Pepperkakebyen. El pueblo de galleta de jengibre.
One of the food we normally associate with Christmas dates are ginger cookies. Along with rice pudding is one of the most typical christmas desserts that never miss in a table in Norway. Kids enjoy helping mothers to prepare cookies to eat them as a dessert with all the family.
Though the cookies with Gingerbread Man's shape –also known as Gingy- are the most popular, the true is that there are no limits when preparing these sweet creations made of ginger and aromatized with cinnamon or honey: they may be oven cooked like Santa Claus, christmas tree or even you may build up a whole city of them.
In Bergen they know this fact quite well. From Christmas in 1991, the city center -Torgallmenningen- becomes the sweetest place in the world with the creation of Pepperkakebyen- the Ginger cookie's biggest town in the world-. They create tiny little houses, trains, cars and ships made of ginger bread, candy canes and they use glass sugar to stick all together.
Everybody helps to make this ginger town grow up, from kindergarden children to school kids that contribute with their own creations. That is why every year Pepperkakebyen is visited by thousands of tourists attracted by its magic and who want to be wrapped with the christmas spirit. It will be open the whole month of December.
Makes you want to go, right? Do it! Check out our prices here!
more infoCatania's Street Markets
La Fiera and La Pescheria are two outdoor daily markets that give life to the streets of Catania and have become one of the city’s major tourist attractions as they are a meeting point between indigenous people and curious foreigners who enjoy watching these markets environment.
La Fiera expands along the city center, being la piazza de Stesicoro its nerve center where the market branches on different streets of the city. From early in the morning you can walk through this market and let the smells and colors of the fruits and vegetables wrap you in. La Fiera is always full of people picking through the wide range of things you can find at this huge market.
La Pescheria is the other central market located next to la piazza del Duomo, an incredible fish market buzzing with its merchants from 5 am until noon. La Pescheria offers a huge variety of incredibly fresh fish and seafood and also offers the opportunity to try in situ some of the products such as clams, mussels, oysters and sea urchins.
After walking through these markets, you better enjoy the wide variety of dishes provided by the restaurants in Catania.
Picture by Berthold Werner
Text by Fran Arnaiz.
Makes you want to go, right? Do it! Check out our prices here!
more infoThe Caves of Hercules
The beauty of the place, their archaeological and mythological value make the caves of Hercules an unusual place to visit in Tangier. The mythological comes as it is here where it is said Hercules rested after performing one of his 12 labors, after separating Europe and Africa , and waiting to perform the next task assigned – pick the golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides .
You get there by a small road , 5 miles from Cape Spartel and 20 minutes from the city of Tangier . Although part of the cave has an artificial origin – rocks for making mill were extracted from here-, its origin is mainly due to the action of strong waves , which has shaped these caves in curious ways. For example , if you see the cave opening to the Atlantic, you will see drawn silhouette of African continenente flipped. Inside the cave , a handful of vendors and artisans offer their ceramic products , souvenirs and postcards with the image of this famous opening .
Picture: imad khleeh
A place well worth discovering! Check out our flights here.
more info
Toykio. Come play with us
- If shopping is supposed to be an experience rather than simply raiding the rails and shelves, there are only a few places that can live up to your expectations and truly surprise and inspire you. Toykio is one of them. After some successful years as an online shop and a pop-up gallery on Königsallee, the guys from Toykio built their new headquarter in the Japanese district of Düsseldorf, just off Immermannstrasse. With its shiny black ceramic tiles and colourful neon signs, it is a hybrid between toy store, art space and a café where you can find pretty much everything your inner child desires.
- Action figures, robots, Qee bears, labbits, comics along with coffee table books, vinyl records and premium poster prints – every item seems to be hand picked by shop owner Selim Varol. The gallery in the basement features a variety of more or less known artists from urban- and pop-art, lowbrow, surrealism and photography, just as Banksy, JR, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Ricky Powell, KAWS, and D*Face. And though it is unlikely – if you ever should get tired in Toykio, you can just sit down and enjoy one of the best coffees in town at the very Brooklyn-like pastry bar.
- By Lukas Blasberg from METAL
A place well worth discovering! Check out our flights here.
more info