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Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts

10.13.2010

The Trip To Frankfurt

Tuesday October 12, 10:55 pm EST. 
We are in the air. Takeoff was uneventful and we are now somewhere over eastern Ontario heading for Frankfurt, Germany. Thr inflight 16x9 display is pretty impressive with it's selection ogf movies and games and tv shows. I first chose CBC news (didn't work) then I thought I'd try a game (didn't work) then I was about to write here that I tried to watch a short Canadian film called 'The Red Hood' which suddenly stopped. I just realized I selected 'preview' instead of 'watch'.  I will watch it now  while I wait for dinner  and a drink.
 
11:08 pm EST.  'The Red Hood' seems pretty good. It seems I did select 'watch' afterall, but it ends abruptly two minutes  or so in. To summarize the Air Canada in flight entertainment leaves much to be desired. I will try something else.

11:09 pm EST. The flight is very smooth so far. We are on an Airbus 330. The temperature is  -54 degrees C outside at this altitude of 33 thousand feet. We are now over Montreal. It is 5:10 am in Frankfurt now. This little netbook is great for blogging on the go. Chicken and pasta with some cubed vegetable salad thing and a brownie that was really good. I've had a few meals on flights over the years and this one stands out because it was edible. Actually we did has a rea\lly nice meal on an actual plate on Air Transat once. We are pretty well into our flight and going to try to have a nap. I wanted to try the keyboard on the netbook, and it seems to be pretty good. I'll give you an update later on after we land in Germany.

03:20 am EST. I slept for awhile, but now we are into some turbulence and everyone is awake. It reminds me of the coun try roads from childhood, minus the dust. Outside we are flying into the sunrise and I can see the thick cloud cover hundreds of feet below us. I always find this to be a bit bizarre after spending a lifetime looking up at clouds. Earlier I looked out and couls see all the stars, it was so black outside, and the air so calm.
I hadn't intended to be writing a movie review, but it's five am and I need to vent about this abombination playing out before my eyes.

We are watching Sex & The City 2. I thought our Moulin Rouge wedding was the epitome of uber-gaiety, until I saw the Stanford and Anthony wedding opener in this sad excuse for a film, which features swans, a men's choir and Liza Minelli with a face so tight you could  bounce a quarter off of it. The old hag can barely talk her lips are so stretched over her bony old face.

The movie is a horrible, desperate attempt to invoke the past triumphs of the ground breaking  series and the eagerly anticipated and well received first film. Sex 2 has so much product placement that Lady Gaga would blush and the four main characters are so wealthy and unsympathetic that the movie is barely watchable, not to mention offensive to anyone who is reasonably 'normal'. I'm only continuing so I can see the end of the line for these old girls, who have now proven that you can't go back and recapture the past, nor should you try.

(Later) Okay in the spirit of truthiness, I admit I didn't finish the movie and I am glad I didn't waste anymore of my life on it. David did however, and told me the gist of the story was that America is still the greatest country in the world (like they'd ever let anyone forget) and women who wear burkas all have Chanel or Dior hidden underneath!

We have arrived in Frankfurt safe and sound, are exhausted and are going to bed. A quick look  at the German news program playing on the lobby television tells me that the trapped Chilean miners are finally being rescued.

We get to our room only to find two twin beds. I feel like we are the gay neibours of Lucy and Desi, or the Flintstones. David goes to the desk and the man there tells him his colleague is dealing with it so he comes back up to the room to find me and the maid pushing the beds together. The maid vacuums the crap from undeneath where the bed originally was and presto we have our Frankfurt marriage bed! Before she leaves I give her the Gideons New Testament, I don't want one in our room. I've decided to fight back, I won't be part of the religious hate spewing disguised as spreading the love. By the way, I don't see a Koran or a Torah or any of L. Ron Hubbards books around here anywhere!

It is now almost 11:00 pm here, we went to dinner at an Irish pub just down the street. I know that isn't very adventerous, but we were hungry and they had an english menu and staff and beer. We are very close to the city centre and train station, which we planned because tomorrow we are taking the train to Nuremberg. Frankfurt seems to have a pretty complex public transportation system, a subway to rival Paris or London and street cars as well. There is a picture of a street car below, much more modern than  what we have in Toronto, but our new ones are going to be state of the art.
In Nuremberg we will visit the museum at the old congress centre and also the Nazi party rally grounds and the castle where the war trials were held after WWII.

Here are a couple of pictures I took tonight bon our walk. Please feel free to comment below. 

 The main drag, I didn't get the name, it's about a block from our hotel.

This is a modern bank building. Looked pretty cool all lit up in blue. Frankfurt has some nice modern architecture.

6.04.2009

Trump Tower Toronto

The concrete is rising on the new Trump Tower in downtown Toronto. This was taken last week and so far they are at about the fourth floor. The residences still have some suites available, if you can afford the 2 million (starting at) dollar price. The new tower will be located at Bay and Adelaide streets.  In the far left of the photo is the brand new Bay~Adelaide Centre. Click the image to view full size.
Click here for the Trump propaganda video on You Tube.

5.09.2009

Bay Adelaide Centre

 
This is the brand new Bay-Adelaide Centre at Bay and Adelaide Sts. in downtown Toronto. The building reflected in the glass is the Scotiabank tower. In the future this won't be seen as the new Trump Tower is being built, you can see a tiny bit of the construction railing in the bottom right corner of the shot. Click on the image to veiw full size.
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2.28.2009

The Gherkin

 
Click on image to view full size. Click the title for the Wikipedia page on this building.

30 St Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin and formerly the Swiss Re Building, is askyscraper in London's main financial district, the City of London, completed in December 2003 and opened on 28 April 2004. It is 180 metres (591 ft) tall, with 40 floors. Its construction symbolised the start of a new high-rise construction boom in London. The building's name is its address, St Mary Axe being the street it is on.

The building was designed by Lord Foster, his then partner Ken Shuttleworth[1], and Arupengineers, and was constructed by Skanska of Sweden in 2001–2003.

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