Cheapflights.ca Toasts Hollywood

TORONTO--(Marketwired - Apr 30, 2013) - With The Great Gatsby, featuring an all-star cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio, premiering on the big screen on May 10, the world is about to be invited to some legendary parties. To get into the mood, the travel experts at Cheapflights.ca, the online leader in finding and publishing travel deals, are toasting F. Scott Fitzgerald's great American novel with a list of Top 10 Hollywood Cocktail Locales. The Great Gatsby is just one of a long line of movies and TV shows that have made us want to chill a glass and pour a cold or creative cocktail. This list highlights our choices for best Hollywood-inspired drinks and locales for indulging.

Below are five of the list's delicious cocktails paired with suggestions for a legendary tasting of your own:

• French 75 - "Casablanca" - Paris, France: A torrid love affair, a fearful time in history, a few tortured souls and a swanky nightclub are just some of what make "Casablanca" a motion picture masterpiece. Recreate your own Hollywood classic with the French 75, an effervescent mix of gin, champagne, lemon juice and sugar. Said to have been first conceived at the New York Bar in Paris in 1915, the French 75 has inspired many contemporary derivatives since its inception. For those looking for the original, head to the City of Light where the New York Bar (now called Harry's New York Bar) still stands or find the French 75 at other historic treasures like The Hemingway Bar.
  
  
• Vodka Martini - James Bond Movies - London, England: Many martini purists will tell you a true martini is made with gin, not vodka, but those three words -- shaken, not stirred -- have transformed modern-day martini culture. A proper vodka martini, made up of vodka and dry vermouth, isn't difficult to concoct depending on your preference of the vodka-to-vermouth ratio, but if you find yourself in London, quench your martini thirst at the world-famous ICEBAR. The ICEBAR by ICEHOTEL London has a chilly twist on the vodka martini, and it is also home to a unique, glacial-inspired setting made up entirely of ice. As London's only year-round ice bar, you'll be able to enjoy your vodka martini at a frosty minus five degrees Celsius no matter what the temperature is outside.
  
  
• Red Eye - "Cocktail" - Tokyo, Japan: The haughty bartending skills of New York business student Brian Flanagan were centre stage in 1988's "Cocktail", where Tom Cruise made mixology look sexy, cool and a little reckless. But with many great cocktails comes the danger of a great hangover, and the movie's signature cocktail Red Eye was the cure for just that. A stomach-churning mix of beer, tomato juice and egg, it might be difficult to find this beverage today (and probably for good reason). But, if you're determined to find a perfect beer-and-tomato-juice combination, we suggest trying your luck in Tokyo where many bars have taken the "beer-cocktail" to a whole new level, like the Yankee Stadium beverage at Park Hyatt Tokyo.
  
  
• Old Fashioned - "Mad Men" - Louisville, Ky., United States: Before Don Draper hit the television screen, an Old Fashioned might have been something you only saw your grandfather enjoy. A sugar cube dissolved in bitters, mixed with bourbon whiskey and garnished with a cherry and orange, this classic cocktail has seen a recent revival thanks to the popularity of "Mad Men," the television series based on the advertising industry during the 1960s. And, if whiskey bourbon is the key component of this concoction, then Kentucky is the place to get the best. Check out the Kentucky Bourbon Trail for distillery tours, or if you just want to bar hop, don't miss the Urban Bourbon Trail where you can visit the best bars and restaurants in Louisville.
  
  
• Cosmopolitan - "Sex and the City" - San Francisco, Calif., United States: The origin of the Cosmopolitan is difficult to trace, but there's no doubt that its popularity skyrocketed thanks to its status as the beverage of choice for "Sex and the City" girls Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. And while New York City seems the perfect place to indulge in this sweet and citrusy cocktail, most signs point to San Francisco as being the first city to put it on the map. There are also accounts of the cocktail being invented in Miami, but it's rumoured that San Francisco elevated the elements from overly sweet to a fresh, light and slightly tangy version -- but we'll let you be the judge of that.
  
  

Rounding out our menu of Hollywood made cocktails are: Mai Tai - Blue Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii; White Russian - The Big Lebowski, Reykjavik, Iceland; Manhattan - Some Like It Hot, New York City, NY, United States; Mojito - Miami Vice, Havana, Cuba; Singapore Sling - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Singapore. To read the spirited details on these tasty cocktails and Cheapflights.ca's complete list of Top 10 Hollywood Cocktail Locales, visit www.cheapflights.ca/travel/top-10-hollywood-cocktail-locales.

About Momondo Group
Momondo Group is an online travel media and technology company that is driven by the belief that an open world is a better world. The group now serves travel search and inspiration to over 13 million visitors a month -- plus 6 million travel newsletter subscribers -- via its Cheapflights (www.cheapflights.ca) and momondo (www.momondo.com) brands.

Skygate began the sourcing of complex air-travel data in 1992, while Cheapflights pioneered the online comparison of flight deals for users in 1996 and momondo launched meta-search in the Nordic countries in 2006. 

The Group has offices in London, Copenhagen, Boston and Toronto, with a consumer base across more than 20 core international markets but users all over the world.

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