In every James Bond movie, the suave spy travels the world, bedding beautiful women and beating up bad guys. You know who else travels the world? National Geographic. Although not quite as dangerously, and with gadgets that run more to the camera and notebook.

The latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, doesn’t rise much above the mediocre mark, but it’s still good world-traveling fun. Here’s a guide to the movie’s locations, Geographic-style:

Early in the movie, Bond visits Siena, Italy, during the Palio, a twice-a-year horse race held in the town’s central piazza. Of course, by “visits” I mean “chases a bad guy and breaks a lot of glass.” National Geographic’s first story about the Palio appeared in the August 1926 issue, still to be found in some grandparents’ basements; here’s a photograph from a 1988 story on the race. Falling off horses, as one of the riders does in the movie, is a pretty standard part of the Palio – the jockeys ride bareback, and a riderless horse can still win the race.

Bond’s travels include a number of visits to London. Everyone knows it always rains in the movie version of London, and this movie’s London follows the trend. How much does it rain in real-world London? Ok, about half the time, according to this BBC chart on London weather, which shows 11 to 15 “wet days” a month. National Geographic Traveler can tell you all about visiting the city yourself. (Take an umbrella.)

In Bregenz, Austria, Bond takes in an opera. By “takes in” I mean “kills people at.” The opera in question was a real production of Puccini’s Tosca at the Bregenz Festival, where the audience watches performances outdoors on a stage that floats on Lake Constance. You missed your chance to see Tosca at this year's festival, but one imagines the 2009 Bregenz Aida could also be quite stunning.

Much of Quantum of Solace takes place in Bolivia’s high desert. You’re in luck – National Geographic has had a lot to say about Bolivia recently. Why do women wear those little bowler hats? See here. The spy might have had a different experience if he’d hooked up with some Bolivian women wrestlers—now that is a Bond girl. Various locations stood in for Bolivia during filming, including Chile’s Atacama Desert, subject of an August 2003 magazine story, “The Driest Place on Earth."

— Helen Fields

The 12th season of reality show The Amazing Race premieres Sunday with the show's first-ever visit to Ireland. The teams fly from California to Shannon, Ireland, where it rains a lot and everyone gives bad directions.

The Amazing Race, in the words of one contestant (a lesbian Episcopal priest), is "a love letter to the planet." Teams of two—brother and sister, father and daughter, best friends, and so on—travel the world, competing in challenges and racing to be the first team to finish that leg of the journey. The last team to arrive is usually sent home.

So we asked our resident Ireland expert, magazine researcher David O'Connor, how well the show represented his homeland. "I feel their pain on the directions," he writes. Off the main roads, there aren't very many signs, and roads seem to stop at random.

In the funniest part of this week's show, each team has to load bricks of peat into baskets on a donkey and convince it to walk back to the entrance of the farm. Peat—partly decayed plant matter found in wetlands—was traditionally burned as fuel in Ireland. I don't know if you've heard, but donkeys have a reputation for being stubborn. Some donkeys strolled happily with their loads of peat; others had their own feelings about helping the teams.

Most people have more efficient ways to heat their houses now, and those who do use peat don't necessarily move it around on donkeys. If the show was really going for accuracy, O'Connor says, the teams would have "hit a hurley ball or herded sheep." (The hurley ball or sliotar is the ball used in hurling.) And he points out a cultural mistake: The challenges involve no alcohol.

—Helen Fields

I'm from Albany, NY, where they don't have anything I'd call "local" in the way of food. Growing up, I ate things like spaghetti, steak, pot roast, and chicken hearts (a foodie from the start, I think I'm the only one who ate this last item), and no matter where I went in the USA, these things - ok, not the hearts -  were always on the menu.

But when I started researching my story on regional foods for the September issue, I was surprised at how differently (at least from a gastronomical standpoint) other folks were raised. A friend from Maine told me she remembered her disappointment when, as a little girl, she discovered that they don't sell lobster rolls at every McDonald's. And, while I was busy eating routine chocolate ice cream cones, I had no idea other kids were getting exciting-sounding things like buckeye candies in Ohio and gooey cake in St. Louis. 

So now I know that there's more than one way to eat ravioli and there's more than one word for ground-up pig parts. What was on the table where you grew up? Remember how you felt when you realized that you couldn't find it once you left home? Is it still hard to find, or is it everywhere now? What do you think is the proper way to make it, and eat it?

— Catherine Barker