Chapter 18

The New Colonist

www.newcolonist.com
See page 263 in The World Today.

This “web magazine about city living” features short articles from writers and readers in different cities, mostly in the United States. They talk about how they and their hometowns are doing in the struggle to make cities livable. You will also find links to news articles about urban issues (again, mostly in the U.S.).

Amsterdam Heritage

www.bmz.amsterdam.nl
See page 268 in The World Today.

Amsterdam has one of the best-preserved urban centres in the world, with the city’s concentric canal-based design and many of its buildings dating from the 17th century (and also lots of buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries). On the Amsterdam Heritage site, you can explore the city’s historic architecture. (It is in Dutch at first, but click on the UK flag for the English site.)

Zandvoort

www.info-zandvoort.nl
See page 268 in The World Today.

Want to know more about Amsterdam’s favourite getaway, Zandfort (or Zandvoort) Beach? This site (the home page is in Dutch, but there is a little “ENG” link in the top left corner for the English version) gives all the information you need to have a great trip to the beach.

Kastelen Pagina

http://home.tiscali.nl/friederichs/kastelen.html
See page 268 in The World Today.

“Kastelen pagina” is Dutch for “Castles page.” On it you will find links to the web pages for a huge number of Dutch castles! It is all in Dutch, but it is not too hard to figure out. Could “Kasteel Doornenburg” mean “Doornenburg Castle”?

Rijksmuseum

www.rijksmuseum.nl/index.jsp
See page 268 in The World Today.

The Rijksmuseum is the granddaddy of Amsterdam’s many museums, and on its website you can look at a cross-section of its collection. You can choose to look just at classic Rembrandt self-portraits, take a virtual look at the museum’s current special exhibitions, or look in detail at its permanent collection of paintings, sculpture, furniture, and decorative art (like painted tiles, which the Dutch are famous for). You might even want to download a screen picture for your computer!

Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam

www.annefrank.org
See page 268 in The World Today.

The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam is in the real house where Anne and seven others lived in their “Secret Annex” from 1942 to 1944, hiding from the Nazis, who had invaded the Netherlands. Their hiding place was betrayed in 1944, and Anne died in 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The house has been a museum since 1960, and it features exhibitions about Anne’s life and her experience, as well as exhibitions on human rights in the world today.

flee.com photography: bikes in Amsterdam

http://flee.com/amsterdam/index.html
See page 268 in The World Today.

Amsterdam is one of the bicycle-friendliest cities in the world. This web page by photographer Frank Lee shows pictures of all kinds of people in Amsterdam with their bikes: old people and young people, bike mechanics, people taking their bikes on the public transit trains, mothers and fathers riding with their little kids. Bikes are simply everywhere in Amsterdam. You can also find links to Frank Lee’s pages of photographs of other cities in Europe and the United States.

Travel for Kids: Amsterdam

www.travelforkids.com/Funtodo/Netherlands/amsterdam.htm
See page 268 in The World Today.

This website will give you lots of ideas of things you might like to do and see on a visit to Amsterdam. Do you know you can rent a “canal bike” to pedal on the water? Actually, they are pedal boats, but they call them bikes anyway (they sure love their bikes in Amsterdam). Of course, you can also rent regular bicycles, or go on a canal cruise. And there are plenty of museums (including a houseboat museum) and windmills to look at.

Sao Paulo, Brazil

http://members.aol.com/pochetti5/sampa-brazil.html
See page 269 in The World Today.

This web page is full of photos of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and some interesting information. For example, did you know that over 1 million people of Japanese origin live in and around Sao Paulo - making it the biggest group of Japanese people outside of Japan?

Consortium for Street Children

www.streetchildren.org.uk
See page 271 in The World Today.

The Consortium for Street Children is made up of many different organizations in the United Kingdom that want to protect and help street children around the world, and keep more kids off the street. Learn about their projects for helping street children at their streetchildren.org.uk website.

Home/Life

www.homelessworld.org
See page 271 in The World Today.

The Home/Life website features photographs taken by kids around the age of 13 in eleven cities around the world, with one thing in common: they do not live in secure home environments. They live on the streets, or in homeless shelters, or sometimes with foster parents, or with their own families in the city’s slums. The Home/Life organization gave the kids cameras and film, and taught them how to take pictures. They photographed whatever they wanted, showing everyone what life was like from their points of view.

Sao Paulo Features:
Fodor’s Online Travel Guide

http://www.fodors.com/miniguides/mgresults.cfm?destination=sao_paulo@142&cur_section=fea&feature=30011
See page 271 in The World Today.

This is the section of the Fodors.com site with information about Sao Paulo, Brazil. What would you do there? The site suggests walking tours you could take in different parts of the city, different kinds of food you can try (like feijoada, the “national dish” made out of a variety of beans and meats), and all the different ethnic groups you might meet.

Chicago: City of the Century

www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/maps/index.html
See page 274 in The World Today.

Chicago: City of the Century is a fantastic site made by PBS, the American public TV broadcaster, based on its TV documentary of the same name. Find out everything you ever wanted to know about Chicago in the 19th century. There are photographs of people you might have met there, biographies of famous Chicagoans, interactive maps and timelines, a Chicago quiz and statistics on 19th-century immigrants to Chicago. There is even a page called “Then and Now,” where photographs of 19th-century Chicago places change into present-day photographs of the same streets and buildings right before your eyes. The Chicago Fire of 1871, the most significant event in Chicago’s history and one of the most extensive urban disasters ever, is chronicled with an interactive map and timeline and an excerpt from the PBS documentary, which you can watch on the website.

Teen Chicago

www.teenchicago.org
See page 274 in The World Today.

On Teen Chicago (a website put together by the Chicago Historical Society), look at what Chicago was like for teenagers throughout the 20th century. For example, if you were from a poor family 100 years ago, you might have had a job sewing garments in one of Chicago’s industrial sweatshops. Read or listen to the teen memories of people who grew up in different decades in Chicago.

Chicago Historical Society’s History Files

www.chicagohistory.org/history/index.html
See page 274 in The World Today.

The Chicago Historical Society has put together this “scrapbook” about some of the best-known people (like Al Capone), places (like the Stockyards), and events (like the Great Fire) in Chicago’s history.

Graceland Cemetery

www.graveyards.com/graceland
See page 274 in The World Today.

No, this is not the cemetery where Elvis Presley is buried. The Graceland Cemetery has nothing to do with Elvis, and everything to do with being one of the oldest graveyards in Chicago. This site is a kind of virtual tour of the most impressive graves in the cemetery - and the graves of some of the most impressive people of Chicago’s past.

Chicago Neighborhood Tours

www.chgocitytours.com
See page 274 in The World Today.

Discover Chicago neighbourhoods like Wicker Park (full of art galleries), Uptown (centre of Chicago’s “jazz age” history), and Chinatown (where Chicago’s first Chinese settlers lived 100 years ago). Read a bit about each neighbourhood. Which one would you want to tour on a visit to Chicago?

City of Chicago

http://egov.cityofchicago.org
See page 274 in The World Today.

Search for “museums” in the search bar of the City of Chicago’s website, and you will come up with more hits than you know what to do with! Chicago even has a “Museum Campus,” a giant park that links together three of its biggest museums—the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum, the Field Museum (primarily a natural history museum, complete with dinosaurs), and the John G. Shedd Aquarium. And there are always new links as the City of Chicago adds information about new and upcoming museum exhibitions.

877Chicago – Official Chicago Tourism Guide

www.877chicago.com
See page 274 in The World Today.

All about travelling to Chicago! Plan a virtual visit on this Chicago tourism site. The “Things to See and Do” section has a great list of Chicago attractions, like Lincoln Park Zoo, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sears Tower (the tallest building in North America), and the Chicago History Museum. And there are links to the websites of each of those attractions. You can also see what sporting events, exhibitions, and cultural festivals are going on.