Toronto Living Shangri-La Toronto | 214.57m | 66s | Westbank | James Cheng

Toronto has always had its own evolving architectural style, right from the earliest days when the first buildings in the Old Town formed a less homogeneous whole, stylistically, than American towns of the same time.
 
Diamond's Four Seasons Centre has a five floor horseshoe-shaped auditorium based on the traditional European opera house model, with a proscenium arch. His smaller Harman Hall, Washington, is a very different classical theatre space - one balcony, extremely flexible and adaptable to a proscenium or thrust or arena stage depending on the vision of the director, and able to accommodate chamber music and jazz concerts. It is second theatre, an addition to an existing theatre building. It does not sit on a full city block like the Four Seasons Centre, but fits, mid-block, between existing buildings.
 
At lunch today there appeared to be some green hoarding and a party tent up at the Shangri-la site. I didn't walk down to investigate.
 
It was there last week during the AIDS conference. I didn't have time to go in, but they had recreated an African village to show the lives of children living with the disease. Perhaps it is held over.
 
See? These are the things I miss when I take off to be by the ocean for a week.
 
Well, you know, in August all self respecting wasps migrate to the shore, the better to wear their assorted lobster embroidered outfits.
 
In 36 years here I've never been to any of our seashores. How shameful.

My Shangri-La is still the wild, lonely and marshy north west coast of Norfolk, with vast sandy beaches, small seaside villages, windmills, and stately homes such as Holkham, Blickling and Felbrigg. Vaughan-Williams's Norfolk Rhapsody and In The Fen Country capture it beautifully.

I am drawn back twice a year. If I had time I'd take in London too, but it isn't a priority any more.
 
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin' through Kashmir.

physical-graffiti.jpg
 
And from when I was 16 ...

Put on your slippers and sit by the fire
You've reached your top and you just can't get any higher
You're in your place and you know where you are
In your Shangri-La

-The Kinks.
 
Oh, that World Vision tent was being dismantled today. (Just tardy relative to the AIDS conference.)
My Shangri-La is still the wild, lonely and marshy north west coast of Norfolk, with vast sandy beaches, small seaside villages, windmills, and stately homes such as Holkham, Blickling and Felbrigg. Vaughan-Williams's Norfolk Rhapsody and In The Fen Country capture it beautifully.
Click to expand...

Isn't Hunstanton in those environs too?
smithsonshunstanton2.jpg
 
Indeed it is. And Holkham Hall, one of England's finest Palladian homes, is a few miles to the east.

Once you ignore London, and the cluster of secondary cities that have become popular, there is much to see and do in rural England.
 
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