Do you feel a bit confined by your gig? Sure, the cash is great, but you are held hostage by it. You can’t throw it all away and chase your low-paying dream. Well, now you have a chance to turn the paycheck that keeps you in the office 14 hours a day into the chance to try something new, even if only briefly. Cox & King is offering several packages designed to give you a once-in-a-lifetime shot at living your dream.
1. The Textile Expert
The “Textiles of India” tour takes you to some of the most famous weaving centers in the country, including Varanasi (known for Benarsi silk wedding sarees), Kanchipuram (zardozi embroidery work on Mysore silks) and Jaipur (handmade block printed cotton fabrics). This experience lasts 22 days and comes at a cost of $12,735 per person (based on double occupancy).
2. Painting Papyrus
With the “Splendors of Egypt” and “Discover Egypt” tours from Cox & King, you can satisfy your jones for Egyptology and learn to paint, draw and write under the tutelage of one of the masters. Participate in the rare and fine art that dates back thousands of years (trips start at $4,075).3. Fine Wine … in Lebanon? The Phoenicians sold wine to Lebanon more than 4,000 years ago, and it’s believed that the Lebanese brought it to Spain and Italy. The fertile soil of the Bekaa Valley is the secret behind Lebanese wine, and you can get all the details on the “Lebanon & Syria: Empires Past” tour. Spend a day at Chateau Ksara, the oldest running winery in Lebanon, and learn the intricacies of the process of making Lebanese wine. This 15-night tour starts at $6,585.
4. South American Shutterbug
Click like crazy in Argentina on the Cox & King “A Photographic Journey: Buenos Aires & Northern Patagonia” tour. You’ll travel with Diego Ortiz Mugica, known as the Ansel Adams of Argentina, and pick up some tips and tricks, against the backdrop of the Argentinean culture. This unique opportunity is only available from November 6 – 13, 2010 and starts at $5,894.
5. Study Primates in the Wild
Startin Kigali, Rwanda on the “Gorillas in the Mist” tour, and you’ll climb into the world of gorillas. After a briefing, you’ll enter Parc National des Volcans, where you’ll enter their habitat and get great views of these massive creatures. The experience lasts four days and starts at $4,195.
6. Jewelry Craftsman
You could make jewelry in your living room … but wouldn’t be more interesting to try it in Mozambique? Go to Ibo Island, and experience classes with traditional silversmiths. You can even bring your old jewelry to melt down and use as a starting point (creating a bridge between old and new) or buy materials from the locals. This trip starts at only $1,585 a person.
7. The Origami Master
Put your fingers to work on an art form that dates back to the seventeenth century. You’ll learn to fold paper into amazing creations and gain an appreciation for the history behind origami on the “Treasures of Japan” tour, which starts at $12,525 per person.
You were a cheerleader, you dated a cheerleader, or you hated the cheerleaders. As I recall, that’s how high school worked.
Thanks to travel PR, that same primeval paradigm lives on long after graduation. That miniskirts-shouting-slogans thing still works, whether you’re a used car salesman, Miley Cyrus on VH1 or the tourist board of a small Balkan nation. When it comes to selling your destination in today’s busy world of busy people, a country’s name just isn’t enough–just like school spirit, you need colors, a pep band, a mascot, a brand and most important–a cheer.
It’s tragic but true: tourist boards don’t trust their country’s name to inspire appropriate thoughts in your brain. Toponyms are too open-ended and too untrustworthy–also, way too obvious. For example, what’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say . . . Monte Carlo? How about Australia? The Bahamas? Kuwait? The Gambia?
Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not enough. Tourist boards want you to choose their destination over all others, then allocate all of your vacation days to them and then come spend your money on very specific things–like miniature golf by the sea or hot air balloon rides across the prairie. In short, they want your school spirit so much they’re churning out cheers to fill up all the Swiss cheese holes in your mental map of the world.
Like a good cheer, a good destination slogan is simple and so memorable it sticks in your head like two-sided tape. Sex sells, but then so does love: “Virginia is for Lovers”, Hungary offers visitors “A Love for Life”, Albania promises “A New Mediterranean Love”, while the highlighted “I feel Slovenia” spells out sweetly “I Feel Love”. Meanwhile, Bosnia & Herzegovina call themselves “the Heart Shaped Land” and Denmark’s logo is a red heart with a white cross. Colombia and Dubai have red hearts in their logo. Everybody else uses sunshine.
There is a direct correlation between sunshine deprivation and travelers with disposable income–sunny places sell, which is why Maldives is “the Sunny Side of Life”, Sicily says “Everything else is in the shade”, Ethiopia quizzically boasts “13 Months of Sunshine”, Portugal is “Europe’s West Coast”, and Spain used to be “Everything Under the Sun”. Spain was also the first country ever to have a logo-the splashy red sun painted by Joan Miró in 1983. Some destination logos work–like the black and red “I LOVE NY” design of Milton Glaser that’s been around ever since the 70s. Others fail to grasp the spirit of a place (cough, Italia). Reducing one’s country to a crazy font and some cheesy clip art often detracts from that country’s best assets. Like nature.
When chasing the crunchy yuppie granola suburbanite dollar on vacation, you’ve gotta roll out Nature and promise them the kind of purity that lacks from their daily life. British Virgin Islands claims “Nature’s Little Secrets” while Belize counterclaims with “Mother Nature’s Best Kept Secret”. Switzerland urges us to “Get Natural”, Poland is “The Natural Choice”, Iceland is “Pure, Natural, Unspoiled”, Ecuador is Life in a Pure State, “Pure Michigan” is just as pure, Costa Rica is “No Artificial Ingredients”, and like a clothing tag that makes you feel good, New Zealand is simply “100% Pure”. New Zealand also wants us to believe that they’re the “youngest country on earth” but that’s pushing it. The youngest country on earth is actually Kosovo (Born February 2008)–so young they’re still working on their slogan.
And there’s a tough one–how do you sell a country that’s just poking its head out from under the covers of war and bloodshed? Kosovo’s big bad next-door neighbor Serbia asks us frankly to “Take a New Look at Your Old Neighbor”; “It’s Beautiful–It’s Pakistan” steers clear of the conflict, Colombia owns up to its knack for kidnapping by insisting, “The Only Risk is Wanting to Stay”, and Vietnam nudges our memories away from the past and towards “The Hidden Charm” of today.
Our nostalgia for simpler, better, pre-tourist times invokes our most romantic notions about travel: Croatia is “The Mediterranean as it Once Was”, Tahiti consists of “Islands the Way they Used to Be”, and Bangladesh employs a kind of reverse psychology to insist we “Come to Bangladesh, Before the Tourists.” Such slogans of unaffectedness mirror the push for national validation by tourism, where actual authenticity is second to perceived authenticity, hence Malaysia is “Truly Asia”, Zambia is “The Real Africa”, and the Rocky Mountain States make up “The Real America”. Greece is “The True Experience” and Morocco is “Travel For Real”. Everybody wants to be legit.
Countries without the certified organic label try merely to stupefy us: Israel “Wonders”, Germany is “Simply Inspiring”, Chile is “Always Surprising”, Estonia is “Positively Surprising”, “Amazing Thailand” amazes, and Dominica claims to “Defy the Everyday”. To that same surprising end, Latin America loves trademarking their exclamation points (see ¡Viva Cuba!, Brazil’s one-word essay “Sensational!” and El Salvador’s “Impressive!”)
Where punctuated enthusiasm falls short, countries might confront the traveler with a challenge or a dare. Jamaica projects the burden of proof on its tourists by claiming “Once You Go You Know”, Peru asks that we “Live the Legend”, Canada insists we “Keep Exploring”, South Africa answers your every question with a smiley “It’s Possible”. Meanwhile, Greenland sets an impossibly high bar with “The Greatest Experience”.
Working the totality of a country’s experience into a good slogan is a challenge that often leads to open-ended grandstanding: “It’s Got to be Austria” might be the answer to any question (and sounds better when spoken with an Austrian accent). Next-door Slovakia is the “Little Big Country”, insisting that size is second to experience. Philippines offers “More than the Usual” and small, self-deprecating Andorra confesses, “There’s Just So Much More” (I think what they meant to say is, “come back please”). Really big numbers carries the thought even further: Papua New Guinea is made up of “A Million Different Journeys”; Ireland brightens with “100,000 Welcomes”.
When all else fails, aim for easy alliteration, as in “Enjoy England“, “Incredible India“, “Mystical Myanmar”, and the “Breathtaking Beauty” of Montenegro. (For more on the correlation between simplistic phrases and high mental retention, See Black Eyed Peas-Lyrics).
The point of all this is that today, the internet is our atlas and Google is our guidebook. It’s how we travel, how we think about travel and how we plan our travel. Punch in a country like Tunisia and you’re greeted with a dreamy curly-cue phrase like “Jewel of the Mediterranean”–Type in next-door neighbor Algeria and you get a glaring State Department warning saying “Keep Away.” In a scramble for those top ten search results, destinations compete with a sea of digital ideas that pre-define their tourist appeal. It’s why we’ll never find that page proclaiming Iran “The Land of Civilized and Friendly People” but why a simple “Dubai” turns up Dubai Tourism in first place, along with their moniker “Nowhere Like Dubai” (which should win some kind of truth in advertising prize.)
That aggressive, American-style marketing has taken over the billion-dollar travel industry is obvious. Nobody’s crying over the fact that we sell destinations like breakfast cereal–that countries need a bigger and brighter box with a promised prize inside in order to lull unassuming tourist shoppers into stopping, pulling it off the shelf, reading the back and eventually sticking it in their cart. I guess the sad part is how the whole gregarious exercise limits travel and the very meaning of travel. By boiling down a country into some bland reduction sauce of a slogan, we cancel out the diversity of experience and place, trade wanderlust for jingoism, and turn our hopeful worldview into a kind of commercial ADHD in which we suddenly crave the Jersey Shore like a kid craves a Happy Meal.
Nobody’s ever asked me to join their tourist board focus group, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own opinions and tastes. For instance, my daily reality is a stereo cityscape of car alarms and jackhammers. Any country that simply placed the word “Quiet” or “Peaceful” in lower-case Times New Roman, 24-point font white type in the upper right hand corner of a double-truncated landscape spread–well, I’d be there in a heartbeat. Better yet–how about a one-minute TV commercial of total silence. (“Oh, wow honey, look!–that’s where I wanna go.”)
This is probably why I’ve never been in a focus group. For all the focus on authenticity and reality, I find most tourism slogans lacking in both. For the most part, they are limiting and unoriginal, easily dropped into any of the above categories. Even worse, today’s slogans challenge actual truths gained through travel experience. One day spent in any place offers a lifetime of material for long-lasting personal travel slogans. My own favorites include Russia (“Still Cold”), Turkey (“Not Really Europe At All”), England (“Drizzles Often”), Orlando (“Cheesy as Hell”), and Ireland (“Freakin’ Expensive”).
As a writer, I must argue against the cheerleaders and in favor of words–the more words we attach to a destination the better the sell. I think it’s safe to assume that Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia has done more for Argentina tourism than any of their own slogans. Similarly, Jack London gives props to Alaska, Mark Twain mystifies us with the Mississippi, and Rudyard Kipling keeps sending people to India. All four authors wrote about love, nature, and sunshine. They wrote long books filled with enthusiasm and punctuated with exclamation marks. They made us fall in love and yearn for places we never saw or knew.
No matter how many millions get spent on tourist slogans, today’s trademarked PR phraseology has generally failed to hit the mark. Perhaps they’ll make us rethink a place–reconsider a country we’d somehow looked over, but can a two or three word slogan ever touch us in that tender way, make us save up all our money, pack our bags and run away?
Nature has the power to amaze. From towering mountains to vast grasslands and immense oceans, there’s a world of natural wonder out there waiting to explore. But sometimes the outdoor world isn’t just amazing – it’s also downright weird. Mysterious sliding rocks, bizarre sinkholes…even lakes where you can float. We’ve put together a list of 17 strange natural wonders around the world. What strange forces are at work here? You’ll just have to read on to found out…
Lake Hévíz – Hungary Lake Hévíz is Europe’s largest thermal lake and a destination for people looking to rest their bones and experience the water’s alleged healing powers. The spring-fed lake is rich in blue and green algae, with good bacteria to aid in curing human ailments. Lake Hévíz is able to keep its own water fresh because a spring cave beneath the lake replenishes the entire body of water in a single day day. The lake’s strong health tourism industry has helped Hévíz continue to thrive.
Stone Forest – China
China’s landscape is rugged, yet lush and full of personality. The Stone Forest is no exception. Tall rocks shoot out of the hills like skyscrapers forming a city skyline. Most of the rocks are weathered to a smooth surface, but some formations look like animals and people. At times the rock formations move seamlessly between trees, blending in to create a scene almost like a painting.
Sarisarinama Sinkholes – Venezuela
The four sinkholes at Sarisarinama are very large and form almost perfect circles on the summit of Venezuela’s flat-topped mountains. Besides the geological abnormality, the unique plant and animal life found on the floor of the sinkholes is an object of much research by scientists – some species are found no other place on Earth.
La Brea Tar Pits – California
In the middle of Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits shelter millions of years of history beneath their murky surface. Tar seeps up from the bedrock to form a pool. The pool is then covered in water, making an attractive watering hole for animals. When an animal fell into the pit, La Brea became its final resting place. The museum at La Brea holds the preserved bones of a stork, a prehistoric wolf and even a mammoth.
Dead Sea – Israel and Jordan
This giant salt lake on the border of Israel and Jordan is unique for two reasons: extreme saltiness and elevation. The Dead Sea is one of the saltiest lakes in the world and the resulting in an added buoyant lift for visitors. Even inexperienced swimmers easily float atop the water. In addition to the salt, a hefty concentration of other minerals increase the therapeutic value of the water, and many visitors can be seen rubbing it on their skin. The Dead Sea is also the Earth’s lowest surface elevation; the resulting high atmospheric pressure is beneficial for people suffering from respiratory illness. Visitors often feel a renewed sense of energy due to the increased levels of oxygen.
Luray Caverns – Virginia
The Luray Caverns were first discovered at the end of the 19th Century and now offer commercial tours. Stalactites and stalagmites form draped curtains throughout the caverns. One drip formation in the cave looks like a pair of eggs, sunny side up. The shallow underground lake in Luray Caverns, called Dream Lake, is perfectly still and creates an immaculate reflection of the stalactites hanging above. This illusion makes it seem infinitely deeper than its actual depth of twenty inches.
Chocolate Hills – Philippines
Out of a generally flat landscape, the conical Chocolate Hills rise from the floor like their candy kiss namesake. During the wet season, they are covered in a fresh carpet of green grass that looks like moss. When rainfall drops off for the dry season, the grass turns to a milk chocolate brown. The limestone hills were carved by erosion and are known to contain ancient marine fossils.
Arches National Park – Utah Arches National Park in eastern Utah is known for the reddish-orange sandstone rock formations that adorn the landscape. Shapes have been created very slowly over time and the most famous feature at Arches National Park is Delicate Arch. Other arches include Landscape Arch and the Double Arch, branching from the same base in different directions. Surprisingly, Arches isn’t all about the arches. Tall, thin sandstone slabs stick up out of the ground like fins, or blades to form the Organ and Park Avenue.
Sliding Rocks of Racetrack Playa – California Racetrack Playa is a dried up lake bed in Death Valley National Park. Rocks appear in the middle of the playa with a trail behind them, making it look like the rocks have slid across the surface. There are no animal or human prints around the rocks to indicate they were pushed or pulled. Nobody has ever seen the rocks move and there is no concrete explanation for their movement.
Giant’s Causeway – Ireland
The hexagonal basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway, formed millions of years ago by volcanic eruptions, are a natural wonder of geology and mythological lore. The columns look like prisms rising from the ground on the northern Irish coast. Finn MacCool, a giant of Irish legend, is said to have built the causeway with his own hands to make a bridge to Scotland.
Bonneville Salt Flats – Salt Lake City, Utah
Back before the Grand Canyon was even a blip on the radar, most of the western United States was underneath the Great Salt Lake. Though a portion of the lake still exists (one of the only landlocked bodies of salt water on Earth), most of the lake is gone. Left behind are the Bonneville Salt Flats miles of flat, barren, white landscape. The white dusting is actually salt, left behind after millions of years in the Great Salt Lake.
Penitentes – Andes Mountains, Argentina.
Similar to underground stalactites in caves, the Penitentes are spiky formations of ice and snow formed in vast fields along high-altitude mountainsides in South America. The formations, which seem to look like religious men bent in prayer, derived their name from the Spanish word for “penitent.” Some of the most famous fields cover the high peaks of the Andes Mountains in southern Argentina. Pine Mountain Laccolith – Southern Utah
Dominating the skyline of St. George, Utah is Pine Mountain – the world’s largest laccolith. A laccolith is a volcano that erupts from the bottom. Due to oddities in the sedimentary nature of the rock, the lava spills out of the bottom of the mountain. Though an eruption hasn’t happened for thousands of years, the lava beds still cover this seemingly contradictory landscape.
Molokini Crater – Maui, Hawaii
Millions of years ago, a volcano erupted just off the coast of the tranquil waters of Maui, leaving a moon-shaped shelf named Molokini that’s become a marine-lover’s playground. Cradling a reef just off coast, it’s an ideal location for snorkelers and divers to get a glimpse of tropical sea life – just don’t touch the turtles!
The Grunion Run – Huntington Beach, CA
Each year, the circle of life is on display as the Grunion fish of Southern California come ashore to lay their eggs in the sand. The sardine-like fish ride the waves inland by the thousands giving a silver glint to the shoreline.
Devil’s Tower – Wyoming
Although Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway is a remarkable example of the pristine beauty of nature’s own architecture, the largest group of columnar basalt is Devil’s Tower in eastern Wyoming, a staggering mesa rising 1267 feet above the natural landscape. Though the vertical cooling pattern of lava is the scientific reasoning behind columnar basalt, the Devil’s Tower appears to defy reason.
Red Tides – Florida’s Gulf Coast
Its impossible to predict the exact time and place, but one of the oddest natural wonders in our oceans happens in Florida’s Gulf Coast when dangerous algae “bloom” and expand in the water. Millions of the organisms have to be present for the event to occur, but when they are, they create a mystical wonder of reds, purples, browns, and even greens in the coastal waters.
Once upon a time, the world’s food capitals were a mere few well-known locales like Paris, New York, and Bangkok. All the action (and the eyes, and the forks) were focused there.
Recently, though, many areas of the world have expanded and improved both their menus and their talents in the kitchen, resulting in far more places staking their claims in the classy world of quality dining. Similarly, other cities have quietly cultivated some of the most amazing farmer’s markets on the globe, and their passion for fresh food has spread throughout their communities. Taken together, the following are the crème de la crème — the Greatest Cities in the World for Foodies.
Sydney, Australia
Australia imports very little of its produce; the great majority is harvested from local fields and farms promising fresh, flavorful dishes with the very best of in-season fruits and vegetables. In addition, the open-air Sydney Fish Market showcases the best and freshest seafoods from both the local area and from around the world. The Fish Market is an excellent place to shop, to grab some of the world’s finest sushi, and even to take some cooking classes in their recently renovated facility. For those soon to visit, here’s a list of prizewinning eateries in the Sydney area.
Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China
China’s south coast is a celebration of amazing foods. If you’ve got a taste for Asian-fusion, or the best dim-sum on earth, this is your city. The amount and variety of dining options is stunning, and whether you’re interested in street-side vendors, feasting in Yung-Kee where as many as five-thousand guests dine on their roasted goose every day (!), or meals carefully prepared by five-star chefs, Hong Kong has it on the menu.San Francisco, California, USA For many foodophiles, San Francisco is a potentially surprising pick. However, what most don’t know is that San Francisco actually has a strong culinary heritage that began largely as the coincidental landing pad for many immigrants arriving in the United States from Asia. The melting pot of different flavors, traditions, and recipes that cultivated there spawned dozens of powerful contenders in the culinary industry. Combine that with one of the worlds strongest and most vibrant wine cultures and it doesn’t seem surprising at all for San Fransisco to make this list.
Pro tip: The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is held Tuesday and Saturday offering produce from small regional farmers and ranchers, many of whom are certified organic. If you don’t feel like buying fruits and veggies, the market also offers sweets, cheeses, and wines.
Melbourne, Australia
The Botanical, the Koko, the Vue de Monde… some argue that Melbourne is the food capital of Australia, and for good reason. Melbourne is host to some of the most fantastic dining establishments in the world, and might just have more restaurants than any other city on the continent. Its strong fashion sense and sharp clientele demand a classy dining experience and only the tastiest cuisine can last in a city with such competition. Award winners abound in central Melbourne, so any visit here is unlikely to disappoint.
Rome, Italy
It’s been said that it’s hard to eat poorly in Rome (or even perhaps anywhere in Italy). Here, at the birthplace of our modern pastas, you can expect the well known tradition of Italian dining to be at its absolute best, and like San Fransisco: the wine culture is certainly at the top of its class. This doesn’t mean you have to spend a load of money, though. Both five star class and some enticing cheap eats are available on just about every corner of the old city.
Mumbai, India
Any foodie looking for a taste of truly authentic India will be satisfied (and stuffed!) here. No matter what variety you’re looking for, be it coastal cuisine or seafood, a good kebab, or just some hot tandoori, it doesn’t get any better than this. The unique spices and flavors native to India offer a festival for the palate you’re unlikely to find anywhere else. Stop in to any one of the “innumerable restaurants” in the area and be prepared for something spicy! You won’t be able to say “naan” to these choices!
Montreal, Canada
Fresh, hot breads, rich and bitey cheeses, smoked meats, and sweet wines… Montreal is a gift to the palette. It has a history rich in perhaps the most renowned culinary culture on earth: of course, we’re talking about the French. The selection of restaurants in Montreal, be they casual or upscale, will have something on the menu capable of teasing even the most fickle of palettes, and the ingredients are fresh, often grown locally and sometimes picked just that day.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Argentina’s capital is awash with cafes and shops, many specializing in just a quick bite to eat and many others capable of bringing the full bodied Argentinian flair to your plate (a new experience for many, a regrettable one for none). What really makes Buenos Aires’ kitchens worthwhile is their infusion of Spanish and Italian influences that form unique nuances derived from both, but brought to full potency only here, in Argentina.
— The above was written by Caleb Roy, Seed contributor.
Chicago, Illinois, USA Once you bite into a Chicago-style hotdog, you’ll wonder why you’ve ever eaten another type. A typical Chicago hot dog includes a pickle spear, relish, tomatoes, mustard, onion, and even a dash of celery salt. You can find hotdog stands and restaurants throughout Chicago so there is no need for extensive search. However, for a traditional experience, try the South side.
Stann Creek District, Belize
Local foods consist of surprisingly simple ingredients and include fried chicken, tamales, and rice and beans. Flavored with local spices and flavors, food lovers who enjoy the unusual will find common ground with those that love the familiar. There is something here for everyone.
To truly eat like a local, go into town (dubbed the “cultural capital of Belize”) instead of staying on the resorts. For an extra bit of pleasure, pair the food with a Belikin. It’s the national beer of Belize and worth every calorie.
Springfield, Illinois, USA
Not many people know Springfield, Illinois as a great food town, but let me tell you about something called the horseshoe. For those that love cheese and meat, you have found your heaven. It starts with a piece of Texas toast and is followed by any type of meat you want (although buffalo chicken is especially popular). Throw some french fries on top of the meat, and plaster cheese sauce on top of the fries. Restaurants throughout the town offer this staple of Springfield diets, but the West side is especially plentiful in horseshoe restaurants.
Avery Island is home to Tabasco, the greatest thing to happen to food since the plate. Factory tours run 7 days a week and cost $1.
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
If you love gumbo and jambalaya, take a trip to New Orleans for a traditional delight. In addition to the cajun food, make sure you try the fried pastries (beignets) paired with a cup of coffee while you’re in town. If you like to bar-hop and need a bit of liquor to cool your mouth from the jambalaya, try the French Quarter to move between establishments.
Pro tip: Nearby Avery Island is home to Tabasco, the greatest thing to happen to food since the plate. Factory tours run seven days a week, and cost a paltry $1.
Venice, Italy Venice has been a traditional port city for centuries and chocolate helped make it rich. It’s a tradition that has never left this city on the water. Chocolate shops are located throughout the city. However, to visit the affordable shops, venture away from St. Mark’s and the tourist area; try Santa Croce and the San Polo areas instead.
To top it all off, try a sgroppino. It’s a traditional cocktail with vodka, sorbet, mint, and sparking white wine.
Edinburgh, Scotland Haggis is only for the truly brave of heart. This traditional dish consists of sheep innards mixed with onion, spices, and even oatmeal. I’ve found that each haggis chef cooks it a bit differently, but all haggis reminds me of salisbury steak. Tourists flock to restaurants on the Royal Mile that offer it just for the experience. However, if you wish to taste a more traditional haggis, step off of the Royal Mile and into a small family run shop. It may be more traditional and not cater to sensitive tourist bellies.
London, England
As early as the 13th century a food market existed under London Bridge on the south side of the Thames. Today, Borough Market (pronounced Burrah) is one of the largest food markets in the world offering an impressive display of conventional and organic produce, cheese, meats, wild and exotic game, seafood, wine, and baked goods. There are also a number of stalls within the market that offer prepared food. Join the adventure and get into the longest line. Don’t worry about what’s being sold at the other end.
Of course, London has been for some time a major food destination. With tourism and travel booming, the restaurant industry has been able to flourish — producing such gems as triple Michelin Star winner The Fat Duck overseen by Heston Blumenthal and his 12-course menu; or the Tamarind, a classy, casual eatery serving Indian cuisine that often sees celebrities like Madonna popping in for a quick bite.
Barcelona, Spain La Boqueria market dates back to 1217 and is one of the more charismatic and intimate food markets in the world, located just off La Rambla. In a city known for seductive architectural influences, La Boqueria stands out as a gem. Here you will find a wide variety of diverse and colorful foods (and characters).
Bologna, Italy
Everyone expects to find great food in Italy. If your travels do not include Bologna, you’ll miss out on one of Italy’s greatest masterpieces. Behind the grand arcades of Piazza Maggiore are cobblestone streets where greengrocers, fishmongers, cheese merchants, butchers and bakers have plied their fare since Caesar was in power. Here you will find Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, Balsamic vinegar from nearby Modena, Parma ham and bags of tortellini hanging in shop windows. Impatient? There are countless restaurants and cafes worthy of their presence in this area of gastronomic heaven.
St. Petersburg, Russia Did you know that Russians spend more money on food than any other European nation? It’s no wonder with options as the Yeliseyevsky Gastronom Market, housed in an Art Nouveau mansion built in 1901.
This grand emporium showcases exquisite seafood, meat, cheese, and baked goods. You will be amazed at the impressive quality and quantity of caviar on offer and will be hard pressed to find more opulent surroundings to showcase luxury items from around the world.
Tokyo, Japan
The Tsukiji fish market handles more than 2000 tons of seafood per day. A highlight of any visit to Tokyo is a 5am tour of the market to observe the auction of the most exquisite fish and the transfer of more than $5 billion US in this massive market complex each year. The best catches routinely find themselves prepared as world-class courses at restaurants such as Waketokuyama and Tsujitome.
Not only is Tsukiji the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world, but it’s one of the largest wholesale food markets of any kind, employing nearly 65,000. Just outside Tsukiji is an outdoor market offering not only exquisite seafood, but also produce and food-related goods, including an impressive selection of kitchen knives. Toronto, Canada
A farmer’s market has been in existence at Front and Jarvis Street since 1803. Today, the St. Lawrence Market encompasses two buildings: the South Market, open throughout the week with more than 100 food vendors on the upper level, and hard-to-find exotic and international items on the lower level.
Every Saturday the North Market hosts a farmer’s market starting at 5am. Need inspiration? Located on the west mezzanine of the South Market, The Market Kitchen is a 2,400 square foot cooking school with exposed brick, 20 foot-high ceilings, and soaring views of the Toronto skyline.
Scotsman Mark Beaumont completed his Cycling The America’s expedition yesterday, reaching Ushuaia, Argentina 268 days after he set out from Anchorage, Alaska. Mark crossed through 12 countries on his journey, racking up 13,080 miles, and climbing two major mountains, in the process.
While this would seem like an incredibly long ride for just about anyone else, for Mark it’s only his second longest ride. Back in 2008, almost two years ago to the day, he finished circumnavigating the globe on his bike, a journey that took him just 195 days to complete, which was a record at that time.
To spice things up on his latest adventure, the Scotsman decided to throw a couple of new challenges into the mix. Not only did he climb the 20,320 foot tall Mt. McKinley, in Alaska, he also reached the summit of Aconcagua, which stands at 22,841 feet and is located in the Andes mountains of Argentina. The two peaks are the tallest in North and South America respectively.
While he peddled away the past eight months, Mark has also been blogging his experiences extensively, and it has made for an interesting travelogue. He clearly enjoys spending his time on the road, exploring the countries he passes through, and getting fully immersed in the local cultures. For their part, many of locals that he met along the trail thought that he was a little crazy for making such an epic journey on just his bicycle, but Mark was often touched by the kindness of strangers, who were usually curious about his expedition.
For certain sections of the ride, Beaumont was accompanied by a camera crew, but he also carried his own camera, and filmed much of it himself as well. All of the footage will be edited together to make a BBC documentary that will air in the U.K. later this year. No doubt it will be a fascinating adventure to watch unfold.
