Enthralling details emerge on almost every block -- corbels shaped like sea horses, high-relief stone ships flanking a doorway, gargoylelike faces embellishing keystones.
We enjoyed the jousting tournaments and pageantry, but especially enjoyed fossil hunting on the shingle beaches and exploring ancient landscapes dotted with burial mounds and mysterious stone "ships" that date from the iron age.
There are stone ships and there is a mix of graves that are triangular, quadrangular and circular.
The Borre mound cemetery in Vestfold is for instance connected to the Yngling dynasty, and it had large tumuli that contained stone ships.
I really don't think I will come back," Pearson said from amid his rock-strewn, naturalistic site, which includes 10 truckloads of stone shipped 160 miles from a quarry in Derbyshire.
Built from Dorian stone shipped from Genoa, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach was opened in 1927 as a private estate by one of the richest women in the world, Marjorie Merriweather Post, and donated to the US government in 1973 for use as the winter White House.
The citadel at Inverness, begun in 1652 and using stone shipped from as far away as Aberdeen, had cost £50,000 in 1655, when it was still unfinished.
A prominent tradition is that of the ship burial, where the deceased was laid in a boat, or a stone ship, and given grave offerings in accordance with his earthly status and profession, sometimes including sacrificed slaves.
Inside, the space connects sea and stone, with ships' wheels giving the walls a nautical touch.
Last Wednesday, the last of 1.2 million pounds of stone was shipped from Italy to the United States, weeks earlier than the projected due date; it should all be installed by mid-July.
Of course, today's riverfront development probably would never match the riverfront activities of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, when shipbuilding, stone quarries, shipping, ferries, and agriculture used the river as a highway.
