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Swedish star Loreen having taken the top spot last year (and for the second time), Sweden tapped its handsome,  third-biggest city to again host the world’s largest, longest, and perhaps most anticipated/beloved music competition – this year´s 68th edition pulling in a worldwide television audience of some 200 million. And of course like its predecessors, this one got thousands of fans from some 90 countries to flock to Malmö and enjoy its myriad offerings. (I´m just not sure why they k

Eurovision.tv

It’s baaaack! The 67th edition of the world’s largest, longest, and perhaps most anticipated/beloved music competition, pulling in a worldwide television audience of some 160 million and inspiring tens of thousands of fans to travel

On a personal note, although I haven't yet attended the Eurovision song contest in person, ever since I started traveling more extensively to Europe in 1977 – well before American Idol, The Voice, or The X Factor – it's always been a big deal for mor

No matter what the temptation might be, our current situation allows us no scope to gather. A festival without a gathering is nothing but a festival without content. Northeast India has rightly earned its spot as the land of festivals. Northeast India, with its colorful tribes, sub-tribes, and its many expressive cultures fill the yearly calendar with myriad traditional festivals.

But of late, this region has also homegrown some festivals where art and its finer nuances finds the appropriate note

The name of Montreal's Golden Square Mile (aka Le Mille Carré), a square mile of signature historic blocks at the heart of downtown at the foot of Mount Royal, traces its origins back to 1950s real estate developers promoting the area's prosperity. Today, "golden" more aptly describes the stellar array of attractions available within such a small radius.

In 1983, only 30 percent of the district's historic buildings survived the wrecking ball due to its convenient overlap with downtown but thanks

When it comes to cities in Cuba, capital Havana does hog a disproportionate share of the attention – and it’s not hard to understand why. But at the southeastern tip of this island country, 540 miles (870 kilometres) from the capital, is another which amply deserves to be part of any visit to Cuba. One of the first of many settlements in the Americas to be named after mother country Spain’s revered pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela, the bayside port of Santiago de Cuba is this country’

If you’ve been taking in any celebrity news of late, you’ve no doubt seen that Hollywood types have been especially thick on the ground over here this summer – famously featuring an almost punching out of Justin Bieber by Orlando Bloom at Ibiza Town‘s latest hot nightspot, Booom! Besides these two, other boldface names being being bandied about lately are Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Zac Efron, Leonardo di Caprio, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton.

But hereabouts this is par for the course, as Euro

You don’t necessarily have to ski or snowboard to have fun playing outside during winter travel– nor do you even need a mountain! Right in the middle of many urban destinations, renting a pair of skates and mingling with the locals is a fabulous way of getting both exercise and often a spectacular new perspective on old cities. Here are some of my top choices:

Boston 

In the northern zone of the 50 groomed acres (20 hectares) of the USA’s oldest park, the Boston Common Frog Pond offers a fu

How would you spend a weekend getaway in London? That very question was posed to us by Virgin Atlantic, which challenged us to design a dream itinerary for two days of gallivanting in London, one of the world's most exciting and attraction-rich cities, and a favorite of BonVoyageurs since we first moved to the Greater London area with our baby daughter and our French cat in the late 1970s.

To make the dream weekend in London even more interesting, Virgin Atlantic sent us a travel bag of inspira

Miami’s South Beach is the quintessential “party capital of America.” But what if your goals run more toward sun-drenched beaches and culture? On a recent sojourn to SoBe, I had the opportunity to stay in the elegant and refined “colonial grand dame” of Ocean Drive, the Betsy Hotel. In the crowded South Beach hotel space, the Betsy stands out like no other. Sure the Delano, National, Shore Club and more attract a vast amount of attention, but it is the boutique Betsy, that is my rationale for a

Once again, Diego was right. Actually, Jake thought blearily, these days Diego seemed elevated to frickin' oracle. Who knew? When they were at NYU together, the doofus was far less into books than pranks, from cute-but-harmless to dangerously dumbass. Like the time - a decade pre-Occupy - he'd sent out a press release from “the Coalition to Arm the Homeless” and the resulting brouhaha snowballed until their dorm was besieged with reporters from CNN, the Post, AP, even the London fucking Times --

Some new and up-to-date stuff about USA: http://tours-tv.com/en/united-states

As of 2009, six of the 25 tallest buildings in the world are in the United States. (12-2009)

As of 2009, the tallest building in the United States was the Sears Tower, also the 4th highest in the world. (12-2009)

The Mustard Museum in the United States in in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin. (4-12-2007)

$12 was the cost of General Electric’s first set of 24 Christmas lights (equaled the average paycheck of one work week in 1903).

The

If you ever asked me in my younger days what would be an exciting week I may well have said something like “fly 5000 miles, have currencies from 4 countries in my wallet, and wake up wondering where I am.”

In my adult life I have had quite a few weeks like that. I am in the middle of another one.

The day before yesterday I was in Chiang Mai. A 90 minute flight on Air Asia took me to Bangkok for one night. At five a.m. I was on my way to the airport to catch a 7 hour flight to Doha on a Qatar Air T