DESKTOP 2791 - LYON, FRANCE

Lyon, or Lyons, is a city in east-central France, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, about 470 km from Paris and 320 km from Marseille. Inhabitants of the city are called Lyonnais. In 2013, Lyon city had a population of 500,715 and is France’s third-largest city after Paris and Marseille. Lyon is the capital of the department of Rhône and the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The metropolitan area of Lyon had a population of 2,237,676 in 2013, the second-largest in France after Paris.

 

The city is known for its cuisine and gastronomy and historical and architectural landmarks and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Lyon was historically an important area for the production and weaving of silk. It played a significant role in the history of cinema: Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinematographe in Lyon. The city is also known for its famous light festival, Fête des Lumières, which occurs every 8 December and lasts for four days, earning Lyon the title of Capital of Lights

 

.Economically, Lyon is a major centre for banking, as well as for the chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries. The city contains a significant software industry with a particular focus on video games, and in recent years has fostered a growing local start-up sector. Lyon hosts the international headquarters of Interpol, Euronews, and International Agency for Research on Cancer. Lyon was ranked 19th globally and second in France for innovation in 2014. It ranked second in France and 39th globally in Mercer’s 2015 liveability rankings.

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DESKTOP 2763 - QUEENSTOWN NZ

Queenstown (Māori: Tāhuna) is a resort town in Otago in the south-west of New Zealand's South Island. It is built around an inlet called Queenstown Bay on Lake Wakatipu, a long thin Z-shaped lake formed by glacial processes, and has spectacular views of nearby mountains such as The Remarkables, Cecil Peak, Walter Peak and just above the town; Ben Lomond and Queenstown Hill.

 

Queenstown has an urban population of 13,150 (June 2015 estimate), making it the 29th largest urban area in New Zealand, and the third largest urban area in Otago, behind Dunedin and Oamaru. The Queenstown-Lakes District has a land area of 8,704.97 square kilometres not counting its inland lakes (Lake Hāwea, Lake Wakatipu, and Lake Wanaka). The region has an estimated resident population of 32,400 (June 2015 estimate).

 

Its neighbouring towns include Arrowtown, Glenorchy, Kingston, Wanaka, Alexandra, and Cromwell. The nearest cities are Dunedin and Invercargill. Queenstown is now known for its commerce-oriented tourism, especially adventure and ski tourism. It is popular with New Zealand, neighbouring Australian and other international travellers alike.

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DESKTOP - GLOW

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DESKTOP 2462 - SYMI, GREECE

Symi island belongs to the Dodecanese islands complex and lies 24 nautical miles NW of Rhodes and 255 nautical miles from the port of Piraeus. The highest point is Mountain Vigla at 616 metres. The island is very close to the coast of Asia Minor, just 5 miles from Alopos in Turkey. It is not a very big island, only 67 square kilometres. The majority of the land is covered in rocks. Two settlements form the town of Symi: Chorio (Village) and Yalos ( Harbour). Pedi, found in the bay of the same name and Nimporios in the bay of the same name, have a few inhabitants. There is also a big monastery complex, Panormitis, where around 30 people live and take care of the monastery.

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DESKTOP 2406 - PARGA, GREECE

Parga (Greek: Πάργα [ˈpaɾɣa]) is a town and municipality located in the northwestern part of the regional unit of Preveza in Epirus, northwestern Greece. The seat of the municipality is the village Kanallaki. Parga lies on the Ionian coast between the cities of Preveza and Igoumenitsa. It is a resort town known for its scenic beauty. In antiquity the area was inhabited by the Greek tribe of the Thesprotians. The ancient town of Toryne was probably located here.

The village of Parga stands from the early 13th century. It was originally built on top of the mountain "Pezovolo". In 1360 the Pargians, in order to avoid the attacks of the Magrebins, transferred the village to its present location. During that period, with the help of the Normans, who held the island of Corfu, the fortress of Parga was built. In 1401 a treaty was signed with the Venetians, and the rule of Ionian Islands passed to them. The Venetians respected the lifestyle of the Pargians who provided, in turn, invaluable assistance to the fleet of the Venetians. At the same time the Pargians fought by the side of their compatriots to throw off the Ottoman rule. As Parga was the only free Christian village of Epirus, it was a perfect refuge for persecuted fighters and their families.

In 1797 the area, along with the Ionian Islands and Parga, fell into the hands of the French, and in 1800, proclaimed free city status with broad authority under the protection of the Sublime Porte. In 1815, with the fortunes of the French failing, the citizens of Parga revolted against French rule and sought the protection of the British. In 1817, following a treaty between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, the British granted Parga to the Ottomans. This resulted in the Good Friday of 1819 where 4,000 Pargians, having with them the ashes of the bones of their ancestors, their sacred images, flags and a handful of soil from their homeland, exiled themselves in the British protectorate of Corfu where they settled.

The former citizens of Parga never ceased to dream of returning to a free country and to participate actively in the struggle for liberation. But they had to wait almost 100 years for this. Parga and the rest of Epirus was liberated from the Ottoman rule on 1913 following the victory of Greece in the Balkan Wars.

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DESKTOP 2175 - SAN FRANCISCO, USA

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial centre of Northern California and the only consolidated city-county in California. San Francisco is about 121 km2 in area. It is located on the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula. It is the smallest county in the state. It has a density of about 7,124 people per km2, making it the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City. The city and its surrounding areas are known as the San Francisco Bay Area, and are a part of the larger OMB-designated San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth most populous in the nation with an estimated population of 8.7 million.

San Francisco (Spanish for Saint Francis) was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís named for St. Francis of Assisi a few miles away. The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later.

In World War II, San Francisco was the port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theatre. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, massive immigration, liberalising attitudes, along with the rise of the “hippie” counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a centre of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines.

A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman’s Wharf, and its Chinatown district. San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Reddit, Square, Inc., Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, and Craigslist. It has several nicknames, including “The City by the Bay”, “Fog City”, “San Fran”, and “Frisco”, as well as older ones like “The City that Knows How”, “Baghdad by the Bay”, “The Paris of the West”, or simply “The City”. As of 2015, San Francisco was ranked high on world livability rankings.

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DESKTOP 2124 - ACROPOLIS

Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for at least 5000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC, and its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laid the foundations of western civilisation.

During the early Middle Ages, the city experienced a decline, then recovered under the later Byzantine Empire and was relatively prosperous during the period of the Crusades (12th and 13th centuries), benefiting from Italian trade. Following a period of sharp decline under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Athens re-emerged in the 19th century as the capital of the independent and self-governing Greek state.

Athens is rich in ancient sites and buildings, including the areopagus, the acropolis (seen below), the agora, various amphitheatres and various athenaea (temples of Athena, like the Parthenon), as well as numerous other architectural remains, and monuments, statuary and objects of everyday life. The Acropolis Museum, the National Archaeological Museum and numerous other museums and galleries also have objects and remains of the ancient city.

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DESKTOP 2005 - BETWEEN HEAVEN & EARTH

The Metéora (Greek: Μετέωρα, pronounced [mɛˈtɛoɾɐ], lit. "middle of the sky", "suspended in the air" or "in the heavens above" — etymologically related to "Meteorite") is one of the largest and most important complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Greece, second only to Mount Athos. The six monasteries are built on natural sandstone rock pillars, at the northwestern edge of the Plain of Thessaly near the Pineios river and Pindus Mountains, in central Greece. The nearest town is Kalambaka.

The Metéora is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List. All of the monasteries that are located at Metéora are perched on high cliffs and accessible by staircases cut into the rock formations. They were created to serve monks and nuns following the teachings of the Greek Orthodox Church. Much of the architecture of these buildings is Athonite in origin. Of the six intact monasteries, the Holy Monastery of St. Stephen and Monastery Roussanou are inhabited by nuns.

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DESKTOP 1354 - ORANGE SUNRISE

Sunrise in Tasmania, Australia.

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DESKTOP 1351 - COCHEM, GERMANY

Cochem is the seat of and the biggest area in the Cochem-Zell district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. With just under 5,000 inhabitants, Cochem falls just behind Kusel, in the like-named district, as Germany's second smallest district seat. Since 7 June 2009, it has belonged to the Verbandsgemeinde of Cochem.

The town centre with the outlying centre of Sehl upstream lies on the Moselle River's left bank, while the constituent centre of Cond lies on its right. A further constituent centre, Brauheck, with its commercial area, air force barracks and new town development, lies in the heights of the Eifel on Bundesstraße 259, some 2 km from the town centre. Emptying into the Moselle in Cochem are the Kraklebach, the Ebernacher Bach, the Sehlerbach, the Falzbach, the Märtscheltbach and the Enthetbach.

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DESKTOP 995 - OAMARU, NEW ZEALAND

Oamaru (Māori: Te Oha-a-Maru), the largest town in North Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand, is the main town in the Waitaki District. It is 80 kilometres south of Timaru and 120 kilometres north of Dunedin, on the Pacific coast, and State Highway 1 and the railway Main South Line connect it to both. With a population of 13,750, Oamaru is the 27th largest urban area in New Zealand, and the second largest in Otago behind Dunedin. The name Oamaru derives from Māori words meaning the place of Maru (compare with Timaru). The identity of Maru remains open to conjecture.

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