St Petersburg & Moscow

Rafael did this

This has bubbled up to the surface again as I am currently trying to compile the photobook (or as the older generation would have it an 'album') from our long trip to China... so where were we? Oh yes. From Helsinki we took the train to St Petersburg and then onwards to Moscow, spending a few days in each place...

Lego Castles

http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/230059
Ever since I was a kid with a book on castles, I've always had a yen to visit Krak des Chevaliers in Syria, arguably the greatest castle ever built. And today Google suggested "Krak des Chevaliers LEGO"...



... holy crap.

I poked around a little more on the site, and mostly it's pretty... well, fictional and boring (although the siege reenactment from Lord of the Rings looked impressive). But my favourites are definitely the real-life scale models, which require a bit of ingenuity to get the details right. Check out the Belfry:


That's in Bruges, you know. There's some great little details which you can see in the full Flickr set.

Man Goes on Junket to Avery Island, tastes Tabasco sauce. That's it, really.

http://www.doshermanos.co.uk/2011/03/tabasco-getting-saucy-on-avery-island.html
You have to scroll a long way down to get to the story itself, but when you get there I found it quite diverting.

Rotterdam villa collides with mirror, attractive result

Not for anyone with a thing for rounded curves, this... but wow it sure is pretty. The architects claim that all they did was establish the corners of the maximum allowed envelope and join them up, but I've never seen it done like this!


The architects are a firm called Ooze - which makes me think of blobby, amoeba-like stuff rather than than a farmhouse seen through a smashed mirror. If you can stomach their pretentious website, there are a few interesting pictures of the works in progress.