Atlas Obscura

It’s hard to miss when you walk around southern Stockholm: the giant white ball known officially as the Avicii Arena, which locals simply call Globen, or “the Globe.” With a diameter of 360 feet (110 meters), an inner height of 279 feet (86 meters), and a volume of 21.4 million cubic feet (605,000 cubic meters), it was until recently the largest spherical building in the world.

In the heat of summer there’s nothing sweeter than a frozen treat. Communities all over the world seem to have their own specialties, from the mysterious Blue Moon of the American Midwest to the elaborate ice cream replicas of art and architecture that have become common at China’s top tourist attractions. For National Ice Cream Month, Gastro Obscura takes a deep dive into the delicious stories behind each scoop.

Entering Maru Toledo’s Santina de Covadonga restaurant on a hot, dry day feels like traveling back in time. Visitors who walk up to the gate, dirt crunching under their feet, will likely encounter a dog lazing about and bougainvillea waving gently in the breeze. After passing through the 19th century–style kitchen, filled with dark-red earthenware pottery, old cookbooks, and the smell of smoke, they’ll sit beneath a tin roof and watch as women use pre-Columbian tools to make tostadas raspadas (“scraped” tostadas), grinding corn with a metate and cooking with a traditional firewood stove known as a tecuil. Everything, from the menu to the equipment to the décor, is meant to evoke the historic, nearly-forgotten traditional kitchens of Jalisco.

For Kerem Özcan, a data scientist based in Amsterdam, winters in his home country of Turkey would not have been the same without salep, a hot drink made of crushed orchid roots, milk, and sugar. On ski trips to the mountains of Uludağ, “we’d always end the cold and tiring day with a salep,” he says. Özcan, who left Turkey in 2013, is one of the many Turkish people living abroad who thirsts for salep. “I tried to quench it with eggnog a couple times, but it didn’t cut it for me,” he says.

This Atlas Obscura–themed crossword comes from independent crossword constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley. He has been a professional puzzlemaker since 1996, and his pieces have appeared in dozens of publications. He’s also a member of the Boston Typewriter Orchestra.

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Humans aren’t the only animals that enjoy soaking up the summer sun. In the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, crocodiles sunbathe along the muddy banks that line the steep cliffs of Sumidero Canyon. On the small, rural island of Tashirojima, off the coast of eastern Japan, cats lounge peacefully as waves tickle the shore of “Cat Island.” From June to September in Manitoba, some 3,000 beluga whales sing and swim their way along northern Canada’s Churchill River. With a bit of luck, you may even find yourself eye to eye with some of these incredible creatures as they’re busy migrating, raising their young, and getting their tan on during the warm summer months.