Abbotshall Parish Church

Abbotshall Parish church is in my home town of Kirkcaldy in Scotland and contains some graves of my distant family. Around the middle of the seventeenth century it was decided that a new church was needed to ease the pressure on the Old Kirk in Kirkcaldy, and thus the parish of Abbotshall was created. The land was on the Abbotshall Estate which was owned at the time by Sir Andrew Ramsay, and became a Burgh of Barony. The first church is said to have been built in 1679, although there is a reused date stone from 1674 on the present church. There is no record of the appearance of the church before it was rebuilt in 1788, and the rebuild is the church which stands today. In 1876 the parish was absorbed into the Burgh of Kirkcaldy. There is a graveyard containing some good examples of historic gravestones and a mort house.

Birthplace of the Black Russian Cocktail

I love old hotels with character and the Metropole Hotel in Brussels, Belgium is a fine example of one that I have stayed at. 

The Hotel Metropole, built in 1895, is the only nineteenth-century hotel in Brussels still in operation today. The hotel has 298 rooms and 15 suites.

In 1890, two brothers with a brewing company opened Café Metropole as a place in the city to sell their beer. The café was a huge success and the Weilemans-Ceuppens family then purchased the building next-door, a former bank, which would become the Hotel Metropole, inaugurated in 1895. Today, the hotel’s reception desk is easily recognizable as the desk of the former bank, a significant historical and heritage glimpse of the past.

The brothers commissioned French architect Alban Chambon to be the chief designer of the hotel. Today, Chambon’s design of modern comfort and luxury is still a prominent feature of the heritage hotel, which is considered an important historical landmark in the city.

Not only was Hotel Metropole one of the first luxury hotels, it was also the first to have electricity and central heating, and is now the only existing 19th century hotel in Brussels. In fact, many heritage tours of Brussels visit the Hotel Metropole to look upon its facades and design.

The hotel’s reception, lobby, and lounge are overtly ornate with Corinthian columns, rich furnishings, gilded details, and glittering chandeliers – all which can still be seen and experienced today at the hotel. Similarly, the meetings and conference rooms of the hotel are decorated in a Renaissance style.

The Metropole is famous for having hosted the first Solvay Conference in 1911. Check out the photo below which is in the lobby of the Metropole Hotel and see how many famous physicists you can spot. There's Einstein, Planck, Rutherford, Lorentz and Madame Curie just for starters.

Moreover, it is the birthplace of the Black Russian cocktail, which was created in 1949 by barman Gustave Tops for the United States ambassador to Luxembourg, Perle Mesta.

Spanish Serenade

Traditional Singers, Laguardia, Spain by HighlanderImages

Laguardia is a small walled hill town in the Rioja wine country of northern Spain. Sitting high on a rock foundation under the shadows of the mountains to the northwest, the city retains, intact, its historic walls from the 13th century including its four entrance gates. Within its walls can be found historic building from various time periods. Today, the outer village walls are breached with glass windows, but it is easy to imagine the village as it must have been in the Middle Ages. There are only a few streets with in the old city, so navigating is fairly easy. Still, the village is large enough to provide you with some shopping, and magical eating experiences, not to mention the experience of consuming some of the best wines of Spain.

While walking through the small narrow streets of the town I followed the sounds of singing and celebration and eventually rounded a corner to find this group of men celebrating something ... a wedding perhaps, a birthday ... or just life itself!

No Standing Anytime

This array of signage on a lampost in the Greenwich Village historic district of New York appeared to confuse rather than to inform. I guess the message was Keep Movin' but only One Way!

The Markt

The Markt ("Market Square") of Bruges is located in the heart of the city and covers an area of about 1 hectare. Some historical highlights around the square include the 12th-century belfry and the Provincial Court (originally the Waterhall, which in 1787 was demolished and replaced by a classicist building that from 1850 served as provincial court and after a fire in 1878 was rebuilt in a neo-Gothic style in 1887. In the center of the market stands the statue of Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck.

In 1995 the market was completely renovated. Parking in the square was removed and the area became mostly traffic-free, thus being more celebration friendly. The renovated market was reopened in 1996 with a concert by Helmut Lotti.

Around the Markt are numerous restaurants, cafes and bars where you can sit and take in the sights of the many historic medieval buildings and sample some of the Belgian food and beer.

Gion Machiya

One of the many beautiful old traditional buildings found in the Gion district of Kyoto. Gion is a district of Kyoto, Japan, originally developed in the Middle Ages, in front of Yasaka Shrine. The district was built to accommodate the needs of travelers and visitors to the shrine. It eventually evolved to become one of the most exclusive and well-known geisha districts in all of Japan.

The geisha in the Gion district do not refer to themselves as geisha; instead, Gion geisha use the local term geiko. While the term geisha means "artist" or "person of the arts", the more direct term geikomeans essentially "a child of the arts" or "a woman of art".

This neighborhood in Kyoto has two hanamachi (geiko communities): Gion Kōbu (祇園甲部) and Gion Higashi (祇園東). Despite the considerable decline in the number of geisha in Gion in the last one hundred years, it is still famous for the preservation of forms of traditional architecture and entertainment.

Part of this district has been declared a national historical preservation district. Recently, the City of Kyoto completed a project to restore the streets of Gion, which included such plans as moving all overhead utilities underground as part of the ongoing effort to preserve the original beauty of Gion.

Gion remains dotted with old-style Japanese houses called machiya, which roughly translated means "townhouse", some of which are ochaya or "tea houses". These are traditional establishments where the patrons of Gion—from the samurai of old to modern-day businessmen—have been entertained by geiko and geisha in an exclusive manner for centuries.

Inside the ochaya is a private and closed world where the evening's entertainment may include cocktails, conversation, and games as well as traditional Japanese music, singing and dancing. To this day, geiko and maiko (geisha in training) in full regalia can still be seen in the evenings as they move about through the streets of Gion to and from their various engagements at the ochaya' They dance and sing and they entertain for veryone

There is a popular misconception that Gion was a red-light district. It was a geisha district, and as geisha are entertainers, not prostitutes, Gion is not, and never was, a red-light district. Shimabara was Kyoto's red-light district.

Punting on the River Avon

These are some of the historic buildings you can see on the River Avon, Christchurch, New Zealand as you enjoy a punt on one of the wonderful punts that you can hire. A punt is a flat bottomed boat that does not have a keel. The Avon runs right through the centre of Christchurch and eventually out to an estuary, which it shares with the Heathcote River. The Avon River was known by the Māori as Ōtākaro or Putare Kamutu. The Canterbury Association had planned to call it the Shakespere. The river was given its current name by John Deans in 1848 after the River Avon in Scotland.

Coliseum Theatre .... Pawagam Coliseum

The Coliseum Theatre is a movie theater in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. One of the oldest movie theaters in the country, it was built in 1921 by the Chua family led by Chua Cheng Bok. The Art Deco-style building is capable of seating 900 people and also features a balcony.

The famed Coliseum Café and Hotel are located behind the theatre, just down the road. The oldest and continuously running cinema hall in the country (save for a break during the Japanese occupation during World War II), most of the movies premiering in the building are Indian movies. After Chua Cheng Bok's demise in 1940, his estate continued to administer the Coliseum until its acquisition in 1973 by a company owned by his nephew Dr Chua Boon Teck and his wife Mdm Khor Joo Saik.

In 2006, the Malaysian government proposed to close the theater and turn it into a cultural heritage center, but relented when there was a public outcry to the scheme.The government later decided not to close the cinema. Instead, they planned to build a parking lot nearby.In that year, Dr Chua Seong Siew, elder son of the late owners Dr Chua Boon Teck and Mdm Khor Joo Saik, had successfully appealed for the cinema theater to remain open, and so it continues to operate to this day.