of Misamis Oriental Province. Camiguin is one of the best kept paradise of Northern Mindanao. It is an island province of volcanic origin hence it is called “Island Born of Fire”. Camiguin Island is said to be created by volcanic eruptions and land movements, thus the reason of the moniker. It has a total of seven volcanoes including Mount Hibok-Hibok, an active one with last recorded eruption in 1953 and helped maintain its shape as what it is right now. A way to travel Camiguin starting of a seaport where placed in Misamis Oriental to reached into a sparkling white sand beaches with majestic mountain backdrop. The port is the jump point to the province via an hour RORO vessel sea travel. While crossing the wide deep blue and cruising on a gunned-engined little ship, you will captivate yourself by looking into pleasing and satisfying surroundings. As clear as gleaming sun the water in unbounded flow and the caroling crew of the vessel singing Christmas songs to the passengers. You'll immediately welcome by a white sand bar as you arrive at the port of Camiguin and look down into the water, you will see some beautiful and colorful kind of fishes. It was just some prelimenary briefing on how bless of beautiful attractions and worth to spend time the place is. We rented a van to stroll around from sea to summit. Camiguin Island is one of the many pretty islands in the Philippines that lets you drool over with its white sand beaches, firey sunsets, and bizarre townscape. While travelling into our destination, the setting behold my eye as I noticed that on my right side was never ending sea and on my left was full of rice field like it was just amazing and unique scenario. Our first stop was The Old Church Ruins, also known as Gui-ob Church, the historical landmark in Camiguin Island. It is located in Brgy. Bonbon, Catarman. Guib-ob Church was destroyed and partly submerged during the series of eruptions of Mt. Vulcan from 1871 to 1875. According to the people there, the ruin of Guiob Church is all that is left of the old town. The church lost its roof, but its sturdy walls and columns still standing, showing its historical presence to the people. A massive, beautiful physical reminder of an almost apocalyptic past and one of the tourist attraction now. It looked like a simple ancient wall, like a wrecked castle surrounded by towering trees and covered by moss. The walls continued to give a vivid illustration of how the old church looked like and how big it was. As the midday sun shot arrows of light, we stop in a small restaurant and here, I can tell that the folks here are best cook with unique and gastronomic island cuisine. Our second destination was the Sunken cemetery. There are no flowers or gravestones to the memory of the lost citizens of Camiguin, only a giant cross rising up out in the middle of the sea to mark where this place of rest once was. As one of the damages of 1870's volcanic eruption, this cemetery was sunk and in order to commemorate the late residents, a man-made marvel looming cross was built in remembrance.

This spot became the famous landmark of the Island. Best viewed if you are chasing sunset but if you want go near, you can rent boat and do snorkeling as marine life have grown through years. Riding along the way, similar posters hanging on the side street catches our attention as it informed the celebration of Lanzones festival but unfortunately it was last October. To give you a piece of fact, Lanzones or buwahan is the local fruit here and the sweetest and juiciest than here. Their big celebration of Lanzones festival is to give thanks to the bountiful harvest of Lanzones as well as to show their culture. Our last spot was Katibawasan falls. A curtain of water revealed me immediately. Satisfaction ruled me as I enter the premises of the park. It was utilized by the local government and transformed into tourist attraction. The water casades from 250 feet above ground and as I went nearer the fall, its sound rumbling plunges from above to the small pool awaited and directly into a flowing river. Ferns and plants decorate the edge of the cliff while boulders rest below, naturally arranged to let the water make beautiful movements. By the way, it has an entrance fee but the satisfaction you'll get double or triple your paid. Your getaway is not complete if you cannot visit a souvenir store. Not a distant from Katibawasan falls, there are many souvenir as a remembrance that I went in Camiguin Isaland. This day seems so long, tired but at the same time satisfied of what I witnessed today. Only three landmarks we went through because we only have one day to explore the beauty of Camiguin. As the sun broke through the drizzle, we went at my uncle's home in El Salvador Misamis Oriental where we stayed for our vacation.

All in all, my whole journey in Camiguin Island was wow! I'm not mistaken of my decision to go with them and given the opportunity to see such stunning nature. We were just visited few spots there because we had just only one day to explore and engage ourselves to the place but I know that there are a lot of hidden paradise that secretly lay on that place. To travel is to know. To understand a certain place not only on the geographical formation but to understand the way of living of the species that shaped that place especially the people. Learning from experience is to learn the present. Traveling is not just aiming to view beutiful spots or majestic formations or to admire structures. It also brings us into realization, peace of mind, reflection for our future actions. Live life to the fullest. Sometimes you need to get out and escape your messy surrounding, to escape the chaos of the city, to be stress-free. Leave your paper works, your unfinished businesses, your pressuring school works, your brokenhearted, and your burdens at home and start to appreciate beautiful things to refresh your mind. Go to a place like Camiguin where your intoxication replenishes by its comfort. You are not alone, there is always Camiguin.

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adrianodiprato · 5 years

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+ “If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.” ~ Alphonse de Lamartine

Istanbul

My trip to Istanbul couldn’t have come at a better time. After what felt like a long term and still processing the passing of my father, it was great to finally get on the plane, excited for my next adventure.

Istanbul is a transcontinental city as it is located on the Bosphorus waterway in northwest Turkey between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. The commercial centre is in Europe while the rest of the city is in Asia. Fascinating.

Throughout its long history, Istanbul has acquired a reputation for being a cultural and ethnic melting pot. It is very clean (apart from cigarette butts), easy to walk around and felt safe in all the parts I explored.

When I think of words to describe Istanbul, chaotic is the first one that comes to mind. A city of over 15 million people invites traffic chaos, with people in a hurry throughout most times of the day. And be prepared for merchants attempting to pull out all the stops to get you to buy from them (I wasn’t a fan of the constant invitations to come into their shops, restaurants, etc).

I’m still not sure how I really feel about Istanbul. I know that for a lot of people it has been love at first sight, but I didn’t get that “WOW, I can’t wait to return feeling” I usually get when I encounter a new destination. Having said that what struck me about Istanbul is that everyone I met was upbeat, positive and polite (except when discussing local politics). I was fascinated by the amount of activity going on. Everywhere there are people working, enthusiastically selling and making a living.

Below are my Top 5 must-dos in Istanbul:

1. Sultanahmet district

Domed mosques, topped with fairy-tale minarets, anchor scores of neighborhood squares where prayer calls echo down cobbled lanes throughout the day. You’ll find all the major historic sights of Istanbul in Sultanahmet (sul-tan-a-met). The super impressive Hagia Sophia Museum, the Blue Mosque, the ancient underground water tanks of Basilica Cistern, the grandeur of the Topkapı Palace, the Chora Church and of course the bustling feast for the senses, the Grand Bazaar. Steeped rich in history, culture and diversity, Sultanahmet is an architectural paragon, filled with significant landmarks and a must for any traveller.

2. Beyoğlu neighbourhood

Located on the European side Beyoğlu (BEY-oh-loo) is the district on the north bank of the Golden Horn, from Karaköy (Galata) and the Galata Bridge to Taksim Square. Beyoğlu is removed from the city’s tourist hub and is the cultural heart (or hipster heart) of Istanbul. As the sun sets, this district comes to life, with bars and diners beckoning you through their doorways. This neighbourhood is also home to Istiklal Avenue - a super fun place, day or night. Sample the delicious offerings at the 360 Restaurant/Bar/Club and take a moment to saviour the view from the eighth floor.

3. Bosphorus Strait

This significant water channel is home to much activity on a daily basis. Commercial trade and commerce, and tourism dominate the strait. You should consider buying the hop on hop off boat trip (approx. 19AUD) with the first departing around 11:45pm from the port of Kabataş. It will take you to the most important ports on the Bosphorus, till the end of the channel where it reaches the Black Sea.

4. Food & Drinks

When we talk about what to do in Istanbul, food and drinking are part of the experience. Basically one can’t enjoy the city if you don’t taste its flavours. Eat a delicious Gozleme (thin dough with different fillings), a spicy döner kebap (my fav was Sedef Büfe) the seasoned köfte (meatballs), or try a traditional tea (çay), then sample a sticky pistachio baklava or devour a seductive rose flavoured Turkish delight. With so much diversity on offer all will cater for your culinary senses.

5. Turkish bath

Ok, so on my final day I had one because everyone that I spoke to raved about their hamam experience. I felt beaten throughout the ordeal but oh so cleansed post the session. So my advice, treat yourself and indulge in being scrubbed down (hard), then lathered in what others have described as a cloud of fragrant soap.

Word of caution - Taxi drivers can be very shifty. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

For me Istanbul remains a city of contrasts. Where the East meets the West (literally), where the modern and traditional co-exist, where mosques meet contemporary skyscrapers, and where some women are dressed in their traditional burkas and others in tight-fitting jeans, bright lipstick and high heels.

To be honest, Istanbul is a beautiful looking city, that continues to be well restored. It has nothing to hide and it has much to discover with each step you make into a new neighbourhood to experience.

You can’t visit Istanbul without being drawn into its rich past, especially the striking remnants of the Ottoman, Roman and Byzantine Empires.

Istanbul is truly a world class city that is full of life, art, culture, history and much energy and a resolute verve.

Teşekkür ederim Istanbul.

#permissionistriumph #wanderlust #turkey #istanbul

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muellerewald-blog · 5 years

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We love a good city break. Not only can they be really affordable and accessible, you can often experience the beating heart of a country. From capital cities like Madrid and Berlin, to the whimsical charm of Krakow and Prague, city breaks come with all of the exploring, arts and culture, nights out and sightseeing you could wish for.

If you’re wondering where to go next, take a look through our list of 20 best city breaks for couples and get planning the rest of your 2019.

Reykjavik

Why go? Reykjavik is one of the most popular destinations in Europe – if not the world – right now. What makes it among the best city breaks for couples is a vibrant nightlife scene combined with stunning scenery – Reykjavik is surrounded by volcanic terrain and when skies are clear the sunsets are spectacular. It’s a compact city so most areas are within walking distance. Head for the main street of Laugavegur which is packed with shops and bars, and for accommodation, we can highly recommend the Reykjavik Centrum Hotel for couples planning a visit to the city.

Paris

Why go? No shortlist of the best city break for couples would surely be complete without the inclusion of Paris. The French capital carries an air of romance which is fully deserved and still authentic. Yes, of course you’ll encounter plenty of tourists at the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe – definitely still musts to visit if you haven’t been before – but there’s history and culture down every street in Paris. There are plenty of restaurants, cafes, parks and boutique shops, so sample as many as you can! The Montmarte has amazing views over the city, The Louvre is one of the world’s finest and largest museums, and the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont spreads over 25 acres.

Amsterdam

Why go? With a flight time from the UK that can be as short as 45 minutes, there’s no excuse not to hop on a plane and spend a long weekend in Amsterdam. Its renowned nightlife makes it one of the best city breaks for young couples, but the capital city of the Netherlands is far more than party central. It has a wonderful laidback and friendly atmosphere, winding cobbled streets filled with bars and shops, and striking architecture too. Around the city is a network of canals, best explored by taking one of the many boat trips on offer. Amsterdam doesn’t really do cars as such, by the way – you’ll find many people cycling around or travelling by tram.

London

Why go? For many people living outside the UK, London is arguably right at the top of their wishlist – however, when it’s right on your doorstep it can be easy to take for granted. But if you want a city break on home turf, London has everything. Shop in Oxford Street, watch a show in the West End, visit the city’s excellent museums and take a trip on the London Eye – there is enough to do to fill several weekends over. For a change of pace, spend some time in Shoreditch and Camden, exploring the street markets.

Rome

Why go? Chaotic, bustling and completely fascinating, Rome is a city like no other and an obvious nomination as one of the best city breaks for couples. This is the beating heart of Italy, home to the Pantheon, Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, St Peter’s Basilica, Borghese Gallery, Palatine Hill and countless other ancient ruins and architectural masterpieces. There’s so much to see and experience that you’ll need regular refueling; fortunately, Rome does food extremely well! You might find the best restaurants – and prices – outside of the busy tourist areas. After a heavy and indulgent lunch, stretch your legs in one of the city’s beautiful parks and gardens.

Venice

Why go? Sticking with Italy, travel around 350 miles further north and you’ll reach Venice, right on the east of the country. This is a city that simply must be visited at least once in a lifetime. It’s a magical place where cars are replaced by gondolas and waterbuses, and though it unsurprisingly gets busy at peak times, late winter and early spring is generally much quieter. Obviously, a gondola ride is a must but you should also try to catch an opera at La Fenice as well as visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the modern art museum located on the Grand Canal. The romance in the Venetian air makes it among the best city breaks for young couples.

Krakow

Why go? This Polish city has a charming, historic location which is growing in popularity as one of the best city breaks for couples as well as groups of friends. The 14th century Royal Wawel Castle and the Barbican fortress are among Krakow’s notable landmarks, while much of the modern day action takes place around Rynek Glowny, the central Grand Square in the Old Town. At 200sqm, it’s the largest medieval town square in Europe, fringed by beautiful townhouses and lots of cafes and bars. It’s a great place to relax and soak up the atmosphere.

Florence

Why go? Italy has so many memorable cities for those searching for best city breaks for couples, and Florence is yet another that is well worth a visit. Considered the capital of the wonderful Tuscan region, Florence is famed for its Renaissance period art and architecture; masterpieces from the likes of Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Botticelli are housed in the Uffizi Gallery. In early spring, the weather is warming up, so enjoy open-air drinks in cafes and bars. The Oltrarno district is a delight too, and it’s been recently regenerated with quaint restaurants, artisan workshops and craft stores.

Dublin

Why go? Dublin is right on the doorstep for UK travellers, and a fantastic choice for a city break. The famed nightlife and entertainment of this Irish city focuses primarily around the Temple Bar area, which is full of not only pubs, but galleries, boutique shops and cafes too. Of course, Dublin has more to offer than just top-class Guinness. Merrion Square showcases the best of Georgian Dublin, Francis Street boasts fine art and antiques and St Stephen’s Green is the city’s public park. The DART train line allows visitors to explore the Dublin coastline, taking in scenic villages like Howth and Killiney.

Edinburgh

Why go? Edinburgh really is a top destination, ideal for a city break. The Old Town has winding streets and lots of traditional pubs and cafes, perfect to wile away a lazy afternoon whilst shoppers will adore Princes Street and Multrees Walk and its range of designer stores. For sightseers, Edinburgh Castle is located right in the centre of the city. The Real Mary King’s Close offers something completely different – a network of streets located underground and dating back some 400 years. It’s Edinburgh’s deepest secret!

Barcelona

Why go? Barcelona is a superb location, a magnificent combination of city break and beach holiday. The streets of this Spanish city – officially part of Catalonia – are full of tapas bars, cafes, and eye-catching buildings bearing the influence of the visionary architect Antoni Gaudi. The stunning Roman Catholic Church Sagrada Familia is definitely not to be missed! Barcelona also has several excellent beaches and botanical gardens, a Gothic Quarter, a picturesque marina in the shape of Port Olimpic and arguably the world’s most famous football club. No wonder it’s considered one of the best city breaks for couples!

Madrid

Why go? Following Barcelona is another great destination in Spain. Madrid doesn’t have beaches but in all other ways the capital city is one of the best city breaks for couples. The climate is usually warm – rising to hot in the peak of summer – and there are numerous museums, galleries, parks, squares and shops to enjoy, many of them off Gran Via. The Palacio Real – Royal Palace – and Museo del Prado are also recommended landmarks. Food and drink is central to life in Madrid, and visitors will be spoiled for choice when it comes to wining and dining. Take a seat outside one of the many tapas bars and restaurants and watch the city go by.

Brussels

Why go? Brussels might not seem an obvious choice as a city break – but it should be. The Belgium capital is fast rising in popularity as an excellent location, with a gastronomic scene to rival Paris in terms of restaurants and fine dining and a reputation as a venue for lovers of classical music and jazz. The Grand-Place is a large cobbled market square in the middle of Brussels, with the Hotel de Ville – the City Hall – the outstanding architectural highlight. Take some time in both the Lower Town and Upper Town – areas which divide Brussels. The Lower Town is crammed and bustling, the Upper Town rather more grand. It really is like visiting two different cities.

Berlin

Why go? The former capital of East Germany, Berlin has a fascinating story to tell in terms of its history and culture – but its modern and forward-thinking image is making it one of the best city breaks for young couples and travellers. The city has a buzzing nightlife with numerous bars and clubs and a late night can often mean very late as some establishments don’t shut until the last guest leaves! Possibly the best drink anywhere is the Berlin TV Tower, which is 203m above the city. Notable attractions to see include the Brandenburg Gate, built in 1791, Museum Island – an UNESCO world heritage site – and the Gendarmenmarkt, which has French and German cathedrals.

Lisbon

Why go? There are many reasons to visit Lisbon, and it’s fast becoming one of the best city breaks for couples. Portugal’s capital city has hardly been a secret but it seems only recently that it’s true attraction was realised by many. For starters, it is the sunniest capital city in Europe, and located just 30 minutes or so away from several beaches. Well, that’s if you want to escape the city – but with an increasing number of restaurants winning Michelin stars, buildings decorated with colourful street art and murals and wooden trams rattling around narrow streets, why would you need to leave Lisbon?

Athens

Why go? Athens is a city break that will feel like a summer holiday, even in early spring when the temperature is still warm. The city was built around the Acropolis, the most visited ancient attraction in Athens, and as such the landmark is visible from just about anywhere. That’s a must-see, but it’s also recommended that you catch an outdoor theatre show too – try the open-air Roman Herodus Atticus Odeon. Of course, there’s a modern side to Athens as well with a plethora of lively bars, glitzy restaurants and clubs. The Psirri district is considered a top spot for a night out.

Prague

Why go? Prague seems to have acquired a reputation as a haunt for stag parties but this is doing the city a huge injustice. Yes, there are plenty of bars and pubs to please larger groups but also a truly charming and beautiful side to Prague which warrants closer inspection. The capital of the Czech Republic has the largest ancient castle in the world, a number of churches and cathedrals and the Charles Bridge – the magnificent 14th century stone bridge linking the Old Town to the Little Quarter or Lesser Town. Wenceslas Square is at the hub of Prague, the perfect starting point for a visit.

New York

Why go? A trip to New York might be considered as the king of all city breaks, though it’s best to spend a few days here rather than a couple of weekend nights – there’s so much to see and do that you’ll need every minute of your holiday. Do the tourist thing and tick off the list of iconic landmarks – Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, the Rockefeller Building and the Empire State Building – but also take some time to relax in Central Park and enjoy a cruise on the Hudson River. Don’t forget to shop on Fifth Avenue, and eat and drink to your heart’s content. You’ll be busy, but also totally inspired!

Las Vegas

Why go? There’s no place quite like Las Vegas – it’s a once in a lifetime destination. An oasis in the middle of the Nevada desert, Vegas is a full-on, 24/7 party venue; shamelessly bold, glitzy and glamorous, it’s surely unrivalled in terms of entertainment and just sheer, brilliant fun! It’s not just about casinos, there’s loads to see too – including the Bellagio Hotel’s famous fountain show, the Mandalay Bay’s Shark Reef Aquarium and the themed hotels imitating Paris, New York, Caesar’s Palace, Venice and Egypt. Set aside a week and just go with it. If you can, squeeze in a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon too.

Marrakech

Why go? Marrakech in Morocco s a place for adventure, exploration and a bit of luxury. There are attractive buildings to admire – don’t miss El Bahia Palace, a sumptuous 19th century masterpiece – and exciting new dishes to eat, whether that be from street food stalls or restaurants. The souks provide an opportunity to browse goods of almost every kind, and you can barter on price to grab a bargain. Don’t forget to round off your city break with a well earned visit to a Marrakech spa.

The post 20 of the Best City Breaks for Couples appeared first on TravelRepublic Blog.

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toldnews-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/lifestyle/things-editors-like-t-suggests-cameos-by-cindy-sherman-warhols-portraits-of-women-and-more/

Things Editors Like: T Suggests: Cameos by Cindy Sherman, Warhol’s Portraits of Women and More

Lina Bo Bardi’s Most Beloved Pieces Come to New York

The multidisciplinary Italian-Brazilian artist Lina Bo Bardi is best known as an architect, most famously of the 1968 São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), a rectangular glass box suspended from two red concrete beams like a kind of Brutalist crab. But she also made radical Modernist furniture. In 1948, not long after she moved to São Paulo from her native Italy, where she had collaborated with architects including Gio Ponti and Carlo Pagani, she founded a furniture studio, Estúdio de Arte e Arquitetura Palma, with fellow Italian architect Giancarlo Palanti. Independently, she continued to create innovative seating and display units for the buildings she designed; in keeping with her communist principles, she liked to shape each aspect of her buildings to encourage accessibility and, in her words, to “fight against the formulaic and routine.”

Among her most influential pieces are the foldable jacaranda-wood chairs she produced for the auditorium at MASP, each of which features an elegant pale leather seat and back that lace up like corsets. One such chair is now on view at a new exhibition, “Lina Bo Bardi & Giancarlo Palanti: Studio d’Arte Palma,” of rare Bo Bardi furniture at Gladstone 64 gallery in New York. Also on display are a swooping iron-and-leather deck chair she created for Casa Valéria Cirell, the rustic shingle-walled home she built for a professor and his family in a tropical suburb of São Paulo in 1964, a mahogany Zig-Zag armchair with a fuzzy animal-hide seat by Estúdio de Arte e Arquitetura Palma and a compact movable wooden chair she designed for the Espírito Santo do Cerrado Church in southeastern Brazil.

Complementing the furniture are works by Bo Bardi’s contemporaries in the Brazilian artists’ collective Grupo Frente, including Lygia Clark and Alfredo Volpi. For Simone Battisti, a partner at Gladstone, the exhibition is all the more exciting because of its setting; the gallery occupies the former home of another Modernist architect, Edward Durell Stone, who in 1956 replaced the facade of the classic Upper East Side brownstone with a geometric concrete grid. His neighbors at the time weren’t pleased, which I imagine Bo Bardi would have enjoyed. On view through June 15 at Gladstone 64, 130 East 64th Street, New York, gladstone64.com — ALICE NEWELL-HANSON

Photographers Take on a New Medium: Cameo

According to the Egyptologist and philologist E.A. Wallis Budge, the word “cameo” derives from the Cabalist word Kame’a, meaning “magical square.” Magic certainly comes to mind when viewing the enchanting new cameos created by the photographers Cindy Sherman and Catherine Opie, who worked with the New York-based collector Liz Swig on a new limited-edition series called “Cameo.” The project consists of nine jewelry pieces — four by Sherman and five by Opie — that will be shown at the Venice Biennale this May and will be available for sale online. The latest project from LizWorks, a platform founded in 2014 by Swig to foster creative collaboration, “Cameo” began after Swig saw Opie’s 2017 exhibition “Portraits and Landscapes” at London’s Thomas Dane Gallery, which included a series of portraits with dark oval backdrops. The photographs reminded Swig of one of the oldest forms of portraiture: the carved cameo. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute!’ Swig says. “Nobody has explored the cameo, maybe ever, in contemporary dialogue and life.”

Soon after, Swig reached out to Opie and Sherman about carving their photographs into curved shells to create unique cameos. For Opie, the project with LizWorks gave her the opportunity to put the art form, which dates back to ancient Greece, in a new context. “When I make a photograph, there’s only five of them out in the world, and I love that there’s this reiteration, or reinterpretation, of a photograph that is not on a gallery or museum or collector’s wall but that it’s out in the world being worn,” she says. Sherman’s cameos transport the most contemporary form of portraiture from the digital into the tangible. She tells T in an email that she had “been looking for alternative ways to transform some of my images from Instagram, since they’re not suitable for regular photographic reproduction. And I like the idea of jewelry as art.”

The cameos were carved by the artisan Gino de Luca, whom Swig met at a jewelry fair in Vicenza, Italy. De Luca is a descendant of a long line of cameo-makers based in Torre del Greco, a town outside of Naples where cameos have been made for centuries. “Cameo” was de Luca’s first encounter with the works of Sherman and Opie, and a chance to modernize his family’s craft. “Within a minute, he just got it,” Swig says of speaking to De Luca about her vision. “He is a magic force, but on this earth.” Price on request, lizworks.net — HILARY REID

A Show on Andy Warhol’s Favorite Subject: Women

In the wake of the Whitney’s landmark Andy Warhol retrospective, “From A to B and Back Again” — the first show of its kind at a U.S. museum in 30 years — New York’s galleries are taking a turn celebrating the artist in their own ways. Sperone Westwater is exhibiting a collection of the artist’s early drawings of people and still lifes of food, handbags and stilettos while, at its upstate satellite in Kinderhook, Jack Shainman will soon open a show of the collaborative paintings Warhol did with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Up at Lévy Gorvy is “Warhol Women,” which, along with some of Warhol’s best-known portraits (Jackie, Marilyn), includes those of Gertrude Stein, Golda Meir and the artist’s mother, Julia Warhola. “It’s such an obvious subject,” says the writer Alison Gingeras, who will contribute an essay to the show’s catalog, of Warhol’s relationship to and reliance on women, “and yet it’s never been fully unpacked in all its complexity.”

That complexity is perhaps most apparent in four images near the gallery’s entrance that a casual observer might dismiss, unwisely, as outliers: These photos, taken over two days in 1981 by Christopher Makos, are of the artist himself in coifed wigs and full makeup. In one, Warhol has been rendered almost unrecognizable, with teased-up Stevie Nicks hair, drawn-on eyebrows and a flirty pose incorporating clasped hands. In another, he channels his most famous subject with an asymmetrical blond wig, a bent knee and arms crossed modestly over his crotch. Though rather than a billowing dress, he wears slim jeans, a white button-up and a plaid tie, as if, below the neck, he’s still Andy. Warhol was deeply fascinated by New York’s drag culture. As far back as the 1950s, he attended clandestine drag salons hosted by the photographer Otto Fenn and made drawings (some of them part of the Sperone Westwater show) based on Fenn’s images. Still, Makos has said that’s not quite what these pictures are about. As Gingeras puts it, “They’re more about undoing gender than performing drag,” adding, “Warhol had an expansive definition of what a woman is.” “Warhol Women,” through June 15 at Lévy Gorvy, 909 Madison Avenue, New York, levygorvy.com — MERRELL HAMBLETON

From Bobbi Jene Smith, a Dance Work Like a Mountain

Since leaving Tel Aviv, where she was a principal with Batsheva Dance Company, in 2014, the Iowa-born Bobbi Jene Smith has been busy choreographing or appearing in one work after another. “With Care,” an elegiac follow-up to her solo “A Study on Effort,” debuted in the fall, and “Deo,” a dramatic staging of the myth of Demeter and Persephone, which Smith cocreated with Maxine Doyle for the Martha Graham Dance Company, premiered last month. But even as she embodies Graham’s definition of the artist as someone who just keeps marching, Smith isn’t much interested in straight, continuous lines. “It’s creation and destruction. You build up and then have to come down, or go down to come up,” she says of her process. Indeed, the symbol of the mountain has become something of a touchstone for her, one that’s directly informed her newest piece, “Lost Mountain,” which will open in New York at La MaMa the weekend of May 16.

In this case, the mountain is not just a metaphor for the artistic struggle but also for the search for meaning in life. To Smith’s mind, one way that meaning can be found is through moments of human connection. “I like the idea of people bumping into each other and, much like the tectonic forces that make the mountain itself, rising up to make something larger,” she says. She will perform the piece with an ensemble of 10 that includes the dancer-choreographer Marta Miller (“I’m pulling her out of retirement for this”); Or Schraiber, Smith’s husband; the violinist Keir GoGwilt; and the Israeli singer-songwriter Asaf Avidan. When we speak, Smith is hesitant to give away too many details but shares that the evening-length work consists of a series of cinematic vignettes, that all of the music will be live and that there will be little separation between art forms. Fittingly, the group is rehearsing at a farmhouse-turned-artist-retreat on a mountain in southern Vermont. Have there been any inspirational hikes, one wonders? “Hopefully next week. It’s been pretty cold,” says Smith. “And we have a lot of work to do.” “Lost Mountain” will open as part of La MaMa’s Moves! Dance Festival on May 16, at the Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East Fourth Street, New York, lamama.org — KATE GUADAGNINO

Michelle Pfeiffer’s Intoxicating New Scents

The last person I’d expect to create a collection of slightly hallucinogenic abstract contemporary art might be Michelle Pfeiffer. But the perfumes from her new collection, Henry Rose, range from the delightfully disorienting (like a Jeff Koons balloon dog) to the unsettling, like a Spielbergian poltergeist-filled TV screen.

Last Light, one of the five scents, is somehow at once lovely and hopelessly unreachable. Jake’s House is a fresh eau de cologne but smells like it was made in 2042, and so is simultaneously familiar and alarming. Fog is a work of conceptual realism — a shadowy curtain of scent that silently curls around you. (The catch, of course, is that fog has no smell. That makes it an olfactory illusion, an extraordinary trick and a mesmerizing perfume.)

Dark Is Night smells like you’re in a nightclub — you know, nightclub air at 2 a.m.: the scent of aluminum, electricity and perfume with a hint of dark plums drenched in sugared rum. You’re lost; having this many weird olfactory landmarks means you have none. The parts fly at you, fill you up till suddenly. You can’t pass a mental breathalyzer. henryrose.com — CHANDLER BURR

#lifestyle disease news #lifestyle news english #lifestyle news indian express #lifestyle news shows #lifestyle news.com #pembury lifestyle group news

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misstinapie · 8 years

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T&J Travels #5: Antipolo 2016

Maybe the boyfriend wanted to make it up to me with my failed plan*, but I'm nowhere near complaining when he pitched going to Antipolo. We are to rely on public transpo for this day tour and what do you know, it could have never been better than expected!

+ The Exciting Time of Sitting Down +

There are 3 places near my place where we can attempt to catch a shuttle. What we tried first was at Megamall which unfortunately had only one seat left and it was eating our time sitting there waiting for another one to come. I was able to get a Growlithe though!

We gave that up after probably a good 30 minute wait and walked to Galleria. Lo and behold we're the first to be on queue that we even got the front seats yay! It was a bit of a long wait for more passengers thought but it was offset by the absence of heavy traffic. We arrived quarter to 11.

+ Antipolo Cathedral +

For first timers like us it was really convenient that our first stop for the day and the last stop of the shuttle was the Antipolo Cathedral. Initially we weren't too sure where it was, I think we've passed by a few churches that might pass off as one but then you see that huge dome in your view and you realize that THAT is the one.

I may not be a Catholic but I always enjoy going to Churches, especially Roman Catholic ones. What added to it's charm is how inspite of being at a busy street, it was clean and everything is in it's place, not blocking the beautiful building.

The terminal we got off is on a street at the left which made the Cathedral the best landmark you could tell someone who would commute for the first time to Antipolo. It made me comfortable knowing that I can go back to a place familiar when need be, not to mention no tricycle driver would not know where the Cathedral is. It was also nice that the ped xings are properly followed. If the guy who ushered us is to be believed, it's 5k for the offense.

The cathedral is not as huge inside, not too much decor, nor was it grandiose like other churches. But even so, the plain white dome interior is a refreshing take in lieu of paintings and chandeliers.

+ La Traviesa +

A seafood buffet place, we got there via tricycle (30php). Our driver didn't know it (must be new), but he proactively asked his friends where to. We got there around lunch time so it's understandable that the place is truly packed. But then in my head I don't get why they have no people in front to seat nor entertain us. Reagan went in after a while of waiting because the waiters seemed like they're ignoring our presence (there's probably 2 tables left so we need to act quickly if we want to eat). He asked someone who gave us plates (tables have cutleries but no plates, it seems like it's something you have to request) and we're off to start. It's a sort of mini culture shock, this is the first time we've seen such system in getting yourself a table.

Truly as advertised there are lots of seafood dishes (probably 5-6), or so I think. Flavors don't differ much. The shrimp isn't as fresh as hoped (our gauge is that the shell of the shrimp is sticking too much to it's flesh). I had my full though because it wasn't bad for 300++ per head. I loved the veggies because they're not soggy and the fried rice had so much ingredients on it.

What had truly surprised me was that being a seafood buffet, their bestseller was none of the main dishes (they are always fully stocked) but their appetizer: kamote chips. It's really funny that when you eat here in Manila the first to go are shrimps, while here the kamote chips don't stay long on the buffet table. I was lucky to get a first batch when I went back to get some and boy they are really tasty! You won't even taste that familiar earthy taste of kamote, you could actually fool anyone that it's just potato.

+ Pinto Art Gallery +

There was already a light shower when we arrived (tricycle was probably 50php?) that the road is becoming muddy. I am not sure if you need to pay extra when you bring your own car to park or even enter (it is within a subdivision but near the guard) but tricycles don't need to.

Entrance fee is 200php for adults, a different charge for those who plan to do photoshoots. Backpacks are prohibited but it seems like you can talk yourself out of it to my annoyance.**

I loved it, there's so much to see. The weirdness of some artworks, the multiple ways you can go to a building, different levels and random rocks out of nowhere. If this is something I could afford, this is an excellent place to hold an event! I could only imagine how it might look with all the drapings and flowers you could dress it in.

What I didn't like though was how some groups hound artworks just so they can take the best shoot. It's ridiculous and sad at the same time. Imagine hanging out with friends who are onto outdoing (or out-instagramming rather) each other. Just keep an eye ON groups who had all the works: makeup, outfits and slrs. Go the other way to better enjoy the moment.

My favorite installation is the simplest, but to me was the most immersive: The Forest. I'm not going to spoil it for anyone but I truly loved it. It's like all my senses are engaged coming in. I hope they never remove it!

+ Hinulugang Taktak +

I knew I've been here once on a field trip ages ago but I could not recall a single memory of what it should look like that's why I still felt giddy seeing it like as if it's my first time. Initially we weren't allowed in because they were saying that they close the park when it rains (apparently due to falling branches) but they may have noticed we were "tourists" and allowed us in after a while as we lingered looking over the railings to see the waterfalls (and also there are a few visitors around the area the reasoning is not valid).

The water is quite muddy probably because of the rain, a bit of trash at the bottom (sad face) but I bet it would be much better on another day. I liked that they have a lot of places where families can hang out for free, however they should do something about some parts of the park that aren't cemented yet. It also looks like a budget friendly option to get married since the area near the falls is a fair size for your guests. You just have to deal with the water spray though.

+ Cloud9 Resort +

This is so out of the way of the rest of everything else so it's somewhat reasonable to pay 120 for the tricycle. We didn't know what to expect on how high it is as well so we added 30 for the driver to take us on the actual resort. Do not attempt this when you're a group, it's safer to walk up. You'd know what I mean once you see how steep it is.

The view up here is breathtaking. That is of course if only the rain would just stop. It would have been nice to be able to dine out of the glass enclosure, away from some smoking patrons. I have no idea if they have other areas reserved for non-smokers but it doesn't look like it. We suppose that the dining area is for drinking sessions and barkada gatherings. Not too romantic if you ask me.

I've no appetite (I don't know why) so we just got tuna sandwiches and calamansi juice. Other than inhaling smoke from the next table this has got to be the #1 downer for the day. You can't even see where in the sandwich the tuna resides and for 130++ it's too disappointing. Back in the office I pay 25 pesos for a rye bread overflowing with tuna and vegetables!!

We're supposed to try the hanging bridge but it doesn't look safe (looks slippery due to rain) and I've no urge to do the 360 experience since it's cloudy anyway. We'd just try it for next time.

+ Going Home +

Unlike everything else we've been to, the location of Cloud9 is hard to get any form of public transpo. We tried walking and back, to be saved by a tricycle who dropped off a group at Cloud9 too. We went back to the Cathedral to buy some pasalubongs (we got our kasuy for 100php a glass and a few freebies). It was quite stressful, everyone is extremely competitive, one was even claiming hailed us to her store but we have no idea who she was.

There were also kids who kept on selling Catholic necklaces, repetitively telling you to share your blessings it has become super annoying. I do give alms but I want to do it on my own volition. A no means no. Reagan is quite nicer, he gave in to those two girls.

It wasn't hard for us to get a shuttle back to Megamall, and the waiting time is reasonable. There was a bit of traffic but not as bad as it is in EDSA. More and more Antipolo looks like a good place to get a house (wink!) since it is really convenient to and fro Ortigas CBD. We will try to get back around May so we could try what Kasuy (the fruit) really taste like. I'm hoping it won't be raining anymore!

Raw Gallery (no edits, not even which photos are on the album!)

*Wednesday that week I told him what if we spend the weekend at Tagaytay since me and officemates are going there on a Friday night. I wanted to just meet him there instead of me going back home. I was really sold to the idea of waking up on a different location in the morning, I even thought of bringing clothes for an early exercise (naks!). It would be convenient for me too since I'd be checking out early Sunday to go to our Church in Cavite. He said it wasn't a good idea though because his car haven't had any checkup yet.

**I only bring backpacks nowadays which I think would benefit my back, but it's too small my officemate once remarked I stole it from a child. So anyway, I left it at their area as told BUT there was this girl who had a huge ass bag that could probably fit 10 of what I have who didn't want to leave hers and "promised" the guy in the baggage counter she would wear it in front instead. SHE NEVER DID AFTER HE LOOKED AWAY. DAMMIT.

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lapergolalaspezia · 4 years

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Exploring Italy - The Beautiful Nation | La Pergola

Italy's Culture as well as Impact

Secret people have actually existed in Italy because prehistoric times. Throughout background, Italy has actually been a major impact of European culture, from the Etruscan neighborhood to the controling Roman Realm. Throughout the Middle Ages and also Renaissance duration, Italy was the center of art and also science. The religious influence of Italy has also been much reaching. The Vatican is an independent state within Rome that is governed by the Pope (or Bishop of Rome), the seat of the Catholic Church.

Cheap Hotel Cinque Terre

Italy Tourist - Something Fun for Every Person

Travelers group to Italy each year to take pleasure in art galleries and also museums, discover Italy's several historical sites, as well as watch the stunning exterior landscapes. Italy has much to use both individuals as well as families. For the golf enthusiast, there are programs available throughout the nation. Golf links can be found in the hills, by the sea, near art cities such as Florence, Venice and also Rome, and also by many of the picturesque lakes of Italy

The Coastlines of Italy.

Fun in the sun can be experienced by family members at one of the several beaches in Italy. There are over 7,600 miles of shoreline snuggling the mainland as well as islands. The Mediterranean Sea supplies several of the most lovely beaches in the world, and also lots of trip resorts lay out the coastlines with sun-soaking sand, lounge chairs and umbrellas. Italy's coastlines are known for their tidiness and also safety and security. Abruzzo, Apulia, Calabria as well as Tuscany are amongst the numerous regions where beaches were lately awarded with the Blue Flag, an honor offered to coastlines that are clean as well as offer risk-free bathing locations.

Nature Fan's Desire

There are 20 national parks in Italy, where nature fans can discover the outdoors as well as sturdy terrain. Lakes, hills, plants and special animals are abundant throughout Italy's parks. Regions where national parks lie include Apulia, Calabria, Sicilia, Sardinia, Tuscany, Piedmont as well as the Marches.

Nature enthusiasts likewise appreciate visiting unique Italian botanical gardens. There more than 30 of these lovely yards in Italy For the bicyclist, each region offers wonderful bike trails for exploring the outdoors and exploring numerous sites and parks.

Check Out Art as well as Background in Italy

As one of the world's most noticeable art as well as background centers, Italy provides numerous fine galleries, galleries and also landmarks. One-of-a-kind galleries featuring vehicles, home entertainment, science and also innovation, as well as archeology are scattered throughout the Italian areas to suit all tastes. Saint Peter's Square is one of one of the most beautiful sites in the world and also was constructed by many well-known designers, consisting of Michelangelo, Vignola, Raphael and Pirro Ligorio. There are additionally numerous castles, royal residences and also cathedrals that attract visitors annually.

Whether it's to learn more about vital amount of times in background, kick back with the household at the coastline, or to appreciate a romantic getaway, Italy has something to offer for every occasion!

Hiking the Hills and Valleys of Italy.

Bring your trekking poles for a fantastic hiking adventure in the lovely nation of Italy! Italy provides some fantastic treking trails where you'll find the land's one-of-a-kind culture and background, as well as take pleasure in wonderful food in the process.

Treking in Italy is interesting since there are so many beautiful locations to check out. Whether it's nature you like or the hectic city life, there are hiking trips available for both. Here are some advised hiking adventures to think about during your check out to Italy.

The National forest of the Grandmother Paradiso

Delight in a hilly hike with this park's beautiful surface. You'll be introduced to the park's wild animals, experience tough walkings to view the high hill heights of the Alps, as well as see the glaciers that border the Rifugio Sella. You could also intend to go to the wooden village of Nex Tignet, which looks like it originated from a fairytale!

Tour the Dolomites (Starting in Ortisei, Italy).

The Dolomites, where Mediterranean and also German societies satisfy, are house of an ancient people called the Ladins, who stay in the high valleys surrounding the Sella Team massif. While treking in the Dolomites, you'll uncover the well-preserved society and also practices of the Ladin people, see the herding fields in Gardena Valley, as well as likewise observe karstic rock formations.

Visit the Italian Lakes Area (Beginning in Milan, Italy).

Hike challenging routes while watching a few of Italy's a lot of picturesque lakes. The lake-side towns of Stresa, Bellagio as well as Lugano provide delicious food, wonderful shopping and a range of glass of wines. Each lake is surrounded by outstanding mountain scenery, and also you'll have the ability to hike amongst awesome glacial lakes. This walk could include a see to the islands of Lago Maggiore, where there are gardens, royal residences and also angling towns. There's likewise a milky-white waterfall called Fiumelatte at Varenna.

Treking at the Cinque Terre (Beginning at La Spezia).

The Cinque Terre is a beautiful collection of oceanside villages where Italian seafaring and traditional Mediterranean food and society coincide. You can hike amongst the lots of cliffs as well as routes that surround the villages, take a scenic tour of close-by Pisa to see the well-known "Leaning Tower," or discover the Medieval art city of Lucca.

Treking at the National Park of Abruzzo.

This is a rugged, tough walking where you can check out truth wild side of Italy. The park is residence to around 300 types of birds, hill goats, wolves, bears as well as chamois. Don't worry - discoveries of bears and also wolves are unusual throughout hiking excursions. This park is the largest national forest in Italy and uses gorgeous scenes of mountains, alpine fields and even more. Be sure to check out neighboring villages to enjoy local cuisine and red wines, as well as discover each community's special history.

Hiking at the Majella National Park in Italy.

As one of Italy's newest national parks, Majella National forest offers a wealth of plants and wild animals, a rich eco-friendly canyon and a wonderful mountain town. Explore the Monte Amaro, the 2nd greatest top in the Appenine chain, which is in your area called the Montagna Madre (or Mommy Mountain). Other suggested walkings consist of scenic tours in Tuscany, Le Marche and Capri.

Tips for Hiking in Italy.

Treking in Italy is great if you recognize where to hike and also are well prepared in advance. Here are some ideas to obtain you started.

Paid Walking Tours.

There are numerous assisted walking excursions where the hike is planned for you. These are excellent if you have actually never been to Italy or are new to treking. Full walking tours use hotel accommodations, transport to and from the hiking areas, experienced tourist guide, paid entrance to sites, galleries as well as a glass of wine tastings in addition to a travel plan.

Self-Guided Tours.

If you are already a knowledgeable hiker as well as are familiar with Italy, you might intend to take a self-guided walking scenic tour. Remember, let someone know where and also when you will certainly be treking in case of an emergency situation.

Decide what sort of hike you wish to take beforehand. If you're a beginner, you might wish to try the light routes where towns neighbor. Additionally, pick tracks you will enjoy. Do you take pleasure in the mountain scene or lakes? Do you enjoy exploring villages, farmland or wineries? Do you wish to observe wild animals throughout your walking? When you decide on the kind of hike, you can investigate various tracks and also areas to find the perfect place.

Get a Hiking Map.

In Italy, most of the treking routes aren't marked well. A few of the markings can be located in obscure areas such as on a tree or rock. That's why you must purchase a hiking route map as soon as you decide where you will trek. A map that details the trails for you will certainly help you discover your means when markings are not readily available, or not clear.

Watch for Seekers.

Searching is popular in Italy, so you'll wish to be sure there are no seekers where you intend to trek. Discover from a hiking trip company where you can hike securely, as well as also what indications to search for while treking. There are indicators for "No Hunting" showed along some treking tracks.

Usage Trekking Poles for Assistance.

Even if you feel up to the walk literally, make use of travelling poles for assistance. You might not realize the stress and anxiety a steep walk can put on your legs, knees as well as ankles. Hiking posts will certainly aid eliminate several of the stress and anxiety and conserve you from several aches and also pains later. Even one of the most seasoned hikers make use of travelling posts for support.

Load Light, But Pack Intelligently.

Your knapsack must include the basics for your walking, such as food, water or beverage, first aid package, and so on. Yet, do not load greater than you need. Packing excessive might cause your walking to be unpleasant due to the extra weight. See to it you have what you need for emergency scenarios. This could save your life!

#Cheap Hotel Cinque Terre

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floridaindependentblog · 4 years

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If you’re the type of person who loves learning about history, then you also should be on the lookout for the best historical places that you can travel to right in the United States!

When it comes to learning about United States history there are lots of states and cities that have helped to shape what we are today.

There are tons of awesome historical cities in the U.S. that are worth taking a trip to explore. Whether you’re planning to go alone, as a couple, or taking the whole family along these U.S. cities are packed full of history that you can learn about.

Keep reading for our guide to the seven best U.S. cities that every history buff should visit at least once in their lifetime

1. Boston, Massachusetts

When it comes to the history of the United States, what better place to start than the birthplace of the American Revolution? There are tons of significant places to tour if you plan to head to Boston on a trip.

Boston is known for creating many firsts. Make sure to stop by the nation’s first college, Harvard University, as well as the oldest public library, the earliest subway system, and even the first-ever public park.

When it comes to visiting Boston there is tons to see and do here for the entire family. You can tour many museums, historical sites, walk through cobblestone streets, and even marvel at the old and new architecture.

2. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

What draws most people to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania is seeing the Gettysburg Battlefield. This battle was known as the bloodiest during the Civil War and a pivotal victory.

Checking out the Gettysburg Battlefield will be a huge part of your trip for a lot of history lovers. You can watch reenactments as well as a film narrated by Morgan Freeman.

On the property, you will also find the David Wills House where Abraham Lincoln finalized the Gettysburg Address which freed the slaves.

Gettysburg is a popular historical city for many other reasons too! President Eisenhower retired to Gettysburg and it was a place that he called home. There were tons of great places that the president loved to frequent that you can check out during your trip to Gettysburg.

3. Charleston, South Carolina

If you’re interested in learning about what life in America when it was still a British colony, then taking a trip to Charleston, South Carolina will be perfect for you. You will find one of the best walking tours here as you see a real-life depiction of what life was like.

There are tons of things that you can learn while you tour through Charleston. On the darker side slavery was very prominent in this city many years ago. You can learn all about the harsh side of slavery as well as slave trading and it’s origins.

Along with learning about all of the history that Charleston has to offer you can also see some magnificent buildings. These buildings include the Dock Street Theater as well as some stunning houses by famous families.

4. Washington D.C., District of Columbia

We can’t have a list of the best historical U.S. cities without putting the nation’s capital. Washinton D.C. is filled with tons of awesome museums, monuments, landmarks, and history that you can explore.

One of the best parts about traveling to Washinton D.C. for history buffs is that most of the great sites that you will want to see and learn about are completely free to the public.

Besides touring all of the big notable monuments and landmarks in Washinton D.C. you can also take some neighborhood tours while you’re there as well. This city is filled with a rich history and it’s totally ready for you to learn and explore.

5. New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans has changed hands throughout history multiple times which is why it can be such a fascinating place to history lovers. The French created a huge influence on New Orleans which also makes it a great place to travel too and learn about.

You’ll enjoy seeing the St. Louis Cathedral, which is by far the oldest church still standing in America.

New Orleans is filled with tons of things to do as well as so much for history lovers to learn about.

6. St. Augustine, Florida

When it comes to seeing the oldest currently occupied European settlement in the United States, then St. Augustine, Florida is the place to go. You’ll be transported by in time the moment you step onto the cobblestone streets that this city as to offer.

With all of the wonderful museums, monuments, art galleries, and colonial architecture St. Augustine is loved by many history buffs. You can learn all about the deep-rooted history and culture that this wonderful city has to offer.

7. Williamsburg, Virginia

When it comes to traveling to many cities on this list you may notice that they’re very updated, but Williamsburg, Virginia has stayed true to its roots. When you travel to Williamsburg it is truly like traveling to a museum which is why it is a great place for any history lover out there.

You can walk the same exact paths that the founding fathers once traveled. All of the reenactments that you will see take place in the same spots that originally did. You will even be able to explore the halls of the original colonial manor.

Historical Cities in the U.S. You Must Visit

When it comes to finding the most interesting historical cities in the U.S. to visit there are plenty! Make sure to add all of these to your list of places that you must visit.

Whether you enjoy going on tours, visiting museums, or exploring at your own pace these U.S. cities have it all. If you love learning all about American history, then you will be sure to have the time of your life at any of these awesome U.S. cities.

Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you can always be updated on new tips and tricks.

The post 7 Best U.S. Cities Every History Buff Should Visit Once in Their Lifetime appeared first on Florida Independent.

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charllieeldridge · 5 years

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21 Awesome Things To Do in Bogotá, Colombia

High up in the Andes Mountains, you’ll find Bogotá. The sprawling capital city of Colombia is home to over 8 million people, making it the 5th largest city in the Americas.

For many years, travellers avoided Bogotá (and Colombia at large) like the plague. While a certain TV show has glorified this dark time in Colombia’s past, the country has spent the last two decades trying to shed its negative reputation as a hotbed of drugs and violence.

These days, more and more curious travellers are heading to Colombia. While you may be tempted to simply breeze through the big city, there are lots of awesome things to do in Bogotá to warrant spending a few days there.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at some of the top activities in Bogotá, from hiking in the mountains and taking in the amazing street art, to drinking beer and blowing stuff up!

1. Join a Free Walking Tour

When you’re new in a city, the best way to get your bearings is by joining a free walking tour. These seem to be everywhere these days, and Bogotá is no different.

The best walking tour of the city is run by the folks at Beyond Colombia. They actually run a few different free tours, but you’ll want to start out with their free walking tour of downtown Bogotá to get an introduction to the city.

Tours run every day at both 10:00am and 2:00pm and go for about three hours. It’s a really fun and informative tour, where you’ll learn about the city’s history, architecture, gastronomy, and more. They have excellent guides who really strive to show you the city from a local’s perspective. If you enjoy the tour (which I’m sure you will), be sure to tip your guide accordingly.

One thing I love about the free walking tours is getting recommendations from your guide on the best places to eat and drink in the city. It’s also a great way to make friends with fellow travellers. That’s why taking a free walking tour sits atop our list of the best things to do in Bogotá.

2. Explore La Candelaria

While the free walking tour covers some solid ground, you’ll still want to take some time to explore the city centre on your own. Known as La Candelaria, this area is home to an array of historical and cultural sights. If you’re not sure what to do in Bogotá, just head to La Candelaria and explore all that it has to offer.

This is where Bogotá was founded back in 1538 by the Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada y Rivera. Much has changed in Bogotá since then, but this area has been very well-preserved.

Walking along the cobblestone streets past the many colonial buildings, you might think you stepped back in time. That is until you turn a corner and see the massive Colpatria Tower stretching up to the sky. Bogotá is a city that manages to hold on to its past while still moving full speed ahead into the future.

Some of the highlights of La Candeleria include the central Bolivar Square, which is surrounded by important landmarks like City Hall and the gorgeous Cathedral of Colombia. The area is also home to several museums, so there’s plenty to see and do here to keep you busy for a short stay.

3. Take In The Views From Cerro Monserrate

One of the most popular things to do in Bogotá is definitely heading to the top of Cerro Monserrate. From here, you’ll get some incredible panoramic views of the city. There’s also a church up here and a few restaurants, so you can take your time and really savor the fantastic view.

You have a few different options for getting to the top of Cerro Monserrate. If you’re feeling up for it, you can hike all the way there along a well-marked trail. While the hike isn’t too strenuous, the high altitude can definitely get to you. The church atop the hill sits at a whopping 3,150 meters!

If you want to hike up the hill, you’ll have to get to the trailhead before 1:00 pm, as that’s when they stop allowing people in. For coming down, they keep the trail open until 4:00 pm. The trail is closed on Tuesdays, so make sure you don’t come then if you’re really hoping to hike.

For those who would rather take the easy way out, you have two options. There’s both a funicular and a cable car running here now. A popular choice is taking one up and the other down.

Round-trip tickets to be used on either one cost 20,000 pesos (about $6.50). The price is cut to 11,000 ($3.50) on Sundays, which makes that a very popular and thus crowded day to visit. The cable car runs every day except for holidays that fall on Monday, and the funicular is always closed on Mondays. You can find the ticket office on the map here.

Another option is to join a half-day tour which takes in many sights in Bogotá, including Cerro Montserrate. Click here to learn more.

If you love being out in nature, be sure to read this guide on hiking the Valle de Cocora. It’s one of the best places to go hiking in all of Colombia, and this guide has all you need to plan a trip there.

4. Eat Like a Rolo

People from Bogotá are known as Rolos in Spanish. They’re different from those who live on the coast (Costeños) or those from Medellin (Paisas). Each region has its own unique culture and customs, especially when it comes to food. Trying different dishes and drinks is certainly one of the most delicious things to do in Bogotá.

Starting your day out like a Rolo means arepas and a tinto. Arepas are a staple dish all across Colombia. They’re made of ground maize dough or cooked flour, and can be found on just about every street corner in Bogotá. The best arepas in my humble opinion are the ones stuffed with gooey, melted cheese!

A tinto is the Colombian equivalent of a long black coffee. Forget spending $5 on a cup of coffee from a certain American chain, and instead grab one from a local street vendor for less than a buck.

When it’s time for lunch, order up a bowl of ajiaco. This Bogotá classic is a chicken soup with potatoes, corn, and herbs. It’s usually served with cream and avocado as well, making for a hearty and filling meal. Try it at La Puerta Falsa.

For when you need to satisfy your sweet tooth, be sure to try a cup of chocolate caliente, Colombian style. It’s made by melting chocolate in a jar with milk. Once it’s ready, you then dunk some chunks of cheese into the hot chocolate. It sounds a bit weird, but it sure is tasty!

5. Visit the Gold Museum

There are plenty of museums in Bogotá, but the cream of the crop is definitely the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum). It’s home to an astounding 55,000 pieces of gold and other pre-Columbian artifacts.

The Gold Museum has exhibits spread out over three floors. In addition to its massive collection of gold objects, there’s also plenty of pottery, stone, wood, and textile objects. One of the most famous items on display is the Muisca raft, which represents the ceremony of the legend of El Dorado.

The Gold Museum is open from Tuesday-Saturday from 9 am – 6 pm and Sunday from 10 am – 4 pm. Tickets cost 4,000 pesos ($1.25), and the museum is free on Sundays. You can also take a free one-hour tour of the museum from Tuesday to Saturday at either 11:00 am or 4:00 pm. You can find directions to the Gold Museum here.

For an interesting and fun walking tour of the La Candelaria neighbourhood and the Gold Museum, click here.

6. Hang Out in Chorro de Quevedo Plaza

If you go on the free walking tour, you’ll stroll up a colourful pedestrian street to reach toe Chorro de Quevedo Plaza. Since you don’t get to linger too much on the tour, it’s worth returning to this funky part of Bogotá on your own.

Carrera 2 is a cool street that’s full of shops, cafes, and bars. It’s also covered in some pretty awesome street art and a popular place for craft vendors to set up. Walking along this trendy street is definitely one of the most fun things to do in Bogotá.

At the end of the street, you run into the plaza. There’s a fountain in the middle and some colonial buildings that surround it. The plaza is a popular gathering place for young locals, especially at night and on the weekends. Be sure to come back here to hang out on at least one of your nights in Bogotá. You can find the plaza on the map here.

7. Sample Local Booze

When in Bogotá, you must sample the local hooch. That means trying both the traditional and modern-day favourites — chicha and aguardiente.

Chicha is a fermented corn drink with a unique and interesting flavour. There are many different recipes for chicha depending on the region, but in Bogotá it’s simple — cooked maize with sugar, fermented for six to eight days. It’s more popular in rural areas, but there are plenty of places in Bogotá that serve it.

The drink of choice for most Colombians these days, though, is definitely aguardiente. This Colombian firewater is made from sugarcane and flavoured with anise, giving it sort of a licorice taste. It’s usually 25-30% alcohol and is drank neat.

Due to its sugary content, this stuff can cause some brutal hangovers. Best to just have a shot and move on to something else…such as craft beer. That’s right, Bogotá is home to BBC (Bogotá Beer Company) and if you like artisanal brews, you won’t want to miss sampling a brew from BBC, or two.

8. Day Trip to the Salt Cathedral

One of the top things to do in Bogotá is taking a day trip out to the famous salt cathedral. It’s located in the town of Zipaquira, about an hour outside of the capital.

This Roman Catholic church was built in a salt mine, 200 meters underground. The miners had long had a sanctuary here, but the cathedral was officially inaugurated in 1954. It’s dedicated to Our Lady of Rosary, the patron saint of miners.

Due to safety concerns, the original cathedral was closed in 1992. A contest was held to choose a design for a new one, and it was opened a few years later in 1995.

A highlight of visiting the salt cathedral is seeing the three sections representing the birth, life, and death of Jesus. It’s a functioning church and a very popular place for pilgrims, drawing in thousands of people every Sunday. Since it doesn’t have a bishop, it actually does not have official status as a cathedral from the Vatican.

Entrance to the salt cathedral costs 50,000 pesos (about $16). While you can get here via a public bus, most travellers opt to join a tour instead. Some tours also include a stop at the scenic Lake Guatavita, meaning you can cross off two of the best things to do in Bogotá in one day. Click here to learn more about the popular, highly rated tours.

Visiting this cathedral is one of the top things to do in all of Colombia. Don’t miss it!

SEE ALSO: 15 Things to Do in San Gil – Colombia’s Adventure Capital

9. Join the Ciclovia Event

If you happen to be in Bogotá on a Sunday, you’ll definitely want to check out the Ciclovia event. Many of the city’s major roads are closed to motorized vehicles on Sunday mornings. Instead of the usual traffic jams, you’ll find joggers, cyclists, roller-bladers, and dog walkers.

Ciclovia started back in 1976 thanks to a peaceful protest from local students. They demanded more public spaces in the city to do things like ride bikes, and it paid off. The event brings one to four million people out every week to take back the city streets and enjoy some time outdoors.

There are plenty of places in Bogotá that rent bikes out. You can expect to pay about 40,000 pesos ($15) for half a day, or 80,000 ($30) for a full day. One reputable shop is Bogotravel Tours. You can find them on the map here.

10. See a Football Match

Football is basically a religion in Latin America. Seeing a game live is an amazing experience and is certainly one of the best things to do in Bogotá.

El Champin Stadium is the place to go for football in Bogotá. The stadium is home to the national team of Colombia as well as two different club teams – Milionarios FC and Independiente Santa Fe.

Ticket prices for the games range from 16,000 pesos ($5) for seats behind the goal up to 90,000 ($30) for some of the best seats in the main stands. It’s possible to buy tickets online or from a few different vendors, but you can usually just rock up on match day and easily find one from the box office.

While you can just head to the stadium and grab tickets on your own, you may want to consider signing up for the Bogotá Football Tour. You’ll meet up with the rest of the group for drinks beforehand, have the chance to pick up some merchandise, and then go into the game to cheer on the local heroes.

If you find yourself in Medellin, don’t miss watching a football match there as well!

11. Wine and Dine in Zona G

Whereas La Candelaria is home to most of the tourist attractions in Bogotá, it’s the Chapinero neighborhood where you’ll want to go for the best culinary and nightlife experiences. This vibrant area is just north of the historic centre, and it’s an increasingly popular choice among travellers.

I’m all about eating local food from street stalls and market vendors, but once in a while you’ve got to treat yourself to a nice meal. In Bogotá, the place to do that is Zona G (the G stands for Gourment) in Chapinero.

Zona G refers to the area between Calles 65 and 75 and Carreras 4 and 7. Within these few blocks, you’ll find cuisines from all over the world. Of course, there’s plenty of Colombian fare, but there’s also Italian, Peruvian, Chinese, French, Vietnamese — the list goes on and on.

If you’re looking for a fancy night out on the town in Bogotá, then Zona G is definitely the place to start. Some restaurants that come highly recommended in this area are Harry Sasson, Criterion, and Bistecca e Vino Da Trattoria.