Xalapa - or Jalapa, officially Xalapa-Enríquez, is the capital city of the Mexican state of Veracruz and the name of the surrounding municipality. In the 2005 census the city reported a population of 387,879 and the municipality of which it serves as municipal seat reported a population of 413,136. The municipality has an area of 118.45 km2. Xalapa lies near the geographic center of the state and is the second-largest city in the state after the city of Veracruz to the southeast.

Yankee Tavern (is a historic sports bar and restaurant, arguably the oldest in The Bronx, that has been serving patrons continuously since 1927. One block from Yankee Stadium, we have been a watering hole for Yankees fans, locals, and tourists for almost a century. Family owned since 1927, the Yankee Tavern was once a watering hole for Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, and Babe Ruth (who was known to buy a round after the game). These days the extensive surf-turf-and-pasta menu draws a crowd of regulars (middle-aged fans and nearby courthouse employees) and home game goers. At the long bar in front, chow down on some grub while listening to music from the jukebox or watch the game on flat screen TVs; in the narrow backroom, art deco lights gleam off the pressed-tin ceiling, while cherry-colored wood chairs tucked under tables share real estate with banquettes painted bomber blue. Every bit of wall space pays homage to the home team: players' posters, photos of Joltin' Joe and Jason Giambi, even a bat signed by Berra over the bar. On game days, when hours are often extended, dear-departed Yankee fanatic Freddy Sez is known to stop by to bang his shamrock-adorned frying pan, too)

There's also one in Minnesota but doesn't have the rich history the one in New York has................

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Zephyrhills, Florida - is a city in Pasco County, Florida, United States. The population was counted at 17,194 in the 2020 census. It is a suburb of the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Statistical Area. Zephyrhills is also known as the headquarters of the Zephyrhills bottled water company and is a member of Tree City USA. Zephyrhills began as the town of Abbott on April 18, 1888, and consisted of 280.74 acres. A voting district was established in 1893 followed by a post office in 1896. In 1909, Captain Howard B. Jeffries, a Civil War Union veteran from Pennsylvania, purchased 35,000 acres and created the Zephyrhills Colony Company with a plan to create a community for Civil War veterans. In 1910 the town voted to change its name to Zephyrhills; it was incorporated in 1914. The city created a historic district in 1999; in 2001 the Zephyrhills Historic District was nominated for and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A Founders Day celebration is held annually in March.

Round 5.......................

Arctic SnowHotel and Glass Igloos (is one of the biggest Snowhotels in the world, and carved from snow and ice each year, and each SnowHotel is designed to be different to earlier years. SnowHotel provides unique rooms and unforgettable nights surrounded by snow and ice. The igloo’s decorated ice rooms are kept at a cool 23 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to -5 degrees Celsius). You won’t feel the chill when tucked inside your thermal sleeping bag. And, thanks to the electric lights, the rooms have a warming glow. The snow igloos have glass roofs that offer breathtaking 360-degree views of the sky. When the northern lights make an appearance, an alarm system notifies guests that this magical phenomenon is visible. With heated floors, an ensuite bathroom, and a motorized bed that changes position, you’ll be kept comfy and cozy your whole trip. The property features an ice bar and three restaurants that serve traditional Lappish meals. Feast on braised Arctic Ocean salmon, savory mushroom soup, and succulent roast elk. Breakfast is included in your room price and served in the heated Log Restaurant. A Finnish sauna experience is also included in your room rate)

FYI: From my Architecture topic folder

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Calling it a night........................

Yeah, as soon as I saw the title I knew that was from your "Architecture" folder.

Buckingham Palace - is a London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the center of state occasions and royal hospitality. It has been a focal point for the British people at times of national rejoicing and mourning. Originally known as Buckingham House, the building at the core of today's palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703 on a site that had been in private ownership for at least 150 years. It was acquired by King George III in 1761 as a private residence for Queen Charlotte and became known as The Queen's House. During the 19th century it was enlarged by architects John Nash and Edward Blore, who constructed three wings around a central courtyard. Buckingham Palace became the London residence of the British monarch on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.

The last major structural additions were made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the East Front, which contains the well-known balcony on which the royal family traditionally appears to greet crowds. A German bomb destroyed the palace chapel during the Second World War; the Queen's Gallery was built on the site and opened to the public in 1962 to exhibit works of art from the Royal Collection. The original early-19th-century interior designs, many of which survive, include widespread use of brightly colored scagliola and blue and pink lapis, on the advice of Sir Charles Long. The palace has 775 rooms, and the garden is the largest private garden in London. The state rooms, used for official and state entertaining, are open to the public each year for most of August and September and on some days in winter and spring.

Aerial view of Buckingham Palace during Queen Elizabeth II's official 90th birthday celebrations in 2016. The principal façade, the East Front, was originally completed in 1850, and was remodeled in 1913 by Aston Webb.

 Buckingham Palace, c. 1710

Elizabeth II's final appearance on the balcony during Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022

YouTube

Inside The $5 Billion Buckingham Palace

Inside The $5 Billion Buckingham Palace

This video below is an animation of the palace and doesn't show the real thing. However, it does a good job of explaining what is what in the palace.

YouTube

What's inside of Buckingham Palace?

Buckingham Palace is in London and its the home to the Queen and to the Royal Family. In this video I show you as much as I can about the interior of the bu...

g

Would love to visit one of those Ice Hotels, there are a few around the world....................

Cornhole ((also known regionally as sack toss, or bags) is a lawn game popular in North America in which players or teams take turns throwing fabric bean bags at a raised, angled board with a hole in its far end. The goal of the game is to score points by either landing a bag on the board (one point) or putting a bag through the hole (three points). The game was first described in Heyliger de Windt's 1883 patent for "Parlor Quoits" displays most of the features of modern cornhole, but with a square hole instead of a round one. Quoits is a game similar to horseshoes, played by throwing steel discs at a metal spike. De Windt's patent followed several earlier "parlor quoits" patents that sought to recreate quoit gameplay in an indoor environment. His was the first to use bean bags and a slanted board with a hole as the target. He sold the rights to the game to a Massachusetts toy manufacturer that marketed a version of it under the name "Faba Baga." Unlike modern cornhole, which has one hole and one size of bags, a Faba Baga board had two different-sized holes, worth different point values, and provided each player with one extra-large bag per round, which could score double points. In September 1974, Popular Mechanics magazine published an article written by Carolyn Farrell about a similar game called "Bean-bag Bull's-eye." Bean-bag bull's-eye was played on a board the same width of modern cornhole boards (24"), but only 36" long as opposed to the 48" length used in cornhole. The hole was the same diameter (6") but was centered 8" (rather than 9") from the back of the board. Each player threw two bags, weighing eight ounces each, "in succession." The boards in bean-bag bull's-eye were placed "about 30 ft. apart for adults, 10 ft. for kids." Scoring was essentially the same as that used in cornhole (three points for a bag in the hole, one point for a bag remaining on the board) and also used cancellation scoring. In the Chicago area, a similar game is referred to as "bags," but uses rectangular bags. The game spread in Chicago, Illinois, and the Northwest region of Indiana in the late 1970s and early 1980s, perhaps due to the Popular Mechanics article mentioned above. Cornhole as it is now known originated and gained popularity on Cincinnati's west side (near Ferguson Avenue) in the 1980s and spread to surrounding areas in Kentucky and Southeast Indiana)

This game is popular in my neck of the woods...........was also in my Summer topic folder

I apologize in advance, but this was too funny.................

Calling it a night........................

Love that last cartoon! 

Robert Dugoni - is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle, which has sold more than 8 million books worldwide. He is also the author of The Charles Jenkins espionage series, the David Sloane legal thriller series, and  several stand-alone novels including The 7th Canon, Damage Control, and the literary novels, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell - Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, for which Dugoni’s narration won an AudioFile Earphones Award and the critically acclaimed, The World Played Chess; as well as the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Several of his novels have been optioned for movies and television series. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction and a three-time winner of the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He has also been a finalist for many other awards including the International Thriller Award, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Silver Falchion Award for mystery, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award. Dugoni studied at Stanford University where he received writing awards. He worked as a reporter for The Stanford Daily and briefly for the Metro Office and the San Gabriel Valley Office of Los Angeles Times. He began and completed law studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, then practiced as a prosecutor in San Francisco. In 1998, he decided to devote himself to writing.

Comment: I have read all but the last book of his Tracy Crosswhite series ... nine books total. I have also read The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell which was excellent. He's one of those authors that you know the book will always be good.

Egeskov Castle (is located near Kværndrup, in the south of the island of Funen, Denmark. The castle is Europe's best preserved Renaissance water castle. Egeskov was first mentioned in 1405. The castle structure was erected by Frands Brockenhuus in 1554. Due to the troubles caused by the civil war known as the Count's Feud (Danish: Grevens fejde), general civil unrest, and a civil war introducing the Protestant Reformation, most Danish noblemen built their homes as fortifications. The castle is constructed on oaken piles and located in a small lake with a maximum depth of 5 metres (16 ft). Originally, the only access was by means of a drawbridge. According to legend, it took an entire forest of oak trees to build the foundation, hence the name Egeskov (oak forest). The estate has belonged to the Bille-Brahe family since 1784, when they acquired it from descendants of the Brockenhuus family. In 1882 it was inherited by the counts Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille, who still own it)

FYI: From my Around the World topic folder

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Frogmore Cottage - is a historic Grade II listed home on the Frogmore estate, which is part of Home Park in Windsor, England. Built in 1801 at the direction of Queen Charlotte in the gardens near Frogmore House, Frogmore Cottage is part of the Crown Estate, the monarch's public estate. The cottage became the residence of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the United Kingdom in 2019 and was their primary residence before they moved to Montecito, California in the United States. In March 2023, an agent of the couple said that they had been requested to vacate it. In 2020, Frogmore Cottage was described as a 5,089 sq ft, four bedroom and nursery, four bathroom single-residence Grade-II listed house. Before renovation, it had 10 bedrooms. During renovations two orangeries, a vegetable garden, and a yoga studio were also developed. The couple most recently spent time at the cottage in 2022, when they came to the UK to attend the late Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations. They also hosted their daughter Lilibet’s first birthday there.

The cottage in 1872

YouTube

Here's How Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Renovated Frogmore Cottage

Here's How Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Renovated Frogmore Cottage. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/9TE-t7nhjVY #MeghanMarkle #PrinceHarr...

Gaslighting (is the subjective experience of having one's reality repeatedly questioned by another. A colloquialism, the term derives from the title of the 1944 American film Gaslight, which was based on the 1938 British theatre play Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton, though the term did not gain popular currency in English until the mid-2010s. A 2022 Washington Post report described it as a "trendy buzzword" that is "often used incorrectly by people referring to simple disagreements [...] that don’t meet gaslighting’s historical definition", leading to expert concerns about the term becoming diluted)

The term derives from the title of the 1944 American film Gaslight, a remake of the 1940 British film of the same name, which in turn is based on the 1938 thriller play Gas Light. Set among London's elite during the Victorian era, it portrays a seemingly genteel husband using lies and manipulation to isolate his heiress wife and persuade her that she is mentally unwell so that he can steal from her. The title refers to the gas lighting of the house, which seems to waver whenever the husband leaves his wife alone at home. The term "gaslighting" itself is neither in the screenplay nor mentioned in the film in any context.......................

was Word of the Year in 2022.............

Calling it a night...........................