When a friend and I headed to Denise's Homemade Ice-Cream in the Clintonville area of Columbus for a bit of ice-cream research, we found out that ice-cream is kind of like a horoscope. The flavor you order tells something about who you are.

"What flavor is the favorite?" my friend asked the guy behind the counter who had his scoop ready.

"For women your age, Salty Carmel," he said. (Our age is the above 30)

"What about not our age? And not necessarily women?"

"That depends. . ." He began ticking off categories, and assigned flavors to particular groups. It was clear that he is a people studier, and has learned a few things from his observations as he has scooped away.

"All men like nuts. Any kind of nuts. Butter pecan. African American men in particular like Butter pecan. Not Pistachio, though, except for Middle Eastern men. They like Pistachio--and Mango."

"Kids like Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate--and Blueberry."

Teenage girls? Thin mint chip.

Women in their twenties? Chocolate fudge brownie.

Asians like the Green tea.

He said that all this might sound like profiling, but that's not what he means. People pick ice-cream flavors based on tastes that are familiar to their cultures--and what they last ate.

When people are standing before him, undecided, he'll ask them what they ate last to help them pick a flavor. Not all flavors are chasers for all foods. We didn't ask him for this list. That's our next lesson.

As for me, I had the Tiramisu. I usually pick Rum raisin, but the woman working with him said that the Tiramisu is her favorite flavor that has alcohol.

My friend had Peanut butter chip, although she also tasted White Gold, Sweet corn and Cucumber and pronounced each of them delicious. I had already plowed into my flavor choice while she was still deciding.

Of course, not all people pick according to their particular categories, these are generalizations, but I thought about how my 6-year-old son's choice of flavors like Bubble gum and Cotton candy don't appeal to me in the least.

Two days ago, I did buy a Dreamsicle from the ice-cream truck that dings through our neighborhood for nostagia's sake. I love them when I was a kid.

Here's a link to MakeIceCream.com that lists the 15 most popular flavors. Vanilla has 11% points over the next popular flavor, Chocolate.

By the way, I highly recommend Denise's. Located on North High Street. This is gourmet ice-cream with a capital G. There's also free WiFi, so while you're savoring ice-cream, you can surf.

"Diet Coke," says the passenger after I ask him what he'd like to drink. While I'm filling a plastic glass full of ice, he asks the question I hoped he wouldn't ask, "Can I get a sandwich?"

"Oh...ummm...I'm sorry." I make a face, the I'm-sorry face, because I am sorry. Really, I am. I'm sorry I have to say I'm sorry all day long. "We ran out," I continue, and before I can tell him that we actually ran out of anything and everything edible on the airplane, he asks "What else do you have?"

I take a deep breath, because I really don't want to tell this guy we have nothing, not one thing, so I make the face again, the I'm-sorry face, and decide to make light of the situation. "Diet Coke. Sprite. Diet Sprite. Pepsi. Diet Pepsi. Orange juice. Apple Juice." He's looking at me like I'm crazy, so I make the face again, oh you know the one, and say, "I'm sorry, but we ran out of everything. There's no more food."

"What do you mean there's no more food!"

"We ran out of food," I say again, as I oh so gently place a can of Diet Coke and a glass of ice on his tray table. What I don't say is that we ran out of food hours ago, due to the fact the passengers were starving because of the hour and a half weather delay we took on the ground. What this passenger and I do not know, and will not know for another hour, is we're going to have another hour and a half delay in flight because the airport in New York is closed due to more bad weather . "Sorry," I say again, and I am, sorry I'm forced to say sorry all day long.

"This is ridiculous!"

Maybe it's just me, but the first time I heard the words "fish" and "taco" together I felt rather nauseous. But, the ol' fish taco is definitely Baja's favorite and most famous meal -- be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. Just about everywhere you look there is a taco stand accompanied by a sign with a happy looking cartoon fish encouraging you to come over and try this local specialty.

The customs officer who helped us with our paperwork in Tijuana was the first person to mention the fish taco. In fact, he recommended that we eat as much fish as we could in the Baja. I don't mind fish but it seems like a risky food to consume at an outdoor stand...really how long can shrimp sit in the sun before it becomes a hazard to someone's health?

Rumored to be a creation of Japanese fishermen, this meal was the word on everyone's lips by the time we reached Southern Baja. "Try the fish taco" was pretty much a daily occurrence. Usually, I am game to try most foods but for some reason I pictured this dish as a soggy taco with undercooked fish coated in a slimy sauce. I hadn't even seen a fish taco in actuality but already this figment of my imagination had turned my stomach against it. Soon, though, curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see whether the fish taco was any good -- so I came up with a plan. This well-devised plan was to get my husband Tom to try one and let me know how it was.

Something didn't smell right. British Airways passengers started to panic when a foul smell started coming from their aircraft on a flight between Belgrade and London. Fearing a terrorist attack, the captain turned around the aircraft and put it back down in the Serbian capital, where the aircraft was evacuated and contained separately on the runway.

Passengers screamed in horror fleeing from the aircraft as they were helped by workers in hazmat suits.

Investigators first feared that a a container with acidic chemicals had burst in the hold and was causing havoc among the cargo. But upon further investigation, they narrowed the source down to a package of curry.

This follows on the heels of an emergency landing earlier this year of an Alitalia flight because of similar fears --- the source of which was revealed to be minced onions.

Want to exercise that inner restaurant critic in you? There's a new site out there called BooRah that is looking to tap into a lot of reader-generated content about the restaurant scene in your community.

BooRah is a restaurant aggregator that culls the best restaurant reviews from across the Web and puts them in a easy-to-search database, each entry described in terms of boos and rahs. You can search major metropolitan areas or you can search for a specific town. This site seems to be pretty deep in terms of picking up obscure communities. For a test, I searched Old Hickory, Tennessee (where my father grew up) and came up with reviews of Dairy Queen, Subway, Hardees and Sonic.

O.K., hardly great. That is kind of my problem with a lot of user-generated restaurant sites. I'm all for hearing what you have to say about a new Village eatery or the best place for Sushi in San Fran, but do we really need reviews of McDonald's and Taco Bell? Also, sometimes these "reviews" can be frustratingly general, of the "I had a great steak here!" variety.

Still, I like this site, mostly because it seems pretty comprehensive and BooRah is growing and adding new cities regularly. I searched the Boston suburb I called home for five years and found one of my favorites -- a little Italian gem called Tullios in Quincy -- prominently listed, along with several other good local bets.

The site says it has 1.2 million restaurant reviews, 250,000 restaurants profiled, and 150,000 menus uploaded. Not bad.

Foodies might not find everything they want here, nor those acutely tuned in to their local dining scene (you'll know the best places to go). But I can see BooRah being very helpful to the business traveler or road tripper who likes to eat well, even in Topeka or Spokane.

Anyway, check the site out and see what you can contribute.

Two summers ago my son was wild about cicadas. They were everywhere, and each time he found one of their shells he put it in an empty bottle. His exuberance was the type only four-year-olds can generate

There's a museum in New Orleans with his name on it. Not literally, the museum is called Audubon Insectarium, but it's the kind he would LOVE. This museum is the first new tourist attraction to open since Katrina changed the landscape of much of the city and is part of Audubon Nature Institute. I found out about it through this article in the Columbus Dispatch.

The landscape inside the Audubon Insectarium is bugs, bugs and more bugs--35,000 live ones and 15,000 mounted ones--or thereabouts. As people go from exhibit to exhibit, they learn about bugs from prehistoric times through today.

Built in the historic U.S. Custom House, the museum offers entertainment and creativity in how it displays its subject matter. For example, you can get an idea of what a bug's world looks like through reconstructed tunnels that puts you in the bug's perspective. Outside the bathrooms, you can see dung beetles roll waste into balls. In case you're wondering-it's not the waste from the bathroom. There's also a chance to test your mettle against a cricket's power. Can you pedal as fast as a cricket can hop?

Another exhibit is devoted to showing what insects people eat around the world and how they are cooked. That sounds like an exhibit Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods would swoon over. If you want to try an insect yourself, you can try some edible bug snacks. I've had chocolate covered grasshoppers before. The closest thing I can think of is Nestle Crunch bars.

Also, there is a section about pest control management and a live butterfly exhibit among other offerings.

Lest you think getting rid of all insects but the pretty kind, one of the main points the museum makes is that if it weren't for bugs, nothing else would live. Remember the lyrics to the song, "There was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly?" It's kind of like that.

There's Breakfast with the Bugs on July 12. Notice it's with the bugs, not eating bugs.

You've thought about going to Venice. Come on, admit it. Don't deny it. Of course you immediately talked yourself out of it, considering you absolutely detest crowds and tourist traps. Yet Venice, you must admit, does look magical, like the kind of tourist trap you should see at least once in your life. But the problem is you can't stand crowds and tourist traps. And that's a problem. A very big problem.

For me, too!

When a flight attendant takes a vacation, the flight attendant will do everything possible to avoid anything that resembles a layover. Layovers equate to work. Yeah, I know, work ain't so bad when you're laying over someplace nice, but at the same time, laying over somewhere nice usually means you're at a chain hotel surrounded by chain restaurants, not too far from the airport. Of course, life could be worse, I know. But when you've been doing the layover-chain-thing for thirteen years, it doesn't matter where you are - New York, Paris, Rome - it all starts to look the same. Which is why a flight attendant looks for something different, someplace unusual, somewhere special, when it comes to a vacation - wherever that vacation may be.

Todos Santos, the little town I mentioned in my last post, offers a quiet escape from the typical vacation destination of Cabo San Lucas. This small town is home to a mix of Mexicans, artists, surfers and ex-pats and offers some of the best surfing in the Baja. Pair that with great places to eat, interesting galleries, beautiful beaches and cheap beer and you have a pretty perfect vacation spot.

To get here you will need to fly into the San Jose Del Cabo Airport and either rent a car or hire a taxi. It is more cost efficient to rent a car and the SJD airport has numerous car rental agencies to choose from. The highway from Cabo San Lucas to Todos Santos is apparently the most dangerous road in Mexico, so make sure you are prepared to focus on the journey ahead. If you are tired after your flight, spend a night in Cabo San Lucas and head out the next day refreshed and ready to enter the madness that is Mexican driving.

Once you arrive in Todos Santos, you will find that there are numerous places to stay as well as some truly great places to eat. Be advised that most of Baja California Sur has been affected by the influx of foreign money, so prices are higher than those found in mainland Mexico but they are less expensive that Cabo. That being said, depending on the time of year you travel, here you might be able to negotiate lower room costs, especially if you are planning on a longer-term stay.

Where to Stay: Short -Term
Don't be surprised to find the hotels in Todos Santos starting at about $45US a night for pretty basic accommodations. The Maria Bonita Hotel, located at the corner of Colegio Militar and Hidalgo, offers clean rooms with hot showers for around $50US per night. The couple who manage the hotel are very friendly and will happily encourage all of your Spanish speaking attempts. Be warned this hotel is located on a main street so it can be quite loud at night. There also happens to be a laundromat below the hotel which also contributes to the noise by running at all hours of the day and night.

Right after I posted about the Jesus Trail in Israel that meanders for 40 miles through the land where Jesus walked, I received my daily missive from Intelligent Travel. There was the post "What would Jesus eat?" Now, that's a pairing combo--eating and walking.

Travel writer, Andrew Evans just returned from Israel armed with details on food that have a biblical basis. While you're walking along the path that Jesus might have wandered, pop into the eateries he suggests and you'll have some mighty fine meals.

Evans tells which restaurants serve what and gives a bit of a background history of some of the foods, many that date back to the time of Jesus or earlier.

Eucalyptus is in Jerusalem and Muscat Restaunt and The Organic Kitchen are at the Mizpe Hayamim Health Resort overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

Here are some of the foods Evans mentions eating, although some of them are from markets he visited along the way:

• yellow lentil soup with hyssop
• lamb braised with pomegranate
• tilapia with lemon butter sauce and baked vegetables
• sage tea (thought to cure jet lag)
• pumpkin-filled Bukharian pastry
• pickled green almonds,
• black Persian lemons
• Yemeni yogurt balls
• bread sprinkled with olive oil and herbs

If you're a person who likes a free breakfast when you go to a hotel--the donuts and Fruit Loops call out your name the moment you open your eyes in the morning, you might be missing out.

According to a survey conducted for the American Hotel and Lodging Association, of the 10,000 hotels out of 45,000 that participated, they're providing wireless Internet more often, but cutting out the free breakfast. You can get the free breakfast at many-- but don't assume.

Here is a summary of the survey findings to help you compare what you'll be getting for your dollars before you make that reservation.

• 91% offer Internet (15% hotels charge for it, and of those, 75% to 91% of them fit into the luxury to up upscale category)
• 75% have a computer in the lobby for guest use
• 47% have indoor swimming pools.
• 58% have outdoor swimming pools
• 82% have refrigerator in the room
• 40% have only non-smoking rooms
• 25% have allergy-free rooms
• 67% have weekend specials
• 56% allow pets, and of those, 67% charge extra for your four-legged family member.
• 43% have flat-screen TVs
• 48% offer vegan meals
• 66% offer healthy meals
• 70% offer a free newspaper

And about that free breakfast? 59% offer it, but that's down 9% from two years ago, the last time the survey was conducted.

For more details, read the MSNBC article. You'll notice how the changes reflect societal trends and habits.