Travelsmartplanet

If you’ve ever wondered what the letters BMW mean it’s for Bavarian Motor Works. You can get your fill of everything BMW by touring the BMW museum, located  just outside of Munich.

The blue and white colors and pattern on the car’s emblem are taken right from the Bavarian flag.

www.muenchen.de/int/en/tourism.html

www.cosmos.com/Product.aspx?trip=46050

The swooping architecture of the building and jaw-dropping 17 metre-high domed ceiling of Canada Hall are visions you will not easily forget after you have visited the newly named Canadian Museum of History (was Canadian Museum of Civilization), which covers Canadian life from AD 1000 to 2000.

From now until Sept 28, 2014,  you can enjoy the informative exhibit about Snow and the ingenious ways in which  Canadians have adapted to difficult winter conditions, from sleighs to snow removal. You can participate in a fun quiz at the end.

The museum is a playground for all, as the Children’s Museum takes the kids on travels around the world – including a passport to stamp in each country. All kinds of imaginative play from driving a bus, motorcycle, ship or camel to running a shop, putting on a puppet show, living in a pyramid, moving heavy boxes using a winch, or booking a trip can all be tried out.

In the main galleries, visitors see a Viking family arriving in Newfoundland around AD 1000,  discover New France through a farmhouse, inn, hospital, shoemaker’s shop and visit a voyageur camp, a lumber camp, a Métis campsite, British military living quarters and a Maritime shipyard. There’s a stroll past shops  along the main street of a small town in late 19th-century Ontario.

Learn about life in a turn-of-the-century prairie railway station and yard, a Saskatchewan grain elevator, an authentic Ukrainian church, a Chinese hand laundry and a 1920s Alberta oil derrick. You can even sit in Yellowknife’s Wildcat Cafe, the town’s first restaurant and a popular gathering spot for prospectors, bush pilots, miners and trappers.

If you love animals, leave time for the up close and personal movie, Kenya 3-D about a safari through Africa.

Location: 100 Laurier St., Gatineau, Quebec K1A 0M8
Phone: 819-776-7000 or 800-555-5621
www.civilization.ca

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

CT: Exit 90 on I-95: Mystic Seaport – Step back in time in this 19th century maritime village offering you everything from tall ships to boarding the very last wooden whaling ship.

See a scale model of the area in 1870, figureheads from the bows of ships, a planetarium, a visitors’ gallery overlooking  restoration when in progress and the world’s largest collection of nautical photography.

The permanent seafaring exhibit covers immigrants, traders, explorers, fishermen, artists and vacationers on oceans, lakes and rivers. Try to catch the “man overboard” or “dead horse ceremony” aboard a sailing ship, and leave time for the large museum and fabulous gift shop. Your second day is FREE

Location: 75 Greenmanville Ave, Mystic, CT
Hours:  Apr-Oct 9-5, Nov-Jan 2 & Feb 16-Mar 30 Th-Sun 10-4
Tel: 888-9seaport  (888-973-2767) or 860-572-0711
www.mysticseaport.org

If you are heading out to Ottawa to skate on the Rideau Canal and to enjoy Canada’s capitol, leave some time to explore the Canadian Museum of Nature, their first national museum, completed in 1912.

The Beaux Arts building was recently renovated and is now fronted by a towering glass atrium. That’s where we found the arts and crafts action. Perhaps leave that for the end, after you’ve had a chance to watch “Exploding Geology”, the tornado demonstration, walk through the large bird display (and play on the interaction boards),  swoon over the 1200 gorgeous minerals, rocks and meteorites , meet the 10-metre blue whale, enjoy the full size mammal gallery (look for the reindeer), go face to face with a triceratops,  or spy on the tarantula.

Kids of any age and their parents will enjoy their day. If you have time there are two movies, “Nature Unleashed” and “3D Dinosaur” but our gang liked the interactive museum more. Special exhibits coming up will show off Ikebana, Japanese floral design, Flora of the Canadian Arctic and in the summer, the Hidden Lives of Ants.

Trivia buffs should note that this Canadian Museum of Nature  served as home to Canada’s House of Commons and Senate following the fire that destroyed the Centre Block of Parliament in 1916.

Location: 240 McLeod St., Ottawa, Canada
Phone: 613-364-4021
www.nature.ca

Every other shop in Bruges, it seems, is a chocolate shop – 50 or so but who’s counting?  Bruges, known for its medievalness, has a playful side when it comes to tourist museums, with one for chocolate and another for fries. The chocolate museum started out as a private collection of everything to do with the history and making of chocolate.

You will learn that milk chocolate is 45% sugar, and that when chocolate made its way to Europe by the Spanish explorers, it was a drink with a secret recipe for making it – til the 1800’s. The process of conching was invented around then, which made it possible to create hardened chocolate for eating. You can see the cups they drank it in, and they sure were super-sized. Fries with that?

www.choco-story.be

Chips (fries) were  created in the US in 1852 in Saratoga, NY all because of a dissatisfied customer. When he complained to George Crum about his potato, Mr Crum sliced it into little pieces to annoy him. Instead he loved it! French fries were possibly misnamed during WWII when American soldiers, hearing Belgians eating fries and talking French, thought they were French food.

Potatoes around the world are covered too – see if you can find the pink and purple ones. If all this fry talk has gotten you a bit hungry, don’t worry, there’s a fries shop in the basement where you can have them with the traditional mayonnaise or pickle sauce, mustard or curry ketchup.

www.frietmuseum.be

Amsterdam is fun, hopping, bustling with bikes, museums, cafe life, canals and history. After a day of all that stimulation, it’s a blessing to come back “home” to the Okura Hotel, a 4o-year old sea of tranquility. Fabulous sleek design (love those light fixtures) and super friendly service.

Sure it has a pool and sauna but also a jet lag program, a hairdressing salon, cooking school, shoe shine service, a florist – and – half of all the Michelin starred restaurants in Amsterdam (one French and one Japanese). Best new secret in town is the new sunny Michelinesque cafe, Serre, facing the canal and cheffed by some of the staff from Ciel Bleu. So, the food has all the quality, sauces and presentation of its sisters but at prices you can afford – 35 Euros for a tasting menu or a giant bento box with 9 surprise dishes inside.

www.okura.nl

Holland was first with wind energy and now the  rest of us are playing catch up. If you want to see some of the original kind, it’s a quick 20 minutes from downtown Amsterdam to Zaanse Schans www.zaanseschans.nl

Windmills were built as mini factories making the products of daily life with free energy. At this outdoor museum, you can still see a half dozen of them making spices, paint, linseed oil and doing wood cutting. There’s an indoor museum, a cheese building, one for wooden shoes and village houses.