Whistler In Canada Is The Number 1 Rated Ski Resort

Yes, it's true: for the last 8 years Whistler in Canada is rated number one ski resort in North America. You have to know that Whistler Blackomb is the official Alpine Skiing Venue for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

There are 2 mountains: Blackcomb and Whistler Mountain, 2284 and 2182 metres high, open for skiing from November till April and later. Out there is uncontaminated nature just some steps away from the Village. This place is still home to bears, cougars, deer, rabbits, birds and fish. So, everybody who loves outdoor activities can enjoy recreation programs for tourists.

Remembering all this you maybe plan a visit in Whistler. In this case you can book your Whistler accommodation visiting Holiday Whistler, a vacation rental company. You will find not only wide variety of properties for rent all year round. Holiday Whistler offers you different services from transfer from airport, breakfast and ski-passes waiting for you, till massages, ski-school and even heli-skiing and snowmobiling. You have only to decide what do you plan this time you visit Whistler.

The navigation of the site is very easy. Use Whistler lodging search engine to explore the wide selection of properties or maybe call them and allow them to find the ideal rental for you.

Every property has it's page in the site of the company.
As example we will visit now Benchlands Gleneagles 7 where we find a description, a great quantity of photos - even videos in other cases, and the most important is that you can directly check if this property is available for the period you are interested in.

If you look for Olympic accomodation, you have to call the team to see what they can do for you.

Mausolei Of Gens Cornelia And Gens Lutatia

In these posts we are visiting places of interest for tourists in Nocera Superiore in Province of Salerno:
First part Roman Necropolis Of Nocera Superiore
Second Part Mausoleum of Gens Numisia

In these posts we are visiting the places of interest in Province of Salerno, Italy.
Next part of our trip in the history of Nuceria Constantia demonstrates us the very great importance of this town in the region. It's enough to remember the names of the families who lived there in that period.

On the photo here you see mausoleum of gens Cornelia. Follow my advise, click on the photo and see it in the original size to have right impression. Now imagine that on the right and on the left ledge there are statues of lying lions that protect peace of the persons buried there. And there is the upper part of this building with the cupola.

Well, you have to know that gens Cornelia was one of the 100 original families of Rome. This is an other monument remembering us about the most important families of Rome.
Gens Lutatia was a family of plebeian origins, but in 242 bC one of it's members, Gaius Lutatius Catulus, won Carthaginian fleet and later they had other heroes, so in the I centurty bC this family was very important.

This mausoleum was built to bury "a 17-years old boy of noble origins that had splendid future for him and was more beautiful as a god, but the goddesses of freshwater, Naiads, took him with them".

This photo is from Nymphs

This other monument I did not know what family belongs to . It seems it has to be built after the eruption of 79 dC. There is not so much information about other parts of Necropolis. This monument was burried to preserve it's down part, I think.

The down part of the street was filled up with ashes by the eruption of Vesuvio and floods. The upper part of these monuments was visible and people used stones and statues to create latest burial places.

Mausoleum of Gens Numisia

First part Roman Necropolis Of Nocera Superiore

So, I began to tell you about Necropolis of Pizzone in Nocera Superiore. This second post is about one of the families that lived in that town.

Gens Numisia, so far I found in internet, was an etruscan family. There are their burial places in Pompei (that town ws 2 times more little as Nuceria) and not far from Latina. There is even a sort of vine that has their name. This family had to be very important in Nuceria because they built this enormous mausoleum 12 meters in diameter that was inspired by the mausoleum of Augustus in Rome.

This photo is from Wikipedia

On this photo (down) you see how big it is when you are near it.
We wanted to enter inside the monument and... I was surprized because I could not imagine what I will see inside. Only a very narrow corridor, about 1,5 meter large circular place in center of the building with 8 little niches for cinerary urns and 2 buriing signs in the other end of the corridor.

I did not understand the why of this enormous building. Maybe the archaeologists could not understand it too, because they tryed to open the wall but there is nothing as the wall there.





3 part Mausoleums Of Gens Cornelia And Gens Lutatia

Roman Necropolis Of Nocera Superiore

I told you before, that the director of our Archaeological Group of Salerno asked me to organize for our members a visit to the Necropolis of Pizzone in Nocera Superiore where I live. The problem with this archaeological excavation is that it's always close. Normally, these places are open by the volunteers of archaeological groups, but the Archeoclub of Nocera Inferiore has not enough members, I think. And there are too many interesting and historically important monuments. So I offered myself to be a guide for the "Open Doors" manifestation and the problem was solved for me.

Unfortunatelly I had only 2 days for preparation before I went to ritrit in Pozzuoli, but I hope I did it good.

Here I want to write some posts about this Necropolis. And the first is about the street where it was built.

Residents of Nuceria Constantia wanted to make special impression on the traveller leaving the town with this Necropolis, I think. They dug 60 meters of the street 3 meters under the country-level. You see the board behind the mausoleums (on the right).

Romans used to bury their deceased around the main roads going out from their towns. These street was very large (10 meters) and divided in 3 parts -it's difficult, but you can see it on the second photo. Near the mausoleums you can see places where the traveller could sit "and meditate about the fate".

We could not see the covering of the street from high, so the first visitors and than I too, we went down and found stones that delimitate boards of the center of roman street. Interesting is that you can not understand how large it is when you look at it from high. Sincerely, I don't know why this street has not the cover of stone blocks. I saw roman streets in different parts of Italy, they were all made from stone blocks. Maybe those were more important streets...

Read more:
2 Part Mausoleum of Gens Numisia
3 Part Mausoleums Of Gens Cornelia And Gens Lutatia

Easy To Book Cheap Hotels All Over The World

Today I wanted to present you a site that can help you to book the best room in a hotel all over the world offering you till 80% discounted prices.

Imagine want to go in Italy. We open "world directory" and click Italy in Europe. Now we have a really great choice between cities, provinces, places of tourist interest and most important informations like airports, conferences, events, train stations and others. I think it's very important information because I had different problems when I looked for train stations to reach some destinations.

So we decide to visit province of Naples in our virtual trip today and want to go to Sorrento. It's the left side peninsula on my photo. First of all it's beautiful little town for those who wants to forget great cities. There are many historical places if you are interested in and beautiful beaches just under the rock where is situated the town. Book your room visiting Sorrento Hotels and relax under the sun of Italy.

It may be that you like extreme emotions in sense of nature and prices, so you have to plan your trip on Capri. It is a rock-island, you can see it on the left of my photo. In times of Roman Empire Tiberio built his palace there. He had his private "pull" in a cavern too. All these you can visit there. I like the cavern where the colour of the water is incredibly azure and you have to lay in the boot to enter inside the cavern. But I like the road to Anacapri that passes in part over the sea too. Choose between Capri Hotels you can find visiting Easytobook.com and enjoy till 80% discounts there.

I understood. You prefere more popular places like Venice. Well, no problem. Visiting Easytobook.com we find Venice Hotels for every pocket. Don't forget to book your room in advance. Believe me, it's really difficult to find cheap hotels when you are in the town. And when you are just there, you have only to think about the beauties of the place and walk, walk and walk.

Spring Music in the Woods

We've been having some fun with the white throated sparrows lately. Greg can whistle the exact song of these sweet little birds. One day while we were enjoying our lunch on the side porch, we heard several sparrows singing in the yard. So he started to sing back. It wasn't long before a couple of them flew to the trees near to us, trying to find this new neighbor they were hearing. I got to see a little one in the white pine by the corner of the porch, and was able to capture a photo while he was singing.

I love how they lift up their little heads and how their little chests puff out while they sing.

Another bird enounter we had was with a pair of killdeer. Our neighbors had been telling us about these birds and their behavior. When we looked it up in the bird book, the description fit them to a T. If they have a nest nearby, they will leave it and make a big show of acting like they have an injured wing. This is to distract the "predator" from the nest. We watched both of the birds do this little act several times for us, and as we retreated, they would get up and then find a new spot to do it again. It was quite a thing to watch. We didn't look for the nest, as we didn't want to disturb any little ones. We did get a few photos and video clips of the adults. I am impressed with how well they blend in to the background scenery.

Last week, Paul spotted an indigo bunting in the birch tree right outside of our window. I had not seen one before, so that was a fun sighting. And finally, on a recent walk on the side road, I heard a lot of chittering noises as I approached a large aspen tree. Looking up, I noticed a small hole, and somebody poking a beak out of it. A mama hairy woodpecker flew out, and went to a neighboring tree to peck for insects. While she was gone, those babies in the tree made such a loud ruckus, I thought for a moment that the tree was shaking. She kept up a steady chirp to them, in between her peckings, but it didn't calm them one little bit. I continued on my walk, but paused again as I passed by on my return. The little ones were still making a fuss, though not as loudly. Evidently, their mama must have found enough bugs to keep them satisfied for a bit.

This time of the year it is a real pleasure to wake up early in the morning. The chorus that greets me is a wonderful reminder that spring is really here.

Good Fishing...and Catching

There's been some serious fishing--and catching--going on in these parts lately! The late spring has kept the water temperature on the cool side, and that means that the fish are still in relatively shallow waters. These good looking lake trout were caught by the Olson Family, and they reported having an excellent time fishing. We heard that the bass are biting also. The mosquitoes are biting, too, and I'm told that means that the walleyes will be hungry. I haven't seen many of those since the week after the ice went out. Hopefully reports for those will start rolling in any day now.

Something else rolled in today instead....a big grey cloud of smoke. Greg and I first noticed it mid-morning, while we were out in a boat. This was my first boat ride of the season, and we went to check out the progress of the cabin-building on the lake. I smelled the smoke before I really noticed it. The wind was coming from the northwest, and the far western end of the lake was looking quite hazy. I asked Greg if he thought that maybe he was going to be called upon to go help fight a fire, but he didn't think so. He said that if this was a fire that was nearby and just starting, we would see a plume of smoke, not a blanket. He said that this was probably someone else's fire. Sure enough, when we got home, we learned that it was actually smoke that had blown down from fires in Manitoba and Ontario. We just happened to be in the path that the wind was blowing. It's been so wet this spring, it would have surprised us if the fire had been close to us.

What I found most interesting, though, was how the scent of that smoke in the wind immediately flooded me with memories of a year ago. I was changing beds in Tamarack cabin, and found myself thinking about doing that same task last year, and I could remember for whom I was getting the cabin ready: On Sunday night, it was for our friend Mark, evacuated from the end of the trail. On Tuesday night, it was another friend named Mark, and his son Nathan, coming up from Duluth to help us set up sprinkler heads. Other cabins were in stages of use for Forest Service personnel, the early waves of people working the fire before all of the staging area was in place. I could remember vivid details of the moments in those days. Maybe my memory isn't failing me as badly as I sometimes think it is! I know that the sense of smell is a powerful reminder, and today reinforced that for me.

As I was sitting this evening and knitting on my current sock project, we noticed how pretty the colors were in the sky. They just happened to coordinate with the colors in my yarn. This is another result of the smoke in the air--it often brings beautiful sunsets.