World of Ease

Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

It might be possible to visit the city of San Francisco without coming in contact with its beatnik history, but there’s little reason to. It’s a fascinating part of all that the city has come to represent. Despite their reputation for excess and decadent living, they also can take at least some credit for the establishment of the famous San Francisco Zen Center . This is one of the most well-known in the country, and its origins stem from the Beat writers’ interest in Buddhism. Today, travelers will still come to town and stay at a San Francisco hotel in order to have access to the center.

So although the Beats’ interest lead to more serious Buddhist scholarship and practice in the area, it was really the work of Shunryu Suzuki who brought it to material light. He was a student all his life, and came to the city in 1959. Seeing a need for a more traditional approach, he opened the center. In part, this was to give practitioners a place to practice and learn in the traditional ways, but it was also a way of introducing the philosophy to the west. His teachings and books are widely known, and are considered to be some of the most accessible tracts in the area of Zen Buddhist studies.

There are many SEO tools out there right now, but quite possibly one of the most necessary tools for anyone to use is a keyword generator. Knowing what sort of keywords you should be adding into your pages and your blog posts is essential to helping your website rise in the ranks.

You can usually start off with your already developed website , or if you haven’t developed the website yet, starting off with a keyword or set of keywords can be useful. This seed keyword can show you a number of related keywords that will help you develop the ideas that you want on your website. One of the nice things about these kinds of tools is that they will usually also show how often that keyword is used and how often it is searched. This can give you an idea of how many people the keywords are aimed at as well as what your competition will be looking like.

When you are looking into using one of these tools, make sure that it has some kind of filter. Keyword tools will often generate hundreds of keywords, many of which will have little to nothing to do with your niche. Being able to sort through these makes your job a lot easier.

One doesn’t have to travel the world over, and cross the seven seas, in order to develop a strong attachment to maps. It does help, though. Armchair geographers as well as globetrotters get something out of holding a map of a mysterious place in their hands. Some world maps have special traits, from historical interest to geological features, that bring a specific memory, or a specific idea, close to mind. Others can simply offer a bigger picture, where the perspective of a particular journey comes into focus when the place is seen in relation to other places.

For those who have traveled extensively, they can be a visual reminder of a lifetime of memories. Every place that was seen once can be recalled with an enormous clarity, if the time is right and the memory is receptive. Puzzling over a map of the world, trying to recall a journey on a continent, can be as rewarding as reading a favorite novel, and can also spark as much conversation. For an ever broader perspective, globes turn the flat surface into a three-dimensional representation of the earth, with a kind of clarity that has captivated people for generations. In an era where information is becoming more visual , the map and the globe are finding their way back into the home and study, giving travelers a wonderful tool for remembering a life.

There are many ways to get out and explore the everglades near Marco Island. There is quite the tour industry built around the water and the channels of the everglades. There are many tour companies like Awesome Everglades Adventures who has very experienced guides such as Captain Ron to take visitors of the are out for some interesting fun. Captain Ron has been giving tours of one thing or another since the fifth grade. No matter where he lived as a kid he always found something to give tours on. He gained is captains license by the time he was 23 and has been taking people on water tours every since. Awesome Everglades Adventures is Captain Ron’s own company now and he has a hands on approach to his tours.  

Captain Hector Diaz is also offering some adventures through the everglades. He has been giving tours and fishing trips for over 20 years and loves to spend time with adults and kids. His company is called Quality Backwater Charters Spring is a busy time for most of the charter companies in Marco Island so it is always good to make your reservations early. You can check with your hotel click here to help you get set up with a great tour. Each company has its own unique focus that they like to explore with their guests. Captain Diaz likes to teach people to fish in this beautiful area and Captain Ron likes to teach people about the area.  

If one chooses to take a more simple approach to the everglades they can find a kayak or canoe either as a tour or as a self guided adventure. There are also some short road trips to take more inland from the island that offer up other great views of the everglades. Maybe giving a couple of adventures a try would be the best plan.

For sculpture that spans the western world — for exhibits from ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece, Sumeria, and Rome, all the way to the massive altar pieces of the European Baroque period — you’ll need to find your way to the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt, Germany, one of that country’s best sculpture museums. If you’re planning a trip to Frankfurt anywhere from July to November, you’ll be able to see “Sahure, Death and Life of a great Pharaoh.”

Sahure ruled in Egypt in 2487 BC to 2475 BC in the Fifth Dynasty. He was the son of queen Khentkaus I, and had no wives or children, or at least no children who survived him. He was succeeded by a brother, Neferirkare. His own rule lasted about twelve years. Most likely, he died during his thirteenth year as Pharaoh. Historical records as well as Egyptian art indicate that Sahure established an Egyptian navy and sent a fleet to Punt, trading with Eastern Mediterranean cultures. His pyramid contained relief sculptures that illustrate his fleet and recorded a military career in which he campaigned against Libyans in the western deserts.

The exhibit introduces visitors to the art of the Old Kingdom in the Pyramid Age. You’ll see images of famous pharoahs during that period. It will feature the pyramid complex of Sahure, which in Egypt was located a short distance from the Giza complex. The complex was discovered at the beginning of the 20th Century by Ludwig Borchardt, where a number of extraordinary reliefs were excavated and brought to Frankfurt. The excavation diaries by Borchart present watercolor sketches and reconstruction drawings. The exhibit will also include the lastest finds from the necropolis.

Loans from collections world-wide will be used — from Cairo, New York, Paris, Boston, Berlin, and Munich — to create the displays. When the original pieces can’t be provided, replicas will be on hand to simulate the architecture of the place. Fragments and a relief model of the Sun Temple of Abu Niuserre Gurob will also be available to the public.

New York City lives up to its name with being the largest city in the United States; boasting its enormous array of entertainment, shopping, dining and an assortment of cultural opportunities for visitors and New Yorkers alike. Skyscrapers juxtaposing with brownstones, greenspaces surrounded by miles of asphalt and concrete, through-and-through natives walking among just arrived immigrants, high rise luxurious hotels towering over small hotels, and the financially wealthy enjoying innovative street art, you’d be hard pressed not to find something to interest your appetite.

The ever growing number of hotels , nightclubs, and restaurants that bring in millions and millions of tourists per year is a great example of just how the city’s cleaned up its image. New Yorkers can be proud of their safety statistics, clean streets and lower crime reports as new construction springs up every where.

The Big Apple, and it’s five boroughs are microcosms of ethnicity, commerce and distinctive personalities that should be explored, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed when walking through any or all of them, especially Manhattan, so it’s better to pick one thing to focus on such as architecture, people, history or theater and let the exploring begin.

If looking for history, look no further than lower Manhattan, where the old Trinity Church stands in the middle of the modern Financial District, plus the span of the Brooklyn Bridge is seen as a tribute to the engineering feats of the Industrial Age. In the borough of TriBeCa, you’ll find hipsters gathering and in the Upper West Side, you’ll see families nesting. Greenwich Village, despite what they say, is still the cradle of the Bohemian beat crowd. The Upper East Side is the ‘up’ in the upper crust. But, no matter where you are in New York City, you’ll find ethnic enclaves that continue to be the ingredient that livens up best melting pot.

New York is a city of contradictions, which is the glue that holds this city together, and keeps ensures that it will always be the best city in the entire world.

Charleston, South Carolina, was originally founded under the name Charles Towne in 1670, three hundred and forty years ago, and actually moved from its spot on the Ashley River ten years later to its present location, that of Oyster Point, and then, three years later, adopted its current name.

“Charles Towne” is also known as The Holy City because of many steeples that punctuate the city’s skyline, as well as the fact that in the days of the original thirteen states, it was the only one that offered tolerance to the religion of the French Huguenot Church, as well as one of the first to allow people to practice their Jewish faith without any restrictions. For that reason, the 4th oldest Jewish congregation in the United States is located in Charleston and was founded two hundred and sixty-one years ago.

If you’ve come to the city and booked one of the Charleston luxury hotels , you might explore that history, or you might choose to go in another direction entirely and take a look at the other history of Charleston, the one that includes bootleggers and revolutionaries, pirates, and ghosts, and presidents.

The Original Pub Tour of Charleston revels in these details in a two hour narrated tour of Charleston, covering six or eight blocks of the town’s historic district. The tour is based on pub tours in Europe. The Charleston version was established at the turn of the 21st Century in 2001. The tour takes its group on places only the locals will know, where guests will sample beer, southern cocktails, and a number of appetizers. The tour promises to take you through historic taverns and speakeasies, to pubs on the tops of roofs, and breweries which have a view of the harbor, while the guide tells you about the pirates and ghosts.

The tour costs thirty dollars for adults and includes the price of the appetizers. The group leaves to find its way around the Charleston pubs at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.; for reservations, you only need call 843-345-7827.

As we headed closer to Fort Collins, and after weeks of driving around the middle of America, seeing empty town after empty town, pulling into a town that was so full of life was truly a blessing to behold. The people here seemed so happy, and we didn’t see anybody with over-weight issues. Fort Collins seems like a place where one has to go out of their way to eat at a Burger King or a Taco Bell.

It was snowing when we arrived, so we were glad to pull into a great hotel Fort Collins has to offer to all of her travelers. We called up our friends, who live here, to let them know we arrived safe and sound. They invited into town to watch a basketball game. They came by to pick us up and after the game, we went back to their house and ended up getting really drunk. My husband, when he’s drunk, which is rare, likes to wrestle, and he tried to take down everyone in his sight. We ended up taking a taxi back to our hotel. Our friends offered to drive, but they were just as drunk as we were.

The next morning we all met up and went out for a big breakfast at Choice City Butcher and Deli and had fun getting into a snowball fight to work off the huge breakfast burritos we ate. I think this town has made my husband very frisky! As we walked around town, we noticed how most of the people here get around on bicycles, even in the snow. Our friends told us that Fort Collins is probably the most progressive place in the US. We believe it! Walking around downtown, there were plenty of music shops, art supply shops, ethnic shops, live venues, sculptures, eateries serving healthy food and the most beautiful old buildings.

To think that we’ve never heard about how amazing Fort Collins really is, it’s astonishing and we’ve come to the conclusion that the people of Fort Collins like to keep it that way.

There is quite a trip along the Atlantic Ocean as the coast line starts to make its transition into the Gulf of Mexico. Highway 95 is the main route to get to places like West Palm Beach heading south through Boca Raton and working ones way down to the big metropolis, Miami. There are plenty of sights to see along the way. Plenty of golf courses and lots of water sports and beach fun. There are also many luxurious shopping hubs and some of the most amazing restaurants with chefs that live in the area because of the climate.

Take your time along the coast and stay in some fancy hotels on the beach in Boca Raton. It is a more calm and quiet area along the coast and could be a nice place to catch up on some real rejuvenation. Many of the hotels have some fine spas to spend a day in just soaking in the hot tub and cool pools taking up the sun. Grab a nice massage or facial you surely deserve to be pampered.

If you decide to stay a little longer maybe you would like to get out for some nice walks. Boca Raton has some beautiful walk at places like the Spanish River Park and the Japanese Gardens or the unique neighborhood called Old Floresta which was created by the amazing Addison Mizner who was really the inspiration and developer of this beautiful area along the Atlantic Ocean. It was his vision of Spanish influenced architecture that was developed early in the area. He built some amazing places for some of the most elite people in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There are still the rich and famous vying to get there hands on some of his Boca Raton masterpieces.

So while you are driving down highway 95 from West Palm Beach to Miami don’t let Boca Raton get by with out spending a little time relaxing along its sandy shores.

Every year my brother lobbies his wife to spend Christmas in Vegas, but the truth is, he’d head out to this 105-year-old desert city at almost any time. His idea of a good time is to find a hotel in North Las Vegas, choosing a great deal on a room , then hit the casinos to play craps, roulette, and blackjack. While in the past, I’ve favored the strip, in recent years I’ve always made it a point to go north, if only to stand under the Fremont Street Experience and enjoy the free show of giant, whirling bands and UFOs that appear ninety feet above my head several times a night. To experience the sky in a different way, I’ll also find my way to the Planetarium in North Las Vegas.

Kids will love this small Planetarium and Observatory . It’s a pretty small space, so you may want to arrive early in order to get a good seat, and you won’t want to be late: Once the presentation begins, you won’t be admitted. Taking into consideration the time of year and the weather, each session will emphasize various different objects, such as the moon, planets, stars, and distant galaxies. What you’ll see depends on what the latitude and longitude, date and time permits; it’s always changing, but always interesting.

The Planetarium and Observatory is located at 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave., Ste. 1A in North Las Vegas. To phone the planetarium, all you need do is call (702) 651-4SKY. The planetarium is open to the public on Fridays, at 6 and 7:30 p.m., and Saturdays, 3:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.. Following the 7:30 shows, there’s public observing sessions that runs at roughly 8:30 p.m.. If you’re looking for souvenirs from the experience, the Astronomy Store is open from five p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, and 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday. Admission is six dollars, with four dollars for seniors 55 and above, and for children under 12. Youth groups and students of the Community College of Southern Nevada also pay the reduced rate.