Travel off the beaten track and experience

Heavy petting… going nuts… queue the suggestive hamster jokes. Nantes, France has added yet another “attraction” to its handful of other enticing selections, a romantic hamster wheel for two (no… truly). Visitors to the La Villa Hamster have the choice of dressing up in complete rodent garb, nibbling organic grain, sleeping in a haystack, and, yes, sipping off of a giant water tube oh yeah, and keep the night. It’s catching on. The visionaries are currently looking into future Hamster Hotel sights in the U.K. and soon afterwards, “going back to [their] origins.” I’ll let you come to a conclusion about that 1. I’m a bit disappointed, essentially. I was half expecting a labyrinth of brightly colored plastic tubes you had to navigate on all fours, or a ball you’d be trapped in and have to roll yourself from a single room to the other. I guess you can not have it all.

Ideally all of them, but if you’re looking to attempt to time your Gallic expedition to coincide with a nearby festival, verify out the Telegraph’s list of the top rated 10 summer festivals in France this summer. From the giant yard sale that is La Grande Braderie de Lille, to the pageantry of Bastille Day, you’re bound to run into at least one particular although you’re there. They’re all wonderful, and pretty much like Woodstock, but with better food.

With a full decade of war behind it, Croatia’s islands have rapidly become one of Europe’s premier summer celebration destinations, attracting everybody from nicely-heeled celebrities to the down-and-dirty underground dance music crowd, all in search of good instances, excellent music, and an escape from the crowds that descend on Europe’s other party islands such as Mykonos and Ibiza. (Even though, word has gotten out and islands like Hvar can see its quantity of visitors swell from five,000 to 30,000 in the course of peak season). The Guardian takes a appear at how England’s underground dance music world has unofficially adopted the sleepy fishing village of Petrcane for their summer time festivals, with more than 7 festivals occurring between July and early September this year. For the the extra regular nightlife scene, Hvar is residence to many bars, terraces, and discos catering to the thousands of guests that contact this island dwelling in the late summe...

Not to be outdone by everyone else on the Iceland bandwagon, the NYT sent commonly stodgy restaurant reviewer Frank Bruni to sample the city’s much more-economical-than-before reindeer and puffin delicacies and to verify out the notoriously inebriated and lengthy-lasting nightlife (where he managed to stay out pretty much previous 1 a.m. to report back of hearing a band covering Sonny and Cher — and lived to tell about it). Study his account here.