Travel Industry Journal

Cheeky Monkey’s Restaurant & Bar in Byron Bay

In the heart of Byron Bay lives an infamous backpacker party pub known as Cheeky Monkey’s Restaurant & Bar

From the Cheeky Monkey’s website:

Cheeky Monkey’s Restaurant & Bar opened its doors in June 2000. With a community shocked at the presence of the place, it took some adjustments for Byron Bay to get used to this new business striking a chord of popularity at the wrong end of town. But today, the venue stands dominant as Byron’s most popular and packed Party Bar in the area. Through the depths of winter and the heights of summer, you can be guaranteed to find Cheeky Monkey’s Restaurant & Bar absolutely bursting at the seams.

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With Halloween around the bend, we’ve got candy on the brain. And while the National Confectioners Association has released its list of the top ten candy destinations in the country (Hershey, Pennsylvania, predictably tops the list), we opted instead to get in touch with Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America. Almond (yes, that’s really his name) has traveled the country in search of old fashioned, mom-and-pop candy factories. His book is a gooey paean to a time when you could waltz into the drugstore and buy, for mere pennies, delicacies like the Twin Bing, Idaho Spud, Valomilk and Abba-Zaba. We recently caught up with Almond, on tour for his latest book, to ask him a burning question: What’s the farthest you’ve ever traveled for a candybar?

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National Geographic Traveler contributing editor Andrew Nelson, yet again, sends IT a dispatch from a destination we never even knew he was visiting. He writes:

Santa Barbara’s famous for its Spanish mission. Today there’s a Santa Barbaran with a mission of his own—wheeling travelers around the chic California colonial outpost on the two-wheeled electric, zero-emission scooters known as Segways. Jerry Mahoney and Trish Caron, owners of Segway of Santa Barbara, mainly sell the whiz-kid marvels, but they also have a profitable sideline offering tours to travelers. He operates from the company’s headquarters, an old warehouse in a neighborhood called the Funk Zone—a collection of industrial-style buildings housing sculptors, skateboard makers, and surfing outfitters squeezed between Hwy 101 and the Pacific Ocean.

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There’s no better way to get to know a place than to hang out at the local brewery. And IT recently came across one that’s making a concerted effort to save the planet. That, and the beer is pretty darn good. The Long Trail Brewery in Bridgewater Corners, Vermont, was modeled after the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. Its patio and vegetarian-friendly restaurant overlook the Ottauquechee River. In the winter, a woodstove makes the bar especially cozy.

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We’re not going to lie: IT loves a bar with a good happy hour. And if the bar is eco-friendly? Well, we’d be fools not to show our support! Last week IT ventured over to Dupont Circle to investigate happy hour at Hotel Palomar’s trendy Urbana Restaurant & Wine Bar. “Reminiscent of a modern-day Tuscan wine cellar,” Urbana is earth-toned, sophisticated, and, last but not least, environmentally conscious.

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In a few hours I will climb into a couchette on the night train to Madrid, bringing to a close my week of trudging around Barcelona with all six pockets of my cargo shorts ludicrously over-filled with various journalist battery-powered gadgets, maps, pamphlets and breath mints. These shorts are an integral part of my Travel Writer Tool Box and I can’t live without them, but when I run across the street to catch a bus, the contents of the pockets swing around, my knees get all banged up and I feel like my shorts are going to drop to the floor. This is what it must feel like for women to run without good chest support. My cargo shorts need a sports bra.

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