Life In Car

Vancouver is a gorgeous, multi-cultural city that everyone should visit once. No mater you or your companions’ interests this city has something to cater to you. It has all the appeal and quirk of most cities along the west coast of the United States but has the personality of a friendly small town. Vancouver always seems to be ready to make one feel welcome.

Like most major metropolitan areas the city has districts so you have a wide option of Vancouver hotels and bed and breakfasts to choose from. If your trip is for relaxation and you fancy some antique shopping the Gaslamp District is probably your goal with its distinctive late-Victorian architecture making you feel like you’ve traveled back in time despite modern store fronts lining the avenues.

Like most western cities there’s a strong Asian influence easily seen in the rich culture surrounding Chinatown. Vancouver’s is located downtown in the West End district. Full of bustling shops, wonderful restaurants and markets full of delightful Asian wares The streets are lined with examples of some of the oldest surviving architecture in the city. A traditional Chinatown gate marks the entrance to the Chinese Cultural Centre, where visitors can observe exhibitions and lectures and or take walking toursone of the most stunning attractions of this area is the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden , a classic Chinese garden styled after gardens of the Ming Dynasty era.

There is a mystique about Scottsdale that’s not entirely unusual for cities in Arizona. Its past is rather simple and puzzling all at the same time, with a very long history of human occupation by the First Nations that have been in the area for hundreds of generations. Its appeal as a tourist attraction comes from its years when the streets were dust, and there was something of the wild west here. Lately, however, the popularity of Scottsdale, Arizona hotels comes from a reputation that’s based on wealth and opulence.

The entire area is not riches beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and some of the older parts of the city are quite modest. It seems that the wealth, at least in its conspicuous displays, comes in part from the culture of the other towns. Paradise Valley, for example, is near by, and for many people, being in the residential section of either place is almost entirely indistinguishable. The irony of the situation would not be lost on Leslie Nielsen . The dramatic actor who turned his career into something rather explosive when he decided not to take himself seriously, hails from Paradise Valley. His iconic presence as the strong man who is actually the opposite of what he pretends to be is somehow entirely local.

Walking around Palm Beach, you’ll run into plenty of shopping areas full of tourists and locals alike enjoying a good bargain or sale. Most of the stores are busy with people, but don’t let that stop you from going into some to find designer clothes at a great price. Usually, during the summer months, most tourists are from other countries having a great time with all of the attractions that Palm Beach offers.

Currently, there is some construction going on at many of the store fronts on Worth Avenue. The stores , in order to keep business alive during construction, are having the best sales in Florida, which is a boon for shoppers. The construction, which is backed by the tourist industry such as the hotels Palm Beach is best known for, is to widen the street so that Palm Beach can be host more outdoor activities and place artistic benches for sidewalk seating to bring in more foot traffic.

The restaurants in Palm Beach also offer some of the best summertime specials around. You can get a 3 course meal for $20.00 at some of the better establishments. It seems that the chain-restaurants fair better than the individually owned restaurants when it comes to the best pricing. But, if you’re one for atmosphere and special treatment, then eating at a local mom-and-pops will do just fine.

The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum is a hidden treasure inside the Florida International University (FIU) , located in Miami at 10975 SW 17th Street, across from the Blue garage and adjacent to the Wertheim Performing Arts Center on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus. The Frost Art Museum opened its current 46,000 square foot, state-of-the-art building in 2008 and over 40,000 people have visited the museum, which is an AAM accredited museum and Smithsonian affiliate.

While checking out what Miami has to offer this summer, check out this wonderfully welcoming museum. The current exhibitions are ‘Tap Tap: Celebrating The Art of Haiti’, running now through September 5, 2010; this exhibition is part of a larger project to contribute works lost in the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti and help with the rebuilding of the cultural and artistic heritage by featuring the works of artists of the lost patrimony from The Frost Art Museum’s large collection of Haitian art.

Another exciting exhibit is ‘Spiritual Healing – Shamans of the Northwest Coast running through October 3, 2010; this exhibit is designed to enlighten FIU students and Florida residence about the artistic accomplishments of the Northwest Coast Native tribes and specifically their cultural approach to healing.

If you’re staying at a Miami Spa Resort , you’ll find the Frost Art Museum conveniently located and what’s even better is the admission is free. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 5pm, Sunday from noon to 5pm. The museum is closed on Mondays.

When visiting Boston this summer, there is a ‘must-do’ adventure you shouldn’t miss. 5 Wits, which is Boston’s most interactive and entertaining experience. The name is derived from the Renaissance literature where the 5 wits were: common sense, imagination, fantasy, memory and estimation. You’ll find 5 Wits to be the most unusual place you’ve ever visited. When walking back to one of the best hotels in Boston , you notice how totally astonished you are.

Located at 186 Brookline Avenue, 5 Wits brings a m ©lange of museum exhibits, video games, haunted houses and special effects that create an interactive adventure. 5 Wits will make you feel as if you’re a part of an action-adventure film instead of watching one. You’ll get the opportunity to arm yourself with five key senses that hopefully help you win over evil! You’ll need to solve puzzles in an Egyptian tomb or die!

It’s a great way to spend about an hour, even though you may find the ticket price of $20 per person a bit high, afterwards, you’ll feel it was well worth it. The adventure has a Disney type quality about it and you’ll find the tour guides to be very convincing and funny as they play their roles. The best time to go is later, so you’ll have a smaller group. If the group is too large, you’re chances of having people with poor puzzle solving skills to be greater and they can ruin the whole adventure. 5 Wits will make you wish you had one in your town or that your friends were with you. Enjoy!

If you were in Marrakech in June, then you couldn’t help but participate in the annual festival Awaln’art . This was the Festival’s fourth year and to date was the richest art festival yet. The Festival team of Awaln’art had decided to make 2010 an atmosphere of live art in public places and called it the Rencontres International Art in Public Places.

The Festival had a circus and cabarets on one side, masks, puppets, poets and entertainers in the center, on the other side were the storytellers and dancers; parades wandered in and throughout with music and fire eaters. The public space or 17, groupement Slimane Ben Zoubir was transformed into a huge, open playground for four days. The diversity of artistic events was stunning, innovative, captured the imagination and was very successful.

The Festival tours Marrakech and some villages of the surrounding valley and many unsuspecting tourists stepping out from their Marrakech hotels were involuntarily incorporated into performance art pieces that were performed at random spots along the festival fair, only to be let loose to go about their way, which they did in protest and instead became participants and joined the 120 artists, 12 companies of street art, 7 nationalities, 20 performances at 5 performance venues, 2 Master Classes and a Battle between acrobatics performers.

Next year’s Awaln’art Festival is already in the planning and promises to be even more spectacular than 2010!

We have all seen it. There are dozens of movies with last minute nuptial. There have been some great story lines of the couple who decided they just wanted to have a quick one without the big wedding. How about the drunken stupor wedding that ends up with a quick annulment. Not all of these crazy weddings have been in the movies. Many of them are real and have been done by the celebrities of the world. Take Brittney Spears short Vegas marriage to just a friend. I suppose he thought he was making out well. Have all the crazy stories of Vegas chapel weddings inspired you? It is a sort of cult following and has a place in things to do that are funky and cool. After all the time, money and effort that goes into a traditional wedding, one might look back and wish they had gotten married in a Vegas chapel. After all, everything is included.  

One of the most famous wedding chapels in Vegas is the Graceland Wedding Chapel . There really have been some major stars who truly got married there. Jon Bon Jovi, Richard Simmons, Michael Damian, Billy Rae Cyrus and the list goes on. This is the chapel you seem to see the most in the movies and is one of the oldest buildings in town. Definitely the oldest chapel anyway. Get married by Elvis in the original Elvis wedding chapel. This will be one of the most fun and cost effective wedding a couple could ever have. For a couple hundred bucks a couple can be married by an Elvis look alike, who will sing two Elvis songs, and gets their photo taken all dressed up with fresh flowers. It really is a one of a kind experience.  

If you like the idea of a Vegas chapel weddings but without a Vegas theme, head over to the Chapel of the Flowers they have a very elegant facility that actually makes you feel like you are not in Vegas anymore.  

Also many of the Las Vegas hotels have some great wedding packages with chapels inside the hotel. They do have some great themes and will take care of everything for you so you can actually enjoy the guests rather than deal with the problems. .

A state with as much mystery and history as Arizona is bound to have its share of interesting residents. As a political boundary, it’s only been in existence for about a century, but there are people who have lived here for 300 generations or more. Everyone has a story, and one of theater’s great challenges is to figure out how to tell each one in just the right way. In this part of the world, it’s complex because there are so many identities here, and so many people who pass through for one reason or another.

There are stories of real estate moguls, outlaw cowboys, defiant go-go dancers, and an endless chain of workers who each have incredible worlds living inside of them. It’s impossible to tell them all, but people like Marcelino Qui ±onez take it upon themselves to try.

Although it’s important to point out that, if asked, he would be the first to deny that claim of taking it upon himself. More than most artists of his generation, he is very quick to mention the long line of inspirations and ancestors that took him from Durango to Phoenix, where he does most of his current work.

The winner of the performance category for this year’s New Times Big Brain Winners will mention that it was James Garcia, a collaborator in art, who nominated him for the award. He didn’t get it himself, and no matter how much he’s pressed to recognize his individual achievements, he still has another name of someone who pushed him toward the present.

He’s performed some very dense roles, working at places like the Actor’s Theatre and other local venues, producing works about people who need to be inhabited in a live art. Heroes like Van Gogh, Bobby Kennedy, and Che Guevara, have all come under his artistic gaze.

One does get the sense of being in the presence of a real artist when he’s around. Cool and piercing, his stare is fixed on some point in the past or future, an injustice, or a moment of hope, but the ready smile announces that he is here in the present. In a state where the climate brings people to luxury hotels, Arizona also has a climate for great art, because there are great artists pushing the limits and making it possible for the next generation to remember what it was like to be here.

Buena Park is most famous for being the location of one of the nation’s favorite theme parks, Knott’s Berry Farm . And while this is one of the city’s prominent attractions and brings in a large percentage of the city’s tourists every year, there is actually a great deal more to the city than you would initially imagine. Adding some of these alternative attractions and features makes for a well rounded vacation and they are also the reason the residents are so happy in their Orange County city.  Just consult a travel directory when setting your itinerary.

For information on some of the great attractions and landmarks that can be found throughout the city you can consult with the friendly staff at one of the hotels. Buena Park is full of great things to do and the helpful staff members will certainly lead you in the right direction. One of the areas you will definitely want to visit while you are in town is the historic park area on Beach Boulevard. It is located just south of Interstate 5 and features some of the great historic buildings in the city. Bacon House, Stage Stop Hotel and Tice House are just a few of the historic buildings located there. The Whitaker-Jaynes House is another one of the significant area buildings and it also serves as the city’s own historic museum.

Other major attractions in the city include the Medieval Times Dinner Show, which is one of nine of its kind venues across the country. Horse shows, sword fights jousting and other Medieval style games are just part of the faire which also includes a theme style dinner and the events conclude with a tournament. There is also a vegetarian meal available for those with the dietary needs and lifestyle choice option. While you may very well go to Buena Park to visit Knott’s Berry Farm, you will most likely enjoy these other features just as much while you are there.

Miami is destination nightlift hotspot, and Club Space is the hottest place to be. Space is synonymous with dance music, the go-to venue for any serious clubber and the place to listen to the most current tunes in club music. Space has been a successful night club for two decades and continue to reign as the over-the-top club experience for the discerning dance music enthusiast and for all of Miami.

State-of-the-art sound, lighting and visual systems, the venue has set the high-bar for any club to match or even come up to. The owner Louis Puig, a former DJ-turned-nightclub impresario, already owned a few nightclubs in South Florida, which are all very successful. But, he felt the need to do something new and less commercial for the Miami night scene, and that’s when he took on the challenge to build a new multi-room megaclub – Club Space, located at 142 NE 11th Street. Then he threw in legendary DJ/Producer Oscar G, trance maven Edgar V, house stalwart Roland and a local favorite, Ivano Bellini; coupled with a sudden influx of guest DJs like Paul Van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, John Digweed, Danny Tenaglia, who played a record 20-hour set during the 2000 WMC, and added the ingredient of then at that time, an unknown Dutch guy named Tiesto. With all that, Puig shook-up the landscape of Miami’s nightlife and threw down the gauntlet.

Club Space is within walking distance of all the Miami luxury hotels now that it’s in its multi-story monster building, complete with an outdoor rooftop terrace. The term ‘superclub’ was invented to describe this unbelievable venue that can hold a record crowd. Soon Club Space began to receive numerous media accolades and awards from the local government, all of which were for making Downtown Miami, the place to come for a fantastic nightlife. Miami is considering naming NE 11th Street the ‘Louis Puig Boulevard.’