This year’s holiday light display in central Madrid is designed to take spectators on a visual trip to the moon as they walk or ride along the Gran Via. Created by Brut Deluxe Studio, the repeating motif is a sequence of thirty-one lunar images. The only way to experience the effect of the light show is to travel the entire length of the installation, which will be in place until January 6, 2015.
For the second year, Hello Wood, an art/architecture/design project, has built a special Christmas tree in the heart of Budapest near Deák tér. Constructed of 5,000 pieces of firewood, and illuminated by specially designed lighting from Philips Hungary, the impressive tree stands 11 meters tall and is 4.5 meters wide. It also features a chapel-like interior with log bench seating. On January 6,2015, the tree will be dismantled and the firewood distributed by a local charity group.
The Chicago Transit Authority is getting into the holiday spirit again this year with the wildly popular Holiday Train!. Santa and his elves ride the train passing out candy canes and season’s greetings.
The spectacular train is an amazing sight – during the daytime and at night. The outside of the six-car train is adorned with holiday seasonal images. Thousands of twinkling lights outline the shape of the train and windows, with even more lights running across the tops of the cars.
Interiors of the cars are decked out with thousands of multi-colored lights, red bows, garland, and red and green overhead lighting. The hand poles are wrapped to look like candy canes.
As the train pulls into each station, Santa waves to the boarding passengers from his sleigh on an open-air flatcar carrying his reindeer and decorated holiday trees.
Are you having trouble choosing last minute book gifts ? Well the New York Public Library has created a Holiday Book List Generator to help you out. The app covers a wide range of subjects: Architecture, Cooking, Dance, Gardening, Music, Photography, Sports, Theater, Travel and Wine in fiction and nonfiction. You can give it a spin right here: link
London-based photographer Simon Brown’s wonderful show The Weight of Knowledge just closed at New York City’s Benrubi Gallery, but here are a few images from the exhibition that are sure to warm any bibliophile’s heart on a cold winter’s day.
all images © Simon Brown
In case you needed another reason to visit Paris this holiday season, the Bibliothèque Nationale has opened a special exhibition to showcase treasures from its enormous collection. E’loge de la rareté: Cent trésors de la Réserve des livres presents one hundred works selected from thousands added to the collections over the last two decades. Designed to encourage the general public to visit the library, the exhibition includes incunabula, artists’ books, rare proof copies, children’s books, first editions and scandalous publications such as Fleur du Mal. The show runs until February at the François Mitterand branch.
Finding a hotel room anywhere near the exact location that you want to stay can be problematic. But now Scandic, Scandinavia’s biggest hotel chain, will bring a fully kitted-out hotel room to you. Just pick the spot where you’d like to spend the night and Scandic To Go will deliver a pop-up hotel to you.
The specially-built mobile hotel rooms come complete with two beds, bathroom facilities, linens, robes and a terrace. There’s even free breakfast and wifi.
To date, the personal hotel rooms have been placed in Stockholm, southern Sweden and beside a lake in Finland. I think that I want mine delivered to a perch above the Geirangerfjord in Norway. If you’d like to choose your perfect spot, visit the website and enter the contest to win your own pop-up hotel.
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