My name is Farah Liana Binti Hamidin. I am 22 years old on this 24th June. I am Universiti Malaysia Kelantan's students. My course is Degree in Entrepreneurship in Health. Now I am third year student and this blog is one of my assignment for travel and tour subject. I was born in Kuala Terengganu but todays my family is live in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. I have four siblings and i was the number two. The first is my brother and others is my younger sisters. Actually I am twin and my sister now study in University Teknologi Mara in Degree of Event Management. Peoples always say that you are so lucky to have twins and I am glad that I am twin. This is because I can share any story or problems with her. Sometimes we can share about our interest. Even though we are twin sometimes we also argue with each other.
I am not talkative person. I also hard to make a new friend because of I am not good in communicate with others. I am also hard to easily get comfortable with everybody. It take time for me to get close to some one. Maybe there are people thing that I'm an arrogant lady but actually i'm not. It just because I'm not really friendly person. That was my bad sight in my life and I know it will be hard for me when it come times for me to get a job. I do not know what is my specialty. But I think I am a flexible person. Sometimes it good to be flexible but sometimes it will become bad.
Actually i did not really know myself yet but maybe sometimes I will know it.....
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Destination 1 - Prague Astronomical Clock, Czech Republic
To celebrate its 600th anniversary in 2010, a 3D light show played over the tower and faces of the Prague Orloj, with high definition animations showing events in its history. Twenty-first century innovation was honouring the cutting-edge technology of the early 15th century, but Prague's beautiful astronomical clock doesn't really need new-fangled bells and whistles to give crowd appeal. It is still the most popular and distinctive attraction in the city's Old Town Square. Although is dates from a period of politics turmoil in Prague, the clock is a miraculous legacy from the medieval city's golden era, when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV made it his capital. Prague became the empire's economics and cultural centre and the foundation of Charles University in 1348 turned into a hub European learning. Charles IV also oversaw a vast expansion of the city, but the clock is the oldest part, overlooking the tenth century marketplace from the wall of the Old Town Hall, s building erected by Charles's father, John of Luxembourg.
The clock and astronomical dial - in effect an astrolabe - was made in1410. It was the work of the clock maker Mikulas of Kadan, based on the calculation of Jan Sindel, professor of maths and astronomyat the university. The sun and mood circle around the still earth in the centre os the dial, while the sun also moves around the zodiac and the moon indicates its phases. The sun and the golden hand on its arm point to the time in various ways: on 24-hour dial and as a period of daylight divided into 12 'unequal hours' - longer in summer shorter in winter. Beneath the clock is the calender flanked by four carved figure: a chronicles, an angel, an astronomer and a philosopher. But the figure the crowds gather every day to see are the moving ones, which go into action on each hour.
Four seedy 17th century characters stands beside the clock: Vanity admiring his reflection, a miser clutching his bag of gold, a turbaned Turk and skeletal death, who rings his bell and eyes his hourglass. Above them the 12 Apostles added in 1860s, peer out as they shimmy past their two doordays, and finally a golden cockerel crows to signal the end of the show.
The clock and astronomical dial - in effect an astrolabe - was made in1410. It was the work of the clock maker Mikulas of Kadan, based on the calculation of Jan Sindel, professor of maths and astronomyat the university. The sun and mood circle around the still earth in the centre os the dial, while the sun also moves around the zodiac and the moon indicates its phases. The sun and the golden hand on its arm point to the time in various ways: on 24-hour dial and as a period of daylight divided into 12 'unequal hours' - longer in summer shorter in winter. Beneath the clock is the calender flanked by four carved figure: a chronicles, an angel, an astronomer and a philosopher. But the figure the crowds gather every day to see are the moving ones, which go into action on each hour.
Four seedy 17th century characters stands beside the clock: Vanity admiring his reflection, a miser clutching his bag of gold, a turbaned Turk and skeletal death, who rings his bell and eyes his hourglass. Above them the 12 Apostles added in 1860s, peer out as they shimmy past their two doordays, and finally a golden cockerel crows to signal the end of the show.
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| Prague Astronomical Clock |
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| Prague Astronomical Clock |
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| Carved figure in Prague Astronomical Clock |
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| Prague Astronomical Clock Tower |
Destination 2 - Windmills of Kinderdijk, Netherlands
Painted on countless tiles, teapots and trinkets, the windmill is a cliche of the Dutch tourist trade. But it became an icon for good reason: wind-powered pumps kept two-third of the country from disappearing beneath the sea. The Dutch didn't invent the windmill, which was in use in the Persian Empire in the ninth century, and the earliest mills were built to grind corn. But from 14th century Dutch engineers installed and developed windmills as part of ingenious drainage systems to create and maintain productive manmade landscapes and to power some of the world's earliest industrial operations such as sawing wood for shipbuilding.
In the low-lying coastal regions of Holland and Utrecht, a constant battle had to be fought against flooding from the time the first dykes were built around AD 1000, but the Dutch also became experts in land reclamation, draining the marshlands by digging canals and regulating the flow of water with networks of sluices and reservoirs. Windmills, powering rotary iron scoops, made it possible to lift water out of low-lying fields and over the dykes into reservoirs that were emptied into the rivers at low tide. The orderly rectangular fields between the waterways, known as polders, were used as pasture and for growing crops in the fertile, peaty soil. Polders now make up approximately 60 per cent of the country.
In the 18th century thousands of windmills dotted the Dutch landscape, but in the age of steam they were gradually replaced. the graceful Kinderdijk mills were erected in 1738 - 40, and are among the few survivors of over 150 mills in the Alblasserwaard area, which battled to control water levels between the Lek, Noord and Merwede rivers for over a century until steam pumps were installed in 1868. The windmills of Kinderdijk are a serene and beautiful monument to an old technology, but one that is now becoming relevant again as we face a post-oil world. Tellingly, they were brought back into regular use during World War II when there was no diesel available to power the pumps and they are still maintained in working order in case the modern equipment breaks down.
In the low-lying coastal regions of Holland and Utrecht, a constant battle had to be fought against flooding from the time the first dykes were built around AD 1000, but the Dutch also became experts in land reclamation, draining the marshlands by digging canals and regulating the flow of water with networks of sluices and reservoirs. Windmills, powering rotary iron scoops, made it possible to lift water out of low-lying fields and over the dykes into reservoirs that were emptied into the rivers at low tide. The orderly rectangular fields between the waterways, known as polders, were used as pasture and for growing crops in the fertile, peaty soil. Polders now make up approximately 60 per cent of the country.
In the 18th century thousands of windmills dotted the Dutch landscape, but in the age of steam they were gradually replaced. the graceful Kinderdijk mills were erected in 1738 - 40, and are among the few survivors of over 150 mills in the Alblasserwaard area, which battled to control water levels between the Lek, Noord and Merwede rivers for over a century until steam pumps were installed in 1868. The windmills of Kinderdijk are a serene and beautiful monument to an old technology, but one that is now becoming relevant again as we face a post-oil world. Tellingly, they were brought back into regular use during World War II when there was no diesel available to power the pumps and they are still maintained in working order in case the modern equipment breaks down.
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| Windmills of Kinderdijk |
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| Windmills of Kinderdijk |
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| Windmills of Kinderdijk |
Destination 3 - Eiffel Tower, Paris
As Paris planned its International Exhibition for 1889, marking the centenary of the French Revolution, it held a competition to design a spectacular tower to stand at the entrance of the site on the Champ de Mars. Out of 700 entries, the design submitted by Gustave Eiffel's engineering company was unanimously chosen for the project. Building began on January 1887, but not everyone welcomed the unmissable new landmark. It was the bolted metal construction that made the height of the new tower possible. Experience of building bridges had taught Eiffel that the most important consideration was the strength of the wind, and the shape of the curved pylons was developed so that at any height the downward force was equal to the force of the strongest wind at the point.
There were formidable challenges. The pillars on the riverside had to be supported by air-compressed foundations in the underwater steel caissons, and Eiffel devised a system of hydraulic jacks to position each foot at the correct angle to meet the horizontal beams on the first level. The iron components weighing a total of 7300 tons, were assembled in Eiffel's workshop and bolted together on site. The tower open on 31 March 1889.
Now it is carefully preserved, and every seven years 25 painters set up safety nets and harnesses and repaint the whole structure, starting from the top and painting by hand using brushes. The whole job takes 18 months. The original colour was reddish brown, but red has also been used and even yellow; since 1968 the paint has been ' Eiffel Tower Brown', specially mixed to blend with the cityscape and applied in there shades - darker at the bottom and lighter at the top to give a consistent appearance.
The individual ticket price is between 3.00 euro to 14.00 euro it depend on age and ways to go up there either by lift or stairs.
There were formidable challenges. The pillars on the riverside had to be supported by air-compressed foundations in the underwater steel caissons, and Eiffel devised a system of hydraulic jacks to position each foot at the correct angle to meet the horizontal beams on the first level. The iron components weighing a total of 7300 tons, were assembled in Eiffel's workshop and bolted together on site. The tower open on 31 March 1889.
Now it is carefully preserved, and every seven years 25 painters set up safety nets and harnesses and repaint the whole structure, starting from the top and painting by hand using brushes. The whole job takes 18 months. The original colour was reddish brown, but red has also been used and even yellow; since 1968 the paint has been ' Eiffel Tower Brown', specially mixed to blend with the cityscape and applied in there shades - darker at the bottom and lighter at the top to give a consistent appearance.
The individual ticket price is between 3.00 euro to 14.00 euro it depend on age and ways to go up there either by lift or stairs.
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| Eiffel Tower night view |
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| Eiffel Tower |
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| Eiffel Tower |
Destination 4 - Edinburgh Castle, Scotland, Edinburgh
Scotland is a land of castles. There are have been over 2000 of them, but Edinburgh's, towering above the city on its forbidding rock, sets the pattern, even if little of its medieval fortification remains. It even has a couple of ghosts, a piper and a headless drummer. The castle rock is the hard basalt plug of an extinct volcano that resisted later glacial erosion, leaving an almost impregnable crag with only one approach route - the ultimate safe refuge. It was known to the ancient Scots as Din Eidyn until it fell to the Angles in AD 638, when it took the English name Edinburgh.
David I moved his capital here from Dunfermline in the 12th century, giving the castle royal status. Only one structure remains from this period, the little Romanesque chapel dedicated to his mother on the summit, which is the city's oldest building. When the Earl of Moray's forces captured the castle from the English in 1314, by scaling the precipitous north face to rock , it was the only building that was spared, and Robert the Bruce later left money and instruction for its repair. The monstrous cannon that sits outside the chapel arrived in 1457 as a gift from Philip Duke of Burgundy. It fired balls weighing 150kg for up to 3km, but really its bark was worse than its bite: firing generated so much heat that it could be used only few times a day, and its was barely manoeuvrable on a battlefields. From 1540 Mons Weg was saved for ceremonial use, until the barrel burst in 1681when James Duke of Albany - a rather had bad omen for the future king, who managed to reign for only three years.
The 15th century saw the creation of royal apartments and the great hall, although after the royal family moved down the royal Mike to Holyrood Palace the castle was mostly used as an arsenal. But Mary Queen of Scots took refuge here to give birth, in a tiny wood-panelled room whose panels are vividly painted to commemorate the events: before her baby was a year old she was forced to abdicate and he became James VI, later James I of England. In all, the castle suffered 13 attacks, culminating in the ' Lang Siege' when the garrison held out for nearly two years in support of the deposed Mary Queen of Scots. Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 was the last to test defences - the castle held out easily - but in the face of the Napoleonic threat the vast New Barracks was built in 1799, large enough to hold 600 troops. In the event the castle never needed to defend itself against the French - its vaults held prisoners of war instead.
Soldier still guard the castle, but the besieging hordes turned into tourist as Victorians went wild for 'auld' Scotland. Walter Scott dashingly searched the castle for the crown jewels and masterminded its tartan-and-bagpipes image. With gatehouse and great hall restored in baronial style and the One O'clock Gun set up on the ramparts, the annual Military Tattoo on the Esplanade has cemented Edinburgh's status as Scotland's top castle.
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| Military Tattoo |
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| Edinburgh Castle |
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| Edinburgh Castle |
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Destination 5 - Hagia Sophia, Turkey, Istanbul
East meets west in Byzantium, also known as Constantinople and Istanbul. Perhaps the main meeting point is the Hagia Sophia, which has variously been an eastern Orthodox Cathedral, a roman catholic cathedral, an imperial mosque and a secular museum. The clutter of names around a building also known as Sancta Sapienti, Aya Sofya and Magna Ecclesia result from a culture and architectural clutter sometimes willed by existing incumbents, sometimes introduced by new ones. Its instigator, Emperor Justinian, plundered building materials from throughout the Byzantine Empire. Hellenistic columns came from the nearby Temple of Artemis and Corinthian columns were shipped from Lebanon along with green marble from Macedonia, black stone from Bulgaria, yellow stone from Syria and porphyry from Egypt.
Walls and ceilings were covered on gold mosaics revealing God's holy fire surrounded by lords and ladies, young lovers, shoals of leaping fish, ecstatic musicians and choirs, solemn saints and soaring angels. Justinian declared ' Solomon, I have outdone you,' and the Hagia Sophia remained the largest temple in the world until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. By then, the building was a mosque and many of its mosaic had been plastered over, in accordance with the Islamic ban on figurative images. At ground level, most of what now confronts the visitor is still Islamic. Higher up, Orthodox Christian iconography is being uncovered. Maintaining balance of religious, restorative and conservation interest is most difficult in the dome, where Islamic calligraphy overlays an Orthodox picture of Christ.
The 30 m diameters dome is uncluttered in form, and what was without precedent when Hagia Sophia was built in the sixth century remains utterly extraordinary. It is monument of unageing intellect, designed by physicist and mathematician who between them realized the world's first pendentive dome. The elegance is augmented by an arcade of 40 windows around the dome's base from which, in a way that invokes a spiritual responses regardless of creed, light diffuses through the whole building and makes the dome seem to hover above the nave. Hagia Sophia now hovers above religious divides. A museum administered by a secular state, this monument to wisdom has somehow overarched the vicissitudes of time, volcanic eruption and violent regime change.
Walls and ceilings were covered on gold mosaics revealing God's holy fire surrounded by lords and ladies, young lovers, shoals of leaping fish, ecstatic musicians and choirs, solemn saints and soaring angels. Justinian declared ' Solomon, I have outdone you,' and the Hagia Sophia remained the largest temple in the world until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. By then, the building was a mosque and many of its mosaic had been plastered over, in accordance with the Islamic ban on figurative images. At ground level, most of what now confronts the visitor is still Islamic. Higher up, Orthodox Christian iconography is being uncovered. Maintaining balance of religious, restorative and conservation interest is most difficult in the dome, where Islamic calligraphy overlays an Orthodox picture of Christ.
The 30 m diameters dome is uncluttered in form, and what was without precedent when Hagia Sophia was built in the sixth century remains utterly extraordinary. It is monument of unageing intellect, designed by physicist and mathematician who between them realized the world's first pendentive dome. The elegance is augmented by an arcade of 40 windows around the dome's base from which, in a way that invokes a spiritual responses regardless of creed, light diffuses through the whole building and makes the dome seem to hover above the nave. Hagia Sophia now hovers above religious divides. A museum administered by a secular state, this monument to wisdom has somehow overarched the vicissitudes of time, volcanic eruption and violent regime change.
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| Inside Hagia Sophia |
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| Hagia Sophia |
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| Hagia Sophia Dome |
Destination 6 - Alhambra, Spain, Granada
The Alhambra is , in a unifying sense. A hyphenated place. The palace-fort in southern Spain is an Arab-European. Moslem-Christian melting pot. Its sprawl of small interlocking spaces reveals that paradise on earth may not necessarily be a contradiction in terms. An architectural realization of an earth-paradise is what the 14th century Nasrid craftsmen had in mind when they enclosed a complex of domestic buildings within a set of fortifications. Moorish towers looked out over Spain and in on an evolving maze of buildings clustered around quadrangles of varying sizes and joined into a whole with alleyways and sub-courtyards. Everywhere trees and flowers rub against formalized decorative foliage.
Stilt arches, columns, domes and muqarna-stalactite ceilings give a distinctive non-European feel. Walls and floors are covered with painted tiles of intertwined flowing patterns that echo that architectural complexity and suggest infinity. At the root of Alhambra's geometrical iconography is an Islamic conception of divine order. It follows the Mudejar style, which saw Western ideas influencing Arabic craftsmen who worked in isolation from the rest of Islam. The culture mix changed when eight centuries of Muslim rule over Granada ended in 1492. By 1527 Charles V has inserted a Renaissance palace, beginning a process of Italianate revisions that continued until Philips V's death in 1746. Spain's empire then dwindled and the Alhambra was neglected until 19th century.
A highlight of the complex is the Court of the Lions, a quadrangle where a central fountains play into an alabaster basin resting on the back of a dozen marbles lions. Galleries and pavilions enclose a space that seems under the benign guard of 124 slender columns. Blue and yellow tiled walls are framed in enamelled blue and gold. Colour and light defines the Alhambra. An unnamed Arab poet describe the exterior walls surrounding woodland as 'a pearl set in emeralds' and there is a kaleidoscopic richness to its appearance.
Stilt arches, columns, domes and muqarna-stalactite ceilings give a distinctive non-European feel. Walls and floors are covered with painted tiles of intertwined flowing patterns that echo that architectural complexity and suggest infinity. At the root of Alhambra's geometrical iconography is an Islamic conception of divine order. It follows the Mudejar style, which saw Western ideas influencing Arabic craftsmen who worked in isolation from the rest of Islam. The culture mix changed when eight centuries of Muslim rule over Granada ended in 1492. By 1527 Charles V has inserted a Renaissance palace, beginning a process of Italianate revisions that continued until Philips V's death in 1746. Spain's empire then dwindled and the Alhambra was neglected until 19th century.
A highlight of the complex is the Court of the Lions, a quadrangle where a central fountains play into an alabaster basin resting on the back of a dozen marbles lions. Galleries and pavilions enclose a space that seems under the benign guard of 124 slender columns. Blue and yellow tiled walls are framed in enamelled blue and gold. Colour and light defines the Alhambra. An unnamed Arab poet describe the exterior walls surrounding woodland as 'a pearl set in emeralds' and there is a kaleidoscopic richness to its appearance.
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| Court of the Lions |
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| Alhambra |
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| inside Alhambra |
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