With some direction from a friend we have made during our stay at Manatee Hammock, we visited the grounds of the White Sands Buddhist Center north of Mims. It’s tucked away in an oak woods with no indication from the road of the treasure that lies within. Signs along the driveway guide you to a sense of peace and then you see the huge statue of the seated Compassionate Buddha. A walk around the reflecting pond takes you past a reclining Buddha around to the standing Buddha flanks by columns reminding us that “The Way to Nirvana is Nirvana” and “Every Step of the Journey is the Journey.” This calm and peaceful experience is just what we are in need of in the moment.
Ever since its debut on Broadway the two of us have wanted to see “Wicked the Musical”. Today we realized that dream. In the Apollo Victoria Theater in London’s West End we were witness to the incredible prequel to The Wizard of Oz, the story of the Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.
London’s National Portrait Gallery’s temporary exhibition, “Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens” presents an amazing collection of portraits, jewelry, personal effects, books, costumes, and more to illustrate not only the lives of the six women who married the second Tudor king, but the effort across five centuries to keep their memory alive.
The purpose of our trek to Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham in the southwest of London was to see a recently recovered bronze bust of the Emperor Caligula but we discovered so much more in the recently restored 18th Century “little Gothic castle” built by Horace Walpole.
0 Comments