A-Z Places

[AuAL]

Red Fort, Agra, India

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Second City Improv in Chicago. I miss going there and it was across the street from The Earl of Old Town, a favorite hangout of mine.

 

[Cutesie]

Twin Towers, Ramat Gan, Israel. These 14-story buildings were completed in 1994.

 

[AuAL]

Urunga, NSW, Australia

OK, Urunga is a little town - a little over 3000 inhabitants - on the NSW mid-north coast. The name is apparently from the Gumbaynggir word Yurūnga, which is derived from the word for long yurūn in reference to "long white sands”. You can’t see much of it from the train, which is where I took the photo. (Sorry about the reflections in the window.) This photo was taken specifically with A-Z Places in mind, as I don’t have many photos of places starting with “U”.

 

[Cutesie]

Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington and Chelsea, London, UK. Opened in 1852 as the Museum of Manufactures, it was soon renamed to South Kensington Museum. The current name was given in 1899, when the Queen laid the foundation stone of one of its buildings.

Housing 2.8 million objects in 145 galleries, V&A is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design.

 

[AuAL]

Westminster Abbey, London, UK

 

[NDR2]

Xbox Game Studios, Redmond, Washington

 

[Cutesie]

Yass Courthouse in Yass, a town of 6,000 in New South Wales, Australia.

 

[NDR2]

Zell am See, Austria

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Astoria, Oregon

 

[NDR2]

Baucau, Timor-Leste

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

California

When California comes to mind, I see endless miles of crops growing year-round, in rich, fertile soil under a bright sky, with rugged mountains in the distance.

I can almost smell the cattle.

 

[AuAL]

Dashashwamedh Ghat, Varanasi, India

 

[Cutesie]

Empire State Plaza, near the state Capitol in Albany, New York. Most of these government buildings are clad in imported stone. The 44-story Corning Tower is the tallest building in the state outside of NYC; it has a free observation deck. The bowl-shaped structure to its left is The Egg, a theater. Since 1978, the site has officially been called the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza, named for the governor who initiated the project.

 

[AuAL]

Futian Mangrove Nature Reserve, Shenzhen, China

 

[Cutesie]

General Grant National Memorial, better known as Grant's Tomb, Manhattan, New York. It was completed in 1897, almost twelve years after the death of the war hero president. So who is buried in Grant's Tomb? No one; both Ulysses and his wife Julia are entombed in sarcophagi aboveground. (It was a favorite riddle of Groucho Marx.)

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Half Moon Bay, California

 

[Cutesie]

Island View High School, opened 2018 in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Happy Canada Day to those celebrating!

 

[AuAL]

General Grant National Memorial, better known as Grant's Tomb, Manhattan, New York. It was completed in 1897, almost twelve years after the death of the war hero president. So who is buried in Grant's Tomb? No one; both Ulysses and his wife Julia are entombed in sarcophagi aboveground. (It was a favorite riddle of Groucho Marx.)

In the Taj Mahal, in the inner chamber, you can see the sarcophagi of the Shah and his wife. They are empty. This chamber is several metres above ground. The bodies are directly below these sarcophagi, but they are not buried. They are in two more sarcophagi in a tomb chamber below.

The Shah’s sarcophagus is to the side of his wife’s. It is the only feature of the Taj Mahal that is asymmetrically placed. The Shah intended the Taj Mahal to be his wife’s tomb - he was to have another nearby. Placed under house arrest for the last 15 years of his life by his son, the rights of disposition of funds were removed from him. When he died, his son put him next to his wife, rather than go to the expense of building a second tomb.

Regarding the symmetry, a building to the side of the main building is a mosque, erected on site to reduce the loss of construction time from workers going off-site for their frequent daily prayers. There is another, identical building on the other side - it has no function other than to maintain symmetry.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Jackpot, Nevada