From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri Mar 14 2003 - 01:56:09 MST
Damien Broderick:
>At 07:03 PM 3/13/03 +0200, Amara wrote:
>>Damn! I thought that this was the true topic!
>>I encourage all other extropes
>>to continue scouring the globe for the finest bare-all vacation
>>spots and report back about your discoveries.
>Damn! I thought Amara'd be posting some pics illustrating her research!
:-)
http://www.amara.com/port/Azulejos@SantiagodoCacem_50.jpg
Well... artistic pictures probably don't count...
[Azulejos are brightly colored decorative ceramic tiles influenced by
the Moorish and Spanish designs before the 16th century. Around the
mid-16th century, the Portuguese developed their own style when a new
Italian method allowed images to be painted onto the clay, rather
than using colored clay. Later, by the 17th century, decadent and
colorful images were all the rage. This azulejos is located at the
Santiago do Cacém Pousada, on the side of the main building as you
enter. Some pictures of the rest of the Pousada can be seen at their
web site:
http://www.portugalvirtual.pt/pousadas/santiago.do.cacem/]
About the Portugal naturist beaches: The Portuguese hospitality
includes welcoming the naturists, and with more kilometers of sandy
beaches than most other European countries, plus a very liberal
attitude, it's perfect for baring all.
My first suggestion for an extropian naturist holiday is along one
of the beaches of the Troja Peninsula, which is about one hundred
kilometers south of Lisboa. There is one naturist beach nearby to
where you exit from the ferry, if you take the ferry across from
Setúbal.
You can see the Troja Peninsula at the far distance of this somewhat
washed out picture I took from the Arrabida cliffs of the area
around Setúbal.
http://www.amara.com/port/arrabidacliffs_50.jpg
These show the fine sand, the blue sky, and the extraordinarily blue
water:
http://www.amara.com/port/sesimbrawall+beach_50.jpg
http://www.amara.com/port/caboderocha_50.jpg
The water is cool, though, along the Portuguese west coast, so it
might be better to find those beaches on the southern Algarve
coast. Sagres is a good location with a beautiful beach, and
there is a naturist beach somewhere nearby to here:
http://www.amara.com/port/SagesBeach&Pousada_50.jpgnuxis
The most southwestern point of the European continent is located
near Sagres at the lighthouse Cabo Sao Vicente. You can stand on the
corner where the Atlantic Ocean meets on three sides. The 'bulb' of
the lighthouse is a very large (several humans high, a couple humans
thick) piece of beveled silicate, as finely crafted as telescope
glass, and extremely powerful: it can shine 90 km once every 5 sec.
http://www.amara.com/port/CaboVicente2_20.jpg
The history of the area is tremendous. It was in Sagres, that the
Infante D. Henrique, Prince Henry the Navigator, in the 15th
century, came to work on his obsession to push back the frontiers of
the known world, which opened the unique phase in Portuguese history
called 'The Discoveries'. Columbus had his beginnings there too...
http://www.amara.com/port/HenryNavSchool.jpg
[He was 24 years old when by one of those quirks of fate, Columbus
ended up on the doorstep of the Sagres school of navigation. He was
with an armed convoy on its way from Genoa to England in May 1476
when it was attacked by pirates off Cape St Vincent. His ship went
down in the ensuing fight and, though wounded, he managed to escape
by swimming six miles to shore. How long Christopher Columbus spent
in the Algarve is not known. He is said to have spent some time
recuperating in Lisbon, a city he came to know well. In 1478, he
sailed from Lisbon to Portuguese Madeira as a buying agent for a
major Genoese company. The following year he married the daughter of
the governor of the island of Porto Santo in the Madeira group. That
was where their only child, a son, was born. It was only after
sailing to the Portuguese trading post of Soo Jorge da Mina on the
Gold Coast (now Ghana) that Columbus got a real taste for
exploration, as opposed to mere business travel. It was then that
the notion of voyaging westward to find new lands took hold of him
and became all consuming. Only after the death of his wife, Dona
Filipa, did Columbus leave his adopted country (Portugal) with his
son, Diego, to seek sponsorship for his proposals from King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. A deal was agreed after seven
years of wrangling. And thus it was under the Spanish, rather than
the Portuguese flag that he discovered the New World.]
Amara
and her faithful steed:
http://www.amara.com/port/parkedbike@Sines_50.jpg
(This is a small extract from a 22 page story I wrote
about this bike trip.)
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known." -- Isaac Asimov
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