Blog catchit.com

@ Erik De Leon

Cuenca, located in the southern part of the Ecuadorian cordillera, is the third biggest city of Ecuador after Quito and Guayaquil and since 1999 it is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The historical centre is full of colonial elements like the wrought iron and cut wood balconies, paving stones and architecture which points out European but without neglecting autochthones details.

There, you will find many churches, symbol of the Spanish religiosity which was marked in these distant grounds. This architecture is important with invaluable details, made from gold and marble.
Failing this one it has two cathedrals in a small territory: the “la Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción”, or the new cathedral, and “la Iglesia del Sagrario”, or the old cathedral.
In its turn, the two oldest religious temples are the Monastery of Conceptas and the Catch of load which dates from the first decades of the foundation of the city in 1957.

As in the majority of the colonial cities, interesting buildings surround the central place.
There, you will also find, the House of Canónigos, the Court of justice and the old cathedral, from the neo-classical style (XVIII century).

@ Dan..

Do not miss colored markets such as the traditional flower market which is located close to the cathedral or markets where it is possible to eat typical.

You can, thus, visit traditional districts such as « las Herrerías », where the craftsmen of iron work, or that of “el Vado” or the District of All Saints known also as the bakers’ district.

This city deserves to be visited.
For much, it is the prettiest city of Ecuador with an important cultural richness and a privileged environment.

To supplement your visit, only thirty minutes away from Cuenca, the Natural Park of “Cajas” is waiting for you with more than 230 lagoons.

@ Chodaboy

Getxo is a picturesque commune of Bilbao known for its houses, located in the right part of the ria of Nervión.

It is known for its pretty residences with sight into the sea, built at the beginning of century XX by the Basque upper middle classes.

Today, the new port of Getxo is a sporting port full of boats, but the Old port of Algorta (Portu Zaharra) is a pretty tourist attraction.

Algorta is one of Getxo’s four communes, a small typical district where there are narrow and sinuous streets.

Although fishing has almost disappeared from the port, the district remains a place with plenty of life, especially on weekends and in summer.
There are a lot of colored houses of marine style, the restaurants and the taverns where you will, for sure, stop to try “pintxos”, tender meat skewers.

@ chaserpaul

Recently inaugurated, the Restaurant Nais Aquarium is located in Guatemala, and it is not a simple thematic restaurant, it is also an ecological center for entertainment and education that has a sophisticated system of life support, including a hospital for marine species, tanks of group of forty, biological laboratory, center of nutritional support and an impressive system of illumination by GPS in order to maintain fishes natural habitat.

You will discover 450 fishes from 38 exotic species, reef and sand sharks, which come from Bali, Indonesia, Fiji, Brazil and the Caribbean Guatemalan, and a complex of 15 aquariums decorating the Restaurant and the Lounge decorate.

This gastronomical establishment has a capacity of 500 people, and in case there is no table available, clients will get a beeper in order to let them know as soon as there is one for them.
Visitors can enjoy their meal while they are submerged in the aquatic world with feeding shows or taking the “Back Stage Tour” to learn more about marine species.

This experience of recreational and environmental tourism, supported by Clearly, Coca-Cola, BAM and Panasonic, will be transferred to Costa Rica and Honduras the next year, then Panama and Salvador, to end in Mexico in 2011.

I had always thought there couldn’t be any place as good as Rio de Janeiro or Bahia all over Brazil. I was wrong.

Near Natal, a colorful village is hidden, plenty of live and quite during daytime, that’s what gives it all its charm.
A lot of foreign decided to live there for a while in order to stay away from big cities and their noise.

To go out, there is a large choice of restaurants to eat and a large amount of bars will welcome you with some music.

Pipa’s beaches are “Praia do Madeiro”, “la Bahia dos Golphinos”, “la Praia Central”, where most of people go.

My favorite one is “la Bahia dos Golphinos” (Dolphins’ bay).
As you should already have guess, it is common to see dolphins playing near swimmers. It will give an amazing feeling.
Moreover, the beach is huge, its sand is soft and the beach end up with wild vegetation.

@ marquiroga

ADVICE

If you are a woman and feel like buying a Brazilian bikini, I would tell you not doing it. Actually, they don’t use Brazilian bikinis but small pieces of fabric joined with string… .

A lot of night parties are going on around « la Prai de Amor », in the middle of palm-trees. These parties are unsurpassed.

CURIOSITY

In « la Praia da Minas », huge turtles get together when it’s time to lay eggs in orders to dig them into sand.

“The Bossa Nova” is a kind of music, which usually goes with a guitar, drums and percussion instruments. Elis Regina and Gilberto Gil are some of the artists that have popularized this beat.

@ Larsz

For millions years, these semi transparent organisms stride oceans. Known under the name of Salpidae, they are linked to jellyfishes. They have got the special feature of absorbing carbon dioxide CO2 and of calming down the greenhouse effect caused by Human.

Scientists from the Oceanus magazine concluded that salps, as big as a human inch, can set up huge school of fishes and can absorb 4.000 tones of CO2 per year.

Salps swim, feed and produce wastes continuously. That’s why the only part which is not transparent is its stomach. The Phytoplankton, which uses CO2 to grow up, is its main nutrient. It drains it off almost instantaneously in the ocean.

@ Nick Hobgood

The most surprising is that in 2004 and 2006, two biologists, Madin y Kremer, have studied the existence of new groups of salps in southern oceans, near the Antarctic. They have appeared there because of the increase in temperature these last years, which is a reaction against the global warming.

Oceanologs offer us already a lot of things to discover. Going diving is the best way to get close to these wonders. So, go and explore seabed! “You will feel like a fish in the water”! And if you come across some salps, don’t be afraid, they are harmless.

@ kevinzim

We see snakes as frightening and underhanded. However, Chinese people cook it and eat it with enchantment.

You can find snakes, as dogs, in any restaurants. In winter, you will find it in the form of stew as they say it keeps you warm (like dogs) and has aphrodisiac virtues.

You will have to choose the one you will eat while it is still alive. And before starting eating your meal you will need to do the two glasses ceremonial, which can be fast (or not) and disgusting: a red glass and a green one, one full of bile and the other full of snake’s blood. You won’t be able to start eating before drinking all of that!!

Everything is eatable in snake!!!

You can eat any part in any kind of way: You can make chips from its skin; you can fry it or make a soup of it… mmmmmm…
You can also find it in pharmacies: It relieves you of rheumatisms and, more surprisingly, of malaria crisis.
For older people, snake is used also used as protector against the Devil spirit and as Viagra.

In this crisis situation, the word “free” is a big attraction for travelers. The Travel European Commission has offered a top 10 of the best free activities in Europe that we can enjoy for the next months.

Germany

@ dalbera

The famous museum in Berlin, in the middle of the river Spree , offers free entry to the 5 museums every Thursdays from 2pm.

France

The ring of Kerry sums up all virtues and attractions of this Gaelic country: Gold and hiking in the green hills, fishing in the rivers and fine sand beaches. That’s not all; the area is an authentic museum in the open air with prehistoric buildings, castles and monasteries.

Estonia

The city of Navarra, located at the Russian border, is the most oriental point of the European Union. The Teutonic Knights castle is from the century XIII and it is split up by a river. Over there all kind of concerts and other open air events are going on.

Hungary

Already famous for its Red Bull, the Air Race takes place in Budapest from August 19th and 20th, with dozen of pilots doing acrobatics and jumping from bridges in a minimum of time.

Switzerland

The street Parade in Zurich goes on in August. It’s a colorful party with electronic music, it’s actually a huge “RAVE PARTY” which succeed with dignity to the “love Parade” in Berlin.

@ Javi Vte Rejas

England

London is famous to be expensive. Taking a look at these countless treasures and works of arts from the Britannic museum and the national Gallery is priceless. That’s why it’s free…

Belgium

The sentence “free beer” has a special meaning in this country that produces some of the best beer worldwide. The Haacht beer offers a free tour with 2 degustation of their beer included.

Norway

“The Scream”, famous Edvard Munch’s paint, can be contemplated in the national gallery in Oslo, with Cézanne’s, Gauguin’s, Picasso’s works of art.

Austria

In the city of Innsbruck, the “hiking bus” is free from end of May till October for all costumers of the city and for the ones being around this city, it will be free if you acquire the Club Innsbruck Card. Of course, there is a vast hiking program.

Since January we can see, with Google Earth, some of the most famous and important museums where of the Prado Museum in Madrid.
And even if it could seem contradictory, you will see pieces with a better quality and details at home from your computer than within the museum.

Google never stops surprising us, and this time it has realized a project with the Prado Museum in order to allow anybody to contemplate, from the other side of the world, 14 paint artworks with a high resolution.

This project is called “Prado’s works of art on Google Earth” and enables to look at several pieces with a high resolution.
Images have 14 billions of pixels, a level of details 1400 times better than what we could get with a camera of 10 mega pixel.

This system is so specific that we can see micro details that painters incorporated in their works, details impossible to see naked-eyes; we can also appreciate works’ scratches and imperfections and, of course, any deep and shade of licks of pain that made these pieces becoming classics.

14 works of art can be seen, here are some of them:

• La Crucifixión, Flades, Juan de
• El caballero de la mano en el pecho, El Greco
• La familia de Felipe IV o Las Meninas, Velázquez
• El sueño de Jacob, Ribera
• 3 de mayo, Goya
• La Anunciación, Fra Angelico
• El Cardenal, Rafael
• El emperador Carlos V a caballo, en Mühlberg, Tiziano

@ brainsluice

I love Thai temples and orientalism, with nature and spirituality around it. We can breathe it in each step of the construction, trying to join socialite and mysticism.

What really curious about them?
They are not as ancient as we could think and the White Temple is an example of it.

Moreover, its official name is Wat Rong Khun and it has been created by Chaloemchai Khositphiphat, the most famous artist in Thailand.

It is a modern construction that they plan to end up in 90 years. However, we are already surprised by what there is already, such as its entrance, special and eerie, but I keep it for the end as it the thing that struck me the most.

@ Dust Mason

Inside, its walls contrast, even if it is more for their strange details than for their beauty: As soon as we get there we can see a plane against a twin tower, a fetus within a uterus, various weapons and some devils.
It is the symbolism of spirituality confrontation and oriental peace with the chaos and oriental overconsumption.

Outside, the chapel is decorated with crumbled mirrors, the pinion with a Naga and an elephant; inside, it has a wall painting illustrating Buda’s life, also made by Khositphiphat.

As I told you before, I have left you the temple entrance part for the end. Here we go …

@ karma-police

To get to the first floor we need to cross a bridge. The bridge itself is not so surprising, but sculptures around it, those hands that seem going out from the water and from the ground, imitating sinners trying to get out from the Hell.

@ Daffydus

An image that will cool you off…

@ Patrick Mayon

With the typical Italian euphoria, now news papers tell that the tower is safe.

In January 1990, after 20 years of research, the Tower of Pisa had been closed to public to protect it from its inevitable worsening. In December 2001, its visitors could go and see it again. With all maintenance works, the tower got, partly, its verticality back.

Technicians say that it got back almost the same position than in the 1700s, it can stay like this for 300 more years if researches and preventive cares still go on. But visits are limited.

The tower of Pisa started to be built in 1173 and it is prone to various stories and myths.
They say that Galilee threw two different mass cannon balls from the top of the tower in order to demonstrate that the descent speed was independent of the mass.

Various initiatives have been undertaken in order to look after the tower, but without a real success. Included Benito Mussolini, in 1934, commanded to set the tower in a vertical position, by spilling cement on the base of it in order to sink further in the soft ground.