Travel

HBO’s Game of Thrones showed us how awesome it can be to hang out in a castle, drinking mulled wine and forcing fine feathered friends to carry out our bidding.  Well, maybe it didn’t focus on the awesomeness part, per se, since most castle denizens in Westeros had loads of other shit to worry about, but what if you could sit back and relax in a remote castle somewhere without having to

I would consider myself a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings/Hobbit books and movies but I’m not obsessed with the franchise and could probably name only a handful of characters.  However, there are some people that go to great lengths to show their devotion to all things Middle Earth, take for example, a fan in Chester County, Pennsylvania who had an architect design a real life Hobbit house.

Now if having a hobbit-hole house in your backyard wasn’t impressive enough, I’m sure you’d be impressed by the fact that the fan actually had this house built to store his Lord of the Rings memorabilia that he has collected over 30 years.

In May 2011, the Knuffingen Airport at the Miniatur Wunderland (German for Miniature Wonderland) was completed and is currently the world’s largest model airport. But the airport is only part of the Wonderland attraction. The exhibit started as a model railway attraction in Hamburg, Germany and is the largest of its kind in the world.

The model railway consists of seven sections: Harz (fictitious city of Knuffingen), Hamburg, Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Alps and Austria, and America. The model railway takes up approximately 1,150 m² of floor space. Each section has unique landscapes and the railway exhibit showcases details that the specific regions are known for in the real world.­ For example, the ‘America’ section has highlights such as Las Vegas with over 30,000 lights, the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Area 51, Miami, the Everglades, and so on. When you watch the promotional video below, you will also find funny interactive scenes such as people having sex in a van or a not so funny scene such the police investigating a crime scene.

Mexico is not getting the best press right now. We all know this. As a result, fewer of us Americans are going there, outside of the college kids and honeymooners heading straight for the American colony of Cancun. But the truth is that the bad news out of Mexico is close to the border and in isolated cities. That’s why I headed to Mexico, one, because there is a whole other Mexico that is beautiful and safe and a great setting for adventure, and two, because Mexico tourist bureaus are willing to send “journalists” like me on trips to prove it.

I arrived in Veracruz, Mexico, after a short connection in Dallas where I tried airport Texas barbecue, which turns out, is

The Embera Indian Village outside of Panama City is not a historical recreation. It’s not Panama’s answer to Jamestown or Plymouth Colony. There is no modern visitor center or actors dressed in traditional garb and refusing to break character for eight bucks an hour. Despite the fact that there are tours, and the Embera people are friendly, hospitable, and happy to share their traditions and culture with outsiders, the Embera Indian Village is a real village, and a real home to the Embera people that live there.