Great way to spend a week.

It’s the first week of Spring and my mind is on getting the hell out of here.

by Emily Epstein

Icelanders are famous for knocking back Brennivín, a local version of schnapps so lethal it’s also known as “black death,” but beer was illegal on the island for 75 years, until March 1, 1989.

Travel headlines for the weekend of 1/21/07

If you’re in the US, local “blue” laws preventing the sale or consumption of alcohol on a Sunday, which New Year’s Eve is this year, could but a serious damper on your party plans.

In honor of the coming New Year, the jet-setting folks at Condé Nast Traveler have rounded up a list of how 12:00 am, January 1 will be met in nine different places around the globe.

The drunkards of the Web are toasting the Thirsty Traveler. Recently, his alcoholic adventures have gotten attention from a bunch of sites and blogs.

The French Government takes their country’s gourmet reputation seriously: by law, the first bottle out of France ’s vineyards each year, le Beaujolais Nouveau, can’t be uncorked until the third Thursday of November.

Lambics are brewed “wild,” with yeast that naturally occurs in the environment, and fermented in oak barrels, for a whole different kind of flavor than you might associate with lagers and other brews created under strictly controlled conditions.