I, for one, can never get enough of winter fun. Living in San Francisco, a trip to the mountains is easy but requires some planning and often ice skating indoors has to satisfy my cravings.

In Ottawa, Ontario, workers and students can ice-skate commute (skammute?) on the Rideau Canal Skateway. The 4.8-mile-long, 26-foot-wide frozen canal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Visitors can rent skates, and warm up spots, cafes and other amenities dot the route. It is of course a popular tourist attraction and the centerpiece of Winterlude, a three-week-long winter festival including ice sculptures, skate clinics and Snowflake Kingdom, a snowy playground wonderland.

The world’s largest naturally frozen ice rink has been open for more than 40 years. The average length of the skating season is 50 days. The Rideau Canal skate season typically runs from December to mid March. Some years it is extended to as much as 95 days and you can check ice conditions daily. Moms pushing strollers mingle with commuters and school kids, making rush hour a busy affair on the ice. It gets cold in Ottawa and many insist a packet of tissues is mandatory to fend off the runny noses. Some prefer hockey skates, others speed skates or figure skates. Canadians are of course big ice enthusiasts!

Ottawa, Canada’s capital, is home to some great museums, imposing structures and fine restaurants welcoming an international diplomatic core. If you’re like me and love the idea of a long outdoor skate, Ottawa might be calling.

Marseille is building on it’s southern ties to North Africa and is remaking  the harbor area into a car-free and pedestrian-friendly promenade. In classic French fashion, the city has designated ten new cultural sites, many located in renovated structures. A museum was once France’s Ellis Island, where immigrants were processed, and an abandoned tobacco factory is being refashioned as a Contemporary Arts Museum focusing on the Immigration theme. New buildings are popping up too, with public finance we Americans can only dream about. The desire to change the crime-ridden image to cultural hotspot is a tricky balancing act, paying homage to the immigrant culture without whitewashing the colonial past.

Nearly 30 percent of Marseille’s population is Muslim and without a significant middle class to support the arts, Marseille has been neglected culturally over the years. This is a chance, post Arab Spring, for the city to shine.

Marseille is in Provence, and  many venues in other Provencal towns, including the wealthier Arles and Aix-en-Provence, are part of the year-long celebration hoping to create harmony, civic pride and serve as a magnet for tourists and tourist euros!

It is also cherry blossom season, here in San Francisco, in our nation’s capital and of course in Japan, a rite of spring and a life-affirming, annual natural event. As I wheeze through the days full of blooms and pollen I stop to think about the brutality and generosity of what we call Mother Nature.

Traditional custom this time of year in Japan is to picnic under the cherry blossoms with friends and family. Sake, poetry and karaoke often accompany a spread of bountiful treats. This year though, as the country mourns, many are avoiding conspicuous consumption and opting to forgo the annual ritual, or to tone it down considerably. The elderly mayor of Tokyo has erected signs to ask residents to avoid the spring fun as a show of solidarity for those suffering in the northeast of the country. Mother Nature, or the force in nature, whatever you want to call it, can be so cruel and so glorious. The cherry blossoms are beautiful, fleeting, and fragile…like life itself. There is poignancy this year, but certainly the pink blossoms offer a small glimmer of hope, that life goes on.

The oldest, in the French city of Strasbourg in Alsace on the German border, has been active since 1570. Georgia Hesse, in the San Francisco Chronicle, ably describes the appeal of such markets and the particular draw of Strasbourg, where visitors stroll the lanes where Goethe, Gutenberg, and Albert Schweitzer once wandered.

Many markets last through New Year’s Day and some even run through the Epiphany on January 6, but others close up shop on Christmas Eve, so hurry, time’s running out.

Maybe it was the long bus ride that had warped my ability to make sense of my surroundings, or it could have been my diet of magic realism literature I was on at the time, but the scene I wound through that night presented the kind of phantasmagoria that can induce hallucinations. Was everyone in costume? Was it a warmup for Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead? Colors flashed by, shouts and laughter and the melodious rhythms of Spanish ricocheted off balconied buildings. Smoke from street stalls carried the scent of grilled meat. And I continued to push my way, gently because this was a happy throng, across the plaza to the hotel.

When I squeezed through the doors into a busy lobby I learned I’d arrived in the middle of the Cervantes International Arts Festival. Tired as as I was, I knew I had to get out with the crowd. There was too much energy in the streets to do anything else.

And what a reward I received. I flowed with the masses to an open-air theater to watch a series of skits from Don Quixote under the stars. It didn’t matter that my mediocre Spanish wasn’t up to the task, I got most of the meaning through the actors’ delivery. When the curtain went down the fireworks went off, flames and sparks shooting everywhere, whirligigs spitting fire above the audience, the night erupting in celebration before the lights came up. I really did feel I was in the middle of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.

This year the festival runs October 14 to November 1 with more than 2300 artists from 25 nations and 5 continents presenting opera, music, dance, theater, visual arts, film and academic activities.

During my few days in the city I went to many of the tourist sites — the catacombs to look at the mummies, Diego Rivera’s house and museum, the tunnels that draw off the traffic to make the center of the city a pedestrian zone, Callejón del Beso (the Alley of the Kiss) on a lane so narrow lovers are said to be able to kiss across it from their balconies, the viewpoint on San Miguel hill commemorating the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence — but what really stayed with me was the  flamboyant energy of the Cervantes Festival, a party I’d known nothing about, but remember every autumn.

I have never been to Israel, but would love to go some day. The Israeli city of Tel Aviv would be my first stop. Tel Aviv sounds like such a vibrant city and since, so often there is bad news coming out of the Middle East, I thought it was a good time to bring up the 100th birthday of this bustling metropolis. This pulsing city of more than 1.5 million is the most liberal in Israel, full of artists, gay bars, high-tech companies and Bauhaus architecture. Tel Aviv is called the Barcelona of the Middle East, a hip city, with trendy restaurants and night life which, despite the ongoing political conflict that is never far away, has a lot to offer visitors. Upcoming anniversary events include:
* International Art Biennale (ARTLV) (9 September – 9 October), showcasing contemporary works in dozens of exhibitions.
* The Green Festival (17 October), dedicating of the Green Route along the Yarkon River and a centennial bike ride.
* Fashion Week in Tel Aviv Port (19-22 October).

Bhutan, a country the size of Maryland, is rugged, breathtaking and its culture has remained intact because of an insular and protective approach to governing. Travel to Bhutan is not easy or cheap. Foreigners are restricted; only 20,000 tourists are allowed in each year.

Trips are well-organized, supervised and expensive.  In recent years Bhutan has been in the news having been crowned the happiest nation in the world. With isolation and preservation of culture, the country values GNH or Gross National Happiness more than GDP. GNH is an ethos and political philosophy of the country that measures the happiness of its citizens holistically. GNH seeks to balance material gains with spiritual well being. Bhutanese hope that the new young king, who wears his hair like Elvis, might open the country further. Let’s hope Bhutan can remain quirky, well-preserved and happy—the antidote to globalization.

Floodlights lit up rows of food stalls selling the makings of a grazing feast: shish kebap, grilled corn on the cob, waffles with syrup and fruit, gozleme (hand-rolled pastry filled with cheese or potato or spinach and grilled like flat bread), gyros, dried fruit and nuts, grilled chestnuts, baklava and all manner of fried sweets, candied apples and multiflavored, multihued toffee twirled on a stick. Then of course there was Turkish coffee made in small long-handled metal pots laid right on the coals and a waterpipe smoke to finish you off.

Carnival rides and games such as air hockey anchored one end of the festivities. Tables and chairs filled the areas behind the stalls so diners could eat in comfort. The call to prayer or some other devotional chant drifted over the party like gossamer and I didn’t see an unhappy face in the throng. No one seemed to be left out. Women wore all manner of costume, from sexy Western dresses to jeans and t-shirts to headscarves and long wraps to full burkas (well, not a burka but a kara carsaf; see the comment by Anastasia for explanation).

With the Blue Mosque illuminated on one side and Hagia Sophia on the other, I could see that these nights were never-to-be-forgotten moments for the children scurrying to and fro or holding their parents’ hands. I must say I shared the same sentiments. If fasting all day means you get to have a party like this every night for a month I might start celebrating Ramadan every year. But the setting of the party was hard to beat. I guess that means I’d need to settle in Istanbul.

By the way, I love the way the stalls are made to look like shops on the street, with the false second story facade showing windows, siding, and other details that a real building would have. See the first photo in this post to see what I mean.