A 100-foot statue of Christ sits atop Mount Corcovado, looking down on which major world city? Buenos Aires Mexico City Rio de Janeiro Santiago Think you know the answer? Send it to me as a comment at the bottom of this post. At the end of the week, I’ll draw one name from all the […]

Let’s start this quick peek into Albania with some background about this man on a horse. That’s Skanderbeg (or Scanderbeg, depending which reference you’re using), a 15th-century military hero. Born George Castriota (again, spellings vary) around 1404 in northern Albania, he was the son of a prince. For years, he was held hostage at the […]

What city, America’s Glass Capital, is home to baseball’s Mud Hens and to M*A*S*H’s Corporal Max Klinger? Kalamazoo, Michigan Portland, Maine Reading, Pennsylvania Toledo, Ohio Think you know the answer? Send it to me as a comment at the bottom of this post. At the end of the week, I’ll draw one name from all […]

Three years ago, around this time, I got what I thought was a brilliant idea. Having observed other writers spending a year doing various things that interested them–from living biblically to buying nothing–I thought I’d spend a year learning at least something about every country in the world, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. I’ve always been […]

Romansch is one of the four official languages of what European country? Belgium France Romania Switzerland Think you know the answer? Send it to me as a comment at the bottom of this post. At the end of the week, I’ll draw one name from all the people who answered correctly, and that person will […]

Because of time zones, which of these cities celebrates the new year earliest? Auckland, New Zealand Beijing, China Seoul, South Korea Sydney, Australia Appropriately, I’m kicking off the daily travel trivia question here at Facing the Street with a question about New Year’s Day. Think you know the answer? Send it to me as a […]

If you’ve ever thought, “Gee, chocolate bars would be great if they weren’t cluttered up with nuts and caramel,” then Max Brenner’s is the place for you. The Australian chain of chocolate cafes (which also has shops in New York, Philadelphia and several other non-Aussie places) has the genius to serve chocolate in its most […]

As British writer David Aaronovitch points out in the introduction to his 2000 travel book/memoir, Paddling to Jerusalem, in the last few years writers have walked around England under the guise of just about every gimmick imaginable. From south to north, around the coast, up the middle, round the sides, in wheelchairs, on one leg, […]

Does Al Gore know about this? The often-windy Iles-de-la-Madeleine in eastern Quebec are a hotbed for the sport of kite-buggying: basically, zipping along the beach in a buggy, powered by a parachute-like kite. The driver holds a set of lines made of super-strong Spectra. A tug on the left turns you left; a tug on […]

I have a strange fascination for oddball road signs, dating back at least as far as 1978, when my sister and I spotted a British road sign that consisted of nothing but a large exclamation mark and the dire words, “Warning: Road liable to subside.” Since then, I’ve photographed an iguana crossing sign in Montserrat, […]