Gadling

What do Czechs eat for Christmas? Typically, I don't like when people ask me this question because the answer, "carp," is followed with a reaction of pure disgust.

If just eating carp sounds disgusting to you, I can´t wait to hear what you´ll say about the rest of the tradition. (And I can't wait to hear the reactions, particularly after my Santa post.)

As Neil likes to remember from his time living in Prague, about a week before Christmas, fish vendors start appearing on street corners. They bring tubs or barrels full of water and packed with carp.

It is freezing cold, so the vendors usually drink heavily while selling the fish. By the evening, these guys can be quite entertaining.

People come to these vendors, usually with kids, so they can pick and buy their own carp. Then they either kill and gut it (in front of the kids, which some people criticize) or they take it home alive. They fill a bathtub full of water and leave the carp there so the kids bond with it. They usually name the thing, of course, which makes it all the more fun when it comes to time for Daddy to kill Carl the Carp.

Mom then fries him up and serves him with potato salad. This used to be very common, and I still remember the times when we couldn't bathe for a day or two because Carl the Carp had a monopoly on the tub. After the fall of communism, animal advocacy groups started a campaign calling the entire tradition inhumane. More and more often, people will just eat a schnitzel with potato salad to avoid a moral dilemma. They don´t actually have to kill a pig, which is much more morally acceptable. As anywhere else, the wealthier people become, the more they like to remove themselves from the whole "killing the animal before you eat it" part. It is a little hypocritical, but that´s the way it goes.

This photo by t3mujin whose photos seem to always follow the tips offered up by Jeff Nolan, is so vivid it almost makes my eyes hurt. I love shots like these were only part of a building is shown so that the composition is artwork as well. The blue tile feature, the texture of the wall and the blue of the background are wonderful together. This shot, according to the tags, was taken in Portugal.

Do you have your own photos that work as art? Interesting angles. Images that make your heart beat? Send them our way to Gadling's Flickr Photo Pool to be considered for Photo of the Day.

One of my Peace Corps friends emailed me a couple days ago. He reminded me that today is Tobaski. That's what this Muslim holiday is called in The Gambia. Perhaps you've heard it called Eid Al Adha--or just Eid. This is the day when Muslims celebrate when God told Abraham not to sacrifice Ismail (Issac)but a sheep instead.

Today every married male is supposed to kill a sheep if he can afford one, if not , than a goat, and if not that --a chicken. The food is cooked to be shared. A portion is to be given to poor people, meaning those without. A portion is shared with friends and family who stop by for a visit and a portion is kept for the family who bought the sheep. Most is given away. When the sheep is killed there is a blessing said to Allah (God).

If you're looking for the ideal family vacation destination -- one that's fun for every age, and maybe a bit educational as well -- you have something to look forward to. Don Aslett's Cleaning Museum is scheduled to open in fall 2008 in the small southeastern Idaho town Potacello.

Don Aslett started a international janitorial company, and is as big a cleaning fan as you can find. In fact, in order to communicate the scale of cleaning he's talking about, his museum will prominently display a giant model of Noah's Ark -- because we're talking about biblical proportions of clean.

The 50,000-square-foot museum will include a horse-drawn street sweeper, as well as the largest antique vacuum cleaner collection in the world. And there's stuff for the kids, too: a three-story globe called Kid's Clean World where "children can take part in interactive exhibits teaching them how to wash their hands, make their bed and clean their room."

And if you need some cleaning tips, the third floor of the five-floor museum will function as a training center.

When I went to Bern, Switzerland by mistake once (I meant to go to Lucerne, but ended up on the wrong train), the only picture I took was of the bear in the bear pit. Because my own camera had broken when I dropped it on the stone floor of the church where William Shakespeare is buried in Stratford-upon-Avon, Great Britain month earlier, I was using a borrowed, cheap one on this Switzerland jaunt. How did I drop my camera? I was donating money of all things. And what was my payback? My picture of the bear looked like it was of a dog--a mangy dog at that. What was I thinking?

Continental and Northwest are currently in a bit of a fare war for each other's Honolulu markets. So if you're anywhere in the Midwest and could use a mini-vacation in January, check kayak for your fares; they just dropped to around the 400$ range.

Normal fares for this route are anywhere from 600 - 1500$, so this is a pretty good discount. Itineraries appear to work best traveling from Monday to Wednesday, so I would make sure to do a flex search (+/- 3 days) to make sure that you can find the best deals.

I'm getting the price out of the Detroit and Minneapolis markets but shop around, the fare could be good from elsewhere as well. Travel before the first couple of weeks in February to take advantage of the fare.

This might make a good "surprise! we're going to Hawaii next week!" Christmas gift and is a lot less expensive than that Lexus you were about to get.

We're at the hump day of Gadling's Grand giveaway week, and here's a recap of what we're giving away, in case you forgot. Remember, you can enter to win all of the contests up until this Friday at 8:00 PM EST, so if you haven't dropped your name in the buckets, get on it!

• Monday: A handful of books!
• Tuesday: Rajasthan: Houses and Men
  
• Today: Journeys of a Lifetime book
• Tomorrow: Planet Earth DVDs
• Friday: Eagle Creek Voyage 65L backpack

If you're really lucky, you could be walking around with a new backpack while watching an awesome DVD and reading three different books!

You know the difference between Americans and Britons? The word of the year for 2007 stateside is "w00t" while across the pond, it's -- get this, -- "locavore." OK, it's not quite as pretentious as it sounds, though still too much for my taste. Anyone want to venture a guess?

It means someone who eats food that's locally grown, and who especially takes notice of seasonal available foodstuff and avoids preservatives. Meanwhile, the American word basically means "yay." The two words come courtesy of Merriam-Webster Dictionary (based in MA) and Oxford English Dictionary (based in Oxford of course).

Good ole Webster had some pretty good words in past years, including the talk show host Stephen Colbert's trademark "truthiness." But this year they simply went for something fun.

Pretty soon you're never going to have to do anything outside of Google. You'll check your email, calendar, dry cleaning, and now, flight status, all from the comfort of your precious Google Account.

Just in time for the thorny holiday travel season, Google has implemented flight tracking directly into its search engine. So not only can you check the weather, stocks, and get directions from the Google command prompt, but save yourself a few minutes by skipping the airline's clunky homepage to find out how late your flight is. They're all late nowadays, right?

The data is being pulled from FlightStats.com, and clicking on your flight (American Airlines 125, for instance) gives you detailed information, including the ability to track its current location over, wait for it, Google Maps.

Being a bit of a healthy living nut, I'm always a little bit excited by nice hotel gyms. Many hotels out there buy a used treadmill and a couple sets of mismatched weights and call it a gym, but a nice hotel will actually make the effort to replicate your gym at home. I've found that Fairmont Hotels (at least the Canadian ones) tend to have nice gyms, but they come with a pretty hefty price tag unfortunately.

Athletic Minded Traveler recently came out with a list of the top hotel gyms in the US. Here's what made the cut:

1. Houstonian in Houston)
2. Renaissance ClubSport in Walnut Creek, CA
3. Park Hyatt at the Bellevue in Philadelphia
4. Four Seasons in San Francisco
5. Embassy Suites Lakefront in Chicago
6. Hyatt Regency La Jolla at Aventine in La Jolla, CA
7. Westin Atlanta Perimeter North in Atlanta
8. Grand Hotel in Minneapolis
9. Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, CO
10. Venetian in Las Vegas

Want to know why they made the list? Click here for the full article.