Travelsmartplanet

An international idea celebrated in 50 countries, Restaurant Day is a food carnival created by food-loving people setting up one-day restaurants. The idea of the day is to have fun, share new food experiences and meet others in our community. People offer their family cuisine, favorite recipes, desserts or whatever in their backyard or a park.  Prices are very inexpensive.

Check the maps to see if there is one in your city.

Date: Sunday, August 17
http://www.restaurantday.org/

Tags: carnival, city, countries, cuisine, dessert, family, food, map, people, recipe, Restaurant

When you hear the words “Ellis Island“, you think of the immigrants pouring in from Europe yearning for a new life. The flip side of the North American tale of immigration is now on display at the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp, Belgium. The brand-new museum presents the experience of the over two million people who emigrated from Europe between 1873 and 1934 aboard the ships of the Belgian-American company Red Star Line.

Visitors of the Red Star Line Museum get a glimpse of what an immigrant’s journey was like – from the docks of Europe, across the churning waters of the Atlantic, to starting a whole new life in North America.  You can read personal tales of present and past immigration as well as view the plates used on the ships, smell the scent of the disinfecting showers, and try your hands at a puzzle once used to assess newcomers’ intelligence. Anyone can search the genealogical database, or even add personal comments and family history.

Among them were famous passengers such as Albert Einstein and Golda Meir. The museum lets you trace their travel across the ocean. When you sing “God Bless America” or “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” you’re paying tribute to a Red Star Line immigrant named Israel Baline (better by his Americanized name, Irving Berlin). By the time of his death, his songwriting included 1,500 songs, 19 musicals and 18 feature films.

www.redstarline.be/en

Tags: Albert Einstein, America, Atlantic, database, disinfect, dock, Ellis, Europe, film, genealogical, God Bless America, Golda Meir, History, immigrant, intelligence, Irving Berlin, Island, Museum, musical, North, plate, Puttin' on the Ritz, puzzle, Red, ship, shower, song, star

Antwerps’s diamond cutters are world famous. Marcel Tolkowsky (an engineer by profession but from a family of diamond cutters) is celebrated as the father of the round brilliant diamond cut (called the American Standard, American Ideal Cut, Tolkowsky cut or Tolkowsky Brilliant), using an optimal number of facets to achieve maximum brilliance.

He set the diamond cutting benchmark in North America and his technique is still used today. In 1919 he derived it from mathematical calculations that considered both brilliance and fire of the stone. Learn this and more sparkling info at the Diamond Museum ( www.awdc.be/diamond-museum-province-antwerp ) in Antwerp, Belgium

Eight out of ten of the “rough” diamonds sold worldwide pass through Antwerp, Belgium, the most important world diamond trade center. More than 50% of the world’s cut, precious stone quality diamonds and industrial diamonds are handled there.

We were surprised to find out, at the Diamond Museum in Antwerp, that when cutting a diamond to expose its brilliance, you lose 50% of the diamond. Don’t worry – they don’t toss the scraps out. Leftovers are saved for industrial use – it is, after all, the hardest substance in the world. You can only cut a diamond with a diamond.

Famous diamond quotes are on the wall of the Diamond Museum in Antwerp, Belgium: Zsa Zsa Gabor, “I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back”.

Image Courtesy : ekati.bhpbilliton.com

Check out the 181.02 carat diamond in the Diamond Museum in Antwerp, Belgium. It’s from the Ekati Diamond mine located in Canada, 200 km. south of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories. This was Canada’s first diamond mine.

Diamonds are not only white gemstones; Fancy colored ones (which you can see at the Diamond Museum in Antwerp) can be cognac colored or like whiskey, or even pink from Australia.

In the the 17 ^th century, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the son of an Antwerp, Belgium engraver, traveled to Persia and India. He was lucky enough to get to see the large gemstones in the treasure houses of the Indian rulers and was smart enough (or rich enough) to bring some of the world’s most famous diamonds home as souvenirs – including the Koh-I-Noor and the Blue Hope. He sold them to kings – like Louis the XIV of France. We learned all about him at the Diamond Museum (www.antwerp-tourist-guide.com/antwerp-diamond.html)

At the Diamond Museum ( www.antwerp-tourist-guide.com/antwerp-diamond.html ) in Antwerp, Belgium you will learn that diamonds first came from India in the 16th century, and that situation lasted right up until the 18th.