Riverside Town at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

Fontainebleau and the Abbey of Royaumont are other places close to Paris, where summer courses are offered. More distant places are Boulogne, Caen, Rennes, Tours, La Rochelle, Pau, Dijon, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Montpellier, Cannes and Nice. What a row of them. Imagine Grenoble, to select but one name. Imagine three months of study and travels centering in this lovely riverside town of the Alpine province of Dauphine, within sight of Mont Blanc, a venerable young town that spreads a contagion of cheerfulness to all who expose themselves to it.

Lisbon is shaped like a cradle and there's much to see in the Floor of the cradle and on both rims. The floor, called the Cidade Baixa (Lower City) is of geometrical design, like a gridiron, from the riverside fraqa do Comercio, popularly called Black Horse Square because of its equestrian statue of King Joseph I, up as far as the mid-town square known as the Rossio. Ten parallel north-south streets are crossed by ten east-west streets and this part is the Lower City's "down town," flanked on the west by a shopping center (Rua Garrett), on higher ground.

The family leisure area will feature a "children's world" education and learning centre, a family entertainment centre and a 10-screen cinema. The casino complex, which would be operated by Las Vegas-based MGM Mirage, will provide a central entertainment venue, a sports pub and restaurant, three international standard signature restaurants, a food court, a coffee bar and a delicatessen. The central focus of the waterfront development, however, will be Glasgow Harbour Square, which will be linked by a pedestrian footbridge to Events Square - the entrance and exhibition piazza to the Riverside Museum. The Riverside Museum will be 3,000sq m (37,270sq ft) larger than originally planned.