london
This weekend:
Food Lovers' Fair
Food goes back to delicious basics at Food Lover's Fair at Covent Garden. The focus of the twice-yearly fair is real good food and, for people who like to know what they are sinking their teeth into, the importance of sourcing.
More than 250,000 people are expected to peruse the stalls of 120 top-notch British speciality producers. New produce this year includes handmade crisps, organic smoked fish, and geese. A healthy smattering of celebrity chefs, including Mark Hix of Le Caprice, Ben O'Donoghue of Monte's, and Peter Gordon of Providores and Tapa Room, will be giving demonstrations. There are also tutored tasting
workshops and live baking displays across all four piazzas, and entry is free.
Still hungry? Drop into the Food Lover's Cafe or one of the many local restaurants which run special Food Lovers' menus over the weekend. There is also a creche if you want to lose yourself in a feeding frenzy
sans enfants.
www.coventgardenmarket.co.uk
Aberdeen, Edinburgh, or Glasgow to Heathrow with British Midland, from (pounds) 76 return; www.flybmi.com
Amsterdam
This month: Holland Dance Festival
Forget the clippity-clop side-shuffling tap of your childhood and brace yourself for the magic of the world's greatest tap dancer, Tamango, who is performing at this year's Holland Dance Festival.
Tamango will be performing an exhilarating show, Full Cycle, with his group of free-style performers, Urban Tap. His performance uses Brazilian capoeira, a martial art-style dance, street hip hop, with the sounds of the didgeridoo, and is performed against a backdrop of live video projections to add a multi-media dimension.
Twenty-nine dance groups from around the world will be in attendance at venues
throughout The Hague until November 8.
www.hollanddancefestival.com. Edinburgh or Glasgow to Amsterdam with easyJet, from (pounds) 84.48 return; www.easyjet.com
Cumbria
Next month:
World's Biggest Liar
Fancy competing in bending the truth with the world's best? On November 20, contestants line up at the Bridge Inn, in the Wasdale Valley, Cumbria, where they have two to five minutes to wax lyrical. In the interest of fairness, politicians and lawyers are excluded from entry.
The tradition was established 26 years ago in memory of Victorian publican Will Ritson, who claimed to own a foxhound/eagle hybrid which could jump incredible heights.
Losers can console themselves with beer and the local ''tiger beef'' stew. For entry forms call Whitehaven Civic Hall on 01946 852 821.
Edinburgh or Glasgow to Whitehaven with Virgin from (pounds) 27 return (advance booking); Virgin 08457 222 333.
Why not try:
If you think a teddy bears' picnic is pushing it, you'll think a Thai meal for 600 monkeys is plain daft. During the annual Monkey Banquet on November 24, however, visitors flock to the Khmer ruins at Lop Buri, outside Bangkok, to see this extraordinary lunch, complete with napkins and menus. The event was started by a wily hotelier as a thank-you to the monkeys for bringing tourists in great numbers. Rumours that monkeys come by train from the capital, Bangkok, for the free gifts of mirrors and toys are completely unsubstantiated.
Lop Buri Tourist Office
00 66 36 412 300.
new orleans
This weekend: Voodoo Music Experience
If the spirits don't shake you, the music will, at the fifth annual voodoo music experience in New Orleans City Park. This year's 80 acts include 50 Cent, The White Stripes, and Marilyn Manson. For dedicated clubbers Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, and Felix Da Housecat keep the cool factor high.
Organisers say the expanded three-day festival is the anchor for the city's notorious Halloween celebrations.
New Orleans is the US capital of voodoo so don't leave without checking out some of the ghosts of the French Quarter, either on a guided tour or under your own steam. Visit the city's most haunted cemetery, St Louis
No 1, and the tomb of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. Festival tickets ($29.50) are available at www.voodoomusicfest.com.
KLM return flight from Edinburgh and three nights in a three-star hotel in the French Quarter, (pounds) 429, from Nov 1, ebookers.com or call 0870 043 3957
Aldeburgh
This weekend:
Poetry Festival
Some of the most accomplished names in poetry descend on Aldeburgh in Suffolk this weekend for the 15th annual poetry festival, from Oct 31 to Nov 2. Don't miss Paul Farley, winner of the Forward Prize and Whitbread Prize for his poems, reading his work. Pulitzer prize-winner and New Yorker Stephen Dunn makes a rare UK appearance to dissect his favourite modern poems.
www.aldeburghpoetryfestival.org
Edinburgh or Glasgow to Saxmundham with GNER from (pounds) 79.50 return;
www.nationalrail.co.uk
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