World's Best Places to Visit

Los Angeles gets a lot of bad rep.  I tried to counteract preconceived notions with a post where I list 20 things to love about the city. In my previous post, I didn’t feature prominently the Downtown / Civic Center area.  Nevertheless, this neighborhood, delineated by the major freeways, is one of the more exciting parts of the city. After Washington D.C., Los Angeles has the largest concentration of government buildings and employees in the nation. The diversity, vastness, and vibrancy of Downtown give us a good idea of what we can find in the rest of the city.  After all, modern buildings and adobe houses, graffiti and masterpieces, fine dining and street food coexist here. Pictures of Downtown Los Angeles In this post, I try to give you a taste of Downtown in 40 photos.  The scenes are disparate, I know, but for some reason, they go together like pieces of a puzzle. The City Hall This grandiose, 32 story building was completed in 1928.  Over the years, it has been renovated t...

After admiring the 360 degree views from the Chapel of the Holy Cross, we continued moving south along State Route 179 towards one of the most famous spots in the Sedona area:  Bell Rock . Sedona is notorious (mainly) by two things: the red rocks (of course) and the vortexes. According to some New Age practitioners and metaphysics students, vortexes are swirling centers of subtle energy coming out from the surface of the earth. The vortex energy is not exactly electricity or magnetism, although it does leave a slight measurable residual magnetism in the places where it is strongest. It is believed that the energy that exists at these locations interacts with who a person is inside and strengthens the interior. Turns out believers of this phenomenon place one of the Sedona vortexes (there are four or five depending on what source you consult) at (or around) Bell Rock. Because of its accessibility, the spot is flooded by visitors to the area. Some visitors (like me), are just interes...