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2 x 1-inch box carved from bone and hand-painted that we got at the Grand Bazaar. Probably paid too much, but we love it.

Everyone has a dream destination, a far-off country they hope to visit someday.

Forget your dream destinations. You need to go Turkey.

The main challenge when writing about Turkey is to limit the use of wow-adjectives. Turkey is that awesome.

It’s appalling how little we know about Turkey. My friend thought it was in the desert somewhere in the Middle East. It’s Mediterranean! If you need a visual peg, think of Italy, only bigger and more organized. (Rome, I love you, but your drivers are all trying to kill me.)

We’re talking about the 17th largest economy in the world, soon to become the 10th. It’s European and Asian—if you stand on the bridge on the Bosphorus you can have one leg on each continent.

“Isn’t that where they shot Taken 2?” Yes, and Skyfall and Argo.

“Isn’t that where the ex-husband of the actress is from?” Enough! We’ve listed ten types of stuff you can do when you visit Turkey. Because you are going, even if you don’t know it yet.

Read 10 Things to do in Turkey, our travel piece at InterAksyon.com.

Whenever we meatatarians dine out, our token vegetable dish is either laing, adobong kangkong or gising-gising. Gising-gising is a dish of green beans, peppers, and ground pork in coconut milk—as the name says, it should be spicy enough to wake you up. We like the gising-gising at Recipes, at Bistro Remedios and Lorenzo’s Way. And at Via Mare, although these days we get the feeling Via Mare isn’t even trying anymore.

The other night we ordered gising-gising at Smoking Hot, a newish restaurant in Greenbelt 3. The chopped-up beans and peppers looked alike, so with each mouthful our friends felt like their tongues were being flayed. (We have the Bikolano gene so anghang has little effect on us.)

This reminded us of a fish stew we ate in Shanghai (the photo above). It was as if they had a serious peppercorn surplus and wanted to use as much as they could. The stew was delicious, and it made our pores weep in the dead of winter.

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Another restaurant chain in serious need of sprucing up is Dulcinea. We still like their churros and hot chocolate, but the pastries in the vitrine look like they’ve committed suicide. We’ve had eclairs, meringues and negritos (their politically-incorrect name for the chocolate beehive) with the consistency of fossils. Obviously they were several days old; if you dropped them on your feet they’d leave bruises.

Some weeks ago we ordered the lentejas and it tasted like someone had dropped a whole salt shaker in it.

The restaurants were renovated some years ago, but the interiors are dispiriting. It’s become the sort of place you go to when you feel like crap and don’t want anyone to see you. Dulcinea, we liked you. Wake up.

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Why do the newer restaurants have such terrible acoustics? You’re sitting two feet away from each other but you have to yell to make yourself heard. Meanwhile you can hear conversations from across the room among people you don’t know. Glass frontage plus hard, smooth surfaces and no insulation equals auditory chaos.

Last week we had dinner at Grace Park in One Rockwell, Makati. We thought it was a Korean restaurant; turns out it’s Margarita Fores’s new project (named after Grace Park, Caloocan). The menu is Cafe Bolang Sosyal (i.e. mahal), and the look is “Stuff unearthed from lola’s bodega”. We approve of unmatched tableware.

We ordered squash ribbon pasta with goat cheese, the fish of the day (apahap), and beef belly. Everything was delicious, but we had hoped for a greater variety in the menu. Okay, the place has just opened. Grace Park was packed on Tuesday night; there was a bit of a wait, but our very efficient waiter gave us updates on the estimated time of arrival of each dish. Afterwards we were served a slice of key lime pie, on the house.

The problem was the acoustics. It was like sitting inside a blender. It was so noisy, Raul was singing Bobby Darin’s version of Don’t Rain On My Parade at Raul volume, and we could barely hear him. Finally we moved to a table outside, where it was quieter. Another ten minutes inside and we would’ve had headaches.

Rating: Recommended, but bring ear plugs.

Loosely translated: This exhibit on the Philippines ranges from the Cordillera in the North and travels to the South to Mindanao and shows considerable archaeological treasures from very ancient times.

This is an exhibit that is very poetic and elegant, and allows us to discover an entirely unknown world.

Thanks to Jomari for the translation.

This is the first major exhibition in France in the last twenty years devoted to the Philippines.

Visit the museum website.

In an earlier era, law enforcement might not have identified the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing so rapidly.

Hiding in plain sight was an ocean of data, from torrents of photography to cell-tower information to locals’ memories, waiting to be exploited. Police, FBI, and the other investigators opted to let spectator surveillance supplement and augment their own. When they called for that imagery, locals flooded it in. They spoke to the public frequently, both in person and especially on Twitter. All that represented a modern twist on the age-old law enforcement maxim that the public’s eyes and ears are crucial investigative assets, as the Internet rapidly compressed the time it took for tips to arrive and get analyzed.

Read This Is the Modern Manhunt: The FBI, the Hive Mind and the Boston Bombers, at Danger Room in Wired.

The original manuscript of Ode to A Nightingale in John Keats’s handwriting.

The poem recited by Benedict Cumberbatch, to music by Mahler.

Ben Whishaw as John Keats in Bright Star by Jane Campion.

Commemorative plaque, London. Photo by JZ, 2011.

Keats’s old apartment in Rome, now the Keats-Shelley Museum. Photos by Juan, 2012.

The Peninsula Manila recently launched its first ad campaign in a gazillion years. Entitled Pen Moments, it was produced by Ridley Scott Associates and directed by Jean Claude Thibaut and Anthony Crook, with still photography by Russel Wong.

And in case you’ve ever wondered when the LUXE City Guide to Manila is ever coming out, it has, sort of. The travel guide publisher in partnership with the Peninsula Hotels has produced PenCities, an online lifestyle journal spanning the nine Peninsula cities, including Manila. Visit PenCities Manila and make your own suggestions.