Cool Travel
Cool Travel / Sun, tapas, and more tapas in the Basque Country
November 19, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Katrina Whitehead |
For a seriously good summer holiday destination, it’s pretty hard to beat San Sebastian on Spain’s Atlantic coast. Set on a gorgeous piece of coastline in the heart of the Basque region, this buzzing seaside town certainly packs a punch. It’s got three divine beaches, hundreds of tapas bars (apparently more per square kilometre than any other city in the world), a vast selection of historical buildings and churches (if the urge to sightsee takes over), clubs, boutiques and countless festivals all year round. Plus, if you’re really into your tucker, the area surrounding San Sebastian is arguably the best in Spain for gastronomy – boasting several of the world’s finest Michelin-starred restaurants. Read more
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Cool Travel / Chan Chan City, Peru
November 16, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Jessica Parra Nowajewski |
On the coastal side of Trujillo in Perú, you can find the old abandoned city of the Chimú (900-1400 AC) culture, an impressive site of just twenty square kilometer. It’s a dusty place, which is being rebuilt and looks like a Hollywood stage surrounded by enormous ancient walls. If you’re lucky, you can see some reminders of the original Chimú sculptures. You can take a tour of the city or go by yourself in a local bus. I recommend the latter, because it’s a very atypical experience that you won’t forget easily. [Photos by Jessica Parra Nowajewski] Read more
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Cool Travel / Living the high life in Biarritz, France
November 13, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Katrina Whitehead |
Seriously, is there anywhere in the world more glamorous than the French holiday town of Biarritz? I recently visited Biarritz for the second time, and this visit, was even more wowed by the endless array of buffed, leggy, chain-smoking Europeans — each of them dripping in jewellery, swanning about in their caftans, and sipping champagne like it was water. Read more
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Cool Travel / Hanging with the witches in Zuggaramurdi
November 11, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Katrina Whitehead |
Okay, so these days we have global warming, rising sea levels and terrorism to deal with. But you’ve really got to feel sorry for the hapless souls who lived in the seventeenth century, especially if they happened to live in the Basque village of Zuggaramurdi. In this picturesque and seemingly tranquil village, the infamous witch hunts of the Spanish Inquisition reached fever pitch — and it was in the town’s caves that hundreds of alleged “witches” were burnt in front of cheering crowds. Today, you can take a tour of the creepy caves, and in June every year, the locals hold a night-long party in the caves to celebrate the summer solstice. If you dare, you can even stay in a witch-themed auberge for the evening. Spooky stuff! Read more
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Cool Travel / Baltimore’s Book Thing
November 11, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Gerry Mak |
Every weekend, the Book Thing opens its doors and people from all over Baltimore flood in to rummage through its vast and perpetually replenished selection of free books. The non-profit establishment accepts donations of unwanted books from the community and redistributes them to those that want them. Read more
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Cool Travel / The Bone Room: an ossified store in Berkeley
November 6, 2009 | Cool Travel | by The Uncool Hunter |
The owner of the Bone Room had worked in a store that sold reptiles, cobras, and spiders since 1987. Now he’s running his own business where he sells bones of all kinds: from human skulls written with the corresponding natural record to different kinds of animal bones, skulls and even embalmed laboratory rats and dissected insects. Read more
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Cool Travel / Cook. Eat. Drink. Live in New York City
November 5, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Zolton |
Hmmm, hmmm. I’m heading along to Cook Eat Drink Live in New York this weekend to indulge in a three-day modern food and wine event at The Tunnel and La Venue, at which there will be a sampling of ‘ultra-premium gourmet foods and spirits, plus appearances from some of the city’s premier chefs’. It’s going to be an event of gastronomical indulgence, so I’ll be fasting for at least, errr, three hours in anticipation.
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Cool Travel / New York’s Stuffed Artisan Cannolis
November 2, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Caitlin Zaino |
Having been raised a proper Italian-American girl in New York, I was taught from a young age how to spot a good cannoli: those tasty desserts made of hollowed fried dough stuffed lovingly with creamy, sweet ricotta and topped with a marvelous dash of powder sugar. Yum. These tiny Southern Italian treats are not the stuff of nouvelle cuisine. Or are they? Enter Stuffed Artisan Cannolis. Read more
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Cool Travel / The Modern Toilet restaurant
October 29, 2009 | Cool Travel | by The Uncool Hunter |
Shattering the phrase, ‘don’t shit where you eat’, the Taiwanese restaurant The Modern Toilet offers the option of eating on a toilet, as well as eating from plates in the shape of toilets, bidets or bathtubs. Luckily there’s food inside. In the restroom, you answer nature’s call on dishes and clean yourself with napkins.
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Cool Travel / Sydney’s Laneways: By George! project
October 29, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Zolton |
The Laneways: By George! project runs in Sydney until January and has seen eight laneways along inner-city George Street transformed with ‘creative, innovative and inspiring high quality temporary artworks, encouraging people to explore these forgotten spaces in the heart of the City. Some of the lanes include a canopy of birdcages and forgotten birdsongs, a prosthetic skin with heartbeat, a pop up kitchen and nightclub, a seven metre bar highlighting climate change and a magical infinite’ forest’ [above]. Sounds like a very clever use of an otherwise indistinct strip of Sydney.
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Cool Travel / Beautiful drain artwork, somewhere, anywhere
October 28, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Zolton 
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Monsieur Cabinet has been making the mundane beautiful by emphasising its natural qualities, as reflected in these wonderful drain artworks. Read more
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Cool Travel / Inside a North Korean Arcade
October 23, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Gerry Mak |
Gaming blog UK Resistence just posted rare photos of an arcade in Pyongyang. The dingy, poorly-maintained building and game consoles remind me a lot of an arcade I went to in Beijing in the early 90s, although slightly more depressing.
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Cool Travel / Barcelona’s Cuines Santa-Caterina
October 22, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Katrina Whitehead |
When Barcelona’s ‘it crowd’ are hankering for some good tucker, I’m pretty sure they head straight to Cuines Santa-Caterina. And why wouldn’t they? Located inside the actual Mercat de Santa Catarina (a fresh produce market) this hip restaurant/bar serves up tasty cuisine from breaky right through to dinner. Ranked as one of Barcelona’s top places to eat and be seen, it’s got several open grills — and you can either sit at the bar, peering into the kitchen, or at large communal tables. Head there early for a tapas-style breakfast, or choose from three oddly grouped cuisines for lunch or dinner: Vegetarian/Sushi, Mediterranean and Asiatic. Thanks to the Scandinavian-inspired decor, you feel like you’re inside a giant warehouse, surrounded by giant shelves topped with boxes, wine, olive oil and vinegar. The prices are surprisingly reasonable, the staff are welcoming, and if you’re there for breakfast, you can hit the market with a full tummy afterwards. Read more
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Cool Travel / The canyons of Peru
October 21, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Jessica Parra Nowajewski |
One of the deepest canyons in the world is located six hours away from Arequipa. This amazing Peruvian landscape offers you old villages, terrace cropping, condor birds, and a surprising oasis near the Colca river. The best tour option is three days trekking downwards and then climbing more than 1,200 meters in three hours from 2,100 feet over sea level. Or you can always do it by yourself without taking a tour. Just ask the locals for information. [Photos by Jessica Parra Nowajewski] Read more
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Cool Travel / Ghost stories at the Merchant’s House Museum
October 20, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Ilana Kohn |
Next time I find myself on my fifteen minute walk to the C train, I plan on cramming a little Halloween in. New York’s Merchant’s House Museum has a new hotline where you can call up and simply listen to the cell phone audio tour, Tales Of The Strange and Inexplicable, featuring some of the Museum’s most notorious ghost stories. Should that whet you appetite for something more tactile, the Museum is currently holding candlelight ghost tours and will even be hosting an authentic 19th Century funeral — antique coffin to be physically borne down the Bowery and all. The hotline is 1-877-646-1832.
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The Nobody Was Thirsty project is a collaboration between Ivan Kane’s Café W as charity — water — and Australia’s own denim label, Nobody. The campaign aims to sell a signature, not-for-profit T-shirt, with all donations helping to fund the world’s water crisis. The sale of one T-shirt alone can provide two people in Africa with clean drinking water for twenty years, something the majority of us take for granted.
Ok, so I’m a big fan of any show that features sparkles, feathers and nipple tassels. Which explains why I’m so excited about the London Burlesque Festival. Come April, the city will be taken over by scantily clad women, vaudeville acts, dimly lit evening burlesque performances, and more outright wackiness than you can poke an ostrich-feather tickler at. If you’ve never been to a burlesque show before, and are a sucker for a suspender belt flicking or two, get ready for some heavy handed glamour and an experience you’ll never forget. And if you, like me, love an excuse to dress up in full costume and then take it off again to crowds of appreciative fans – raid the London vintage stores now for a costume and apply through the website to put yourself on stage. Applications close 31st December. [photo by Lisa Kereszi]
Australian label Eliza Clare/Adornus is the creative project of Samantha Grant, Sally Wilson and Emma Jackson and is named after Sarah Eliza Clare, a noted couturier in Sydney during the 1930s and 40s who was actively involved in the fashion industry until her early 70s. Read more
Jen Hseih’s illustrations are a wonderfully exciting explosion of colour and subtle innuendo, finely detailed windows into a world that I’ll never know. Read more
Long before the franchise destroyed our fond childhood memories like Aunt and Uncle Beru on Tatooine, many of us born in the 70s were proud to own the many products associated with the Star Wars movies. Read more
I spent the formative first six years of my life in Wellington, New Zealand, a beautiful windswept city framed by a magnificent harbour in one direction and a stunning collection of green, rolling hills in the other. It was here, on a return visit many years later and deep amongst the clipped accents and ruddy faces of the weather-beaten locals, that I stumbled upon the vast catalogue of the then Dunedin based record label Flying Nun. And what a roster of acts they housed — The Chills, The Bats, The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, The Verlaines, and my favourite guitar-pop band, Straitjacket Fits. Read more
It’s only fitting a band of Canadian rootsters like this would tap a mythical figure of folklore for their namesake. Indeed, Ottawa’s The John Henrys understand the power of the familiar. Read more
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WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Charlie Immer’s pastel-pallete sometimes obfuscates the gory violence in his surreal images. At other times, it heightens the gut-wrenching and visceral effect of his work. Read more
Italian-born, New York City-based photographer Paolo Ventura creates fairy-tale like pictures out of amazingly constructed, miniature dioramas that almost trick the eye into thinking he’s a tilt-shift photographer. Read more
I live the upbeat, feel good tempo of the new single — A Hundred Hearts — from Philly group, The Swimmers. Off their latest album, People Are Soft, this song is a strangely fitting anthem for the blustery day outside.
Check out Mike Stimpson’s Lego reinterpretations of classic photographs. Stimpson’s version of Malcolm Browne’s iconic 1963 photograph of the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc is particularly twisted. Read more
Scanners’ new single Salvation
I love this track by London based rock group, Scanners, which is off their latest album, Submarine. Having toured with acts such as The Horrors, The Wedding Present, The Charlatans, Electric Six, and Juliette & The Licks, Scanners could well blow up in 2010. Figuratively speaking, not literally. No, that wouldn’t be fun.
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
Made from 100 percent organic cotton, pesticide free, and eco-friendly, this super soft tee featuring a unique, bold design celebrates a sinister world of kaleidoscopic colours and ripples of psychedelia, of serenading Queens, of dancing flamingos, of unimaginable euphoria. It’s all the work of Sydney label, Das Monk and it’s available through the Lost At E Minor online store for just US$40. Now, there’s one hell of a Christmas present, even if we do say so ourselves Read more
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