In Manitou Springs, a place perched on the edge of a mountain and history, you’ll discover an enchanting, colorful rendition of the 19th century. The extra flair is for the tourists’ benefit. There are boutiques and museums that showcase local designers and artists, pottery shops featuring Native American craftsmanship, and fun places for kids. All of this is brushed with a sugary mix of hemp, hippies, and mysticism. Whether in for the day to ride the Cog Railway up Pike’s Peak or passing through Colorado Springs, there are hours of enjoyment to be had in this little town.

​In 1887, J.G. Hiestand built what is known today as the Iron Springs Chateau Melodrama Dinner Theater. From its origins as a candy and cigar store in 1880, the operation changed owners a number of times before the Iron Springs Company purchased it and began to use the venue to sell mineral water commercially. 

Satisfy your taste for old-school (cash only) at Mo's Diner & Lounge with its eclectic 1940s decor and friendly staff. Serving good traditional food, they specialize in generous, classic breakfasts, burgers, meatloaf, biscuits and gravy, and some Mexican dishes, like burritos and green chili. Nothing fancy and prices to match. A warm family atmosphere with lots of locals.

For some more adult refreshment, the Ancient Mariner Tavern, built like a ship’s galley, features some rocking local entertainment, often without a cover charge. It boasts a full bar featuring Colorado draught microbrews. It’s a rowdy place and the music is loud – perfect for quenching your thirst after hiking up and down the hilly streets.
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Older than the state of Colorado itself, the walls of the Cliff House have seen history transpire. Once a stagecoach stop and gold rush boarding house, the inn was converted in 1886 to a sophisticated resort hotel capitalizing on the mineral springs in the region. The list of famous guests includes Theodore Roosevelt, P.T. Barnum, and Clark Gable. Food and service are impeccable at this reasonably priced vintage hotel.

The downtown Manitou Outpost has stood on the same spot since its beginnings as a livery stable in the 1800s. By 1913, a cafeteria pavilion showcasing an erupting geyser had replaced the stable. Later, a garage offering both mechanical work and tours of Pikes Peak was built at the site. Souvenirs, homemade fudge, and ice cream are the main attractions these days, along with the Navajo geyser well that is still preserved inside - but has ceased to spout.

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Born in 1932, C. H. Rockey came to Colorado as a young child. First a Marine and then a teacher, Rockey paid his dues before earning a chance to do what he truly loved – paint. He is one of the Pikes Peak region’s finest and least commercial artists. His whimsical images of a Tolkienesque ‘Manidoon’ will charm fantasy lovers the world over.

PATSY’S CANDY The product of an Irish popcorn vendor’s vivid imagination, this family-run business has been churning out delectable confections for decades. Tour the factory in Colorado Springs, where chocolate, taffy, and butterscotch popcorn are still produced using specialized machinery dating to the 1940s or give your kids a taste of the past at their original 930 Manitou Avenue location.  

Right next door, an old-fashioned penny arcade houses an impressive antique and retro collection that includes pinball, coin-operated rides, 1964 skee ball, and the latest video games. Competing in 12-player mechanical horse-racing, you could win a fistful of tickets to exchange for prizes. A sweet treat for all generations, this whimsical spot will tickle your senses and put a smile on your face.

COLORADO, USA

Most of the images treat a similar subject, in this case, a building; if you plug in a picture of a red car, you’ll get mostly red cars parked in the same position. But then it gets more interesting. Looking at the examples, you’ll see that composition and geometry play a significant part, and that each picture has several such elements in common with others. Artists will connect with this immediately: strong perspective views, lighter fields of ‘sky’ or ‘ceiling’, squares, triangles, arches, and blocks of dark that contrast with the pallor of the overall image. ​

Finally, all of these images comes with a story: the Vietnamese village of 30 old French villas, a fleet of floating hotels on the Providence River, some Sci-fi guy who is building a model of a frontier power generator at a plasma plantation, a shop-front in the tiny Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye, where the ratio of bookstores to residents is approximately 1:60… The possibilities for artists, authors and historians are literally endless.

Search by Image does return a list of the instances of a specific image online, much like Reverse Image Search by TinEye, which can assist the user in tracing rights owners or infringements. But it also scans the content of the image using some kind of magical algorithm. And this produces results that will be pleasing to all types of users with infinitely diverse missions. At the very least, it is likely to quench one's curiosity about all those snapshots of unanswered questions that tend to rattle about in an avid traveller's luggage. 

hundred wunders started out as a scrapbook for storing my good memories and doing something useful with the many albums of pictures I've taken over the years. Nothing intense, and much of the time it has simply been a nice place to visit. 

But with patience and dedication, hundred wunders has begun, slowly but surely, to live up to its name. I've been invited to write for travel websites, such as trip.com and GPSmyCity, spent a lot of hours wondering, but best of all, met a whole bunch of incredible people. This fascinating adventure recently inspired me to launch the hundred wunders brand and multiply the iterations of what can be done conceptually with archival photographs taken over the years and all over the world.

hundred wunders' leggings, dresses, scarves, gender-friendly baby clothing, and handmade soaps are all produced locally in Montreal, Canada, which helps to limit our carbon footprint. Our fashionable, eco-friendly leather bags are handmade by small, genuine leather crafters around the world. These manufacturers use vegetable tanning, a traditional process employed to tan leather without chemicals. Each satchel, duffel and backpack is unique, exhibiting its own grain, nuances and scars. The bags will be among the most reasonably priced and beautiful pieces of leather you will ever purchase.

​Who knows what else you'll find, off the beaten track? Welcome, and enjoy! And please, shop! In so doing, you'll be supporting some of the finest lesser-known artists and artisans of the world.

The creations in the hundred wunders collection are inspired by photographs of urban environments, representing otherwise random moments in city time. Each piece is completely original - you will not find either the concept or the designs anywhere else. A far cry from the standard framed print, although I love those too, they capture something precious about each of the strange cities I've travelled, mainly on foot. They are the canvas on which these pieces will live from now on.

​The 'architecture' series is the heart of the project, and it plays upon the notion of where the environment stops and the people start. The process involves transforming a single view of a place at a given moment, with all its qualities and limitations, to create a completely unique article of clothing that is true to that view: a snapshot of the city has been laid across cloth so that it can wrap around your body, making you one with the urban environment.
 

In fact, the Pemaquid-Bristol region looks a lot like Cornwall, very similar to the Fal estuary on the south coast. We even had a boat ride, to see the seals – but no ferry from St. Mawes! Lots of lobster and seafood, including fish and chips!

You don't get many chances to photograph real coal these days!

On our way, we stayed in the mountainous region of Jackson, New Hampshire. There is a funny little steam locomotive at the foot of Mount Washington, still puffing, complete with an engineer in a dirty face and overalls.

We spent one night in Jackson, New Hampshire, had dinner in the pub and listened to a local Irish folk band. The rest of the time was at Hawks House Inn, a comfortable, laid-back B&B near Damariscotta, Maine. The host was large, gregarious and couldn't do enough to make us feel at home, and the inn was busy each day. Breakfast was buffet style laid out on two large tables. Steve, the host, was very proud of his artisanal cereals and bread, all bought at the local farmer's market, he said, as was the selection of fruit. This was ideal for us since we could help ourselves to what we liked. Not having bacon and eggs each morning probably did our figures some good, and every little bit helps these days!

As you can see, the sun shone every day, which apparently is not particularly typical of the coastal region of Maine. While this is about the closest we are to the ocean, it is still almost exactly 600 kilometres away, so not an afternoon's drive.

We were lucky with the weather but here at home, we REALLY need some rain. It has been a consistently hot, dry summer and the gardens have suffered, in our case due to the heat, but also because of the ravages of the plant pests which such hot weather seems to encourage. Sigh! We can't have it all...

GPSmyCity.com publishes iOS and Android apps featuring self-guided city walks in 700+ cities worldwide. Once installed on your GPS-enabled mobile phone or tablet, their apps turn your mobile device into a personal tour guide. With over 5,500 city walks available, GPSmyCity.com is the largest travel portal of its kind. Each city walk offers a precise route map guiding you to the famous attractions, monuments and interesting sights as well as hidden gems; as if you had brought along a local guide. No need to hop on a tour bus or join a tour group!

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With some care, this old kirk may survive to see its 200th birthday. Built in 1836, it is a lesser known, if not unknown, estate belonging to the United Church of Canada (Pastoral Charge of Argenteuil), but it began life as a Presbyterian church.
     Its design is that of a typical Scottish country parish building, and it gets its somewhat offbeat designation from the patron saint and founder of Glasgow, Scotland, who can also boast a cathedral to his name. Located on a beautiful rural site along the Ottawa River, halfway between Grenville and Carillon, St. Mungo's resides in the town of Cushing, Brownsburg-Chatham municipality, Québec. All of this is important to its initial discovery, as well as the fact that the property is on Route 148.
    The drive along the north shore of the Ottawa River is spectacular. Here, local farms are interspersed with forest, and you get the impression that nothing much has changed during the past century. The highway and the occasional marina and campground are really the only modern reference points, until you reach the expansive and impressive Carillon Dam.
      St. Mungo's itself sits sedately back from the main road, about midway between a horse ranch and the water. The lawn spreads out about her like an expansive green skirt, and the few nearby properties keep their distance, not quite daring to climb onto her lap.
     St. Mungo's first pastor, the Reverend William Mair, came to Canada from Glasgow, Scotland, and took charge of the parish in 1833. However, burials can be traced to the grounds as far back as 1800. There are about a hundred graves in the cemetery, and no room for more. The last burial took place in the 1940s, if you do not count a recent minister's wife, who was laid to rest there in the 1990s.

Beginning a study of historic bridges is to embark on a journey that can literally take the traveller all over the world. Many fascinating adventures can be planned by researching and mapping the location of bridges you might wish to explore. When you find one, there is much to be discovered about the bridge itself, from background information about its construction, to its purpose and all of the details that make up its structure.
   Unfortunately, bridges that aren't protected by public institutions such as the National Register of Historic Places risk falling into disrepair, leading generally to demolition. Historic bridges are an endangered resource that require protection and funding for upkeep. Nevertheless, they constitute a surprisingly rich and interesting collection with a mystique that appeals to all generations. Best of all, they are accessible. You don't need a ticket to see a bridge, although you may sometimes have to pay a toll to get to the other side.

The history of bridge building in the world has always been characterized by the quest for better design and strength. The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, opened in 1883, was the first suspension bridge to use steel wire cables instead of iron. Sailors accustomed to high rigging were hired to string the 1,500 suspenders for the deck.
   The risk above the bridge was matched by the danger below. To build the two giant stone towers, timber caissons were sunk deep into the riverbed and filled with concrete by crews of men in air-locked dungeons. Digging until they reached bedrock, some of the workers (dubbed “sand hogs”) were ultimately afflicted by decompression sickness, the same hazard risked by deep-water divers when rising to the surface too quickly. The condition disabled Brooklyn’s engineer, Washington A. Roebling, resulting in the completion of the work by proxy through his wife Emily, also a trained engineer. All told, at least 20 people lost their lives in the 14 years it took to build the Brooklyn Bridge.