Although this 3-day weekend of live music and great microbrews from the southwest and beyond is not technically at the resort, the town of Telluride, Colorado wouldn't be much more than a tumbleweed museum and billy goat hang out without the mountain destination.
You can expect lots of great blues and roots bands at the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival starting September 12, including Canned Heat, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, G. Love and Special Sauce and Gov't Mule. The list of brewers is 56 strong and will include heavy hitters and little-knowns alike from as far way as Georgia. Big names to look for include Sierra Nevada, Moab Brewery and Santa Fe Brewing Company.
There are lots of hotel options available in town and there is camping available for $40. Entrance to the festival can be purchased day-to-day or you can go for the full monty for $155. Birkenstocks, patchouli and dreadlocks will not get you any discounts either, hippies!
This Sunday is the annual start of Pamplona's Running of the Bulls, and just like in past years, we are totally not going to be there.
If you're crazier than us, then you need to know that the festival lasts for nine days (it's always July 6-14), and if you're happy to risk being gored by a very annoyed bull, you have to assemble by 7:30 am, ready for an eight o'clock start.
Also important to know: The bulls can get through the streets faster now thanks to some anti-slip surfacing one of the trickiest parts. Faster, we said. We're not sure that's a good thing. The last time a tourist was directly killed by a bull was in 1995, so perhaps it's all not as dangerous as we thought. But how about you guys report back: We'll be sitting this one out at home.
The Fourth of July means nothing in Italy. But the Second of July means everything in Siena: It's the day when town rivalry is at its peak, team colors are their brightest and competitive spirit overwhelms the medieval Piazza del Campo for Il Palio.
The treacherous horse race and festival is rooted 800 years of Sienese history and for each of the ten competing districts, losing is not an option. For the Oca Contrada, one of the city's winningest neighborhoods, female jockeys aren't an option either--and never have been.
This year some brave Oca women are challenging history and making a legal case for equality. They've made enough ruckus so far to cause the president of the district's electoral commission to resign, but with only 29 of the 424 commission votes in their favor, they're facing an uphill battle.
Female jockeys or not, the race is still on for tomorrow. If you can't make it, the next Palio is on August 16.
Down in New Zealand the Queenstown Winter Festival is on again, with ten days of craziness to mark the start of the winter ski season in the southern hemisphere.
Our favorite part of the festival is Mountain Mayhem day on Saturday. All kinds of weird stuff happens here, including the Dash for Cash which involves a ski race and an obstacle course in pursuit of a $500 prize.
But the best part of the day is the Suitcase Race, in which contestants toboggan down the mountain on suitcases. The rules say you should bring your own suitcase, although they apparently do have a few spares if, say, you're traveling with a lightweight backpack that might not make it down the mountain.
If you're over hot dogs, burgers and beer for the Fourth of July, go all out this year and jet to Paris for Gastronomy by the Seine, which kicks off Friday on various yachts dotting the river.
The festival is brand new, and this year's theme is New American Cuisine. Each day of the weekend offers roundtables with industry bigwigs like Gael Greene, Michael Batterberry and Jean-Luc Naret, as well as cooking demos, tastings and tours of related Parisian museums (like the Musée Baccarat) and outdoor food markets (like rue Mouffetard and Place Monge). On the 4th, you can toast to the US with an evening cruise down the Seine aboard Le Paquebot, with a five-course menu celebrating American food.
As you might have guessed, gastromony isn't cheap: Day passes start at about $221, and the dinner cruise will set you back $379. Still, five amazing courses while floating down the Seine sounds like the perfect excuse for a summer splurge.
If you're in London right now, you still have time to grab a blanket and get to Hyde Park for the biggest, baddest birthday party the town has ever seen--and it's not even for the Queen!
Apparently Nelson Mandela's 90th-birthday wish list included performances by Josh Groban, Queen and (fingers crossed) Amy Winehouse with all proceeds from the concert tickets going to his AIDS awareness nonprofit, the 46664 Campaign.
The concert will also be televised, in case you're too cheap to buy the former political prisoner and past president of South Africa a gift.
As if we weren't already jealous of Washington, DC residents and their free world-class Smithsonian museums, the doors have been thrown open for a two-week celebration of cultures from all over. The Folklife Festival runs today through Sunday; it continues next Wednesday through the holiday weekend on the National Mall. Like the museums that spawned it, it's completely free.
Special exhibits for 2008 include demonstrations of Bhutanese archery, art exhibits celebrating the last 50 years of NASA and a panel of Texan winemakers as well as artifacts from all corners like this Pakistani truck. And we'd love to kick our heels up at the zydeco concert at 6 pm on July 2. It's also free!
If you're a closet "So You Think You Can Dance?" fan or are just waaay to into Dance Dance Revolution, we have the perfect getaway for you. Dance Valley is on July 12 in the Dutch city of Spaarnwoude, about a half-hour west of Amsterdam.
Dance Valley is an all-day outdoor dance party encompassing four different valleys (fields, really) where DJs will be spinning and live bands playing back-to-back. Acts like Phil Horneman, John Digweed, Tiesto and Jessie Vendetta will take the Valley of Love, Strawberry Valley, Devil's Valley and Field of Dreams throughout the day.
Tickets for the day are about $100 and various transportation options are available for dance enthusiasts including coach buses from over 160 places in the Netherlands, commuter trains and, yes, a parking lot for your bike.
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by DanielR
