My travelling buddies in Spain loved pastries, so much so that we were in most every pastry shop that looked half decent. You can see the in the image above scoping out the options at one shop in Sevilla. Not that I’m complaining, I love a good pastry, but there are a very large number of pastry shops in Spain as it turns out. Out of all the shops in all the towns, there is one that you have to visit: Pan y Chocolate in Granada. Try anything they have with dulce de leche, you’ll be glad you did. You can find the place here:

I’m headed to Scotland tomorrow for four days of fun. I’m headed to a fiddle festival and a concert in Glenuig, but other than that plans are pretty open. So do you have any tips on things I should see in Southern Scotland this weekend?

Update: I got these tips from friends on Facebook

• I would recommend Edinburgh castle – well worth taking the guided tour & also Loch Lomond, breathtaking! Have fun.
• Just walk around Edinburgh and party with the punk rock kids at night.

  -1 for Loch tours – generally boring if kinda pretty.

• Culzean Castle (pronounced something like Cullane) is the Kennedy family seat. It now belongs to the national trust. It isn’t near Glenuig, but it is in the south of Scotland, south of Ayr.
• Unfortunatly we are out of thew tourist season now and many of the attractions are now closed (better to visit in the spring/summer time.) I’d have suggested Drumlanrig castle, home of Bonnie Prince Charlie (working estate) but its closed now until 2nd April, in terms of land access (walks) there are no public rights of way in Scotland, its now Grouse shooting season so access to land is a problem, but there may be tourist attractions open within the cities.
• If you hit Edinburgh, definitely hike up Aurthur’s Seat, which you may have already done, but is awesome. Skip the trail and scramble up the side. Much more fun that way.

  Also, see if you can shoot some grouse. And drink scotch. Lots of it.

• i highly reccommend scotland’s best indian restaurant note: this is a joke as I went to Scotland’s best Indian restaurant with this friend. It was indeed delicious.

There are scores of companies that are willing to give away something fairly valuable in exchange for giving them your email address and touch of demographic information. I’m not really a gambling mad, but I’m willing to hand out my email address (my spam address of course) in exchange for a slight chance to win a trip. If you’re of the same mindset and have an hour to burn, you might want to enter all of these:

• Cafe Direct to Peru
• Outside Magazine climb Mt. Rainier
• J.Crew shopping spree in New York City
• Honey Bunched of Oats escape to the Caribbean
• Travel Channel to Charlton, SC (really Travel Channel? That’s the best you’ve got? REALLY?)
• Viv Magazine to Fiji
• Johnson’s Body Care to U.S. Virgin Islands
• Ultimate Thailand Explorers competition (like the Taiwan explorers contest)
• Marriott tweet and facebook your way to Hawaii
• Hell’s Kitchen to Whistler, Canada
• Schick make your own adventure
• Grand Marnier to Las Vegas
• Islands magazine has 7 contests at the moment, none of which are to Bouvet Island
• Starwood hotels sweepstakes for enough hotel points to stay anywhere and a rental car to get there
• Good Hair (the movie) for a cruise
• Virginia tourism commission to Virginia
• Couples Retreat (another movie) to Tahiti
• PADI honeymoon diving trip to Roatan
• Rainy Day Records to the Grammy Awards
• National Geographic to see the Tarra Cotta Warriors in China

I’m sure there are other travel sweepstakes out there, so if you know of any, please post them in the comments. And less cross our fingers that someone in the Questing for Adventure communty scores one of these trips!

I just discoved that next week is going to be awesome. It’s Chocolate Week here in London.

I’ve heard of restaurant week, a pretty common week in cities around the world. All the good restaurants in town have a fixed menu for deal of a price. Chocolate week is a similar deal except there are it’s also loaded up tastings and samplings. Excellent.

When you’re scoping out a big city, make see if there are any weeks like chocolate weeks or restaurant week so that you can get in on the action. I’m sure that you can be somewhere and not know that something was going on, I suppose I even missed Chocolate Week last year. But it’s well worth a little research, as these quiet special events really make a trip that much more special.

Today if the first day of the 2009 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. It’s the biggest gathering of hot air balloons in the world and the most photographed event in the world. If there’s anything that makes me a little bit homesick for the place I grew up (other than friends and family of course), the Balloon Fiesta is it.

I can’t recommend the Balloon Fiesta highly enough. You spend your mornings checking out the Balloons and then in the afternoons have time to kick around the town and surrounding mountains. If I were to plan a long weekend for Balloon Fiesta, my itinerary would look something like this:

Day 1: 5 AM – 9 AM watch the first mass assertion, 600 balloons taking off as quickly as possible, from the Balloon Fiesta grounds. Then take the Sandia Peak Tram to the top of the Sandia Mountains and see the Balloons from above as they continue to drift around and start to land. Then take a good long hike along the crest trail and eat a leisurely lunch at High Finance overlooking Albuquerque. Take the tram back down and wander your way back to the Balloon Fiesta for the balloon glow and fireworks.

Day 2: 4:30 AM arrive early to crew for a balloon – registration is closed for this year, but as you’re planning your trip check back and sign up. You’ll then spend the morning helping getting a balloon in the air and then back to ground and packed up. With any luck you’ll also have a chance to take a ride in the balloon too (I did when i crewed). Then spend the day in Albuquerque, maybe having some delicious New Mexican food with your crew mates or checking out Old Town Albuquerque. In the evening drive up to into the foot hills and see if you can spot any balloons over the city.

Day 3:If there are any events like the special shapes rodeo (imagine giant balloons in the shapes of cows, dinosaurs, motorcycles, etc – it’s cool) then head back for one last early morning. Otherwise head up to Santa Fe for the day, and back to Albuquerque for an evening flight home. Don’t forget to grab a last taste of New Mexico at La Hacienda Express in the airport.

If you have more time, of course you should crew multiple days so that you can try out chase crew – following the balloon form the ground so you can be there when they land. You could also give yourself a little more time to explore the mountains around Albuquerque, the Sandias and Manzanos offer some beautiful short camping trips. But even with s few short days I promise you that you’ll have a great time.

Photo: Coolgates