Portugal's 'second city' should be your first destination.
PORTO
The city of Porto is full of sky-high lookouts and rooftop bars that afford expansive views. Yet the most memorable and unique experiences are often at ground level.
Put on your walking shoes, and hit the streets of Porto and you'll soon find yourself entranced. … and maybe lost. It's one of the pitfalls of historic cities with labyrinthine narrow streets. Fortunately for you, we can't think of a better city to be lost in. For a start, there's always delicious food and drink on hand, and any of those impossibly narrow alleys will soon open up to stunning vistas over courtyards and gardens, the river, and valley beyond.
The UNESCO-listed city centre is a layer-cake of Roman rule, Moorish invasions, and French destruction, with artefacts from multiple eras shining brightly or merely peering out through the cracks.
One thing you won't miss is the art style for which Porto is most well known: blue azulejo tiles. As with the rest of Porto, the story of how this style came to the city is one with a fascinating international history.
In the 15th century, King Manuel I of Portugal imported the style from Spain, where it had been developed during the Islamic expansion of the area in the middle ages. Originally featuring geometric patterns and symbols of flowers, animals and birds, European adaptation added elements of architecture and elaborate storytelling, mostly of a a religious nature.
Adopted by large-scale public works, private enterprises, and individual residents, the ironically blue tiles make up huge whole-building facades with elaborate scenes, and also appear as small geometric repeating patterns on private doors and low garden walls.
The city of Porto is full of sky-high lookouts and rooftop bars that afford expansive views, yet the most memorable and unique vistas are those at street level.
Crane your neck and there are some landmarks that peek out above the balconies (that are themselves worthy of attention : featuring everything from washing being hung out to dry, to vibrant markets and snug bars).
Tickling the sky, you'll see the Torre dos Clérigos (Clérigos Tower), a 17th century Baroque landmark whose 240 steps will reward you with a bird's eye view if you feel the need to head upwards.
The Ponte Luiz I bridge, however, gives you two choices for a stroll: the upper deck is a great spot from which to take pictures looking back across the water at the city, while the lower deck is often filled with adventurous young locals diving into the Douro. We suggest you take one path across and the other back. If the bridge's style looks familiar, it may be because it was designed by a protégé of Gustave Eiffel.
Standing out here like an air-conditioner on an ancient pyramid, the Casa da Música (House of Music) stands in stark contrast to its surroundings, but is now considered one of the world's best concert halls, hosting daily performances of everything from classical choral to experimental electronica. If you aren't stopping in for a show, then it might just be time to head out to lunch.
Torre dos Clérigos. The most iconic and visible of Porto's many Baroque buildings.
Torre dos Clérigos. The most iconic and visible of Porto's many Baroque buildings.
Ponte Luiz I. A cast iron bridge in the middle of Porto's old town. Look familiar? It was designed by a disciple of Gustave Eiffel.
Ponte Luiz I. A cast iron bridge in the middle of Porto's old town. Look familiar? It was designed by a disciple of Gustave Eiffel.
A modern tilt to the Baroque landscape: the Casa da Música
A modern tilt to the Baroque landscape: the Casa da Música
If you aren't stopping for custard tarts, you aren't doing Porto right.
If you aren't stopping for custard tarts, you aren't doing Porto right.
View of the Ribeira district from the upper level of the Ponte Luiz I
View of the Ribeira district from the upper level of the Ponte Luiz I
We can highly recommend A Cozinha do Manel for an outstanding cozy and intimate meal while retreating from the sun, or Casa de Chá da Boa Nova if the opposite is true and you care to dine looking out over the ocean with a Michelin-starred meal of traditional seafood.
While you are at the beach, a stroll or short tram ride will reveal several unexpected delights as lighthouses and chapels dot the rocky outcrops: a truly remarkable way to break free of the city for a fresh-air experience that still retains a magically unique flavour of its own.
Wherever you go in Porto, you are bound to be delighted, and no matter how long you visit for, you'll wish you could stay just a little bit longer.
Capela do Senhora Pedro, at Miramar.
Capela do Senhora Pedro, at Miramar.
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Traditional animation (also called cel animation or hand-drawn animation) was the process used for most animated films of the 20th century.
The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings that are first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it.
The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one against a painted background by a rostrum camera onto motion picture film . The traditional cel animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system.
Various software programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and effects.
The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery media, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media such as digital video. The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animators' work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years. Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" to describe cel animation which makes extensive use of computer technology. Examples of traditionally animated feature films include Pinocchio (United States, 1940), Animal Farm (United Kingdom, 1954), and Akira (Japan, 1988). Traditional animated films which were produced with the aid of computer technology include The Lion King (US, 1994) Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) (Japan, 2001), and Les Triplettes de Belleville (France, 2003).
In computer displays, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display, vertically or horizontally. "Scrolling", as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures, but moves (pans or tilts) the user's view across what is apparently a larger image that is not wholly seen. A common television and movie special effect is to scroll credits, while leaving the background stationary. Scrolling may take place completely without user intervention (as in film credits) or, on an interactive device, be triggered by touchscreen or computer mouse motion or a keypress and continue without further intervention until a further user action, or be entirely controlled by input devices. Scrolling may take place in discrete increments (perhaps one or a few lines of text at a time), or continuously (smooth scrolling). Frame rate is the speed at which an entire image is redisplayed. It is related to scrolling in that changes to text and image position can only happen as often as the image can be redisplayed. When frame rate is a limiting factor, one smooth scrolling technique is to blur images during movement that would otherwise appear to "jump". The term scrolling is also used for a type of misbehavior in an online chat room whereby one person forces the screens of others in a chat to scroll by inserting much noise or special control characters.
Words from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolling.
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