Mount Buller , Victoria

Mount Buller is a town in Victoria, Australia 208 kilometres (129 mi) from Melbourne on the slopes of Mount Buller (elevation 1805 metres AHD).Primarily a resort town, Mount Buller is popular with snow sports enthusiasts in winter due to its close location to Melbourne. At the 2006 census, Mount Buller had a population of 251.

The Mount Buller Alpine Resort is an unincorporated area of Victoria; the larger surrounding locality of Mount Buller is part of the Shire of Mansfield.The ski area around the town has a network of 25 lifts, capable of moving more than 40,000 people per hour - the highest capacity in Victoria. The highest lifted point is 1780 m at Grimus Chairlift and the base altitude is 1375 m at the Chalet Creek loading station on the Horse Hill chairlift / gondola. The lifts are owned by Groset, a part of the Grollo group of companies

Crown Casino in Melbourne

Crown Casino and Entertainment Complex is a large casino and entertainment precinct located on the south bank of the Yarra River, in Melbourne, Australia. Crown Casino is a unit of Crown Limited.

Crown's current casino complex opened in 1997. It is one of the central features of the Southbank area in the central business district and the Crown Promenade fronts onto the waterfront as part of Southbank Promenade. Children under 18 are permitted into the entertainment section of complex, but not into the gaming area or areas serving alcohol. The entire complex has a space of 510,000 m² which is equivalent to 2 city blocks, making it largest casino complex in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the largest in the world.

A dinner served in the buffet restaurant within the casino. DC with colleagues and coach captains.

Regent Street , London

Regent Street is one of the major shopping streets in London's West End, well known to tourists and Londoners alike, and famous for its Christmas illuminations. It is named after the Prince Regent (later George IV), and is commonly associated with the architect John Nash, whose street layout survives, although all his original buildings except All Souls Church have since been replaced.

The street was completed in 1825 and was an early example of town planning in England, cutting through the 17th and 18th century street pattern through which it passes. It runs from the Regent's residence at Carlton House in St James's at the southern end, through Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus, to All Souls Church. From there Langham Place and Portland Place continue the route to Regent's Park.

Every building in Regent Street is protected as a Listed Building, at least Grade II status, and together they form the Regent Street Conservation Area.The street is one of the locations on the standard UK version of the Monopoly board game.

Zaanse Schans , Holland

Zaanse Schans (Dutch pronunciation is a neighbourhood of Zaandam, near Zaandijk in the municipality of Zaanstad in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It has a collection of well-preserved historic windmills and houses; the ca. 35 houses from all over the Zaanstreek were moved to the museum area in the 1970s. The Zaans Museum, established in 1994, is located in the Zaanse Schans.

The Zaanse Schans is one of the popular tourist attractions of the region and an anchor point of ERIH, the European Route of Industrial Heritage. The neighbourhood attracts approximately 900,000 visitors every year.The windmills were built after 1574.

Notre Dame de Paris

Notre Dame de Paris (French for Our Lady of Paris), also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra (official chair), of the Archbishop of Paris, currently André Vingt-Trois. The cathedral treasury houses a reliquary with the purported Crown of Thorns.

Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in France and in Europe, and the naturalism of its sculptures and stained glass are in contrast with earlier Romanesque architecture. The first period of construction from 1163 into the 1240's coincided with the musical experiments of the Notre Dame school.
Notre Dame de Paris was among the first buildings in the world to use the flying buttress (arched exterior supports). The building was not originally designed to include the flying buttresses around the choir and nave. After the construction began and the thinner walls (popularized in the Gothic style) grew ever higher, stress fractures began to occur as the walls pushed outward. In response, the cathedral's architects built supports around the outside walls, and later additions continued the pattern. The cathedral was essentially complete by 1345.
The cathedral suffered desecration during the radical phase of the French Revolution in the 1790s, when much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. An extensive restoration supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc removed remaining decoration, returning the cathedral to an 'original' gothic state.

Jean de Jandun recognized the cathedral as one of Paris's three most important buildings in his 1323 "Treatise on the Praises of Paris":

Acropolis , Athens

The Acropolis of Athens or Citadel of Athens is the best known acropolis in the world. Although there are many other acropolis in Greece, the significance of the Acropolis of Athens is such that it is commonly known as The Acropolis without qualification. The Acropolis was formally proclaimed as the pre-eminent monument on the European Cultural Heritage list of monuments on 26 March 2007. The Acropolis is a flat-topped rock that rises 150 m (490 ft) above sea level in the city of Athens, with a surface area of about 3 hectares. It was also known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man, Cecrops, the first Athenian king.

While the earliest artifacts date to the Middle Neolithic era, there have been documented habitations in Attica from the Early Neolithic (6th millennium BC). There is little doubt that a Mycenaean megaton stood upon the hill during the late Bronze Age. Nothing of this megaton survives except, probably, a single limestone column-base and pieces of several sandstone steps. Soon after the palace was built a Cyclopean massive circuit wall was built, 760 meters long, up to 10 meters high, and ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters thick. This wall would serve as the main defense for the acropolis until the 5th century.The wall consisted of two parapets built with large stone blocks and cemented with an earth mortar called emplekton .

The wall follows typical Mycenaean convention in that it followed the natural contour of the terrain and its gate was arranged obliquely, with a parapet and tower overhanging the incomers' right-hand side, thus facilitating defense. There were two lesser approaches up the hill on its north side, consisting of steep, narrow flights of steps cut in the rock. Homer is assumed to refer to this fortification when he mentions the "strong-built House of Erechtheus" . At some point before the 13th century an earthquake caused a fissure near the northeastern edge of the acropolis. This fissure extended some thirty five meters to a bed of soft marl in which a well was dug.An elaborate set of stairs was built and the well was used as a protected source of drinking water during some portion of the Mycenaean period, as it was invaluable in times of siege.

Bruges, City of Unesco World Heritage

Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country.

The historic city centre is a prominent World Heritage Site of UNESCO. It is oval-shaped and about 430 hectares in size. The area of the whole city amounts to more than 13,840 hectares, including 1,075 hectares off the coast, at Zeebrugge (meaning "Brugge aan Zee" or "Bruges on Sea). The city's total population is 117,073 (1 January 2008),of which around 20,000 live in the historic centre. The metropolitan area, including the outer commuter zone, covers an area of 616 km² and has a total of 255,844 inhabitants as of 1 January 2008.
Along with a few other canal-based northern cities, such as Amsterdam, it is sometimes referred to as "The Venice of the North".

Bruges got its city charter on July 27, 1128 and new walls and canals were built. Since about 1050, gradual silting had caused the city to lose its direct access to the sea. A storm in 1134, however, re-established this access, through the creation of a natural channel at the Zwin. The new sea arm stretched all the way to Damme, a city that became the commercial outpost for Bruges.

Lake Lugano, Switzerland

Lake Lugano is a glacial lake in the south-east of Switzerland, at the border between Switzerland and Italy. The lake, named after the city of Lugano, is situated between Lake Como and Lago Maggiore. It was cited for the first time by Gregory of Tours with the name Ceresio in 590 AD,a name which is said to have derived from the Latin word cerasus, meaning cherry, and refers to the abundance of cherry trees which at one time adorned the shores of the lake. The lake appears in documents in 804 under the name Laco Luanasco.

The lake is 48.7 km2 in size, 63% of which is in Switzerland and 37% in Italy, has an average width of roughly a kilometer, a maximum depth of 288m found in the northern basin and bathing in the lake is allowed at any of the 50 or so bathing establishments located along the Swiss shores. The Italian waters of the lake and the exclave of Campione d'Italia are considered by Italian law as non-territorial for fiscal purposes and as such enjoy a special tax status as a duty free area, exemption from EU VAT and offer residents other advantageous tax privileges.
The whole area behind the southern shores of Lake Lugano is rich in fossils. The focal point of these fossil deposits is Monte San Giorgio, where since the 19th century many fossils have been found dating from the mid Triassic (around 220 million years ago). The deposits on Monte San Giorgio stretch towards the west into Italian territory and the deposits of Besano. Fossils dating from the early Jurassic (around 180 million years ago) have also been found along the southern shores but more towards the east and Osteno.

Colosseum, Roma

The name Colosseum has long been believed to be derived from a colossal statue of Nero nearby(the statue of Nero itself being named after one of the original ancient wonders, the Colossus of Rhodes)[citation needed]. This statue was later remodeled by Nero's successors into the likeness of Helios (Sol) or Apollo, the sun god, by adding the appropriate solar crown. Nero's head was also replaced several times with the heads of succeeding emperors. Despite its pagan links, the statue remained standing well into the medieval era and was credited with magical powers. It came to be seen as an iconic symbol of the permanence of Rome.

In the 8th century, a famous epigram attributed to the Venerable Bede celebrated the symbolic significance of the statue in a prophecy that is variously quoted: Quamdiu stat Colisæus, stat et Roma; quando cadet colisæus, cadet et Roma; quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus ("as long as the Colossus stands, so shall Rome; when the Colossus falls, Rome shall fall; when Rome falls, so falls the world"). This is often mistranslated to refer to the Colosseum rather than the Colossus (as in, for instance, Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage). However, at the time that the Pseudo-Bede wrote, the masculine noun coliseus was applied to the statue rather than to what was still known as the Flavian amphitheatre.

The Namtso Lake , Tibet

Namtso ; “Heavenly Lake”; is a mountain lake at the border between Damxung County of Lhasa Prefecture and Baingoin County of Nagqu Prefecture in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, approximately 112 km [70 miles] NNW of Lhasa.

The lake lies at an elevation of 4,718 m, and has a surface area of 1,870 square kilometres. It is the highest salt lake in the world, and largest salt lake in the Tibet Autonomous Region. However, it is not the largest salt lake in geographical historical Tibet. That title used to belong to Qinghai Lake (almost twice the size of Namtso); but since borders were re-drawn in 1965 that lake now lies just over 1,000 km [650 miles] to the north-east in China's Qinghai province.

Namtso has five uninhabited islands of reasonable size, in addition to one or two rocky outcrops. The islands have been used for spiritual retreat by pilgrims who walk over the lake's frozen surface at the end of winter, carrying their food with them. They spend the summer there, unable to return to shore again until the water freezes the following winter. This practice is no longer permitted under the Communist Chinese regime in Tibet.The largest of the islands is in the north-west corner of the lake, and is about 2,100 m long and 800 m wide, rising to just over 100 m in the middle. At its closest point it is about 3.1 km from the shore.
The most remote island is, at its closest, 5.1 km from the shore.The weather at Namtso is subject to abrupt sudden change and snowstorms are very common across the Nyainqêntanglha range.




The islands have been used for spiritual retreat by pilgrims who walk over the lake's frozen surface at the end of winter, carrying their food with them. They spend the summer there, unable to return to shore again until the water freezes the following winter. This practice is no longer permitted under the Communist Chinese regime in Tibet.The largest of the islands is in the north-west corner of the lake, and is about 2,100 m long and 800 m wide, rising to just over 100 m in the middle. At its closest point it is about 3.1 km from the shore.

The most remote island is, at its closest, 5.1 km from the shore.The weather at Namtso is subject to abrupt sudden change and snowstorms are very common across the Nyainqêntanglha range.

Russia Federation

Russia officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation is a country in northern Eurasia (Europe and Asia together). It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. Russia shares land borders with the following countries (from northwest to southeast): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (via Kaliningrad Oblast), Poland (via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan (by the Sea of Okhotsk), the Republic of Korea (by the Sea of Japan), Sweden (by the Baltic Sea), Turkey (by the Black Sea), and the United States (by the Bering Strait). At 17,075,400 square kilometers (6,592,800 sq mi).

Russia is, by far, the largest country in the world, covering more than an eighth of the Earth’s land area; with 142 million people, it is the ninth largest by population. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning 11 time zones, and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources, and is considered an energy superpower. It has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's unfrozen fresh water.