|soblushed| in United States of America

Thursday, April 19, 2012

casa Loma

Today, some apartment therapy! This will be the last set of photos from Canada, ok? This time a Gothic Revival style residence that is now a museum and a landmark of Toronto. The house was owned by Sir Henry Mill Pellatt: a financier, soldier and wealthy man.

So picture this: the house (or should I say castle!) cost approximately $3.5 million and took a team of 300 workers and three years (1911-1914) to build from start to finish. It has 98 rooms, 5 acres of gardens...and an underground tunnel connecting to the hunting lodge and to the stables (garage, potting shed, stalls, carriage room and tack rooms). God!

As you can imagine, this guy hosted the best parties ever!! And more than social events, the Pellatt's were involved in a number of philanthropic projects. Chic!

Unfortunately, Sir Henry Pellatt started to have problems in sustaining the magic of Casa Loma. Tu ru ru After the World War I the economy collapsed, leading to the bankruptcy and they went back to the countryside.

As a curiosity, Casa Loma has been a popular location for movies and TV sets such as X-Men, Chicago and temporarily transformed into Hogwarts for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Amazing!

I hope you like the photos!

kiss,kiss

JB*

PS: Oh! Sir Henry was so chic and tasteful that he imported artisans from Europe to design much of the furniture. ;)

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Street art :: making of

Thursday, April 12, 2012

THE baseball game

Baseball is a sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond. This is the idea of baseball, right? As you know, this game is very popular here in the USA so it was definitely in my list of things to do. ;) (Just as a curiosity, did you know that baseball is pretty huge in Japan and Cuba too?)

We went to Washington DC last Tuesday to see the Nationals vs. the Boston Red Sox (Red Sox won 7-8). It was sooo cool! The game begun at 3pm and the weather was perfect. The stadium is really nice and the blossom trees made the perfect picture...so DC style!

Just to make sure we're on the same page, the team with more runs at the end of nine innings is the winner, which means that it doesn’t have a restrict time, like soccer for ex. (the longest game in professional baseball history took about 8h ;)). So, going to a baseball game is just A THING: people go there to see the game and also to enjoy the day with their friends and family. Yes! Everyone is there! The food court is pretty nice full of hotdogs and beer; there is a small playground for the kids, different lounge areas… So I think is not so boring like some people may argue. Plus, there is a lot of little breaks between half-innings with special cheers and animations. And one of the more entertaining aspects are the “entrance songs” chosen by the players.

Check my photos to understand what I'm talking about ;).

kiss, kiss

JB*

PS: The game took 3h.