Here at Gadling we'll be highlighting some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each -- maybe you'll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you'll think that they're good songs. Got a favorite of your own? Leave it in the comments below and we'll post it at the end of the series.

If you're going to England, you really ought to make a stop in Liverpool. There's a Tate Museum (with a terrific Auerbach I particularly like), Albert Dock, from whence The Titanic departed, and a music scene you'll never forget.

The Beatles aren't the only band to come out of Liverpool. Here's a list of twelve Liverpool bands from the BBC, which even they confess is "by no means an exhaustive list." Every one has played the famous Cavern Club, which is a great place to visit, even just for a pint in the afternoon.

Among the myriad stories of the global financial crisis that appear almost daily, this one from the New York Times today caught my eye.

The economic downturn is impacting that most sacrosanct of French traditions, the bar-cafe.

The article notes Balzac's famous dictum -- "The bar of a cafe is the parliament of the people" -- in detailing how the French cafe is in real trouble these days. Simply put, people are going out less and when they do, they're spending less.

The days of the long, leisurely French lunch -- a couple of courses accompanied by a bottle of wine -- have been replaced with the take-out sandwich, eaten on the run.

If they do come to the cafe, a owner named Maria Malichier tells the Times, "it's a carafe of tap water, main course and off you go."

"Now people don't eat," says another cafe owner, Gérard Renaud. "They come in for a coffee or a little aperitif and that is it. We are used to being busy, but now we feel lazy, and it is depressing."

What's behind this? Obviously a bit has to do with the financial crisis. But at the beginning of this year a smoking ban extended to include bar-cafes, which is hurting business. So is a renewed crackdown on drunk driving, with cops apparently staking out cafes to catch tipsy drivers.

Anyone that spends any time in France, Paris or elsewhere, quickly comes to see that the cafe culture, dying or not, is something one can only admire about the country -- how people seem to carve out time in their day for it, which of course is time carved out for food and drink and conviviality. There's a reason why Hemingway's A Movable Feast is so evocative of a certain time and place.

Now we have this arresting fact from the Times piece: Two bar-cafes close every day in France. In 1960, there were 200,000 of them countrywide; today it's fewer than 41,500.

Here at Gadling we'll be highlighting some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each -- maybe you'll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you'll think that they're good songs. Got a favorite of your own? Leave it in the comments below and we'll post it at the end of the series.

Manu Chao is a vagabond by nature. He was born in Paris to a Spanish mother and father, but he's really from all over. Chao's music wanders and meanders like his personal life, drifting languages from Spanish to English to French, and picking up influences and passport stamps from South America to Spain and to France and then back again. His improvised concert tours are equally freewheeling, featuring actors, circus performers and tour stops only accessible by boat (?!).

I stumbled across Chao's free-form music while I was in college. There was something that sounded very culturally rich about it - it felt authentic and regional, yet somehow equally global and devoid of place. As I began to travel and see more of the world, I found Chao to be a poignant soundtrack for my travels, particularly in the Spanish speaking world where I happened to be visiting.

Whether wafting over the balconies of ancient windows in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, jingling from makeshift speakers in an apartment in Buenos Aires, or bouncing out of a car radio in Mexico City, Manu Chao's music somehow made a particular sonic sense to me. Perhaps my favorite example is his song, Me Gustas Tu:

President-elect Barack Obama is truly multicultural. His heritage list has added up during this year's electoral race: Kenyan, Indonesian, Hawaiian, and Kansas'ian? Now it turns out that, like any good American mutt, Obama is Irish, too.

According to a search undertaken by Ancestry.co.uk, Obama's maternal roots can be traced to the village of Monegal in Ireland's County Offaly. Apparently the future President's great-grandfather was a shoemaker from the village who eventually emigrated to New York.

A musical group from the village, Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys, has even written a song for the occasion.



The chorus of the song says: O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara / There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama...
and the lyrics go on to suggest that Obama is as Irish bacon and cabbage and call for the President-elect to get his jig on doing Riverdance.

During the recent election hubbub, the villagers of Monegal have claimed Obama as their own and invited him to come and visit the village, with hopes that the President-elect's search for his Irish roots will also boost tourism to the quiet town.

Here at Gadling we'll be highlighting some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each -- maybe you'll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you'll think that they're good songs.

Got a favorite of your own? Leave it in the Comments and we'll post it at the end of the series.

France. This is a country known for its music. The stereotypical accordion tunes from atop Montmartre embodied in the soundtrack of Amélie, the ballads of Edith Piaf, and the intense lyrics of adopted icon Jacques Brel (he was actually Belgian, but the French like him so much they seem to forget). But beyond those symbolic melodies that scream French roots, there's another side to French music. One that is much more urban, cosmopolitan and chic. It's the smooth, electro-jazz, slightly funky sounds of contemporary bands like St. Germain.

View the full EUR per USD chart at Wikinvest

I just can't help but feel giddy about all of the progress that the Dollar has been making against the Euro over the past month. Sure, this is the direct effect of a near worldwide financial meltdown, banks are failing left and right and Iceland was briefly for sale on Ebay. But the slim silver lining to the whole debacle is that we, as Americans, now have more buying power overseas.

As of this morning, you can now officially buy a Euro for a $1.25, down from nearly $1.50 in September. That means that if you've got some late fall (say, Thanksgiving) travel to the EU lined up, it just got 17% less expensive.

In case you're wondering, Iceland's Krona started trading again a couple of weeks back after the government effectively froze trading for a little while to let the market stabilize. One now earns 126 Krona / Dollar instead of the 76 from earlier this summer.

Visiting any city for the first time is an exercise in setting expectations. You can only read so much about the culture, nightlife and food in a guidebook before you need to experience the locals first hand, order a pint of Guinness or eat shepherd's pie and really visit a destination. Setting foot out into the city streets, you begin to compare your first hand experiences against everything that you thought you knew about a destination. In some facets, you're surprised and impressed by the difference; in others, you're underwhelmed.

Taking advantage of some weekend work in the Emerald Isle, I recently spent some time in the capital city for my first trip to Ireland. I was moved most by the ten things below:

• You're never going to want to eat Shepherd's Pie at your local Irish pub again. No, Dublin isn't known for its pinky-up food culture, but the things that they get right they really get right.
• The city revolves around drinking. To that end, bar crawling in Dublin can be performed quite literally. One only needs to mosey down two or three store fronts before he or she discovers another pub almost identical to the one that was just left. It's disorienting enough having a bar on all four corners of every intersection in the downtown area – now try doing it with 17 pints of Smithwicks in your stomach. Currently, the drinking problem has become so profound that there is a massive public effort to curb binge drinking, the majority of which is found in telly and bus ads trying to guilt people out of overindulging.

We live in an era of global brands. McDonald's, Starbucks, H&M, Coca Cola, Australia... Wait, what???

You read correctly, Australia recently won the top spot of the 2008 Country Brand Index. Nation branding, as it's officially referred to, is the theory and practice of measuring and building the reputations of countries; basically applying standard commercial brand management that you'd find with commodities and using it to analyzing everywhere from Austria to Zimbabwe.

The 2008 study conducted by Future Brand, a global brand consulting firm, used rankings from 30 different categories to come up with the final index. Among the categories were History, Standard of Living, Friendly Locals and Environmentalism. It's like a beauty pageant for countries, with the most well-rounded coming out on top. Here are the top ten:

1. Australia
2. Canada
3. USA
4. Italy
5. Switzerland
6. France
7. New Zealand
8. United Kingdom
9. Japan
10. Sweden

When you look at that list, referring to countries as specific brands starts to make a little sense. Don't we all have pretty concrete associations with France for example? Wine, croissants and cheese. And what about Sweden? Meatballs, moose and blondes. Looks like what we once referred to as stereotypes has a new name.

Let's play word association. I'll say a word and then you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind (I can hear you, trust me). OK, ready?

Batman.

Great. I heard "Robin," "cape," "Batmobile" and a something that sounded like "kablam." While there are no wrong answers, you are all so very wrong. The correct response, of course, is "Turkey." As in, Batman, Turkey. Batman is the capital of Batman Province in southeast Turkey and is an important oil-producing area which is home to the country's oldest oil refinery.

Batman, Turkey also happens to be in the news lately because its mayor, Hüseyin Kalkan, is planning to sue Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan (director of the most recent Batman films) for unauthorized use of the town's name. That's right. Batman ripped off Batman. And now Batman wants Batman to pay. Are you following along?

According to The Guardian, Mayor Kalkan said, "There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us." He also blames several unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on "the psychological impact suffered by the town after being placed under the spotlight by Nolan's film."

So, dear travelers, I urge you to pack up your gear, catch a flight to Istanbul and then hop aboard a puddle-jumper to Batman's regional airport (yes, it exists). You'll want to avoid becoming the victim of an unsolved murder and perhaps you should be a good samaritan and try to cheer up the ladies. I bet they like men in masks and tights.

Good luck, Mayor Kalkan. May I suggest that you form a class-action suit with Bat Cave, North Carolina?

Want to make all your friends swoon? Rent out a villa in the south of France for an affordable, peaceful vacation.

Want to make all your friends love you? Take them along!

French villas have become one of the top destinations in the great tradition of group vacations. I love group vacations; it's like an extended party. Get everyone you like together and watch them interact for a week. It's fascinating, often scandalous, and makes one feel like they're in some 17th century comedy of manners, or an old-Hollywood movie.

One villa I recommend is Villa Plantat, near the small town Quissac. Villa Plantat (plantat means "to plant") is an elegant house set on 400 acres of beautiful grounds with an orangerie and a private spring-fed swimming lake, and is located close to both historic Roman ruins and the Mediterranean sea (just 35 minutes away).

Villa Plantat can provide a private provencal chef for just around $20 per meal, and they also have twice yearly yoga retreats (2 hours of yoga per day plus special events; not yoga boot camp) in May and September. $1380 per person includes accommodations, wine (!), and classes.

Villa Plantat is available year round for $4,200 per week (price drops by $500 for additional weeks) and sleeps thirteen. That's just $323 per person. Or, for ten people, $420 per week.

Save up your miles and get to the south of France. It's an idyllic, quaint, and quintessentially lovely experience you won't forget.