Medieval Adventures
If you can’t make it to Medieval Times, maybe try Tournament of Kings at Excalibur in Vegas.
If that’s too tame, perhaps check out one of the growing Medieval MMA tourneys?
8 minute drive through 1976 Paris at full speed
Take an eight-minute high-speed drive through Paris in 1976 during the early hours 05:30am on a Sunday morning in August 1976 when much of Paris is on vacation. Amazing how similar, and different things look.
Hunger Stones
Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine – “If you see me, then weep”
Inscription on a rock in the Elbe River near the northern Czech town of Děčín, close to the German border
Not only is Europe battling astronomical fuel prices, but also one of the worst droughts in almost 500 years. How bad? Historically bad – and we know because it’s literally written in stone.
Water levels are at their lowest in decades – and rocks are appearing from under the shoreline with grim and frightening inscriptions. These rocks inscribed with dates and warnings even have names. They’re called Hungerstein or Hunger Stones. These stones were embedded into a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again.
The earliest readable year on the Děčín stone is 1616. Traces of inscriptions relating to much earlier droughts, including 1417 and 1473, have been largely eroded over time. Ten later dry years, between 1707 and 1893, are also recorded. Most hunger stones are found on the Elbe, which flows from the north of what is now the Czech Republic through former Bohemia and then Germany before reaching the North Sea near Hamburg. Others appear on the Rhine, Danube and Moselle.
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Projection mapping your dinner
Le Petit Chef brings projection mapping to your plate! I first ran into projection mapped dinners when I was at Inamo in London. One of the best aspects of Inamo wasn’t so much the projection mapping on the plate that showed their different dishes – but the fact you could order more food, drink refills, and even hail a cab and see a livestream of the front door cam to know when it arrived – all from the interface and without having to call over a waiter. Just make your selection on the simple table interface and a runner would bring you whatever you wanted. THAT was a fabulous dining experience.
The Line
Saudi Arabia is planning to construct a mirrored building that will be 656 feet wide, 1,640 feet tall, and 105 miles long. It’s called The Line. It will house 9 million people in a eco-friendly paradise. It’s part of a $500 billion Saudi building project called NEOM being plaanned in the country’s Tabuk Province. It’s become a controversial initiative from the start because around 20,000 people will be forced to relocate by its construction – along with the unknown environmental impact of such a structure.
It’s remains to be seen if it will even get off the ground or will end up like many of the other utopian-like efforts that have gone south in Dubai.
Durban July – South Africa’s Kentucky Derby
Tens of thousands of people arrive at the coastal city of Durban South Africa for the annual Durban July – Africa’s biggest horse-racing and fashion event. Much like the pomp surrounding the Kentucky Derby, Durban also turns into an impromptu fashion show.
Photocrom Print Collection and online inspiratino
I think we forget the amazing collections of historical artifacts we have on the internet. The limitations of Covid has left me doing a lot of traveling and bucket list visits to famous places via Youtube and online streamers.
I started looking up filming locations for a favorite movie of mine – The Grand Budapest Hotel. Pre-soviet eastern block countries had amazing architecture. In my searching, it turns out Wes Anderson tried to capture the feel for the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel from old Photochrom prints.
The Photochrom Print Collection is available for free from the Library of Congress and has thousands of early prints of European and North American images from the 1890’s to 1910’s.
It makes me wonder what amazing artistic creations people can make using just the free resources we have at our fingertips today – plus some imagination.
Reservations in Rome
Rome is a lovely town for visiting – but it’s always interesting to see how over-tourism has changed things over the years. I remember going to Rome and having pretty much free reign to walk around the whole Colosseum. It looks like now you need to reserve your slot far in advanced through a new CoopCulture website that lets you buy tickets in advance. In fact, it’s the ONLY way to get tickets for the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Colosseum, and several other key cultural sites. There is no longer on-site ticket sales.
It also appears that the much vaunted Scavi tours under St Peter’s also have online information now as well, but it appears they still prefer a phone call or fax.
Your own island off the coast of Maine
Want to own your own island? Here’s an opportunity: Ducks Island is a 1.5 acre plot a 10 minute boat ride off the Maine coast for a very reasonable $339,000. The house can sleep up to 4 and is far enough away from cities to give beautifully starry night views with the water’s edge only 20 feet from your front door.
The owner stipulates that interested parties must spend a night on the island before he’ll consider an offer. There’s also the fact it can get pretty dicey in New England winter storms from October to May when it’s ‘Not fit for man nor beast’ with storms, ice, and potential flooding. A friend only managed to stay there 3 days before coming back in the winter. There is also no running water, showers, nor heat. Bathroom facilities are an outhouse. Still, it’s a rare find because the structure could never be built with today’s new zoning laws.
Visiting Tokyo on the regular
I’ve been to Japan twice and loved each time I went. With the age of the internet, live streamers, and travel streamers – you can visit anywhere in the world at any time without leaving the comfort of your own home.
Over my 20 years of international travel, one thing I’ve learned is that you can never visit the same place twice. Time marches on in every country, every city, and even every life. Places you visited one year are gone and replaced the next. Cultural trends you loved in one place have been replaced with the latest new thing. Nothing stays the same.
That’s why I love checking up on the places I liked visiting using Twitch, Youtube, and other streams. Thankfully, we’re moving beyond the era of screaming, idiotic streamers into something more refined. I prefer streams from people that live in the countries and travel like locals and not tourists and Instagram influencers. The latter often rarely have any real curiosity or respect for a culture. They do culturally rude/insensitive things, forcing their way through a place with money and brashness. They pressure the goodness of kind locals just to get the shot they want and then go on to culturally pillage some other location for likes. They rarely leave a place or people the encounter better – or actually learn anything about the cultures that produced what they’re traveling through.
Here’s a few of those better channels. Do you have some?
- Chris Abroad: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisAbroad
- Tokyo Lens: https://www.youtube.com/c/TokyoLens
- Robcdee (a younger person’s take with some goofy drinking): https://www.twitch.tv/robcdee
An example of some good quality content. Bonus points for the fact I remember this guy when I was in Akihabara.