Want to test your chocolate geography skills? Try Traveler’s online WorldWise quiz for October, featuring our favorite sweet treat. Learn chocolate-related facts about Turkey, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Ghana and Italy.  Here’s the first question:

Thornton’s, a British chocolatier, created an 860-pound wall of chocolate for an Easter 2007 event. Dubbed the “World’s First Edible Billboard” (and devoured in three hours), the wall graced which London shopping area?

A. Savile Row

B. Knightsbridge

C. Covent Garden

Find the answer, and many more tempting questions, here.

Photo: Telegraph UK/Zuma Press

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If you happen to be in Brighton, England this weekend (Oct. 3-5) for the Photo Fringe Festival, you’ll have a chance to pop into the tiny, traveling Caravan Gallery, which has been trundling around the UK since 2001 displaying photos that emphasize, according to their website, “the reality, and surreality, of contemporary Britain.” The Caravan Gallery is an exhibition space, a caravan, and a visual arts project by British artists Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale, who describe themselves as “simultaneously seduced by and suspicious of the rose-tinted tones of tourist information brochures, and frustrated by their yawning omissions.” Williams and Teasdale have set out to correct those omissions by photo-documenting curious juxtapositions they come across in their travels, and they display their photos in the 1969 car trailer that follows them around. Gallery visitors are welcome to suggest places for them to investigate next.

If you miss them in Brighton, you may be able to catch the show in the USA.  Chris Teasdale says

We are fundraising to bring The Carvaan Gallery to the USA next year and planning to exhibit images in the caravan of towns and cities in the UK to places with the same name in America.   We will be traveling between LA and New York stopping off at (among others) Portsmouth, Glasgow, Liverpool and Washington.  We have a film company involved o capture the reactions of the American public to the “real” Britain.

Check their calendar for updates.

Hat tip: Shedworking

Photo: the Caravan Gallery

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Cinnamon Bun Day began in Sweden in 1999 when the Home Baking Council (Hembakningsrådet) celebrated its 40th anniversary. Now the day has become a tradition held every year in early October.

The American Swedish Institute is located in a 33-room stone castle built by Swedish immigrant newspaperman Swan J. Turnblad in l908. Turnblad founded the Institute in 1929 to promote Swedish and Swedish-American culture. The Institute offers tours of the mansion, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. After you fill up on cinnamon rolls, you can listen to a special presentation about the history of the mansion at 7 p.m., and learn about the lives of the builders and woodcarvers who constructed it.  Besides sculpted ceilings and a two-story grand hall, the mansion has  eleven floor-to-ceiling kakelugnar (Swedish porcelain tile stoves).

The Institute is also offering a Sunday smorgasbord on October 19th at 1 p.m., which will include such dishes as herring in wine sauce, lemon and lime herring, eggs topped with mayonnaise and shrimp, gravlax (marinated salmon) with sweet dill-mustard sauce, kålpudding (cabbage pudding) served with cream sauce and lingonberries, Swedish cheese, smoked ham, and creamy fruit salad. There will also be smoked sausages, a fresh fruit platter, pickled cucumbers, Jansson’s Temptation, meatballs, red cabbage, boiled potatoes and Swedish sausages. Save room for dessert:  Swedish apple and cinnamon cake served with homemade vanilla sauce.  Musicians will play old-time Scandinavian music. The cost of the meal is $25, and the Institute will take reservations until Friday Oct. 17.

Can’t make it to Minneapolis? Celebrate with a Swedish treat by making some of your own. Check out this recipe, or watch a video on how to bake them.             

The American Swedish Institute is at 2600 Park Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota; + 1 612 871 4907; www.americanswedishinst.org

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During my recent trip to France, my historian brother and I had planned to visit the little town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in Camargue in the south, right on the Mediterranean. It’s a sleepy little seaside town where the local French people came for vacation. Since my brother is a professor of religious studies at Dartmouth, our itinerary naturally included a stop to see the medieval church dedicated to several biblical Marys who are believed to have come to the town to evangelize after the death of Jesus Christ. The church was lovely, with a subterranean chapel dedicated to Saint Sarah, the patron saint of travelers. Later that day, we walked down toward the sea, and found a small bullring with posters of bulls and men in white shirts. Since the event was free, we wandered in.

French bullfighting turned out to be very different

from the better known Spanish style,  in that it features neither

matadors nor blood. In France, a very feisty and un-bloody bull comes

into the ring and ten or so men dressed all in white take turns

provoking the bull to charge. Each of the razeteurs had what

looked like a knuckle duster in one hand with a curved comb jutting out

from it. Apparently the goal is to simultaneously stay away

from the horns, but run just close enough to the bull to brush the fur

between them with this comb. The escape from the bull’s charge was

quite athletic, and close encounters were the high point for the crowd,

judging by noise and applause.

After each razeteur approached the bull, they would dash off to the

side of the ring. There, what looked like a normal-size step wraps

along the inside of the bullring. A chest-high wall separates the

bullring from a narrow corridor circling the ring and ten feet above

that was the rail where the spectators sat. After making each dash

across the sands of the arena, the razeteurs would gracefully and

without losing speed, put one foot on the small step, opposite leg at

the top of the wall and then fling themselves to hang from the

spectator rail. The bull’s horns appeared quite sharp and the razeteurs

had nothing to protect them but thin T-shirts and fast legs. The grace

and athleticism with which they flung themselves out of harms way was

quite extraordinary. The close calls were thrilling, but what was most

satisfying was that at the end of the day, the bull was lured from the

ring and survived to play another day.

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Traveler invited HotelChatter senior editor Juliana Shallcross to share her favorite San Francisco hotels in September’s cover story, “Classic San Francisco.”  Juliana revealed some gems, including the Hotel Vitale, which she describes as a “small but elegant 199-room property on the Embarcadero, the city’s traditional waterfront.” When booking, she says, request a room overlooking the water. “The Bay Bridge views are great. And there are free yoga classes, too.”

Another reason to like the Vitale: It belongs to the Joie de Vivre hotel group, which aims to donate a minimum of $200 per guest room per year to community organizations. Hotel Vitale’s philanthropic partner is the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, whose members and volunteers build trails, restore wetlands, propagate and plant thousands of native species, study hawk migration, and bring 15,000 schoolchildren to the Parks each year for educational programs. Hotel guests can help by donating one dollar of their total bill to Joie de Vivre’s “You Can Make a Difference” program.

One more plus: The Hotel Vitale is located within walking distance of a wide variety of public transportation, including BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), the historic waterfront trolleys, ferries to the North and East Bay, cable cars and Muni (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency). 

Thanks for the tip, Juliana!

Photo:  Hotel Vitale

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You read that right. In the picturesque hilltop town of Salemi in western Sicily, the mayor is selling old stone villas in the historic town center for one euro (approximately $1.41) apiece. The catch? These villas were damaged in the 1968 earthquake, and have stood unoccupied and deteriorating for the past 40 years. Sound appealing? Once you buy the villa, you must restore it in two years in a way that respects its original character and in accordance with the architectural standards established by the town council; you must also hire local builders, architects, decorators, and plumbers to do the work, reports Times Online, “since the aim of the scheme is to help the local economy.”

Mayor Vittorio Sgarbi, a former art critic and culture minister, thought up this idea to restore the 3,700 decaying houses owned by the town, and says that musician Peter Gabriel of Genesis has expressed interest, as well as the owner of the Inter Milan football team. Mr. Sgarbi hopes to turn his town into the next Pantelleria, the nearby island where celebrities such as Gérard Depardieu and Giorgio Armani own homes.  If you’re interested, check out the mayor’s website (click on contatti) or call the town council at +1 39 924 991 111.

If you don’t have time to restore a Sicilian villa, you might enjoy reading about a magnificent one in The Leopard, written by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, who chronicled the decline of an aristocratic Palermo family not unlike his own.

Photo by Praecepitum via Flickr

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Tiny Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay is Maryland’s last remaining offshore inhabited island, and the home of Maryland’s state dessert, the magnificently multi-layered Smith Island Cake. So I got it in my head to sail there on our friend’s boat and taste this baked extravaganza at the source. There are easier ways to do it (i.e., by ferry), but not as fun. It’s a ten-hour sail from the town of Oxford, which is where the sailboat lives, and the folks at Smith Island Marina advised us to come on a rising tide to avoid getting stuck in sand. That meant sailing at night, which I love, and arriving at 2 a.m.

My family was up for the challenge, and our neighbor and his friend as well, so we set off on a warm Friday afternoon, after momentarily forgetting one of our teenagers on the dock. As we entered the bay, a trio of ospreys flew around the boat, and one of them landed on the mast and hitched a ride for a while, which we deemed a good sign. The kids grilled hamburgers on the barbecue cantilevered over the stern, and after dinner the stars came out and bioluminescent dinoflagellates sparkled in the waves as we zipped along. The kids were sleeping when we entered the channel and slowly motored through the hazards, using spotlights and flashlights to illuminate the navigational aids in the dark, tricky channel, and we tied up at the marina with relief. 

There’s not a lot to do on Smith Island. Just about all of the 200 or so residents trap blue crabs for a living, as Smith Islanders have been doing for the past 300 years, and there’s much activity before dawn as the watermen head out in their boats to check their traps. There are a few old cars on the island that have seen better days, but most people use boats, golf carts, and bicycles to get around. Ewell, the main town, has the marina, two restaurants, a few gift shops and B&Bs, the post office, a Methodist church, an elementary school, and the excellent Smith Island museum, which offers a vivid intro to the life and history of the island.

The kids took the Zodiac and went exploring, visiting the goats on Goat Island, and I went for a walk on the road through the salt marsh to the next town, Rhodes Point (which changed its name from the earlier pirate-influenced version, Rogues Point). Egrets and herons silently pursued their prey in the marsh grass, heat radiated from the asphalt, and when a car occasionally passed by, the driver always waved. My Crocs were rubbing a blister on my foot, so I stopped to ask an older woman for a Band-aid. She invited me into her spotless, cheerful house and her granddaughters eyed me shyly. “Don’t forget the softball game tonight!” she urged, as I went out the door with my bandaged foot. “Everyone’s invited.”

On the way back to Ewell, I heard thunder and walked faster. An old car pulled up and the driver kindly offered me a ride. We chatted on the way, and he had that wonderful Smith Island accent, which some linguists say is a remnant of Elizabethan speech, from the original English settlers being isolated for so long.

To me it sounds like they add extra vowels in their words and roll them around in their mouths before letting them go (you can listen to it here).When I expressed my admiration for the marsh, he told me about the pair of bald eagles that often hang out on the sign in the water that indicates the Maryland/Virginia state line: One eagle sits on the Maryland side, and his mate in Virginia.

We had reserved two dozen steamed crabs in advance through Pauli Eades at the marina, but when we couldn’t find her in the late afternoon and our stomachs were growling, we headed over to Rukes General Store, which I heard was the best place to eat. Out on the screened porch under ceiling fans, a motherly waitress brought us pitchers of iced tea as storm clouds gathered. The crab cakes I ordered arrived piping hot, packed with fresh crab and bursting with flavor, with no filler and no little stray bits of shell. Our friend Rainer the chef had softshell crabs, which he pronounced the best he’d ever had. Rain pounded down on the corrugated metal roof and leaked a bit onto our picnic table, making the meal cozier as we shoved together. We enjoyed the after-dinner rainbow, with no room for dessert.

The softball field was ablaze with lights as we wandered back to the boat, so we stopped to watch, and two of our kids were recruited to play. Julia was the only outfielder in a dress, and she distinguished herself at bat by running out of her flip-flops, then trying to steal second. “Can she DO that?” wailed the pitcher, as the opposing team howled approval. Next, in his eagerness to get an RBI, our son accidentally knocked down the girl guarding second base, and apologized profusely. “Way to make friends, Owen!” we yelled from the stands. But everyone was amazingly friendly, and the game concluded in laughter, with everyone mobbing the snack bar, which was raising funds for island medical expenses. 

At 3 a.m. we headed out, to take advantage of the tide, then moored outside the harbor until daybreak.  Sailing home in a steady breeze on a sunny afternoon, we cracked and ate crabs, jumped overboard, ate cold watermelon, jumped overboard again, fired the potato cannon, and finally had our delicious ten-layer Smith Island cake and ate it, too.

Photo: Smith Island cake, by Wayne Bierbaum via flickr; Smith Island work boat by BlondeonBlonde via flickr

and his young associates filed this report from SEA LIFE, the brand-new Legoland underwater theme park, where taking a theme park vacation no longer means leaving your conscience at home:

When Legoland California opens its new underwater theme park, SEA LIFE, on Monday in Carlsbad, Calif., it may be closest thing we have to America’s first green theme park.

Everything about SEA LIFE, from the types of fish on display to the way in which it recycles waste, exudes social responsibility. When I got a sneak peak of SEA LIFE earlier this week, I found myself standing next to a bin for recycling park tickets. I’m a regular at all of Orlando’s theme parks, and I’ve never seen a recycling bin of any kind, let alone for tickets.

Last year, the family theme park quietly sponsored a company-wide initiative called the “Green Wave Committee” with the goal of creating a cleaner, more eco-friendly park. The result: over a year, Legoland saved 212 tons of materials from going into landfills.

Legoland already recycled water, used environmentally-friendly pest control and had transitioned to sustainable packaging for food items made in the park. The Green Wave upped the ante by aggressively encouraging park guests and employees to recycle (departments within Legoland competed to see who could recycle the most cans). The park also teamed up with San Diego Habitat for Humanity and its Cans for Habitat program to raise funds to help build an 11-unit condominium complex in Carlsbad.

Thankfully, all that social responsibility doesn’t translate into a boring theme park. SEA LIFE is pretty exciting. All of the freshwater fish living in the aquarium can be found in California lakes and streams, and its cold-water marine animals are all native to the California coastline. (Alas, the aquarium wasn’t fully stocked when we visited, but we were promised lots of exciting fish, including sharks.)

My boys Aren, 6, and Iden, 3, loved the clear diving “bells” that allowed them to surface inside the aquarium for a close-up look at the marine life. The tanks were being cleaned by scuba divers, who took a
break from vacuuming algae to wave to the kids.

Legoland is hardly the first theme park with a green initiative.

Last year, Universal Studios Orlando said it had gone green with a program called Green is Universal that included using alternative fuels in 100 percent of its service vehicles and mobile equipment.

It also claimed to have a “green” theme park ride when it launched The Simpsons Ride

this summer. (If nothing else, The Simpsons was recycled, since it use the same infrastructure as the legendary Back to the Future).

But Legoland goes far beyond Universal’s efforts. If you’re serious about having an environmentally-friendly theme park vacation, SEA LIFE will float your boat.

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Arriving with just as much folklórico dancing as fanfare, Santa Barbara, California’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta will be in full swing over the next few days, and kicks off today on the steps of the historic Old Mission. This year’s theme: Viva La Comunidad, or long live the community!

In its 84-year history, Fiesta has become a cultural celebration highly anticipated by local and international spectators alike, perhaps because it is the only time of year when it is acceptable to wear oversized sombreros in public and chant, “Ole, Ole Ole!” without receiving a disdainful glare. The first official Fiesta was held in 1924 with the opening of the Lobero Theatre which was named in honor of Guiseppe “José” Lobero, a famed Italian trombonist and singer. Both the celebration and the theater remain lofty manifestations of the modern-day town.

Today, Fiesta — slated to run from July 30 through August 3 — brings together a diverse audience to revel in mariachi music, dirt-kicking rodeos, and a smorgasbord of authentic Mexican cuisine. All restaurants and bars along State Street, located in the town center, are packed with merrymakers launching confetti-filled eggs at each other, which they purchase from one of several street vendors.

The weeklong celebration, however, is not only amusement but also a continuation of the city’s heritage from the Spanish, Mexican, and North American pioneers who originally founded Santa Barbara.

Some highlights include the following:

La Fiesta Pequeña:
At 8 p.m. on July 30, Fiesta’s opening celebration of traditional song and dance is a must-see event for all ages.

Los Mercados:
A series of markets spread throughout town selling souvenirs and some of the most delectable, cultural dishes.

Las Noches de Ronda:
Free nightly Spanish music and dancing at the Courthouse’s Sunken Gardens beginning at 8 p.m.

¡Viva la Fiesta!

Check out Catherine Karnow’s Santa Barbara photo gallery on Traveler’s website.

Photos Patrick Turner via Flickr

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On June 1st, volunteer cooks from around the country will travel to New Orleans, Louisiana, to promote good will through good food. The trip is spearheaded by CulinaryCorps, a non-profit organization that designs, organizes, and launches affordable volunteer outreach experiences for culinary professionals. At present, CulinaryCorps focuses its trips on the rebuilding and culinary renaissance of New Orleans, and this June marks CulinaryCorps’ fifth trip to the city since March 2007. 

The ambitious, week-long itinerary is built upon partnerships with local organizations working at the intersection of community and food. On the first day of the trip, the CulinaryCorps team of 14 talented chefs will test their mettle by cooking the evening meal for over 500 volunteers at Habitat for Humanity’s Camp Hope. The next day, the volunteers will collaborate with Edible Schoolyard NOLA to help launch an “Edible Afternoon,” a day of tasty field-day challenges for students at the Samuel Green Charter School. The CulinaryCorps itinerary also includes opportunities for volunteers to learn first-hand about the food culture so important to the city, including a dinner with Gumbo Tales author Sara Roahen, a crawfish boil with Slow Food convivium leader Poppy Tooker, and an early morning stop at Pearl River Blues Farm for fresh blueberries and okra.  The week concludes with volunteer work at two very special events: the “Taste of Mississippi” fundraiser for the Mississippi Slow Food convivium, and the Gala Opening of the much-anticipated Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans.

Read More: Emily Haile blogged about the New Orleans Culinary Comeback after Hurricane Katrina. Traci Angel wrote about her experiences as a voluntourist with Hands on New Orleans. And check out our list of volunteer groups who welcome visitors throughout New Orleans.

Photo by Andrew Edwards