Just a few years ago, Myanmar (formerly Burma) was a closed land, with heavy travel restrictions and limited tourist facilities. Since the broad easing of travel restrictions in 2012, tourism in Myanmar has boomed.
Inle Lake in southern Shan State is a popular stop on many itineraries, famous for its leg-spinning fishermen, floating markets and local communities that dot the ring of the nearly 45-square mile lake. Many travelers choose to stay in Nyuang Shwe …
While every state in the union now makes wine, you still won’t find any areas as well-known as Napa and Sonoma. They are two of the most recognized wine regions in the U.S. and they also happen to be right next door to each other in Northern California. If your time is limited, how do you choose?
It’s hard to believe that two places producing wine could be so close yet so different, but it’s …
Traveling to the interior of Central Africa before the advent of the railway was near impossible. On land the journey between Cape Town and Victoria falls could take the better part of four months, on train though, it was just four and a half days. By 1904 the railhead from Cairo had reached the Zambezi and required a bridge to be built to cross the chasm. The bridge was constructed in fourteen months by the …
My husband and I are fans of food. Lots and lots of different kinds of food. We have enjoyed a fabulous gourmet restaurant in Las Vegas and a beachside hamlet in Mexico where he had his very first Corona. We love it all. But it’s difficult, time-consuming and expensive to attempt to sample a variety of restaurants in the many places we visit, so we have figured out the perfect solution – local foodie tours. …
Toulouse is the birthplace of Concorde, the Ariane Rocket and home to Airbus. It also boasts sixteen-hundred boutiques, a thousand restaurants and a myriad other gourmet finds which demand further investigation. Which is why, upon arrival at Toulouse Blagnac Airport, I made my way to the prestigious Victor Hugo market, famous throughout France for its gourmet stalls and where I was told, I would definitely to find something new to like.
Across the street from …
When you think of Christmas Markets the first place that comes to mind are the traditional ones located in Europe – specifically in Germany and Austria, where old cobbled streets decorated with stringed lights house wooden chalet stalls that sell everything festive.
Strasbourg, France
Located in the Rhine Valley, Strasbourg is a sprawling metropolitan city. It has a mix of French and German cultures because of its proximity to the German border. Here you will …
I’m not advocating necessarily waking up with a glass of “vino tinto” (red wine) with your scrambled eggs and jamon…Although that isn’t out of the question in this area where wine flows often more freely than water.
La Rioja is in Spain’s far north, just below the sunny shores of San Sebastian and nestled between the popular towns of Bilbao and Pamplona. The towns and villages in this area are quiet and sleepy, with the …
Almost everyone agrees: some very tasty wine comes from Spain. As a Barcelona resident with “localvore” tendencies, I mostly buy bottles from nearby Emporda, Priorat and Penedès. Of the three, Penedès is the most established and also closest to the city, making it an effortless option for a wine-tasting day-trip.
When locals think Penedès, they think “cava.” Cava, if you haven’t been lucky enough to sip it yet, is like champagne but from Catalonia. It’s …
One of the most important things I learned when I was in South Beach, Miami for a day recently is that if you are “in the know” you call it SoBe. If you find yourself in SoBe for a day and you like to shop, eat and lounge on the beach, here’s what I did to give you some ideas.
You have some choices when heading to SoBe from another part of Miami, but …
“What do you think of Colombia?” my husband asked. Colombia? We were searching for a way to get to South America from the States, and round-trip flights to the most popular destinations — Argentina, Peru, Chile — were surprisingly expensive. Colombia, on the other hand, was half the cost of those routes, and schedules typically involve a stop in Miami before heading to Bogota, an easy three-and-a-half-hour flight. “Sure!” I quickly agreed.
We spent one …
In northwest Italy, Piedmont (Piemonte in Italian) is home to some of the country’s best wines. And truffles. And food. Some might say this area bordered on three sides by the Alps is a little slice of heaven. It’s hard to disagree.
Encompassing more than 25,000 square kilometers and featuring fantastic foodie towns like Alba (home of the Slow Food Movement) and Turin, Piemonte is everything people come to Italy for. Lush, rolling hillsides are …
Liverpool, a city with a glorious history as a mercantile hub and gateway to the New World, is today a key destination for art lovers, fans of the theatre and museum-goers. The very name of the city invokes images of a magnificent nautical history, two of the Premiership’s biggest football teams and two majestic Cathedrals. Yet relatively few visitors, other than Beatles devotees, put Liverpool on their vacation itineraries. Liverpool has always been a big …
You cannot say you’ve been in the Philippines unless you have tried at least one of these 10 most exotic foods served across the country. Some of them are served quite obviously. You can tell by the look of it if it’s a dish you’ve already tried, are willing to try, or you won’t ever dare to. Others, though, look like a regular dish, such as those cooked in “adobo” style — a very prominent …
As a tourist to Germany it’s not likely that you will find yourself invited into a local’s house. Germans are famously reserved at first, but if you keep your eye out for a broomstick over a door, consider it your personal invitation to enter into the house.
The broomstick represents a besen, the German word for “broomstick” and is a type of wining and dining establishment found only in the wine growing regions of the …
