Results tagged “Family” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Despite having been born and raised on the East Coast and spending most of my adult life in its major cities (Philly, New York, and finally, D.C.), I'd never been to Ocean City, MD, before last weekend when I hung around there with my husband and his family.
   
My mom's a big beach-goer and is pretty particular on her sunning spots. I may dare say she's a beach purist. She likes broad expanses of sand; spindly egrets; tufted, virgin dunes; and minimal crowds. Her favorite beach spot along "the shore" (what we Pennsylvanians and New Jersyians call the Jersey shore) is Cape May, NJ. She prefers it for its busy but manageable beach and homey snack shops but mostly for its well-maintained, brilliantly hued Victorian homes, most turned into lucrative B&Bs. I respect her high standards and now see they're probably why I'd never before been to Ocean City, MD.
   
Having said all of that, I didn't expect much from Ocean City as we arrived and finally extracted ourselves from our too-hot car after four hours on the road from D.C. It was busy and commercial and built up. It smelled too strong of the vinegar doused generously on the ever-popular boardwalk fries. I looked around, went for a dip, sat with the family, watched the world go by, and had two pepperoni slices and a cold beer. It was a fine day but considering Ocean City through the lens of what we at IT and Traveler espouse--authentic, cultural, and sustainable travel--I thought Ocean City fell short. But did it?

When I first toured Europe with my mother and brother, I was intent on exploring the exotic. Trying different dishes, encountering different cultures, and soaking up all of the history, art, and music possible. My brother, on the other hand, seemed most interested in finding the nearest McDonald's. Unimpressed by the food offerings in each country we visited, he sought out the golden arches -- and with it the familiar touch of home.

But even if your adolescent insists on Mickey D's -- sigh -- there's still an opportunity for cultural exploration. Over at Glimpse, the National Geographic website for people living abroad, they've assembled some of the most interesting offerings, including Singapore's Chicken Fan-tastic (above), Israel's McKebab, and China's Taro Root Pie. Adapting local dishes into fast-food fare takes a bit of a formula, according to their post:

[McDonald's] tried-and-true strategy, which has worked for years in the States, also seems to work abroad: Find a popular local dish, cheaply imitate it, name it something cute (usually involving a "Mc"), and make it look really yummy in a poster.

Admittedly, part of the fun of traveling is seeing how things like McDonald's translate into other cultures. So Mom and I decided to make the most of it, and shot a photo album full of pictures of my brother standing below the arches in each country we visited. It's hysterical to look at now, particularly since my brother hasn't eaten a Happy Meal in years.

Check out Glimpse's Top Five list here. And I know you have your own stories of fast food from abroad. Share your favorites.

Photo: Juston Lin via Glimpse

The second annual Capital Hip Hop Soul Festival is set for this Saturday, July 25th, in Marvin Gaye Park in Northeast DC. The free festival and community celebration features a full line up of local talent (16 acts) on two stages, over 20 vendors from community businesses and DC nonprofits, along with a booksigning and poetry slam. The family-friendly festival starts at 11 a.m. and the park is located between two Metro stops: Minnesota Avenue (orange line) and Capitol Heights (blue line). Check out the website where music from the festival is streamed.

To learn more about the festival, we caught up with Maceo Thomas, the festival's organizer.

How'd the festival get started last year?

I was introduced to the music of Kokayi and Afi Soul, two local artists--Kokayi lives in my neighborhood--that I never had heard of. Their music was fantastic. I realized I was clueless on the level of talent that exists here in DC around hip hop and soul music. I had to believe that there were more people like me who couldn't hang out on U St. until the wee hours of the morning to hear these folks. I woke up one morning and decided to put as many local talented hip hop soul artists together one day to introduce them to other folks like me who may have been equally clueless. And I say that totally with love.

Pittsburgh, aka "Roboburgh," has long been a hub of cutting-edge robotic technology, and Chris O'Toole downloads the details on the newest exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center, which opens this weekend.

Robots: so smart, so shiny, so smooth. They're the celebrities of the machine world (next to the iPhone). So it's fitting that the most glamorous and well-known machines have gathered in one place, at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center, so humans can pay tribute.

The Robot Hall of Fame honors movie droids like R2D2 and C-3PO, creepy HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, and a classic 1928 pin-up girl: Maria, the shapely robot of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. But it also credits real-word winners like NASA's Mars Sojourner, the DaVinci surgical robot, and everyone's favorite living room pet, the Roomba.  

The hall of fame is the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, which inducts new members each year. It's part of the world's largest permanent museum show on robotic sensing, thinking, and acting. It opens tomorrow, June 13. Roboworld features over 30 exhibits packed with super-smart demonstrations of how robots collect data, process information, roll, fly, and build things. And it has a few lovable greeters, like Andy, a robo-thespian, and Athina, a sassy chat-bot who'll converse on any topic. She even laughs at her own jokes, like this one: how many humans does it take to change a light bulb? Her answer: three. One to weep uncontrollably; one to cut its soft fingers while attempting to change the bulb; and one to program the robot to do it. Hey, at least we're good for something.

Photo: Andy the robo-thespian via The Carnegie Science Center

Amelia Mularz had an EXTREME weekend visiting the newest exhibit at New York's American Museum of Natural History.

Heading to the American Museum of Natural History always makes me feel like a kid again. Within minutes of stepping foot in the museum this past weekend, my friend and I had already challenged each other to a T. rex impersonation face-off and battled for the greatest--or most annoying, judging from one woman's expression--pterodactyl cry. His take on the prehistoric call sounded oddly reminiscent of 21st century screeching car brakes, while mine was more of a wounded animal sob--either way, music to our ears. We exchanged obligatory high-fives and headed towards the latest exhibit at AMNH, Extreme Mammals: The Biggest, the Smallest, and Most Amazing Mammals of All Time.
   
If the entryway of the museum can excite two full-grown adults to the point of shameless dino shenanigans, you can only imagine what an exhibit with a name like EXTREME MAMMALS did to us. The exhibit, which opened this past Saturday, takes a look at some of the most incredible creatures, extinct and living, to ever roam the planet. Extreme Mammals packs a punch from the moment you enter--through the legs of the largest land mammal ever (the Indricotherium, which weighed as much as four adult African elephants)--until the moment you exit--near the interactive web activity.
   
One look at the Indricotherium, and our child-like excitement once again took hold of us: "Whoa, look at this unicorn thing!" (actually a narwhal whale with an eight-foot tusk). "Oh my god, this elephant has a shovel for a face!" (actually a prehistoric elephant with oversized incisors). "Dude, this squirrel ate dinosaurs!" (actually, the Repenomamus).

At one point, between pointing excitedly at the fossils of a massive horned creature and peeking through a glass window at live sugar gliders, we realized we were just steps away from one of the curatorial assistants for the exhibit, William Harcourt-Smith. I had the pleasure of speaking to Harcourt-Smith and learning about the process for determining what qualifies as "extreme."