The Prettiest Town Weve Ever Visited: Lijiang Old Town | Travels with a Nine Year Old Ever heard of Lijiang? It’s an old town in northern Yunnan, in what was once the Dali Kingdom, the fought-over hinterland between China and Tibet. Curved eave buildings topple up narrow alleys towards a Qing dynasty pagoda. Willows and flowers drip over its narrow canals, crossed by slender bridges. There’s a reason they call it “the Venice of the Orient”. Old shophouses cater for the tourist trade — as always in mainland China, more Chinese than Western. There are little waterwheels in the alleyways but the big one marks where the old town ends and the new city begins, a cusp between the past and the future. Lijiang is full of flowers, all year round. In winter there are bonsai plum trees, in summer they bring out azaleas and in spring the town is full of orchids. Chocolate box? Disneyfied? I mean, you can even play with eagles in the town square. We’ve seen some amazing places since we left. What’s yours? Our thanks to China Odyssey Tours for hosting us in Lijiang.
Watkins Glen State Park Watkins Glen State Park is the most famous of the Finger Lakes State Parks located on the edge of the village of Watkins Glen, New York, south of Seneca Lake in Schuyler County. The main feature of the park is the hiking trail that climbs up through the gorge, passing over and under waterfalls. The park has a lower part that is next to the village and an upper part that is open woodland. Watkins Glen State Park is in a 400-foot-deep narrow gorge cut through rock by a stream that was left hanging when glaciers of the Ice age deepened the Seneca valley, increasing the tributary stream gradient to create rapids and waterfalls wherever there were layers of hard rock. The rocks of the area are sedimentary of Devonian age that are part of a dissected plateau that was uplifted with little faulting or distortion. The gorge path winds over and under waterfalls and through the spray of Cavern Cascade.
Seijogakuenmae, Japan Photo-Post This is my image of Seiji. A leafy suburb with trees overhanging the clean narrow roads. This area of town is peaceful and laid back but very well organized Leefy scenery in front of the station. Looks like a public bath tower in the distance? Seijo Ishii supermarket One of the well appointed shotengai in Seijo. Chance to pick up some good wines here Small well appointed shops in the streets near the station Many of the shops have a nice well organized charm about them Lots of greenery in this area of town. The train lines looked more like a highway here. The Sengawa river runs through part of Seijo The Sengawa River looking back towards the railway line Relaxing walkways either side of the river Trees seem to come from everywhere even though the streets are quite narrow Lots of larger sized houses here with lots of greenery in the gardens A very nice looking cafe with delicious cakes This Church building fits right in and adds lots of character to the area Time to get on the bus Like this:
Top 20 Earth Pictures found on Stumble Upon | Earth Pictures Everybody knows that Stumbleupon is an great source for beautiful photography, nature, pets, arts and much more. They have millions of users and they are probably the most wide used source for finding quality content. Today, we collected 20 popular photographs from Stumbleupon. Most of them have been seen for more than million times each. We hope you’ll enjoy… Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Photo Source Source Photo Source Source Suggested by ISSy; Source You don’t want to miss our new post: 20 Gorgeous Animal Photos. Check out more HERE.
Japan for the Uninvited Exploring Norway’s Fjords by Car and Boat Stung by the cost of things ($20 burgers from a street shack! $13-a-gallon gas!), we decided to arm ourselves with groceries. We loaded up on sandwich ingredients, plus potato chips, chocolates, paper plates and plastic cutlery, at Rema 1000, a local supermarket at our point of departure, the western coastal town of Alesund, which we had flown into. Then we packed our rented Citroën C4 with the food, mounted the GPS and were off into the Norwegian woods. That first day of driving, toward a speck of a town called Oye, took us over roads that cut through valleys. At the front desk of the Hotel Union Oye, a receptionist in a frilly frock suggestive of a Jane Austen novel handed us a key and a metal bowl holding three garlic cloves. The hotel had one foot in the raw Norway and another in the precious one. At 10:20 p.m., it was still bright outside. I had dismissed the ghost thing as clever branding and wanted to keep the bowl of garlic inside the room.
A $100 Weekend in Oslo Slide Show A $100 Weekend in Oslo Tell people you’re off to spend the weekend in Oslo with $100 in your pocket, and the warnings start flowing. Some came in the form of legitimate research like the UBS report that has ranked Oslo the world’s most expensive city for the last three years; others were shock-and-awe anecdotes, like “Food in Oslo is so expensive you can actually buy half a cucumber.” I’m not easily spooked. Budget: $100, or 585 Norwegian kroner Friday Low budgets usually mean greasy meals. But my healthy resolve was soon put to the test during the 30-minute stroll from Vega to Frognerparken, home of the Vigeland Sculpture Garden. I’m as easily bored by sculpture gardens as the next guy who only took Introduction to Art History because his mother wanted him to. The human figures, in bronze and granite or some woven into the parks’ wrought-iron gates, exhibit the gamut of human experience, from playful to pensive, graceful to awkward, loving to violent. What were they doing here?
Tunisia After the Revolution But Mr. Bourguiba’s dictatorial tendencies wore out his welcome. Mr. Ben Ali, his prime minister, deposed him in 1987, but remained committed to education and women’s rights. Today Avenue Habib Bourguiba was peaceful. I passed the stately embassy of France, which had made Tunisia its protectorate in 1881. Inside a loud and bright cafe-restaurant called La Brasserie, I warmed up over café crème and a tarte aux fruits. That evening, outside an Art Nouveau theater, I spotted flyers advertising a documentary film called “Chroniques de la Revolution.” “It’s not here anymore,” he said in French. Still eager to learn more about the Jasmine Revolution, I boarded a commuter line for the seaside suburb of La Marsa. At the Mille Feuilles bookstore, an exhibition called “Dégage!”
The Most Desolate City on Earth: Gunkanjima, aka 'Battleship Island' - Neighborhoods Of all the places to conduct a really wicked paintball match, Gunkanjima just about takes the cake. Utterly abandoned, the former coal-mining site stands like a rotten tooth jutting from the turbulent waters off Nagasaki. A formidable seawall protects a dense warren of empty factory buildings and crumbling apartments. Roofs have blown off or caved in and walls have sloughed off their skins, leaving the skeletal underpinning of buildings visible. The government is pushing for World Heritage recognition for the island's role in the Meiji Era, characterized by a blitzkrieg push to industrialize the country using Western technology. Tourists can hop in a boat and motor out for sight-seeing around Gunkanjima, although they're not supposed to go deep into the failing structures.