IMAGES OF THE WEEK

Longtime readers will remember that I spent the first winter of this blog's existence living in Syracuse, which is, among other things, the future home of DestinyUSA. This is supposed to be a gigantic mall combined with a bunch of hotels and indoor entertainment venues, that will rival that Mall-zilla in Edmonton, Alberta in size. I still follow the development of this project at Syracuse.com (affiliated with the Post-Standard, Syracuse's newspaper), and today I found mention of an already-existing location, in Europe, that is one of the few entertainment/retail locales in the world that rivals what is planned for DestinyUSA in size. It's called Xanadu Madrid (site in Spanish), and here are some photos I found of the place.

This is Madrid Xanadu from the air:



That big gray thing sticking up into the air is a giant indoor snowhill.



And here's part of the indoor, retail area:



Part of me -- the part that looks at the Coruscant scenes in the Star Wars prequels and wants to live there -- really wants to see Destiny built; but the other part, the more sceptical part, continues to wonder if Syracuse is really the right place for it. Madrid is one of the world's great cities; Syracuse is, I'm sorry to say, something of a backwater in upstate NY, which is already backwater enough. I still don't know.

But if they do build it, I'll be there. Maybe my scepticism is really just jealousy that they aren't building it in Buffalo.