Raise your hand if you wanted to be a pirate when you grew up? Some of you may still want to be pirates (I know I do, except I don’t think I would make it in Somalia). Maybe one of you loyal readers is actually a pirate already, in which case I am honored to produce reading material for a sea faring buccaneer. Regardless, pirates are awesome because they stick to the neccesary three elements of being cool; captaining a boat, having a beard, and owning a parrot, but that is getting away from the point.

Today brings good news to all who are still itching at a shot of finding buried treasure and those who believe that swashbuckling is an acceptable term for everyday conversation. A website called We Lost Our Gold has issued a public decree announcing the start of a scavenger hunt to find $10,000 in gold coins buried somewhere within the 5 boroughs of New York City.The site is backed by two Brooklyn artists who have chosen to remain anonymous. Sounds a bit sketchy, right? Well, I agree, but digging a little deeper it looks as if this may actually be legit.

These two anonymous artists claim to have buried a chest filled with $10,000 gold coins somewhere in NYC, which they have been collecting for quite a while. Now these aren’t exactly “gold” coins, but they are 10,000 US mint one-dollar coins. In the current recession, you can’t be too picky.Starting on August 1st, the crew issued an 8 minute Muppet video in which the pirate Muppets, who as the story line goes have lost their gold in New York, reveal some clues about the location of the treasure. Through September 19th, the site will periodically put up 7 more videos, each one giving away another clue to where you can find the loot. The first apparent clue that can be determined is that the treasure is not in Central Park. The site also discourages treasure hunters from digging random holes all over the city, as when you know where the treasure is, you will know.

This does seem like a crazy idea, and not revealing any indication of who is backing the process adds to the skepticism. However, the quality of the site and depth of the videos on there thus far shows that someone has put a good deal of effort and time into this. Plus, the traffic drawn to the site will be pinging left and right. Worse case scenario and this isn’t for real, you still get to watch 8 Muppet videos, and everyone loves Muppets. They are hilarious, especially these pirate Muppets. I especially love Tom the ninja pirate who only speaks in mumbles. What a guy.

I can tell you one thing, if I was in New York, I would be actively participating in the treasure hunt. Not necessarily for the money, although 10 grand couldn’t hurt, but for the ability to unleash my inner child and set sail on the high seas of the Big Apple in hopes of discovering adventure, wearing a bandanna, and saying scurrrrrrrvvvvvvvy.

Hats off to you, fellow pirates, in your conquest for lavish riches. If any of you ends up finding the treasure in September, I would be happy to share the pot. If anyone else gets arrested for digging holes throughout NYC, well, that would make for an awesome story for the kids.

Set aside notions of boring museums and endless guided tours. Museums are going beyond all that and creating experiences that can get even a jaded Millennial excited. During a recent trip to Warsaw, Poland, I experienced one such museum that’s getting it right in a tech-driven world.

Welcome to the Chopin Museum 2.0.

Before heading inside the museum’s impressive 17th century facade, I spent some time walking in the courtyard, where I discovered the first of many interactive components of the museum: an interactive bench. The bench played various Chopin tunes while a QR code enticed me to dig for deeper content.

Upon entering, visitors are handed an RFID enabled card that can be swiped throughout the museum to interact with special content and music. In the midst of personal letters, furniture, pianos and other objects, a slew of touchscreens reveal personalized audio and video content that help bring Chopin and his music to life.

One of the architects of the space, Mara Servetto, told Wallpaper about the design.

“We wanted to incorporate the best technology could offer with an experience that is very human,” explains Servetto. “To this end, all the sounds, smells and interactive technologies have been integrated together.”

It makes for a full sensory experience that eventually leads to a dark, silent chamber dedicated to the end of Chopin’s life. It includes paintings of Chopin on his death bed, his death mask and also a lock of hair. It’s that’s too macabre for you, not to worry, there’s much music to be distracted with once you’re finished with the tour. Be sure to spend some time downstairs in the cavernous listening room. Check out the blank pages that when turned reveal projected images from above.

Playing in a tree house has long been a staple of American childhood, much like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Flinstones chewable vitamins. There is nothing like escaping the stresses of elementary school by hiding away in your treetop mansion while eating animal crackers and contemplating all of life’s complexities. Somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, we forget the joys of being perched atop an oak tree and stick to activities involving the much lower and safer surface we commonly refer to as the ground.

A recent architectural endeavor, however, has now made it acceptable to enjoy the pleasures of a tree house without having to be under the age of 12 or a member of the Swiss Family Robinsons. Sweden’s new Treehotel is quickly gaining press for its intriguing conceptualization and design.  Located in Harads, a town 37 miles below the Arctic circle, this structural masterpiece consists of four separate rooms, each secured to one or more trees between 4 to 6 yards off the ground.

Each room was designed with a theme in mind (including the birdhouse above, a UFO, and more) and allows guests to fully experience the beauty of their surroundings.  The rooms were constructed of wood and glass and come standard with a heated floor as well as an eco-friendly toilet and sink. With the hotel being open year round, it will be sure to provide an experience for everyone to enjoy, whether that be a view of the northern lights during the winter, or being able to bathe in the midnight sun beneath the summer sky. Plans are in the works to complete 24 total rooms, each from a different architect, in the next five years. The grand opening for the hotel has been set for July 17th.  At a price equivalent to about $560 per night for a room, staying in the Treehotel will cost a pretty penny.

With environmentally friendly trends and “going green” being on the rise as of late, eco-tourism is sustaining significant growth. The Treehotel plays into this progression while making a powerful artistic statement. I love this idea for a hotel and the fact that the owners are incorporating so many different architects in the process. Each room is representative of a diverse artistic style, and would be a sight to see even if you were not planning on staying. Even with global warming (or “not” global warming if that’s your cup of tea), Harads is still a bit cold so if you decide to venture to the Treehotel make sure you bring a jacket, or six.

State parks aren’t exactly notorious for best practices when it comes to utilizing new technology, so I have to say I was a little impressed when a friend of mine pointed me to this summer’s GeoChallenge Adventure from the State Parks and Historic Sites division of the Georgia DNR.

The Premise

Sealed ammo boxes labeled as a Georgia State Parks & Historic Sites GeoCache are hidden in 42 Georgia State Parks. There is a “First-to-Find” special prize for a certificate for a 1-night camping stay in each cache for the person who gets there first, and 10 of the caches contain an “endangered” gopher stuffed toy which becomes yours to keep and protect.

How To Play

• Download a Georgia State Park GeoChallenge PassPort or just the Grid Sheet.
• Get the GPS coordinates at www.Geocaching.com for the Georgia State Parks Geo-Challenge locations.
• Locate the caches by entering their GPS coordinates into a hand-held GPS unit.

The Payoff

The boxes contain a prize for the first adventurer to locate the cache, and successive adventurers are encouraged to leave a trinket of equal or greater value for the next adventurer. Log your name and any comments to the logbook, stamp your PassPort grid sheet with the unique stamp for that specific park and then share your experiences online. (Unfortunately, no direction is given as to where to share your experience online.)

There also are geo-coin (bronze, silver, and gold) for finding a certain number of caches and stamping your Geocache Passport with the stamps that are unique to each cache.

As I said earlier, I really applaud the effort. We don’t often see innovation like this from state parks and recreational organizations. That said, I think there are a handful of ways the GeoChallenge Adventure could be made even better.

How To Make It Better

• Make each cache a Foursquare/Gowalla location so that gameplay is not limited only to those with handheld GPS devices. They could even partner with these location-based services so that checking-in at a cache automatically earns adventurers a cache-specific badge (an alternative to having to collect physical stamps in the GeoChallenge Passport).
• Develop GeoChallenge Adventure smartphone apps in lieu of Foursquare/Gowalla integration.
• Incorporate StickyBits at each cache location so that user-generated content can be shared easily online.
• Create and link to a Facebook Fan page for the GeoChallenge Adventure so that adventurers have a designated place to share their adventures online.

Click here for more detailed information about the Georgia State Parks GeoChallenge.

Sometimes all it takes is a blank canvas, and not necessarily a traditional one. Blank buildings or walls are proving the perfect backdrop for digital graffiti art.

This weekend, that’s exactly what will take over the Gulf coast town of Alys Beach, Florida. A Digital Arts Festival that’s being called the world’s first projection art festival will take place on Saturday night.

Participating artists will take advantage of the town’s blank, white buildings and use them as a canvas for digital art. Thirty-six artists are expected to take part in what will be an evening full of interactive art and music.

Event organizer Mike Ragsdale told CNN.com about the genesis of the idea:

“My company once wrote video game reviews for Time Warner, and we often tested the games by projecting them onto a huge white wall in our office,” said Ragsdale.

“Because the buildings in Alys Beach are white, it occurred to me that our town is like one giant blank canvas. So the notion of fusing together art, architecture and technology eventually evolved into the Digital Graffiti event.”

I guess you really never know where an idea might come from. This could be one to hit the road for.

If you’re a wine lover and into travel, this might be right up your alley. BFG recently launched a social media-based promotion on behalf of Lapostolle that will bring one lucky wine passionista to Chile where they’ll spend two weeks as a wine apprentice. They’ll learn the ins and outs of winemaking from a team of the some of the best around. Plus, they’ll even leave with their own blend.

To enter, all it takes is a little creativity and a Twitter account. Apprentice hopefuls are being asked to tell us (or show us) their passion for wine in a Tweet that includes #Lapostolle. If you followed BFG’s search for an Assistant Content Manager via Twitter, this may sound very familiar. Creativity counts here but in this case so does voting.

Twitter entries are displayed on UncorkThePassion.com where site visitors can let their voices be heard by casting votes for favorite Tweets. A pool of the top 50 Tweets will be selected based on community votes.

From there, we’ll turn it over to the experts. Our team of three judges will narrow the pool of 50 down to one lucky apprentice. The judging panel includes Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary, Nick Fauchald of Tasting Table and Lapostolle winemaker Andrea Leon.

The entries are pouring in already so go ahead and cast your vote or get your creative juices flowing and Tweet your way to Chile. We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

My dream vacation for the longest time was Grand Cayman.

I’m happy to say that I’ve been there; done that. I absolutely loved it and have been plotting and scheming on how to return ever since. Those plans, however, may now be on hold.

The new destination I am coveting is Bali; specifically a stay at the Alila Villas Uluwatu (pictured below).

The villas are part of an emerging trend in the luxury resort industry of properties that are being developed with a flair that is both modern and minimalist. Much more than an attempt at greener construction, the resort aims for true ecological sustainability.

The resort was recently the recipient of a 2009 Green Good Design Award and was constructed according to strict a Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) framework. In compliance with the ESD framework, local materials, such as teak, lava rock, and bamboo, were used for construction. Water conservation was made a high priority, as well, incorporating the use of salt water pools and gray water systems to help recycle laundry, dishwashing and bathing water for reuse in landscape irrigation.

Located on a clifftop not far from the area’s famous surf break, the villas are inspired by Balinese open-air structures, allowing guest to adjust the airflow of natural breezes with sliding glass doors and large wooden blinds.

The only real threat I think I’d face in this locale is the desire to never return home. Sell my stuff; ship my dogs to me; I’ll send you a postcard… right after my morning surf session.

Suck-Squeeze-Bang-Blow these are the basic principles of how a jet engine operates. Throw in a bit of volcanic ash and you’ve got yourself a recipe for the worst thing to ever happen to the airline industry. The problem lies with the “squeeze-blow” part of the equation, when combustion happens if it is mixed with ash, that ash will melt due to the heat and then turn to glass causing the engine to seize. I understood the jet propulsion part of things, at least the basic concept, thanks to some of my aerospace engineering friends. What I didn’t know that the volcanic ash part of the problem would have a major impact on a recent trip to Europe.

18 months ago, when I set out to take my Mom to Paris for her 60th birthday, I never thought about how a volcano could snarl airline travel for an entire continent, with ripple effects for the whole world. Before April 15, 2010 I would have laughed if you told me that Eyjafjallajökull is the name of a volcano in Iceland, truth be told I still can’t pronounce it, but now I’ll never forget it. (I’ll take oddly named things for $1000, Alex).

Mashable recently wrote a great article about how stranded travelers turned to social media for information on what to do now that they were trapped trying to get out of Europe, travel within Europe, or get back to Europe from some place else. The term “you can’t get there from here” has never been more appropriate. Not only were planes grounded but train or bus travel was completely overbooked, rental cars were scarce, and even ferry boats were hard to come by. The article talks about the great response that some airlines were able to put together when faced with a disaster that no one could plan for.

Personally, I turned to Facebook and the group “When Volcanoes Erupt: A Survival Guide for Stranded Travelers.” It was here that I was able to learn information from people stranded all over the place, which was good because news in each country seemed to be a little different. I also saw people offering to house total strangers who were stranded, or share a car from one place to another so that people could get home. I also followed updates on Twitter following #ashtag as a trend (favorite.hashtage.ever). Lastly, I found an article from the New York Times that gave up to date information about what airports were open, partially opened, or closed completely & when they were expected to open. This was valuable since one option we were considering was to travel from Paris to an airport that was open so that we could then fly home.

As a US Citizen stranded in a foreign country, I was frustrated that I wasn’t able to find information about what to do on the US State Department’s Travel Site. However, because of the Facebook group I joined, I did eventually learn that the State Department was frequently updating their Facebook page…it just took a few days for that to happen. I was also frustrated that my airline had a Twitter feed, but they weren’t updating it with important information. I would have settled for quick tweets about their website being updated, but that didn’t even happen.

In the end I was only “stuck” in Paris for one extra day. My husband, who was at home, was able to get my mother and I on one of first flights out of Paris when their air space opened on April 20th (CDG-BOS). I may not have used social media to actually get myself home, but I was able to keep everyone updated on what was happening, and to stay informed as best as possible given the unique situation. This ordeal reaffirmed for me why social media is so important; because of the information that can be quickly distributed if you just take the time to look for it.

This is a wonderful time lapse video of the building of Ellis Square in downtown Savannah, Georgia taken over five years from December 2005 to March 2010.

Ellis Square was one of the original squares in Savannah when the city was laid out by General James Oglethorpe in the 1730’s, but over the years it had become a farmers market and then a very unsightly downtown parking structure.

The city decided to return the square back to its original glory with a lot of contemporary features added such as fountains and a visitor center (they also put the parking garage under the square and this slowed construction for a while as engineers ran into issues as they were digging deep into this rather sandy, loose soil).

The square officially opened a few weeks ago and is now full of people, day and night, enjoying the beauty that is downtown Savannah.

Ellis Square Timelapse Savannah, Georgia from andy young on Vimeo.

Every aspect of Las Vegas is designed to keep you up, wired, eating, drinking and spending lots of your hard earned money and not giving a flip about it.

Since Bugsy Siegel first roamed into the Nevada desert with a big dream of plucking riches from the wallets of vacation crazed yahoos, every aspect of Sin City has been thought about, over and over, to keep the money flowing like wine at a Roman bath.

So it would only make sense that the miles and miles of carpet you criss-cross on your way from here to there in Las Vegas is designed to lull you into some weird mental state as well. It’s designed to keep you up.

Dr David Schwartz from the Center for Gaming Research in Nevada said: ‘Casino carpet is known as an exercise in deliberate bad taste that somehow encourages people to gamble.

‘Many of the carpets use wheels - famous to the Romans as a symbol of the relentless capriciousness of fortune.

‘Could it be a subtle reminders to casino patrons that life and luck are fleeting, and one should eat, drink, and be merry before the morrow brings a swing in fortune?’

Hunter S. Thompson went to Vegas searching for the American dream in his classic tome Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and while it was well documented in that book that he took along a few medicines along to enhance the crazy ride, he really didn’t need any of his mind-altering elixirs in order to find the key to the swirly matrix that leads to the palace of Las Vegas riches.

All he really had to do in order to twist his brain into high gear was look down at his feet and watch as his Chuck Taylor All-Stars stomped across the vast Las Vegas carpet covered wonderland. Las Vegas carpet designers truly keep it weird.

[via Daily Mail]