It’s still Christmas in Spain!

by Sean McLachlan on

Well, Epiphany actually, but in Spain this is when we give presents. Christmas in Spain is a time for big meals and family fun, as well as church services for those who are so inclined. Santa passes Spain by to deal with the Anglo and Germanic countries, and Japan from what I hear. Spanish children wait for Los Reyes, the Three Kings, who come on their camels bearing gifts for good little boys and girls just like they did with Jesus all those years back.

The night before, it’s traditional to eat roscón de Reyes, the tasty donut-like creation seen here. This year my wife Almudena took some time off from astronomy to bake her very first roscón. It came out great. As usual, we ate it over at my 99 year-old neighbor’s place, and my wife’s roscón was better than the store-bought one she provided. Roscón is typically eaten with chocolate, hot chocolate. Now this isn’t your wimpy American cocoa; it’s a big chocolate bar melted down and served in tea cups! Perfect for dipping your roscón into.

Every roscón comes with a secret toy surprise baked somewhere inside. If you get it in your slice you have good luck for the rest of the year. I got the toy from the store-bought one, and my son Julián got the one from my wife’s roscón. Some mothers mark the spot where the toy is and make sure their kid gets that piece. I can neither confirm nor deny that Almudena did that.

Another tradition on January 5 is the Cabalgata de Reyes, a big parade where the Three Kings pass through town accompanied by their friends. Check out the video below to see this year’s parade in Madrid. After the parade the kids go to sleep, setting a shoe out for the Kings to leave the gifts next to. They also leave supplies for the hungry Kings and their camels. Julián left out peanuts for the camels and Baileys for the Kings. Remarkably, it was all gone the next morning! I thought of making a trail of peanut shells leading from Julián’s bed to his presents, but decided that would be a bit creepy.

The morning of January 6 is just like Christmas morning in other countries. The kids are up and out of bed early to see what those magical home invaders have brought. Since Julián was a good boy he got everything he asked for in his letter to the Kings. This was easy because he only requested four things. Ah, the advantages of not having a television! In fact, he got more than he asked for.

Now we’re off to my mother-in-law’s house because the Kings stopped there too. I have a shoe sitting in her living room and I’m dying to know what’s next to it. Although we did our shopping last minute (some traditions are universal), we made sure every shoe was well stocked. A few years back we got our elderly neighbor a Furby, which she still has and loves. Yeah, we all made fun of those things when they came out, but imagine how amazing a Furby is to someone born in 1911.

¡¡¡Felices Reyes!!!

Disney World says goodbye to Block Party Bash

by Leigh Caldwell on

New Year’s Day is a day of beginnings, but it marked the end for a Disney World parade. The Block Party Bash ended its run at Disney’s Hollywood Studios on January 1.

The Block Party Bash was a rolling parade that stopped for a “street party” a couple of times along the parade route. It featured characters from DisneyPixar movies including Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles.

The Green Army Men from Toy Story served as hosts and narrators of the dance party, inviting park guests out into the streets to dance to “Celebration” and “Shout” along with the characters and Disney dancers clad in technicolor outfits.

Disney announced last fall that the Block Party Bash would be closing in January. It is being replaced by a new parade, the Pixar Pals Countdown to Fun!

The new parade debuts Jan. 16. It will include four DisneyPixar characters not currently seen at Disney Parks parades: Remy and Emile from Ratatouille and Carl and Russell from Up.

It is believed that the new parade will use the music from the Pixar Play Parade, which will be put on hiatus for most of 2011 at Disney’s California Adventure.

There will be no afternoon parades scheduled at Disney’s Hollywood Studios between Jan. 2 and Jan. 15.

[Image credit: Flickr user HarshLight]

Gadling’s 2011 New Year’s travel resolutions

by Laurel Miller on

It’s that time of year again. A time when we all make certain promises to ourselves, in an attempt to make our lives more organized, our bodies stronger or leaner. We vow to spend more time with loved ones, give back to others, or ditch that cubicle job. And some of us…well, we just want to keep on traveling, any way we can manage to finagle it.

In the spirit of New Year’s, I asked my fellow Gadling contributors about their travel resolutions for the coming year, and came up with some of my own. Our goals are all over the map (no pun intended), but a common theme emerged. Despite our love of exotic adventures, most of us want to spend more time exploring in our own backyard (that would be the United States). That, and invent musical underwear.

Leigh Caldwell

  • Go on my first cruise.
  • Spend a weekend somewhere without Internet access, and, if I survive that…
  • Celebrate the Fourth of July with my family in Banner Elk, North Carolina, home of the quintessential small-town Independence Day. There’s a three-legged race, a rubber ducky race down a mountain stream, and a parade filled with crepe paper, balloons, and every kid and dog in town.

McLean Robbins

  • Quit my “day job” so I can do this full-time.

[Photo credit: Flickr user nlmAdestiny]Laurel Miller

  • Get back in shape after a two-year battle with Oroya Fever (contracted in Ecuador), and climb a volcano in Bolivia.
  • Finally start exploring my adopted state of Washington, especially the Olympic Peninsula.
  • Visit India for the first time; see if it’s possible to subsist on street food without getting dysentery.
  • Learn to wear DEET at all times when traveling in countries that harbor nearly-impossible-to-diagnose diseases like Oroya Fever.

Sean MacLachlan

  • Get back to Ethiopia.
  • Explore Green Spain (the north part of the country).
  • Show my son a non-Western culture.
  • Invent an underwear stereo that plays cheap jazz music when subjected to a TSA patdown.


Mike Barish

  • Drive cross country.
  • See the Grand Canyon (finally).
  • Finally learn how not to overpack.
  • And, for the fifth year in a row, I resolve to learn how to play the keytar (2011 has got to be the year!).

Darren Murph

  • Bound and determined to visit my 50th state, Alaska.
  • Dead-set on relocating a childhood friend of mine back to North Carolina, and then taking him on a road trip of some sort.

Meg Nesterov

  • Visit more places where I know people.
  • Be in more travel pictures and get my husband out from behind the
  • camera occasionally.
  • Take at least one guidebook-free and paperless trip. Okay, maybe one map.
  • Take better notes. I might think I’ll always remember the name of that fun-looking restaurant or weird sign I want to translate, but it’s easy to forget when you’re taking in so many new things.
  • See more of Turkey while I still live here. I spend so much time traveling to nearby countries, I have to be sure to see the landscape of Cappadocia and eat the food in Gaziantep before I go back to the U.S..

Grant Martin, Editor-in-Chief

  • Travel a bit less and work a bit more [Sure, Grant!].

Annie Scott Riley

  • Travel less alone, and more with my husband.

Alex Robertson Textor

  • More open-jaw travel, flying into one destination and traveling by land to another before returning home. It’s my favorite way to see a new or familiar territory–gradually and without any backtracking. I need to do it more often.
  • More thematic consistency in my travels. Instead of scrambling to meet whatever assignment comes my way, I want my travels in the next year to be focused on a region or two, and on a number of overarching questions or issues. I’m still collecting ideas: Remote European mountain villages? Neglected second-tier cities? The Caucasus?
  • Northern Cyprus. Have been wanting to visit since I was a kid. 2011’s the year.

David Farley

  • To take back the name “Globetrotters” from the Harlem basketball team.
  • To introduce eggnog and lutefisk to southeast Asia.
  • To eat fewer vegetables.

[Photo credits: volcano, Laurel Miller; Grand Canyon, Flickr user Joe Y Jiang; Cappadocia, Flickr user Curious Expeditions; lutefisk, Flickr user Divine Harvester]

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon inflation

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade always attracts a crowd from the Upper West Side of Manhattan down to W. 34th Street, where you’ll find the store for which the parade is named. It can be exciting to cram onto the streets and see each of the floats and balloons roll by. Even if it is chilly outside, with the coffee in your hands quickly growing cold, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and experiencing it in person does not compare to having it on television in the background when you’re preparing Thanksgiving dinner.

If you come to New York City for the parade, there’s an attraction the night before that doesn’t draw the same hype, yet I find to be much more fun: the balloon inflation. From 3 PM to 10 PM the night before Thanksgiving, crowds converge on the blocks that circle the American Museum of Natural History to watch the balloons slowly take shape. For many, this is an alternative to going to the parade, providing both the experience of seeing the balloons and the feel of an insider going behind the scenes. A unique touch for me is a Gadling family connection: Melanie Nayer‘s father was part of the crew inflating the balloons in years past.

Getting photos for @gadling (@ Macy’s Parade Balloon Inflation w/ 113 others) http://4sq.com/ajc4qcless than a minute ago via foursquareTom Johansmeyer
tjohansmeyer

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%Gallery-108282%You can feel the crowd start to form well before the W. 79th Street entrance. As low as W. 75th Street, the Columbus Avenue sidewalks became crowded, and by the time I passed Shake Shack, on the corner of Columbus and W. 77th Street, I was effectively in line. It moved quickly, however, and within 15 minutes, I was crossing Columbus with friend and fellow travel blogger Laurie DePrete and headed toward the first balloons down on W. 77th Street.

From 3 PM to 6 PM, the scene changes drastically. Balloons go up as the sun goes down, and characters begin to come to life. Some, such as Snoopy, were not yet recognizable, while others, including Shrek and a Smurf, were already recognizable. At points, the bodies were jammed in, making it virtually impossible to move, but there were spots where the spectators moved easily.

Turn the corner from W. 77th Street to Central Park West, and there’s nothing to see: all you do is walk up to W. 81st Street, where the spectacle continues. Spiderman, Santa and Kung Fu Panda were taking shape on the street.

He exit wasn’t as crowded as the entrance, but t still took a few minutes to push up to W. 82nd Street, where the walking was a little easier. If you’re without kids, the next natural stop is Prohibition, a bar on Columbus Avenue between W. 84th Street and W.85th Street for an excellent Irish coffee and a chance to shake off the chill of the November evening air.

There’s nothing quite like going behind the scenes of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, even if it isn’t the exclusive experience that it sounds. If you do want to get a great view, though, whether it’s for the balloon inflation or the parade itself, nothing compares to making friends with someone who lives in a building overlooking the inflation or parade route!

The Mermaid Parade at Coney Island

by Jamie Rhein on

There are certain events that are purely connected to the place where they are held. The Mermaid Parade at Coney Island in Brooklyn is one of them. Tomorrow, June 20 starting at 2 p.m. is the big event. Since 1983, people have been dressing up in over the top creative costumes– mermaid related or not, to join in on one of the largest art parades in the United States. There are floats, bands and generally a whole lot of join-in-the-fun sea-themed hoopla.

People who come to the parade as spectators could just as well join in; it’s that kind of event. The idea is to be creative in a celebration of the artistic and summer. The parade is held the first Saturday after the summer solstice. In effect, hooray for summer, the mermaids are here. Come dressed as a creature of the sea or a mermaid and join in.

Don’t know what to wear? Here’s an idea. Get a baseball hat and glue natural sponges on it. Or go as a coral “wreath” by getting coral from a pet store and hot glue gun it to a wreath form that goes around your head like a crown.

According to the Mermaid Parade Web site, the parade is family friendly, kids are even in the parade. This year the parade route has changed slightly. For details, click here. The viewing stand is still in the same location.