The good folks at Grist put together their own list of 15 green cities. Although their thought was probably to showcase the green efforts made by local governments and locals to make the cities more environmentally friendly, in reading it I realized it was a great list of places to chose your next eco-vacation.

If you're looking to take public transportation, play in parks and learn more about sustainability as part of your next vacation, here are the 15 cities that made the list:

1. Reykjavik, Iceland
2. Portland, OR, U.S.
3. Curitiba, Brazil
4. Malmö, Sweden
5. Vancouver, Canada
6. Copenhagen, Denmark
7. London, England
8. San Francisco, CA, USA
9. Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador
10. Sydney, Australia
11. Barcelona, Spain
12. Bogotá, Colombia
13. Bangkok, Thailand
14. Kampala, Uganda
15. Austin, TX, USA

Some of the selections surprised me; Bangkok for example, but apparently it's all about the city's strategy to make things greener. Check out the full list with accompanying explanations here.

What green cities have you visited?

With summer in full swing it, finding good outdoor spaces to have a drink is the thing to do. Nothing says summer more than a couple of friends sitting on an outdoor terrace sharing a pitcher. But even better than your average terrace or patio has to be a rooftop.

Stopping for an evening drink is an excellent activity, but if you can find a bar on top of a tall building with an excellent view of your host city, even better. While in Vietnam last fall, my hostel in Hanoi had a rooftop bar and it seemed none of us ever wanted to leave. Our friends over at Matador Nights -- part of the Matador Network -- think along the same lines and have graced us with an article on The World's 10 Best Rooftop Bars. It's the insider's guide to finding the best rooftop nightlife, from the ultra cool to the ultra sexy.

Here are the top five:

1. Sirocco, Bangkok, Thailand
2. The Penthouse, Madrid, Spain
3. Luna Bar, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
4. Rooftop Bar, Melbourne, Australia
5. Gravity, Dublin, Ireland

For the rest of the list and descriptions to all of the bars, read the Matador Nights article here. Do you have a favorite rooftop bar?

Back in April, Catherine posted about Denmark being ranked the world's happiest country by the University of Leicester in England, which published its so-called Map of World Happiness.

Well, just in case you doubted that institution's findings, another study, this one released last week by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, has also ranked Danes No. 1 in terms of happiness and life satisfaction.

The Michigan study's overall conclusion: Happiness is on the rise worldwide.

It's perhaps no surprise that Denmark tops the list, since it is a perennial favorite in any survey of this ilk. There is just something about life in that Scandinavian country that is apparently better than anywhere else. But a few other countries in the top 10 do surprise...at least me: Puerto Rico. Colombia. Northern Ireland.

The 10 happiest countries in the world:

1. Denmark
2. Puerto Rico
3. Colombia
4. Iceland
5. N. Ireland
6. Ireland
7. Switzerland
8. Netherlands
9. Canada
10. Austria

The U.S. comes in 16th on the list, not too shabby given the sad recent years we've lived through.

This is the 26th edition of the U of M study, which annually surveys around 350,000 people worldwide, asking them, well, just how happy they feel.

The 10 unhappiest countries in the world:

1. Zimbabwe
2. Armenia
3. Moldova
4. Belarus
5. Ukraine
6. Albania
7. Iraq
8. Bulgaria
9. Georgia
10. Russia

Not many surprises there.

Check out the complete U of M rankings here.

Anyone out there who's seen the movie "Open Water" knows just what British diver Richard Neely and his American girlfriend Allyson Dalton went through when they were recently stranded near Australia's Great Barrier Reef after their diving group left without them.

The couple was stranded for nearly 20 hours, in some of the most shark-infested waters in the world.

"I truly thought I was going to die. Sharks were on our mind the entire time - but neither of us mentioned the 'S' word," Neely told Britain's Sunday Mirror. "We just had to stay calm to help each other through the ordeal and not think about being eaten alive."

How did they manage to stay alive? By tying themselves together, placing a small dive buoy between them and shouting "I love you" to each other as the night wore on.

The scariest time, Neely said, was at daybreak, the most popular time for sharks to feed.

"Because I'd seen Open Water, I was very concerned about being stranded in the same way, but I didn't mention it to Ally. I could bring myself to mention it because that would have been too much. As a dive guide, I know the best time to see sharks out and about is the crack of dawn," he tells the Mirror.

"I knew when the sun is rising, the sharks look up to the surface and there were Ally and I floating and splashing, with my very big yellow marker buoy splashing on the surface.We were both very well aware of that but we didn't mention it to each other. Fortunately, we didn't see any shark fins in the water - not like in the movie."

The couple was rescued by helicopter by mid morning, apparently just after a poisonous sea snake began circling them.

How did this happen? The couple says they simply got swept away by a strong current, so that they were out of sight of their dive boat. However, some are questioning whether their ordeal wasn't some big publicity stunt.

According to the Washington Post, the couple brought along a water bottle -- pretty pointless with all that dive gear -- and wore full wet suits, unusual for the tropical waters around the GBR. Also, they sold their story to the British tabloids for millions.

Read about their entire ordeal here and decide for yourself.

The Today show has some video footage.

I have been waiting for somebody to try this. They always tell to you to "poke a shark in the eye" if you get attacked, but it always seemed unreal to actually do it when it happens. The eye of a shark is pretty damn small, not to mention creepy.

Nonetheless, an Australian swimmer says he survived a mauling by a 16-foot shark by wrestling with the beast, finally getting free by poking it in the eye. The shark, believed to be a great white, seized Jason Cull by the left leg as he was swimming at Middleton Beach in southwestern Australia on Saturday, AP reports.

The shark was one of three that swimmers reported seeing at the beach Saturday. Officials closed the beach after the attack. From his hospital bed where he was treated for deep lacerations, Cull, 37, told reporters Sunday he saw a shadow moving in the water just before the attack and mistook it for a dolphin.

"It was much bigger than a dolphin when it came up," Cull said. "It banged straight into me. I realized what it was, it was a shark....I sort of punched it, and it grabbed me by the leg and dragged me under the water," he said. "I just remember being dragged backwards underwater. I felt along it, I found its eye and I poked it in the eye, and that's when it let go."

There you go. The eye method is obviously not just an urban legend. Now it's just a matter of being able to locate the eye of a shark (while being half-submerged in its jaws) and poking it . Got it.

[via WTOPnews.com]

Oh, my beloved Australia scores again!

An Australian has been fined after buckling in a case of beer with a seat belt but leaving a 5-year-old child to sit on the car's floor, NY Times reports. Police said they were ''shocked and appalled'' when he pulled over the unregistered car Friday in the central Australian town of Alice Springs and saw a 30-can beer case was strapped in between two adults sitting in the back seat of the car. The child was also in back, but on the car's floor. The driver was fined 750 Australian dollars ($710).

''This is the first time that the beer has taken priority over a child,'' said the police officer in charge.

I hate to break it to them, but I am quite certain this is--sadly enough--not the first nor the last time beer has taken priority over a child.

Traveling with food allergies must be hard.

Even in many countries in Europe, menus simply don't list all the ingredients used in meals. My Canadian friend went into an allergic shock in Prague because of his nuts allergy. He figured eating a sandwich would be safe. Of course, they didn't mention the sandwich had pesto in it. And pesto contains pine nuts...

And that's Prague, which is now fairly Westernized. Imagine what it must be like to travel in Asia, where not only do they use peanuts a lot more but it is much harder to read the menus and find people who speak English well enough.

This ABC article talks about traveling with allergies. It is about the challenges of a traveler with serious food allergies, who presents a card to the waiter noting his allergies to peanuts and peas, written in the native tongue. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. Some waiters even say that they have "never heard of such allergies."

I found it really interesting to read, although I don't have any allergies. How do you deal with food allergies when traveling?

When writing my blog about the recent violence in Chicago last night, I stumbled upon the Forbes list of the world's most dangerous destinations for 2008.

Here they are:

• Somalia
• Iraq
• Afghanistan
• Haiti
• Pakistan
• Sudan
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Lebanon
• Zimbabwe
• Palestine

Although some of these might not exactly be tourist destinations, it is interesting how that list has changed over the years.

Forbes writes that "in the 1970s, a traveler's worst nightmare might have been a hijacked plane or hostage crisis. Today, the threats are equally perilous but reflect the changing times. Now, a tourist or business traveler might worry more about terrorist attacks on mass transit, getting caught in a spontaneous uprising or a bombing of a nightclub or hotel."

The latest terrorist weapon in Australia isn't dirty bombs, oil attacks or hijackings. It's lasers. New high powered lasers that have recently become widely available on the market are turning out to be a formidable tool in harassing pilots while on sensitive landing patterns.

When shined into a cockpit, these high powered devices can refract around the cabin, temporarily blinding crew and potentially damaging their vision. Opposed to older lasers commonly used in classrooms and during presentations, strong lasers have the ability to reach long distances, allowing attackers to strike from relatively long (and well covered) distances.

Here in the United States we've seen sporadic instances and subsequent prosecutions of laser strikes, but in Sydney the problem is starting to get out of hand. So far this year there have been six sightings of lasers in cockpits and the government is getting ruffled. They're passing legislation to ban possession of high powered lasers without a reason, saying that they can now search and question perpetrators on why they own the devices.

Meanwhile, casual users from teachers to hobbyists are up in arms about the legislation, saying that not all lasers need to be banned from use. I suppose if more flights are safer and normal users can prove they're using the lasers for the right purposes it's not too big of a deal, is it?

I picked this photo by Kouiskas as the photo of the day because it looks almost too good be real, you know? Everything is perfect, from the colours of the earth to the fluffiness of the clouds. Postcard-perfect photos are usually fairly elusive, down to nothing more than the stroke of luck that you happened to visit a site on the ideal day. And it's why we bring our cameras everywhere -- we're afraid of missing that perfect photo opportunity.

Got any perfect photos to share? Share them with us -- join the Gadling Flickr Pool.