Here is this week’s collection of good travel info from around the Web and around the globe:

** What’s new in the countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain? (Remember it? If not, read Around the Bloc.)

• Postcard-perfect Vilnius, Lithuania
• Once and future glories of Albania
• Drug-resistant TB rates are soaring in former Soviet regions, so be careful if you travel there.
• Azerbaijan, the nicer side of Baku
• It’s the day after Easter; did you girls get your whipping in the Czech Republic or Slovakia?

** Unique watery travel: good (brrrr) surfing in Britain and Ireland, and unusual diving spots in Texas.

** Get creative with mosaic-making in Venice, awesome art hotels or enjoy a major new quilt collection acquisition.

** For the road warriors:

• protecting your laptop while on the road
• figuring out how to take your own photo when you’re solo
• finding places with Internet connections anywhere in the world
• learning what exactly is in that US passport file of yours (that the State Dept shouldn’t snoop through)
• and yes, even in Australia the higher-end hotels insist that we pay for crappy WiFi.

** The Open Skies agreement will open up options for US-Europe transatlantic air travel. If you’re going to Europe, check out the latest from Rick Steves about what’s new this year in major European tourist destinations.

** A true “reach” travel destination: North Korea

** Updates from the big city:

• The popular and unusual taxidermy shop Deyrolle in Paris suffered a terrible fire.
• Mexico City’s women-only bus can offer relief from unwanted Latin lovers.
• Award-winning New York magazine offers a mammoth Best of New York section.
• Check out cheaper lodgings; campgrounds in/around European cities.
• Instant weekend in Istanbul.
• From the experts - black cab taxi tours of London

** NOT the big city:

• Khasab, Oman (related PT post - Bahrain Rising)
• Out and about in tiny Alpine, Texas
• How to hike the Inca Trail
• How to get to the remote Midway atoll
• Top 10 Greek islands
• See Precious Ramotswe’s Botswana (from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency)
• A quiet getaway to Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay
• 28 scenic Appalachian driving tours

** OK, all the maple leaf’d experts, leave a comment with your favorite European-like place in Canada.

** Finally, I’m hosting the Carnival of Cities over at Family Travel this week. You are invited to send in your (one) blog post about any aspect of any city by noon Central time on Tuesday, March 25th. Please keep it on topic and not spammy or overly commercial, and use the simple submission form on the main Blog Carnival site. Thanks!

March might seem early to be thinking about a festival in early October, but it’s actually getting on the late side for the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. It’s not that you can’t get tickets after March — you can buy tickets opening day on October 3rd. But good luck finding a hotel room.

The National Storytelling Festival started out in 1973 with less than 60 people, storytellers included, on a stage of hay bales and wagons in tiny, picturesque Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town. It now attracts well over ten thousand visitors — you might call them devotees — every first weekend of October.

The tellers vary by year and are the last word in diverse. There’s Barbara McBride-Smith, an Oklahoma school librarian who hands out fairy tales and Greek myths with an unmistakable and hilarious Texas twist. Charlie Chin enthralls with his Chinese fables, creating elaborate settings using only a fan and a chair. Cuban-born, Georgia-raised Carmen Deedy tells stories that pull tears of joy and sorrow easily from her audiences. And Kathryn Windham, a Southern lady to the core, who in her late 80s is now storytelling’s grande dame.

With the exceptions of tellers such as Kathryn Windham, the storytellers vary every year, and pull from famed storytelling talent all over the world. Many of the tellers reappear at international festivals, such as that held every year in Graz, Austria.

The National Storytelling Festival has been consistently named one of America’s top 100 events. I’ve never experienced anything like it for pulling you out of yourself. Listening to live storytelling becomes a journey within a journey, reminding you of what makes your heart truly tick with joy, sorrow, and wonder.

(Photos courtesy of the International Storytelling Center, copyright Tom Raymond, Fresh Air Photographics.)

This is why I love to travel; to see little gems like these ema wooden prayer cards at the Meiji-jingu Shrine, Harajuku, Tokyo.

I wish I could meet the author/artist and find out what he/she was asking for….

Related posts:

• Climbing Mt. Fuji
• The Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum
• Tokyo: The Plastic Fantastic Boulevard
• Press a button for refreshment (Japanese vending machines)

Would you ever guess it’s one of America’s top tourist spots? This is Napa Valley, the deep heart of American wine country. Over five million people visit Napa each year, making it second only to Disneyland in California tourism.

And why? Well, to drink, obviously. Because there’s not a whole lot else to do. And unless you’re on the overwatered Domaine Chandon estate (anyone there ever heard of a drought?), being outside is pretty miserable. It’s not a clean sort of dry heat like you get in the Arizona desert or the Australian outback. Nope. It’s kind of lung-clogging. Polluted.

You can take the tourist wine train, which, despite its being an overpriced joke, isn’t all that bad. That is, if you can get past the shock of the waiting station. It has the air of a church basement in preparation for post-service coffee hour. My sister, at some ungodly hour of the morning, took one look in shock at the burnt sludge called coffee they were selling, and went straight to the customer service desk. “I need coffee,” she said, hoping for directions to a Starbucks. “They’ve got coffee at the cafe,” said a very chipper guy in a bow tie. My sister collapsed on the counter and prepared to explain why the liquid is in no way coffee, and the dusty counter was not a cafe.

Just before boarding the train, you get a young’un with a goatee dribbling wine into plastic glasses for Midwestern tourists and a couple of nuns while informing everyone that, “This wine is individualistic.” The nuns made sure to get an extra swig and I’m sure they needed it.

I’d skip it. Stay in San Francisco. Eat at the jazz club and restaurant 1300 on Fillmore in the city’s very cool revitalized Fillmore jazz district, where you can get waited on by my other sister and drink lots of great California wine without ever having to subject yourself to Napa.

In small-town America, a big blank wall on the side of a building was an ideal spot to paint eye-catching advertisements.

Sign-makers could get pretty creative.

They used dramatic fonts and bright colors to draw the attention of both locals and busy travelers.

As the years passed, buildings changed hands and ads moved to billboards and neon. The artistic efforts faded and peeled.

Enter the Letterheads.

They are a worldwide group of graphics and sign enthusiasts, and I saw an example of their work on historic wall signage in Atlanta, Illinois, on historic Route 66.

Our discovery was pure traveler serendipity.

During a summer Midwest road trip from Texas to Chicago and back, my teen daughter and I tried to hit as many scenic drives and backroads as we could. Across Illinois, old Route 66 (Chicago IL to Santa Monica CA) roughly parallels Interstate 55 and is often only a stone’s throw from it. We could make good time on the big road but it was incredibly boring, so we often jumped off to Route 66 to slow down and look around.

As we drove through the little town of Atlanta, I was struck by the bright colors of the “building ads” (downtown Atlanta itself is part of the National Scenic Byways program.)

When I got out to take a photo, I saw a plaque explaining that the Letterheads had been responsible for the sign’s preservation and restoration.

The group has sign-painting meetups around the globe. In 2004 they did some work in nearby Lincoln, Illinois; the two striking photos below are courtesy of that Letterhead project.

Thanks very much, Letterheads, for helping to preserve a bit of graphics heritage, and for brightening the day of road-trippers everywhere.

Related posts:

• Maple “sirup” from Funks Grove on Route 66
• Purple martins in Heartland gone to the birds