This weekend there will simultaneous partying involving parades, masked mischief, beads, babes, and drinking going on all over the nominally catholic world. To get the skinny, take a gander at the latest episode of The Map, where Liza runs down some of the world’s top Carnival spots, and hits up a German “Karneval” party right here in New York. For some extra goodness, take a look at other carnival videos from our archive. Here’s a clip about Rio’s Samba school parade, and a list of the cities most famed for their pre-Lent madness:



– Basel, Switzerland
– Binche, Belgium
– Cologne, Germany
– Mobile, Alabama
– New Orleans, Louisiana
– Patras, Greece
– Port of Spain, Trinidad
– Rijeka, Croatia
– Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
– Sitges, Spain
– Viareggio, Italy
– Venice, Italy

Miami: More than the Super Bowl
– “Super Bowl host has serene, artsy sides under the glitz” (SF Chronicle)
- “Party time in Miami: You do have a room, right?” (Chicago Tribune)

Buenos Aires for Vegetarians
– “Steak out in Buenos Aires” (Guardian)

Caribbean Island Guide
– “The 10 Point Caribbean Escapes Plan” (NYT)

China: Hiking the Great Wall
– “Wall to wall adventure” (Sydney Morning Herald)

Italy’s Hippy Hill Town
– “Calcata, Italy: Where Newcomers Gave an Old Town a Second Life” (NYT)

Mexico City Dining
– “In Mexico City, Regional Flavors Unchanged by the Big City” (NYT)

St. Petersburg, FL: Not Just for Oldsters
– “A Fountain of Youth” (Washington Post)

As an aspiring journalist, Kelly Loudenberg interned at CNN, ABC, NPR, and HBO, before deciding that corporate media was too restrictive for the kind of stories that she wanted to tell. With a used camera she purchased on eBay, she hit the road after graduating from NYU, and started making short films about her experiences. Kelly’s no novice to traveling: she’s been saving her pennies since she was 17 to finance her solo travel adventures – and to date has been to South and Central America, Europe and the Caribbean. Her work focuses on out of the way places – a hindu temple in Trinidad, a village built by the formerly homeless – and low-to-the-ground traveling, as in her piece on hostelling in the US. Kelly’s clip about a Craigslist ride-share from New York to Montreal, where she met up with the founders of couchsurfing.com, is a perfect case in point: