Visitors to Opar

Taking in the views from the top of Wild Shore Island at Opar

I love the grand natural vistas at Opar, my personal estate. I have recently had a significant increase in the daily visitors to Opar. It's attracting couples who come to dance in the Villa and take romantic walks around the estate. I love having company at Opar, and I enjoy being a hostess showing new visitors around. But I don't advertise. The land mark is passed around among friends and to friends of friends. Readers of my blog can also get the SURL from this and other posts.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them for better viewing.

One of my favorite activites at Opar is horseback riding. I am taking Nathan Hale, my horse, out for some exercise in the early morning. Mowgli, my tiger, usually accompanies us on our rides.

On a recent ride, I ran into a most welcome visitor, Shantu Selene, one of my favorite Second Life live performers.

Shantu mounted a horse and joined me on my jaunt.

Visitors to Opar arrive at my Italianate Villa

The Villa is a garden of hanging and potted plants. There are arched arcades, verandas, and patios where one can meet and dine with friends. In the residence, you'll find a large comfortable conversation area with a sweeping view of the fiord and its towering waterfall. There is dancing in the courtyard. With its fountain and Japanese lanterns, the courtyard is very romantic especially at sunset and evening. Formal attire is recommended when dancing in the courtyard; but not required.

A highlight of the Villa is the Rose Garden

Tall grasses along a shoreline

Beyond the Villa, there is much to see on the grounds of the estate. Everyone's favorite is the Wildflower Meadow. Couples always find their way to the romantic Hidden Forest. And people are enjoying sitting by the campfire on Wild Shore Island, looking at the stars in the night sky and listening the crashing of ocean waves below and the crackling of the fire.  There are many more areas of the estate to explore.

Wildflowers of the Meadow

Romance of the Hidden Forest

Opar has been featured in some of my posts on my fashion blog, and so I have been getting many inquiries about Opar. You are most welcome to visit my estate. Opar is not a public attraction. It is a personal residence where my sister Victoria and I reside. But I have opened it to the public, and all visitors are my welcomed guests. When you enter Opar, you will be given a note with just a few rules. Please take notice of them. If you are a photographer and are planning a shoot at Opar that requires rezzing objects like pose balls, let me know. I can give you temporary rezzing privileges. I hope you drop in for a visit, and I know that you'll want to come back again.

Opar:

 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Opar/30/140/26

Related Posts:

Opar - The Beginning (January 29, 2009)

http://mariko-nightfire.blogspot.com/2009/01/opar-beginning.html

Opar - The Meadow (March 28, 2009)

http://mariko-nightfire.blogspot.com/2009/03/opar-meadow.html

Pellucidar - The World Within

Pellucidar

There is a giant crystalline sphere suspended 1000 meters above Opar, my sim and country estate. Its awesome diameter is the size of Opar itself. Within it is another world that I have named Pellucidar. The name comes from the works of the masterful science fiction writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. In a series of books, Burroughs' Pellucidar was a world lying within the sphere that is our planet - a world within a world. So Pellucidar is an apt name for the newest addition to Opar. Incidently, the fantastic worlds created by Edgar Rice Burroughs are the inspiration for James Cameron's film, Avatar.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them for better viewing.

A Glimpse of The World Inside

Pellucidar is a DrLife World, a creation of my dear friend Leena Ying, owner of DrLife. DrLife World is a 360 degree projection of a gorgeous scene on the inside of a sphere. The effect is spectacular as seen in the picture above. It truly has the feel of a world within. Three scenes are included in the product: a coastal scene (seen above), a snow scene, and a night scene with city lights in the distance. The scenes can be changed using a control panel or a HUD. DrLife World is available at the DrLife mainstore and sells for $1000L. You get three size worlds with your purchase. Amazingly, the worlds are only 7 prims.  So you will have plenty of prims left over to enhance your world with perhaps some buildings, trees, rocks, and other objects to create a wonderful private space. Why would anyone settle for a traditional skybox or platform when you can have an entire world.

Leena Ying, owner of DrLife

DrLife Main Store:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sylvhara/98/172/27

Opar - The Meadow

The Meadow

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The Meadow at Opar is a celebration of color, overflowing with wildflowers in full bloom and tall grasses. The meadow is an island surrounded on three sides by Opar's interior waterways and on the fourth by the sea. This magnificent scene is framed by tall pines and white birches and by Opar's rolling hills and mountains. Leaving the northwest side of the villa, you enter the meadow by crossing a small bridge and are immediately engulfed in a sea of orange cosmos. A steady wind is blowing across the meadow making the orange field undulate and roll like waves upon the ocean. Strolling through the field, the orange flowers give way to delicate pink and finally to white and to the tall grasses bordering the sea. Beyond the meadow lies Opar's Wild Shore and the Hidden Forest. I hope that you will visit my Opar and take a walk in my meadow. And bring a significant someone and enjoy a special moment.

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A Pretty Place for Pretty Girls
.Dawn

. Dusk
. Orange is one of my Favorite Colors
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Kaja Lurra enjoying a walk through the wild flowers
.Tall Grasses Bordering The Sea.

Sitting on the ground and conversing in a sea of blooms

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Opar: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Opar/30/140/26
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Opar - The Meadow

The Meadow

The meadow at Opar is a celebration of color. The meadow is overflowing with wildflowers in full bloom and tall grasses

Pretty Place for Pretty Girls

Dawn

Dusk

Tall grasses edging the sea

Kaja Lurra enjoying a walk through the wild flowers

Opar - The Beginning

Opar

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Its about time I begin telling everyone about Opar, my personal estate in Second Life. Opar is a homestead sim (formerly an open sim) which I acquired last August and began developing. A homestead sim has 65,536 sq meters of land and 3750 prims, the basic building units in virtual worlds. Last summer, I was shown a marvelous Italianate style villa discovered by my friend Leesa called the Southpoint Yacht Club, copies of which were being offered by its builder. It was an award winning design. I fell in love with its impressive courtyard, with its fountains and covered arches, and with the many patios and lounge areas. The villa was a virtual garden filled with hanging and potted plants. I could see possiblities as a club for entertaining friends, as well as a personal residence.

Selina and Me (in red hair) - Girl Talk on the Villa Patio

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The villa is huge and sprawling, and its footprint alone would require almost 1/4 sim. If I wanted this villa, I would have to become a major landowner. About this time, I was given a tour of Kajaland, an open sim owned by Kaja Lurra of Sweden. I never spent a more delightful time in Second Life. Kajaland was modeled on the Swedish countryside with wonderously textured green meadows, rolling hills and highlands, ancient trees, and a surprising wheatfield. Kajaland was a visual delight and a joy to walk or explore on horseback. I was inspired.

Natural Splendor at Opar
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I was now determined to have my own sim. Being from Hawaii, I could have easily planned a tropical landscape, as it was a motif with which I am most familiar. But I decided that the sim must be temperate with birches, pines, and oaks being the dominant trees. I wanted high steep mountains overlooking the sea and interior waterways. I would have a cold fiord with a towering waterfall, forests, and fields of wild flowers. There would be walking and riding paths and, around every bend, something delightful. Most of all I wanted to achieve grand panoramic views of nature.

Earliest picture: with Erin Kinkade on a barren Opar

I made arrangements with a real estate company to have an open sim created for me. It would be named Opar. In our family library, my father had a collection of adventure novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs which he had read as a boy. And, as a young 12 year old girl, I buried myself in these books and, through their magic, trod the martian plains of Barsoom, faced prehistoric monsters at the earth's core, and explored lost cities in the jungles of Africa with Tarzan of the Apes. Strange as it may seem, my love of great literature was ignited by those juvenile pulp novels. First among the lost African cities was Opar, a forgotten outpost of the sunken empire of Atlantis. Opar was inhabited by frightful men and beautiful women and ruled by a high priestess queen, La. La was dark, savage, and regal. Her great love was the Lord of the Jungle; but it was a tragic unrequited love. I identified with Queen La and not with the blonde from Baltimore, Jane. So my kingdom in Second Life must be named Opar.

The Villa at Sunset
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I purchased a copy of the villa, and my dear friend Naiya erected it on Opar and greatly expanded its building. I was also aided in setting up the villa by two of the best master builders in all Second Life, Annabelle Babii and Adrian Harbinger. To achieve the topography that I wanted for Opar, I obtained the terraforming services of Kaja of Kajaland. But first, I had to evict two tenants. Jaysun and Erin Kinkaid, my best friend at the time, erected beach houses at the far end of Opar in an area that became known as Squatter's Point. There they held wild parties and would set out in a monster power boat on pirating expeditions.

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Dark, Savage, and Regal Queen of Opar

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Today, Opar is pretty much complete, and I have largely achieved my vision for it (but I wish that I had more prims). Visitors to Opar arrive at the magnificient Italianate Villa where they can dance and dine under the stars. Sweeping natural vistas serve as backdrops to meetings of friends in the villa's patios, verandas, courtyards and formal rose garden. Visitors relaxing and conversing around the villa's fireplace will be delighted with a grand view of Opar's fiord and towering waterfall. Beyond the villa, visitors can explore Opar's scenic splendors - a wild flower meadow, a wild shore where the ocean churns and waves crash, a Hidden Forest of fairy oaks, and foggy paths leading up into the mountains. Future posts on Opar will highlight a different area of Opar. I think you will see that this is a very special place.

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Opar: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Opar/30/140/26
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