Louisville USA – October 6-7, 11-14, 18-21, 25-28, 2007, held at the Louisville Zoo.
This is one for the kids, not actually on the night of Halloween, but on the four weekends in October leading up to Halloween. If your kids find scary just too much to cope with, then this is for them; a sweet, fun filled early evening event more storybook than frightening.
It’s full of children’s favourite characters and gentle trick or treating for the under 11’s.
Who will they meet and what will they see as they wander round the Zoo?
The giant talking pumpkin – Mumpkin, greets all the visitors to the evening when they arrive
See Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
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We stopped at the town of Moab between visiting Monument Valley and Arches national parks. Canyonlands National Park is also nearby so it’s a good place to stop between visiting these parks. We were only there one night but I really liked the place, primarily because of the shopping opportunities! However, it also seems to be a bit of a Mecca for outdoor activities – especially mountain biking and river rafting / kayaking. Hence it’s ‘tag’ as Utah’s adventure capital. The world renowned 9 mile Slickrock trail attracts some 110,000 mountain bikers per year.
It’s a small town with a population of around 5,000 that has a lovely community feel. Whilst many of the shops are undoubtedly aimed at tourists the quality of the goods is high and they quite a ‘hippy’ / crafty edge’ – with lots of unusual jewellery, clothes, painting and sculpture in addition to lots of sporty out-door gear. My favorite shop was the Hogan Trading Company who profess to be the largest Southwest art gallery in Utah. They have a huge stock of sculpture, furniture and lighting. I have promised myself that one day I will go back and get one of Greg Gowen’s fabulous copper ceremonial masks (http://hogantrading.com/). Moab also seemed to have just the right number of coffee / cake shops and places to mooch around for a day or two!
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Many people stop at Monterey Bay to visit the wonderful aquarium, as did we, and its well worth a visit. As we entered the aquarium we were ‘confronted’ by a striking display of orange jellyfish set off by a deep blue background. They were mesmerisingly beautiful – I could have stood there for hours, in fact I probably did! Other highlights of the aquarium for me were the rest of the jelly fish (so many shapes and sizes), a fabulous display of seahorses (I learnt a few facts) and of course the wonderful kelp forest. We sat and watched the kelp swaying hypnotically for a good 30 minutes with the dappled sunlight coming through. Wonderful and peaceful!
There are quite a few other things to do in Monterey besides the world renowned aquarium. The walk down to the aquarium along Cannery Row has a few fabulous galleries and shops. One sells some of the best wildlife photographs and prints I’ve ever seen – I wanted to buy them all but my walls are just not big enough! There is also a gallery specialising in Ansel Adams photographs and a wonderful jewellery shop. Cannery row was originally famous for canning sardines but is now known as a local hot-spot’ with many restaurants, bars and pubs in easy walking distance.
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Because I have a penchant for ‘things Egyptian’ we stayed in the Luxor. It was a reasonable choice, but as / when I return to Vegas I think I would choose somewhere different for a couple of reasons:
1. The Luxor is nearly at one end of the strip which made it quite a distance to get to the other end (there are moving ‘travellators’ between many of the hotels but it is still quite a distance from one end of the strip to the other).
2. Apart from our bedroom, there seemed to be few quiet places in the hotel to get away from the noise of the slots
First, a bit about the Luxor. We stayed in one of the pyramid’s deluxe bedrooms in the Luxor, which was spacious enough and nicely furnished with wooden inlays in the wardrobe and other furniture – all shaped and in keeping with the pyramid theme. The structure of the hotel is interesting in itself because I believe it has the world’s only diagonal lift – quite a feat of engineering. When you exit the lift the corridors to the bedrooms are inside a huge atrium that looks down onto the Luxor’s second floor IMAX and entertainment areas – which, at the time, seemed to have a huge amount of wasted space. The Egyptian style statues and décor are, in true Vegas style, well done and probably great if you haven’t been to Egypt (I have!). The Luxor also projects a huge beam of light skyward that is allegedly visible up to 250 miles away, however, you don’t really get the impact of the beam when you are up close to it.
Inside the pyramid atrium at the Luxor
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Where but in the USA would you find the World Barbecue Cooking Contest! The country that does everything in a big way certainly knows how to eat.
This annual event takes place in Memphis, and is part of the Memphis in May festival. This year’s grand cook off takes place 17th May to 19th May, and is always the crowning glory of the festival (it’s dubbed the world championship though it’s not the only one). It takes place on the banks of the Mississippi river in the Tom Lee Park, it’s not only corporate sponsored professionals who take part in this smoky combat of ‘culinary delights’, ordinary folk take part with their back garden barbecues.
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