Several botanical gardens are having Mother's Day events this Sunday. One of the advantages of going to a botanical garden, I've found, is that they usually have wonderful gift shops that are perfect places for picking up that last minute present.

If you've forgotten to buy your mother a gift, when she's not looking, perhaps, when she's basking in the fragrance of a floral paradise, slip into the shop to buy her a little something. Since the wedding season is upon us, pick up a wedding gift as well. Here are the first 10 botanical gardens I came across that listed a Mother's Day happening. Nine are in the U.S. and one is not.

(This photo is from a tribute to redbuds and mothers at the Children's Garden at the Cleveland Botanical Garden. My mom taught me to love redbuds too, so I thought this fitting.)

The last two weeks of The Travel Channel's Cash and Treasures on Wednesday night haven't included kids at the dig sites, a quality I was impressed by early on. Still, I continue to be hooked into this show. This week, I stuck around for the back to back episodes because host Kristin Gum headed out of the United States for points south in what worked as a double feature. Normally, the first half hour show satisfies me. The episode right after the first usually has a totally different theme.

Episodes: Digging for aquamarines, morganites and more.

What are they? Gems that can be worth beau coups bucks. Aquamarines range from dark green to a light blue, like clear water. Morganites are light pinkish. Gum found an aquamarine worth $3,000 and a morganite worth $1,481, once they were cut and polished.

Location: In the mountains and hills of Southeastern Brazil before the jaunt to Rio de Janeiro for the cutting and polishing. The first episode was shot in Governardor Valadares in the state of Minas Gerais at the Jaco Mine. The second episode was at the Rio Doce Mine near Rio Doce.

Getting to the Jaco Mine involved first taking a train and then a jeep on an unpaved road with 32 switchbacks. The bonus of the effort, besides the gems, was the gorgeous scenery. Gum was given mining tips by the mine's owner and his son. The snaking tunnel of the mines where the walls shimmered turned up nothing, but once Gum sifted through the tailings using a large screen, she found several aquamarines. One of them was large piece that was turned into the $3,000 beauty. The others were the type you'd put in a collection and were not considered valuable.

God help us! Prague has unveiled its latest desperate attempt to find a new identity and market it to tourists. I hope you are ready. The punchline, in essence, is: Come here because we have beautiful women. (And architecture, but really, who cares. Too many syllables in that word.)

As you can see from this video ad, the Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova and last year's Miss World, Tatana Kucharova, with a kitschy backdrop of the Prague Castle, are trying to tell you that you should come to Prague because--quite frankly--everyone here looks like this and lives like this.

Before you buy your ticket, let me warn you:

Jeffrey recently wrote a post about the Gettysburg electric map that depicts this battle in different colored electric lights. The map may become no more, but here is a new opportunity to learn about the Civil War. In Washington, D.C., starting Memorial Day weekend, the bus tour "Civil War Washington: Soldiers and Citizens" will be taking people to several sites important to the time period.

On the list of stops:

• Lincoln Cottage on the grounds of the U.S. Armed Forces Retirement Home. This is where Abe Lincoln went to as a summer retreat.
• Fort Stevens which was attacked during the Civil War
• The African American Civil War Memorial
• Peterson House where Lincoln died. He was taken to this house from the Ford Theater where he was shot.

As with any bus tour worth the money, this tour gives insider type information like how Matthew Brady, a Civil War photographer attempted to get his shots. For information about the tour, click here.

According to a Durex global survey, Indians are not sexually satisfied -- only 46% of them manage to orgasm. Not quite what you'd expect from the land of Kamasutra and erotic sculptures.

India today is strongly influenced by Western culture, however it is not yet free from its traditional shell, something that gives rise to much hypocrisy. For example: India wanting to ban cheer leaders in a cricket tournament because they are vulgar, but then Bollywood film songs are provocative enough to be classified as erotica.

Sex is still a taboo subject in the country (it's almost synonymous to porn), there is no sex education in schools (culturally immoral?), and anything to do with the word is suppressed. Not being able to enjoy sex stems from inhibitions and ingrained conservative cultural beliefs, all that rise from tradition and severe lack of openness in society.

Or could all this be rubbish and it really has to do with the fact that the "thingis" of Indian men are too small?

Oh well, at least India has scored higher than the Japanese and Chinese who with only 27% and 24% (respectively) managing to reach orgasm, have been pronounced the countries that have the worst sex. Italians, Spaniards and Mexicans have the best sex lives with 66% of them reaching orgasm.

I posted a story about an on-line test developed by the University of Chicago to help people learn about their tendencies to think a wallet or a cell phone may be a gun depending on the color of the person's skin. Two commenters wondered what the study has to do with travel. I think most things have to do with travel, but I majored in sociology as an undergraduate, so I see connections in EVERYTHING. Name two subjects and I'll find the connecting dots somewhere.

Since my post, Iva wrote a post about gun related deaths in Chicago during one weekend, and the people she knows who wants to see bad neighborhoods. This is not that different, I don't think, than people who drive through Appalachia looking to see if people have teeth.

When I learned about the study about racism and guns, I flashed to ideas about safety and travel. Perhaps, I was thinking, people's ideas about safety have something to do with where they choose to go on vacation, and perhaps, if they travel at all. There are plenty of reasons why people choose vacation spots, but there are reasons why people don't pick certain destinations as well. I don't think racism is it, but a sense of security and the predictable is.

There's a reason why Disneyland and Disney World get a crowd. Part of it has something to do with feeling safe, I would guess. The Magic Kingdom has a far-reaching comfort zone. When our daughter was five-years -old, we lost her in Disneyland for a few minutes because my husband thought she was holding my hand, and I thought she was holding his. We were busy arguing about something, thus distracted. Our daughter had stopped to look at something and we had kept going. We freaked a bit, running pell mell, retracing our steps, but I didn't think something bad would have happened. Disneyland is about as controlled an environment as one can get.

I discovered Ten by Ten about 4 years ago in Benetton's "Colors" magazine and ever since I've logged onto it countless times.

The website gives you an hourly update on what's happening in the world through 100 pictures and 100 words, all scouted by a program that scans through RSS feeds from BBC, Reuters and NY Times.

The pictures you see appear in order of importance (left to right, top to bottom). The word corresponding to the image tells you something about the photo; click on the image and you can see the top headlines this hour alongside the picture.

So in a nutshell: the website automatically captures an hourly updated image of the world. Benetton's Fabrica artist -- Jonathan Harris -- who came up with the idea, calls it Internet Art.

What's also cool is that from November 2004 till date, you can get the "image of the world" for any year, any day, and any hour.

It beats all the "day in photos"/ "best of week photo" sections on any news-site. Simple, creative, brilliant.

Call me crazy, but I am one of those people who likes to read newspaper corrections. Yes, I am every editor's worst nightmare. It is probably because I have made my fair share of writing and reporting mistakes, and so I must derive some sort of weird pleasure from other writers' mistakes.

One of my favorite corrections sections is in the Travel section of The New York Times. I bet nobody else reads it ,although it can be quite entertaining. This is my favorite correction of this week: "An article on April 20 about Rome at night misidentified the figure from mythology represented in the centerpiece sculpture of the Trevi Fountain. It is Oceanus, the Titan who the ancient Greeks believed ruled the watery elements - not Neptune, the Roman god of the sea."

That wouldn't be so bad, but this is what they included as an excuse: "The error has appeared for years in travel guides about Rome, is found extensively in Internet references, and has infiltrated at least five other articles in The Times since 1981."

Great. Some slacker once put a false piece of information in a guidebook and it's been picked up repeatedly in the last 27 years. You would think that the NY Times wouldn't rely on guidebooks for their fact-checking.

Here's a way to win a trip to Europe for two. Here's one catch. You have to either travel to Europe and shoot a video of the experience--or have been there before and have a video on hand, or there's no hope for you. The European Travel Commission's, "You and Europe" contest is one where travelers submit video footage of their European trip to www.visiteurope.com. There it can be viewed by the public and the judges.

If you're heading to Europe this summer, you have time. The deadline isn't until September 30. After that the judges will decide who wins. According to the Web site, videos can be "funny, poignant, romantic, serious, or silly--capture an aspect of the culture--whatever captures your imagination."

Videos need to be no longer than three minutes. As a bit of advice, based on "an aspect of the culture," I wouldn't make this a Borat-style film where your interactions are the focal point. The Web site is pushing Europe to travelers. As darling and stunning as you are, you're not it.

To give you tips and ideas, there is a how-to video on making a travel video from CompulsiveTraveler that is geared towards the contest. You can also view what others have submitted for a shot of inspiration.

Hint: These are good. Make yours better.

Read the title of this post again. Now say "what???" As odd as it sounds, Shailendra Roy of eastern India isn't kidding around.

Earlier this week Roy impressed crowds by pulling a train engine and three coaches. The Darjeeling toy train, which weighs about 35 tons, was attached to Roy's ponytail by a metal chain. After pulling the train 10 meters, Roy proudly announced, "I am planning to dangle myself from a helicopter."

How do you maintain such a ponytail? By rubbing it with mustard oil and doing lots of training, like pulling heavy logs and other objects. And apparently the flying thing isn't totally new; last year Roy tied his ponytail from a rope and flew through the air from one building to another in front of television cameras.

Although we here at Gadling do not recommend you try Roy's new way of travel at home, the concept is intriguing. And by intriguing I obviously mean slightly crazy.