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:

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

While I was in Senegal, my favourite T-shirt started growing something, something that smelled totally rank. This wasn’t like bad mildew smell, this was a horrid funk that wouldn’t quit, even after repeated washing. There was no doubt in my mind, or in the minds of travel companions, that the shirt had to go. It’s always hard to leave good gear behind, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet. When you’re on the road, your favourtie kit wears out. It’s best to admit it and replace it if necessary (like my Asics pictured above) or just leave it behind. No point in carrying stuff that’s just weighing you down.

While being able to sail or lead a group rock climbing might help win some friends and make the trip a touch more interesting, here are the five key things I think you should know before starting off your adventure:

1. Current exchange rate and what some simple goods (cheap meal, t-shirt, bottle of water, etc) should cost.
2. How to say at least a few key things – like hello, goodbye, please, and thank you – in the local language
3. Popular local scams. From the steps of Sacre Coeur in Paris to the Royal Palace in Bangkok, I’ve had scammers try their moves on me, and being aware of the popular local tricks helped me avoid them.
4. Visa policies for neighbouring countries. You never know where the road may take you, so it’s good to be ready.
5. The cheapest way to get to and from the airport (or train station). You could end up paying tons for a taxi into town, or wait a little while for a cheap bus. Choice is yours.

Other than that, I say let curiosity fuelled by polite ignorance be your guide.

If watching this doesn’t scare you off of backcountry skiing for a little while then I don’t know what will. I love cruising around off-piste, but damned if I don’t get myself the best avalanche gear money can buy before I get any more adventurous than I am right now.

From the description of on the Vimeo page:

This was a decent sized avalanche. 1,500 feet the dude fell in a little over 20 seconds. The crown was about 1 – 1.5m. The chute that he got sucked through to the skier’s right was flanked on either side by cliff bands that were about 30m tall. He luckily didn’t break any bones and obviously didn’t hit anything on the run out.

1,500 feet in 20 seconds? Damn. Read the rest of the description for a bit of background on how he got into the situation and a more words of caution on skiing in avalanche zones.

H/t: WorldHum

How good is the Shake Shack (a famous New York fast food joint in Madison Square Park)? I don’t know. Not a clue. But, I can tell you that it is massively popular. In fact, I think it’s too popular. The picture above is a bit of the line (I couldn’t fit the whole line in the frame) at 1:30 PM on Saturday. In the time I watched, the line was moving at a rate of about one person getting served every minute. At that rate people near the back of the line would be waiting for the better part of an hour. For a burger.

Unless you are on the burger pilgrimage, this sort of dedication to a simple food product is baffling. Sometimes when you’re traveling, your need to realise that even though something is a tourist destination, that doesn’t mean it should be the be all end all of your trip. If you go to the Louvre, you don’t have to spend hours queuing to see the Mona Lisa. Trust me, it’s smaller than you think and there is plenty of other great art to see without crowds of people jostling for a better position. Same goes for the Shake Shack. I’m sure it’s good, but I bet you can find a burger that’s just as good, if not better, without the wait. Just because something is famous and a tourist destination, doesn’t mean that you have to see it. Reach out and find the next big thing. Odds are you’ll spend less time in line and more time enjoying where you are.

Of course ultra-endurance running is a world different from globe trotting, one is a grueling sport and the other could be classified as a leisure activity (if you’re doing it wrong). But I think that there is a similarity in the sort of high that we seek. It’s the feeling you get when you are out of control of control and have the choice to either stop and fail, or push harder and come out the other side a winner. The feeling at the end of the trip isn’t necessarily even as great as that feeling in a moment when a slightly more sane person would turn back, but you forge on. Dean captures that feeling, which is damned hard thing to do.

I’ve got a copy of the book, and in line with good book sharing practices, I want to pass it along to another person. If you haven’t read the book, leave a comment on this post and let me know if you want it. I’ll get back to you by email and send it to you, anywhere in the world, doesn’t matter.