Hotel Chatter had a piece this month on reality TV coming to Cancun.

We found out in April that the newest season of The Show That Will Never Die, The Real World, would be taking place in Cancun at the ME Cancun Hotel. Now with the show set to debut this Wednesday on MTV.com, we were able to get a sneak peek at the suite/apartment where the eight strangers all shacked up.

To film the show the hotel had to combine 14 rooms into one large suite. You can read about it here.

Oh, and if you want to rent the suite yourself (now that filming is over), you can do so for just $15,000 a night.

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History signed an agreement with Google Mexico to promote archaeological and historical sites in a bid to revive tourism following the swine flu epidemic, according to the Associated Press.

Among the details, a YouTube Channel for the National Institute.

The National institute has 173 archaeological sites and 116 museums. Tourism plunged in Mexico during the Swine Flu outbreak. Now a number of efforts are underway to revive tourism.

If you've been following the confirmation process of Judge Sonia Sotomayor you're probably aware of the ruling today in which the Court overturned a ruling in which Sotomayor was involved. The Right has been quick to try and make hay from the story. Some commentary:

• Grasping at Straws: Sotomayor, Ricci, and the Lunatic Fringe in the HPost
  


• Stage-Setting on Sotomayor and the Supreme Court's Ricci Ruling in the Caucus

Public opinion favors Sotomayor's confirmation atthe moment:

• Broad Support for Sotomayor's Supreme Court Confirmation, ABC News
  


• Most Americans Want Sotomayor on Court, in the WaPo

And then there's the politics:

• Senior Republican Seeks More Material on Sotomayor, in The Caucus
  


• Brownback Third Republican to Say "No" to Sotomayor, The Daily Kos
  


• Republicans drop niceties, go on attack on Sotomayor, in Politico
  


• Senate Dems rush to Sonia Sotomayor's defense, in Politico
  


• GOP's Latino bashing to kick up a notch, in The Daily Kos

Enjoy...


© dbking

Is there a semantic difference between the terms hispanic and Latino? Do the words mean different things?

News coverage of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court has raised some questions about the usage of words. Sotomayor refers to herself as Latina. Many people have strong preferences one way or the other.

I looked at a few web definitions for the two terms. One difference is that Hispanic seems to cover people who speak Spanish, and usually restricts that term to residents of the Americas. On the other hand, Brazilians are usually included under the designation Latino.

Education Week took a look at the question recently.

According to the NY Times, Barcelona is changing. And if you haven't been there recently, you should be aware of some of the changes.

IN recent years, the once-gritty neighborhoods of Born, El Raval and Barceloneta have emerged as the new face of Barcelona - home to some of its best restaurants, bars and designer shops. You wouldn't want to spend your entire time in Barcelona without traveling outside the boundaries of these three vibrant areas, of course, but spending a few well-chosen days among their narrow streets and shadowy alleyways will provide you with a crash course in what's hot now.

The city still has it's museums, but the places you can get a dry martini may be more important to the city's culture now...


© papalars

In Spain's northern Basque region, the city of San Sebastian was recently the focus for a Gridskipper piece on Basque food.

One local specialty is the pintxo, a simple appetizer created by putting most anything (fish, peppers, potato, etc.) on a piece of bread. More broadly, pintxos can refer to most any tapas-style small plate.

Lonely Planet compares the gourmet dining scene of San Sebastian to Central Paris (a high complement). The city is also home to some of Europe's most beautiful beaches.

Located almost in the center of the Camagüey province, where the two small rivers of Tínima and Hatibonica meet, this beautiful old Cuban city has the largest city center in the country - some 10,000 buildings, according to the Cuba Travel Blog.

Camagüey is a hodge podge of twisty streets laid out without a clear pattern. And between the main boulevards are neighborhood plazas that serve (among other things) as home to numerous churches. Thus the city's nickname in Cuba: the City of Churches.

If you want to see Cuba outside Havana, this is a good place to start...

Frommers recently had a piece on Pablo Neruda's homes in Chile. They're definitely worth visiting if you're in the country.

Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
"Pablo Neruda" is a pen name; his real name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. And in addition to being a poet, he was a diplomat for Chile and a dissident. He was eventually forced to leave Chile and live in exile.

Pablo Neruda had three homes in Chile: La Chascona in Santiago, La Sebastiana in Valparaiso and Isla Negra in Isla Negra.

None of the houses are what could be considered fancy, but all of them are decorated in a fanciful way - filled with eccentric collectibles, mismatched furnishings, and memorabilia of importance to Neruda. Each house has a large photo of Walt Whitman; a shrine to the man Neruda called his "poetic father." And they all have the ubiquitous bar. The houses have a nautical theme décor but Neruda was the captain of the wet bar, pouring out libations for all his frequent guests.

If you have an interest in the poet, a visit to the homes gives you an insight intot his life.


© blmurch

Costa Rica is among the most over looked tourist destinations in Latin America.

Costa Rica's 800 miles of coast lines offers beautiful beaches on both the Caribbean and the Pacific. You can often have a stretch of sand to yourself. Of course, the country is also filled with national parks. And the country has five active volcanoes you can visit.

People don't think of it first. Sometimes they don't think of it at all. But Costa Rica has a lot to offer. Check it out...

I came across two videos recently on Wines for latin Cooking. They were on Gary Vaynerchuk's Wine Library TV and he had Ingrid Hoffmann from the food network as a guest.

The two episodes of Gary's show were filmed on December 10 and December 11 of last year.

In addition to looking at various wines, Ingrid walks Gary through tasting a number of different Latin tapas and culinary offerings. The two videos together are almost 45 minutes long.


© ScrapNancy