Travel Spotlights

Old Kyoto City .... Spotlights on an Imperial City

2009-09-27T14:43:00.000+02:00

When you walk through Kyoto...then you feel you are walking through centuries of the Japanese history. This imperial city was leading as a center of the Japanese religion, and as well, theater, music, dances, besides its role as a center of crafts during the Muromachi period (1334-1568). Spared by Allied bombing during World War II, the city is said to hold 20 percent of all Japan's national treasures, including more than 1,700 Buddhist temples and 300 Shinto shrines, all dispersed, often hidden, amid its modern cityscape.

What makes touring through that city full of enjoyment is that you can see Japan in the past represented by the temples and gardens. One of these temples called Ginkakuji (means the temple of the silver pavilion), which has many excellent designed gardens. Nearby, about half hour walk, locates Ryoanji Temple with small garden of raked white gravel and fifteen rocks has become a symbol of the essence of Zen wisdom.
Kyoto is famous by its finest artisans who serving the imperial court, and you can find their workshops on the quiet backstreets of Kyoto which including woodblock prints, silk and textile goods, dolls, and paper goods-are still known for their refinement, elegance, and artistry.
The best time to visit that magnificent imperial city is during its annual celebrations (called matsuri), and the most important three are Jidai, Aoi, and Gion. Thousands Citizens share in the Jidai celebration on 22nd of October. A theatrical procession of clothes from the dynasties of the 8th through 19th centuries snakes its way through the city, beginning at the Imperial Palace.
The cherry flowers will be gone when the Aoi festival floats through town on May 15, but spring will still be at its loveliest as hundreds of participants wearing the clothes of imperial courtiers parade to the Shimogamo Shrine to pray for the city's boom. The Aoi dates back to the 6th century and is believed to be the world's oldest surviving festival.

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Acropolis Of Athens..a marvelous piece of history

2009-09-26T12:21:00.002+02:00

A precious success of the golden age of Greek civilization, the magnificent complex Doric temple known as the Parthenon is the largest structure built in Greece, and it has crowned the top point of the city skyline (acropolis means "upper town") since the 5th century B.C.

The amazing Acropolis is perched upon a limestone mount towering above the city of Athens. The ruins of the Acropolis consist of the Erechtheum, the Propylaea, the Temple of Athena Nike, and the magnificent Parthenon. The name Parthenon means “virgin’s chamber,” and was dedicated to the virgin Athena, the goddess of wisdom and patroness of Athens. The Parthenon was erected between 447 and 432 B.C by order of Pericles, and is considered one of the most perfectly proportioned buildings of all time. So precise was the Parthenon’s architect, Ictinus, that a discernible indent was incorporated into the straight lines of the structure’s long sides to lend the effect of appearing even straighter from a distance.
Long before the now-ruined buildings on the hill were constructed, the site was considered a sacred place. Around 3500 BCE, Neolithic people settled upon the hill and built small shrines to their many deities. By 1400 BCE, it had become the residence for all subsequent kings of Athens. In the sixth century B.C, the first temple honoring Athena was constructed here, and henceforth the “Citadel of the Gods” was considered a goddess shrine for many centuries.
The Acropolis hill, or the “Sacred Rock” of Athens, is the most important site in Greece’s capital, centrally located in the oldest section of the city. The site is a bustling tourist destination all year round and is nearly impossible to miss. A General Admission ticket is valid for all the archaeological sites of Athens: the Acropolis site and museum, Ancient Agora, Theater of Dionysos Kerameikos, Olympieion, and the Roman Agora.
Greece's primary artistic event, the summertime Athens Festival, presents ancient dramas, operas, music, and ballet performed by local and internationally acclaimed artists. The 2ndcentury Odeon of Herod Atticus on the south slope of the Acropolis has legendary acoustics.

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Great Pyramids of Ancient Egypt ...forty centuries look upon you!!

2009-09-25T22:51:00.008+02:00

"From the summit of these monuments" cried Napoleon "forty centuries look upon you!"…by these few words, Napoleon could express the logic defying and the mystery of these magnificent structures..

The pyramids are the only one from the seven ancient world wonders to have survived nearly in good condition. The funerary Great Pyramid of Khufu is the oldest at Giza and the largest in the world, built nearly in 2500 B.C. with about 2.3 million limestone blocks, and each one weights an average 2.75 tons, and constructed by a force of around 20,000 workers. Two smaller pyramids nearby belonged to Khufu's son and grandson.

The Sphinx (Abu El-Hol, "Father of Terror") sits nearby, a strange figure with a lion's body, a human face, and a royal beard. The booming sound-and-light show that takes place every night after sundown is an exciting melodramatic display, and offers an entertaining crash course in pharaonic history. As Cairo's population passes the 20 million mark, the pyramids' former isolation in the desert has been infringed on by the suburbs that continue to grow around them. Touts and persistent camel drivers offer their horses and camels to see the pyramids as they were meant to be experienced. They are most magical at dawn and dusk, or when bathed in moonlight and silence.

On the nearby of the great pyramids, locates Mena House Hotel, within 40 acres of lush parkland and gardens on the edge of the Sahara, this veritable oasis of escape from the amusement-park atmosphere that now often surrounds the pyramids was once the rest house and hunting lodge of the empire-building Khedive Ismail. The omnipresent pyramids loom in full, unobstructed view from your hotel room, the breakfast terrace (Evelyn Waugh thought it was "like having the Prince of Wales at the next table"), the hotel's l8-hole golf course and the garden-enveloped swimming pool.

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