BY RON & MARY JAMES For our first stop on Fab Food Trails Dublin, Eveleen Coyle, our friendly tour guide and founder of the 10-year-old company, gathered us in from the day’s showers in a favorite coffee shop, just steps from bustling Grafton Street. “I began doing this mainly because I knew Irish produce wasn’t getting the recognition it deserves,” she explained over warming cappuccinos. “I was very aware that our reputation abroad for food was not great.” Three hours and seven noshes later, it was clear that Dublin’s food profile deserved to be raised. One of our favorites from the mom ..read more

BY RON AND MARY JAEMS Ireland’s verdant countryside – where sheep and cows graze, and rustic farms hide behind hedgerows – is an Eden visitors find irresistible. These days, so do the country’s chefs.  Innovative food pros are putting Ireland on the map as a culinary destination by drawing deeply on its homegrown bounty. In Michelin-starred restaurants, B&B dining rooms, rollicking pubs and cozy tea shops, Ireland today proudly dines off the abundant land and surrounding sea.  For Chef JP McMahon, “terroir” best explains this modern approach to food that earned a Michelin star fo ..read more

BY MICHAEL BURGE / Story and Photographs by Michael Burge Story and Photographs by Michael Burge: Every travel destination has its surprises, and Grand Teton National Park was no different. We expected sawtooth peaks, sugar-crystal snow and bracing cold. After all, this was the middle of winter. What we didn’t expect were elk in their hundreds, maybe thousands. And a sleigh ride that took us completely around them as they rested in spring’s waiting room. Grand Teton National Park is more accessible than Yellowstone, and even a little warmer, but winter shuts down many of the park’s roads. Temp ..read more

The Booking Game Since the advent of the internet, acting as your travel agent has become the norm, not the exception. Nowadays, in addition to flights, rental cars, and tours, most experienced travelers book their accommodations. Doing it yourself definitely can save money and turn up the perfect situation, but there are minefields and deceptive practices common in the hospitality industry that can turn that dream vacation into a nightmare. A multitude of apps, internet sites, and tools make it easy to book and we generally use a combination of them when doing our research and making reservat ..read more

Inevitably, cruising is the first subject of conversation with our circle of friends. Most love to travel and are veteran cruisers. Almost all have already booked a cruise this year and next.  Cruise fever isn’t confined to our circle of friends. According to a new survey by Cruiseline.com and Shipmate, lots of folks feel the same way. 93 percent are ready to cruise after being landlocked by the pandemic. The Return to Cruising Survey coincides with the nearly first anniversary of the suspension of cruising in the United States. One year ago, we were in Oman aboard the Azamara Journey, pr ..read more

We’re about to begin a three-month adventure in Spain and Portugal. It’s been a long time in coming, for obvious reasons. Over the past 18 months, we planned the trip three times, but Covid surges and lockdowns in the US and in Europe forced us to postpone, again and again. It looks like this one will happen, but we can’t be sure.  Just a few months ago, it looked like we had gained on the pandemic. Covid cases and deaths plummeted as vaccinations increased. The numbers led to fewer Covid restrictions and more confidence in safe travel. But too often, this proved premature. Portugal, for ..read more

A food tour is a priority for us when we visit a destination for more than a few days. We scheduled it early in our stay so we can return to our favorite places before we leave. In Madrid, we signed up for two – one during the day, the other at night – both offered by Devour Tours, a growing and well-reviewed company now in many cities around Europe. We learned about Devour via YouTube videos with the company’s food-loving co-founder James Blick. Blick, who hails from New Zealand, also posts entertaining and informative videos about life and travel in Spain that he produces with his Spanish-bo ..read more

Our Uber (an ideal way to get around in South Africa if you don’t drive British-style on the left) quickly left behind freeways for two-lane highways through Cape Town’s wine country’s verdant valleys crowned by jagged granite peaks. More than 300 wineries thrive here in the moderate Mediterranean climate cooled by breezes from the Atlantic and Indian oceans, but they aren’t lined up, Napa Valley-like, on the main roads, preserving an appealing farm-country vibe. Our arrival in February coincided with harvest – and some of the area’s warmest weather. From our first base, the charming Plumwood ..read more

Since starting to write about wine in the 1970s as a financial journalist covering the evolution of the California wine industry, as a syndicated weekly wine columnist, and then continuing as a freelancer when I switched to the PR profession, I’ve always searched for values from around the world to share with others. It’s easy to write about the most expensive wines from around the world – the first-growth wines from Bordeaux, Grand Crus from Burgundy, Grand Reservas from Spain, Super Tuscans from Italy, and cult wines from California, to name a few. The bigger challenge is to find the little ..read more

STORY & PHOTOGRAPHY BY WIBKE CARTER “The mountains are calling and I must go” is what is written on a sign in the lounge of my accommodation in the SalzburgerLand, and what a calling it is for the people who live in the mountainous region of this part of Austria. Take, for example Helmut Kreidenhuber, who has been a ski instructor for 42 years and who is also a part-time lumberjack and snowshoe hiking guide. “Every afternoon, I have to spend about one hour in the office, and that’s enough for me. Out here, I know every mole hill”, he laughs as we’re traversing the freshly fallen snow at 54 ..read more