Mount Kazbek is a dormant volcano and one of the major mountains of the Caucasus range. Located on the border of Kazbegi District of Georgia, it is the third highest mountain in Georgia and the seventh highest peak in the Caucasus Mountains.

Mount Kazbek is associated in Georgian folklore with Amirani, the Georgian version of Prometheus, who was chained on the mountain in punishment for having stolen fire from the gods and having given it to mortals. The location of his imprisonment later became the site of an Orthodox hermitage located in a cave called “Betlemi” (Bethlehem) at around the 4000 meter level.

The 14th-century Holy Trinity Church above Kazbegi at 2200m has become something of a symbol of Georgia - its beauty, piety and the fierce determination to build it on such a lofty, isolated perch are all emblematic of the country and its people.

The beautifully weathered stone of the church and its separate belltower are decorated with some intriguing carvings, one on the belltower appearing to show two dinosaurs.

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From the middle of July to the end of November, Leucospermum cordifolium shrubs provide vivid splashed of orange and red. Nurseries in Israel, California, Hawaii, Zimbabwe, Australia and New Zealand produce large amount of cut flowers of hybrids and cultivars of this South African plant.

Leucospermum cordifolium belongs to the protea family and is indigenous to South Africa. It grows in acid, nutrient poor soils

An added attraction during flowering time are the numerous birds found near the plants. In the early hours of the morning the abundant nectar flow attracts a variety of small insects, which in turn attract th insectivorous birds that consume the small insects as well as the nectar, and in the process transfer pollen from one flower to the next.

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Rockport is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, with a population of 7,767 (2000 census). Rockport is located approximately 25 miles northeast of Boston at the tip of the Cape Ann peninsula. It is directly east of Gloucester, Massachusetts and surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean.

The area that is now Rockport was simply an uninhabited part of Gloucester for more than 100 years, and was primarily used as a source of timber—especially pine for shipbuilding. The area around Cape Ann was also one of the best fishing grounds in New England. In 1743 a dock was built at Rockport harbor on Sandy Bay and was used for both timber and fishing. By the beginning of the 19th century, the first granite quarries were developed, and by the 1830s, Rockport granite was being shipped to cities and towns throughout the East Coast of the United States.

Rockport had consisted primarily of large estates, summer homes, and a small fishing village while Gloucester was becoming increasingly urbanized. Rockport was set off as a separate town in 1840 as its residents desired a separate enclave with an identity of its own. As the demand for its high-grade granite grew during the Industrial Revolution, the quarries of Rockport became a major source of the stone. A distinctive form of sloop was even developed to transport the granite to parts far and wide until the second decade of the 20th century. For many years, there were a large number of residents of Scandinavian descent, dating from the days when Finns and Swedes with stoneworking expertise made up a large part of the workforce at the quarries.

Although the demand for granite decreased during the Great Depression, Rockport still thrived as an artists colony—which began years earlier due to its rocky, boulder-strewn ocean beaches, its quaint fishing shacks, a harbor filled with small, colorful fishing boats, and the fact that Cape Ann was made famous by Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous. A red fishing shack on Bradley Wharf in Rockport, known as 'Motif Number 1', has for years been one of the most famous sites on Cape Ann, at first as the subject of hundreds of paintings, then as it became well known, as a site to be photographed and visited by tourists from all over the world

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The Tsminda Sameba Church is near Mt. Kazbegi (Kazbek) on the rooftop of the Caucasus. This church was built in the fourteenth century and marks the northern frontiers of Georgia. On the other side of the mountains north from here were the Muslim North Caucasus and the Persian-related Ossetians, traditional enemies of Georgia, who were later used by imperial Russia to penetrate Georgia.

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The 'Pearl of the Adriatic', on the Dalmatian coast, was an important Mediterranean sea power from the 13th century onwards. Although severely damaged by an earthquake in 1667, Dubrovnik managed to preserve its beautiful Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque churches, monasteries, palaces and fountains.

Dubrovnik was founded in the first half of the 7th century by a group of refugees from Epidaurum, who established their settlement and named it Laus. The Latin name Ragusa (Rausa), was in use until the 15th century. From the time of its establishment the town was under the protection of the Byzantine Empire; after the Fourth Crusade the city came under the sovereignty of Venice (1205-1358), and by the Treaty of Zadar in 1358 it became part of the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom, when it was effectively a republican free state that reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Dubrovnik is a remarkably well-preserved example of a late-medieval walled city, with a regular street layout. Among the outstanding medieval, Renaissance and Baroque monuments within the magnificent fortifications and the monumental gates to the city are the Town Hall (now the Rector's Palace), dating from the 11th century; the Franciscan Monastery (completed in the 14th century, but now largely Baroque in appearance) with its imposing church; the extensive Dominican Monastery; the cathedral (rebuilt after the 1667 earthquake); the customs house (Sponza), the eclectic appearance of which reveals the fact that it is the work of several hands over many years; and a number of other Baroque churches, such as that of St Blaise (patron saint of the city).

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