Cyber Travel Promotions

A series of exhibitions planned this year at Dalkey Castle and Heritage Centre, definitely make it worth the trip out of the city. The Heritage Centre, which won the 1998 best Tourism Product and Services, only opened in July of this year and, along with the castle, is rich in local history; During the turbulent medieval period, Dalkey was the chief port of the area. The extensive programme of exhibitions, plays and performances are held in the Victorian Town Hall attached to the castle.

Uruguayan singer and songwriter, Jorge Drexler will perform with his customary passion at Lasal, a very hip, laid-back beach bar located some 20 minutes up the coast from Barcelona. Drexler will play songs from his fifth album and the third recorded in Spain, 'Frontera', a work which speaks of the indignities and oppression suffered under the military dictatorship in his country. After the concert, chill-out DJs will take over.

No visit to Barcelona during the summer is complete without a visit to the night time café on the roof of Antoni Gaudí's masterpiece, La Pedrera. The roof is a tiled fantasyland of slopes, passage ways and cream puff chimneys, with spectacular 360-degree views of the city, stretched out and shimmering before you. During August, the Flamenco group, Levante performs, while in September, the jazz orchestra, La Bohème will keep things cool and relaxed.

Made up of members of the Grateful Dead, the Other Ones have successfully headlined the Further Festival for the last two years. Ziggy Marley has been both blessed and cursed with carrying on reggae's rich cultural heritage and he's shouldered it well with his two sisters Cedella and Sharon and brother Stephen, even earning a Grammy for the album 'Fallen is Babylon'. With both bands pop sensibilities and legendary background, this is one show not to be missed.

Garrison Keillor has made the arch wit and wisdom of his Midwestern Swedish caricatures a national institution with a weekly radio show that goes by the title of his best-selling book, 'A Prairie Home Companion'. The hilarious minimalist humour of his idiot savants and salt-of-the-earth ordinary folks has also driven such classics as 'Lake Wobegone Days', making him one of America's most acclaimed story tellers and humorists and giving his weekly radio show an audience of millions. This week he brings Minnesota to pastoral Westchester county at Tanglewood, for a live broadcast.

A fascinating exhibition documenting the odyssey of Viennese Jews Lucie and Paul Peter Porges and their respective work as a fashion designer and cartoonist. Born in the late-1920s in the same hospital in Vienna, both fled the city as children, eventually meeting at art school in Geneva in 1945. Lucie worked in various couture establishments in Paris after the war and designed for Pauline Trigère, New York's only French fashion house. Her husband Paul is a well-known cartoonist for 'Mad Magazine' and 'The New Yorker'. The exhibition consists of examples of their work, material relating to their life in Vienna and splendid contemporary photos by Peter Rigaud.