Transplanted Englishman Paul Rogers writes about music and lifestyle for LAWeekly, and reports for us from the Characters of Egypt Festival:

"Does he have to keep using that bright pink cell phone?" groaned the lady atop the camel in front of mine as she pointed her camera down at the little lad leading the lanky beast. My fellow tourist was lamenting the otherwise exotic, trapped-in-time image in her viewfinder--the boy's hungry eyes and tousled hair emerging from a traditional earth-toned robe--being tainted by a disappointingly familiar, decidedly 21st-century fuchsia Motorola.

That happened in Tunisia a few years back, but I was reminded of it while perusing the Characters of Egypt Festival in that country's Eastern Desert last weekend. The event returned for its second year to a sandy valley within sight of the Red Sea, about 30 miles south of the rapidly developing resort town of Marsa Alam. An enthralling coming-together of numerous tribal "teams" representing indigenous peoples from all over Egypt, it was a chance to witness their poetry, dancing, jewelry, music, and racing (camel/running/hopping) in and around an array of outsized tents. Organized by the Wadi Environmental Science Centre (WESC) and the Egyptian Desert Pioneers Society (EDPS), Characters of Egypt gathered around 160 of the country's estimated 300,000 tribespeople.

With fewer than 500 tourists attending on each of its three days and a charmingly loose "desert time" schedule (and despite the presence of sponsors like Infiniti and EgyptAir), Characters of Egypt offered illuminating peeps into numerous threatened cultures in an unusually informal setting. But it was also a place where I found myself, like the lady in Tunisia, trying to influence (rather than truly experience) my surroundings.

Our intrepid writer Andrew Nelson is just five days away from his trip to Miami, where he'll be relying on the Twitterverse to show him around. So far, he's already found a great rate at the Essex House hotel, but now he's looking for restaurant recommendations and weighing his options (should he check out Red Steakhouse? El Pub? Versailles?). Be sure to follow him at @andrewnelson to help him with the planning, and then help to show him around town when he arrives.

Andrew will be in Miami from Thursday, November 26th through Monday, November 30th. Tweet him your insider tips on where to eat, play, and soak up the city's culture, using the hashtag #ngtmiami. Follow him now, and read his story about his experience in an upcoming issue of Traveler. And you can follow @NatGeoTraveler for all the latest news from our magazine staff.

Two weeks ago, Budapest's Winter Festival--a massive four-month event--kicked off.  The festival includes a variety of activities, but its five-week Christmas Festival is by far the most popular. This year, the 10th annual Christmas Festival takes place today through December 29th. Attended by 600,000 people annually, it is considered one of the largest Christmas fairs in Europe.

But this isn't your average tourist trap full of kitschy trinkets. Every one of the baskets, leather goods, hand-blown glass, and other crafts sold at the over 100 craft pavilions must be judged and approved by the Association of Hungarian Folk Artists. Such high standards have given Budapest's Christmas Festival a reputation of being one of the most authentic Christmas festivals in the world. Some highlights of the festival include:

Daily Advent Presentation
As a child, I loved hanging a new advent ornament on the tree every day leading up to Christmas, but Budapest's Christmas festival has a tradition that would have blown my 6-year-old mind. Every evening at 5 p.m. from December 1st through the 24th, a different piece of contemporary art is revealed from behind a massive window of the Gerbeaud Confectionery (left). The event is accompanied by a light show and music.

Handmade Gifts
Because the gifts are so authentic and beautiful, the Christmas Festival is a popular shopping destination for locals and visitors alike. Peruse the selection of hand-made jewelry, leather goods, and traditional wooden toys.

• Have you always wanted to see the famous Christmastime Macy's window displays? A new exhibit at the National Museum of American History features the art and business of commercial holiday displays, according to USA Today. The exhibit also details the history of the creation of Macy's Day Parade floats. [USA Today]
  
  
• This November and December, Saguaro National Park (just outside Tuscon, Arizona) is offering a variety of guided sunset and moonlight hikes. Due to popularity, reservations are recommended. [National Parks Traveler]

Photo: wallyg via Flickr

I arrived in Madrid a few weeks ago with only a handful of hours on a Saturday to show my fiancé around town, so I wanted a way to pack in as much culture as we could, and if possible, do it on the cheap. Enter my colleague Meg Weaver's excellent Free City Guide to Madrid, where I found a slew of cost-efficient ways to wander the city. With her list and a few of our own discoveries along the way, we were able to make our limited stay a memorable one, and save a few euros in the process.

Our first stop was the CaixaForum Madrid gallery, a former electric power station that's now a funky art space situated along the Paseo del Prado, tucked among some of the city's best museums. We wandered the current exhibit, took a break at the thoroughly modern cafe upstairs, then marveled at the living wall of plant life that's overtaken the exterior of the building next door. The admission is always free, so it should certainly join the must-see list for those visiting the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and Museo del Prado, which is where we were headed next.

Admission is free for visitors to the Reina Sofia after 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and until 2:30 p.m. on Sundays, so we ducked in there first, taking the very-cool elevators up to see Picasso's Guérnica, which is always captivating. We spent awhile wandering the halls of modern art before heading over to the historic stuff at the Prado, whose immense galleries filled with works by Goya, Reubens, and Velásques constituted an entire semester's worth of study for one of my college roommates when she studied abroad in the city. But we only had two hours, as the Prado offers free admission from 6 p.m to 8 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday (and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday). Thankfully, that was more than enough time to take in some of the museum's more famous works like Las Meninas and The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid.

Namaste, city-lovers! Arun Bhat writes to us from Bangalore, India, and tells us why his city is the best.

Want to see your city on IT? Copy and paste our list of fill-in-the-blank questions into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if you're still waiting for us to feature yours, fear not! We're going to keep posting as long as we keep getting them (please include photos and links!).

Bangalore is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is for a walk through Cubbon Park. It is a quiet place in the center of the city and it's surrounded by beautiful buildings that are more than one hundred years old. Pink and yellow Tabebuia trees loaded with flowers add colour to the park in winter.

When I crave ice cream, I always go to Corner House.

To escape the city, I head to Nandi Hills.

If I want to watch a play I go to Rangashankara. They have plays running six days a week.

For complete quiet, I can hide away Lalbagh. The park is big enough to provide solitude for everyone.

If you come to my city, get your picture taken at Vidhana Soudha (left). It is the most well-known landmark in the city.

Landmark Book Store is my one-stop shop for great collection of books, music, and videos.

When I'm feeling cash-strapped I go and eat in a Darshini, the quick-eat places you can see everywhere in the city.

For a huge splurge I go to Mynt restaurant in Hotel Taj West End and take a garden side table. Not to miss are the excellent Tortellini and Chocolate pudding.

Photo ops in my city include the Cubbon Park area and the Gandhi Bazaar (below). The best vantage point is Ebony Restaurant.


The most random thing about my city is the rain. Unlike the rest of India where it rains just three months, rain in Bangalore is completely unpredictable and arrives at any time of the year.

Biologist Lincoln Brower of Virginia's Sweet Briar University has been studying monarch butterflies and their astonishing annual migration to the central Mexican highlands for 45 years. He helped us square away the facts in Melina Bellow's feature on the monarchs, "In Search of Magic," in our November/December issue. We caught up with him to find out more about his work and gather some suggestions for traveling to Mexico to witness the magic yourself.Why do the monarchs make this journey?

Monarchs are similar in their migratory behavior to many songbirds that invade our temperate zone in the summer, but cannot survive during the winter and so they migrate back into their tropical habitats in the fall. In the U.S. and Canada, milkweeds and nectar sources become superabundant in the spring and summer but completely freeze back in the winter. The big difference between birds and monarchs is that the monarchs return to Mexico, to the same trees in successive winters although they themselves have never been there before. They are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the monarchs that were there the previous year. The entire migration is an inherited behavior pattern and we are just beginning to understand this incredible behavior.

What are some of the most interesting aspects of the migration you've discovered?

We have shown how critical the intact oyamel fir canopy is in providing a very tight microclimate that allows the monarchs to avoid freezing during winter storms. The fir trees serves both as a blanket and umbrella for the monarchs.

• Yahoo! and the Times Square Alliance have teamed up to offer free Wi-Fi in New York's now pedestrian-only area. For the next year (and hopefully after that), just log on to m.yahoo.com to access the free internet. [Gadling]
  
  
• American Airlines is testing a retail service that would sell items like tickets to a Broadway show or theme park tickets to passengers while they're 30,000 feet in the air. Currently the airline is selling items like Heathrow Express train tickets and items from SkyMall. Brett Proud, executive vice president of GuestLogix (the company providing the technology to do this), described airplanes as "a retail space that is probably the biggest retail opportunity ever uncovered." [NY Times]

Photo: mbshane via Flickr

Friend of IT Melanie Mize Renzulli tells us about the "little engine that could" in Mumbai.

Officials from UNESCO were recently in Matheran, a hill station outside of Mumbai, to consider one of India's latest nominees to the World Heritage list. Operating for over a century, save for yearly pauses during monsoon season, the Matheran Light Railway (MLR) runs only a short distance--approximately 12 miles--but has the kind of history and character to qualify for the UNESCO list.

Known to locals as the "toy train," the MLR seems to be conjured from a child's imagination. The train chugs along on a tiny track only two-feet-wide at speeds between five and 10 miles per hour. On its twice-daily journey up and down the mountain between Neral and Matheran Stations, the train passes by 121 bridges, a tunnel, and 221 curves. One of the curves features signage that says "Ah, what a sharp curve!" the type of blithe statement you could imagine a citizen of the British Raj voicing as he took the train for the first time in 1907.

Matheran sits at the top of a misty, tree-lined mountain in the Western Ghats and provides a cool retreat for visitors wishing to escape the heat and hurry of Mumbai. The resort doesn't have much in the way of activities - save for trekking, horseback riding, and monkey watching - but it does have a few hotels for travelers wanting more than a day trip. The best time to visit Matheran is in the months after monsoon season has ended (October to December) in order to enjoy the lush greenery of the forests and mossy hillsides. The monkeys are a little more relaxed then, too!

The Mountain Railways of India, a group consisting of the rail lines of Darjeeling, Nilgiri, and Kalka Shimla, gained World Heritage Site status in 1999. The MLR, as well as the Kangra Valley Railway (in Himachal Pradesh), is seeking singular status apart from the Railways of India. The World Heritage Committee will make its decision about Matheran's toy train at its 34th session in June/July 2010.

Photo: Himanshu Sarpotdar via Flickr

We know social media has changed the way we travel, but can it actually make for a better trip? To test the thesis, Traveler writer Andrew Nelson is trading in turkey and cranberry sauce next week for sunscreen and a BlackBerry. He's headed to Miami Beach to see if the local Twitter community can lead him to on-the-go discoveries in South Florida. If you know Miami, be a bird on his shoulder. Follow him @andrewnelson and help guide him to your favorite bits of South Beach, Coconut Grove, Little Havana and more.

Andrew will be in Miami from Thursday, November 26th through Monday, November 30th. Tweet him your insider tips on where to eat, play, and soak up the city's culture, using the hashtag #ngtmiami. Follow him now, and read his story about his experience in an upcoming issue of Traveler.

Flamingo illustrations: piccerella/istockphoto.com

Hello, city lovers! Today we are heading to Copenhagen, where Alexandra Redisch tells us what not to miss in the Danish capital.

Copenhagen is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is Tivoli Gardens (left), one of the oldest amusement parks in the world.

When I crave cake and hot chocolate in old world-settings, I always go to La Glace; the oldest confectionary in Denmark.

To escape the harsh city-life, I head to the uninhibited town of Christiania, where one makes love, not war.

If I want to be amazed by beautiful marble sculptures and a breathtaking winter garden, I go to the New Carlsberg Glyptotheke, where they also have a lovely tea room.
For complete quiet, I can hide away in the Royal Library; a vast modern building known as the "Black Diamond" (below).

If you come to my city, get your picture taken with the Little Mermaid (right), an iconic statue depicting the heroine from the famous fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen.

If you can only order one thing off the menu from the art-nouveau-style Café Norden, it has to be the famous pancakes.

The Magasin du Nord, located in Kongens Nytorv, is my one-stop shop for great shopping.

When I'm feeling cash-strapped, I go to Rosenborg Castle (below). There is an entrance fee to step into the castle, but the gorgeous 15th-century gardens are accessible to all! For a huge splurge, I go to the main shopping street, Strøget, where they have everything from Topshop to Chanel.

 

We're headlong into Geography Awareness Week, and our pals over at NG Blog Central, inspired by Senator Al Franken's impressive map-drawing abilities at the Minnesota State Fair this summer, have been getting U.S. political leaders involved in the act by asking them to sketch their states. Check out their freehand maps (and comments), then we challenge you to see how well you can draw your state from memory.

For our upcoming January/February 2010 issue, we're preparing tips on how to survive a plane crash. Don't despair! The story's not as morbid as it seems as your chance of being in a plane crash is about the same as giving birth to identical quadruplets! (1 in over 11 million). Fact-checking the story got me thinking about so-called "lap children," kids two years of age and younger who sit on their parent's lap while flying.

Is this a safe way for little kids to travel? Apparently the Federal Aviation Administration does not require infants to be belted in during flight though they do recommend parents use child restraint systems (CRSs) during take-off, landing, and turbulence. It strikes me as odd that kids have been required to be buckled up in cars since 1982, but they're still not required to be similarly secured while on planes.

The FAA said in 2005 that it doesn't mandate the use of safety seats on planes because this would require adults to purchase a separate seat for the infant, and that when forced to buy an additional ticket, many families will choose to drive rather than fly. And, as driving is a statistically much more dangerous way to travel, permitting kids to fly as lap children is seen as the lesser of two evils.

Most domestic airlines don't charge for kids to fly as lap children, hence the perpetuation of this dangerous practice. Restraining your child in a CRS requires a separate seat, for which most airlines charge full ticket price. For many parents hoping to travel with their kids, it's often too steep a price to pay, especially in these tough economic times, if flying with Junior as a lap child is free. While I'm not a mom and thus not personally faced with this decision, I'm inclined to agree with Consumer Reports contributing editor and aircraft dispatcher Bill McGee. Last summer he opined in USA Today that "[i]f a trip is too expensive for a child's seat, then that's a trip that shouldn't be taken."

What do you think?

Photo: Bertabetti via Flickr

• Legos and World Heritage Sites are probably two of my favorite things, so when I found that someone has combined the two, it made my day. Eco-site Environmental Graffiti has an awesome photo gallery of these great Lego creations, like the Red Square, above. Click here for the full gallery. [Gadling]
  
  
• Plan to be in Scotland next week? St. Andrew's Day is November 30, and the town is celebrating by hosing St. Andrew's Free Weekend on November 28 and 29. Sites like Edinburgh Castle, St. Andrew's Castle, and other popular attractions will waive admission through the weekend. For more on St. Andrew's Day, click here. [Wandering Educators]

Photo: via Environmental Graffiti

The exhibit "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" opens this Thursday, November 19th, at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC. We weaseled our way into the press preview to get you a sneak peek. But before letting us loose to see Emperor Qin Shihuangdi's lifesized warriors face-to-face, Stanford Professor Emeritus Albert Dien, guest curator of the exhibit, reminisced on his first visit to Xi'an, China, in 1977 to see the warriors who'd been discovered three years before by a local farmer digging a well. In our October Places of a Lifetime issue he relates this moment:

Turning a corner, we came upon the figure of an archer that I hadn't seen in any published literature. It was such a shock to see this startlingly lifelike figure that our hosts insisted I sit and rest awhile. . . [T]his archer seemed so vibrant, almost in motion. . .I simply sat and stared in wonderment--and the wonder has never left me, no matter how often I've returned to Xi'an.

The kneeling archer is here at our headquarters, along with 14 other figures including infantrymen, a chariot driver, two musicians, a well-muscled (albeit headless) strongman, a 700-pound horse, cavalrymen, a seemingly obsequious court official, and a general. Also on display in the 12,000-square-foot, four-themed exhibit space are 100 objects--decorative jade pieces, bronze weapons, coins, a naturalistic crane sculpture, details of the warriors' armor, and roof tiles--including 20 "Level 1" artifacts, those designated as the site's rarest and most important finds.

Austen fans rejoice! Last week, The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City opened a new exhibit featuring more than 100 of Austen's works. One of the most exceptional pieces is the Lady Susan manuscript - the only surviving complete manuscript of Austen's. Other pieces include personal letters - including the ones she wrote "cross-hatched" (across the horizontal lines of text at right angles in order to save paper) - and selected drawings and prints depicting people, places and events important to Austen's life. The exhibit also features illustrated editions of Austen's novels and an unfinished copy of The Watsons - the "only surviving manuscript of Austen's novels showing her work in progress and under revision".

The exhibit explores the legacy Jane Austen left after her early death at the age of 41. It features later writers' responses to her work - opening with a diary entry by her peer Sir Walter Scott and followed by comments from 20th-century writers such as Yeats and Kipling. Austen's influence is further examined through a film (below) - "The Divine Jane: Reflections on Austen" - by Italian director Francesco Carrozzini at the conclusion of the exhibition that features interviews with artists and scholars. One highlight of the film is when the interviewees describe the kind of dinner party they would have if Jane Austen were a guest.

Fact-checking Andrew McCarthy's upcoming January/February feature, "The Three Faces of Rome," got me thinking about the Eternal City's 2,000-year past, layer upon dusty layer of it.

Currently, only two metro lines serve the city of 2.5 million. A third, set to open in 2015, has unearthed archaeological artifacts (like the Dionysos head, unearthed near Via Sannio, Rome, above), many which will be exhibited in the stations themselves. What else has been unearthed by metros around the world?

Here are some highlights I found in my research:

• In Athens, when the city expanded its metro to accommodate the 2004 Olympics, 30,000 artifacts were found scattered beneath 17 acres.

• During construction, a 11th or 13th-century shipwreck was discovered at Yenikapi, what had been a harbor in Byzantine Istanbul.

• Approximately 2,000 fossils (mastodon, camel, ground sloth) dating back 16.5 million years were located way beneath the surface of Los Angeles.

• Construction of Line 14 of the Paris metro unearthed canoe-shaped boats 32 feet below the banks of the Seine, dating to about 2,800-2,500 B.C., hinting at what may be the earliest human settlement in the area.

•  At what is now Pino Suárez station in Mexico City, an Aztec temple was found in the 1990s and is displayed in the passageway between lines 1 and 2.
  

Who says industrial companies and national parks can't be friends?  Boeing and Washington's Mount Rainier National Park certainly think they can. On Monday, Boeing presented the park with a $75,000 check to help it become more carbon neutral.

According to the Boeing Charitable Trust, the money will go toward Washington's National Park Fund and be used to fund projects like analyzing the park's vehicles to find ways to reduce emissions and to continue a visitors' shuttle that cuts down on weekend traffic. The goal is for these and other projects to reduce the park's greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2016.

This grant is in line with the goal of the Boeing Charitable Trust: funding projects that "reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, inspire environmental citizenship, and protect and restore critical natural habitat." I think this partnership is a magnificent example for other industrial giants and hope we continue to see unlikely friendships formed for the good of the earth.

[nationalparkstraveler.com]

Photo: Jeannette Kimmel

• 'Tis the season of giving, and Google is giving away free Wi-Fi to travelers during the holidays. Through January 15, airport Wi-Fi will be available for free in 47 airports, like Seattle-Tacoma, Milwaukee, Baltimore-Washington, and Houston. Check out www.freeholidaywifi.com for the full list of participating airports. [Gadling]
  
  
• In a few days, Colonial Williamsburg is getting an 18th-century-style coffeehouse. The R. Charlton's Coffeehouse, which will open on Duke of Gloucester Street, will serve free coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, and will include re-enactors who will discuss the drinks "related to colonial society, hospitality and political issues of the day, including trade and taxes," according to USA Today. [USA Today]

Photo: @Saigon via Flickr