Columns

Irish cuisine has long been the fodder of jokes -- a kind of penance to suffer through in order to enjoy the people, music and lush scenery of the Emerald Isle. But that's an outdated notion: Travelers today find fresh, inventive, flavorful meals there -- and many Irish towns are working to establish themselves as foodie destinations.

When it comes to basking in the beauty of Italy's Riviera, the Cinque Terre is tops for me. But there's much more to this region on the Mediterranean coast than those famous five villages.

A handful of charming towns lie within an hour of the Cinque Terre, with posh ports set against rugged mountain backdrops that have drawn poets, authors and romantics over the years from Lord Byron to Elizabeth Taylor.

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 510th issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine. Yes, in this day and age, an actual magazine! And we have a lot of longtime supporters, Barb Hartwell of St. Petersburg, Florida, among them.

Barb wrote, “International Travel News was responsible for propelling my husband and me toward one of the most wonderful trips we ever took and for leading me to a very special friendship.  

“The very first sample copy I received (and I don’t know who was kind enough to have it sent to me) prompted my husband and me to call the company Travel Downunder (Bellevue, WA; 866/258-1629, www.travel-downunder.com) and tell the agent, Wendy Schatz, that we wanted to take the identical trip to Tonga that was put together for Penny and Dan Strohl of Oakland, California, and that was described in such beautiful detail by Penny in the article ‘Tonga — a South Pacific Paradise’ in the August 2005 issue of ITN.

“In the ensuing preparations for that trip, we were put in contact with the Strohls, who became very good friends of ours, although we lived in Florida, far from their home. Since my first email contact with Penny, she and I have emailed each other two or three times a week. (Yes, that’s for the last 13 years!) My husband and I visited twice with the Strohls in Oakland, and I took a little trip to New England with the Strohls after my husband died in 2009.

Kathmandu has been on my “wanna visit” list for years. The perfect opportunity arose in March 2017 when my husband, John, and I were in Kuala Lumpur (better known as KL), Malaysia. AirAsia (airasia.com), an excellent budget airline, was flying from KL to Kathmandu, Nepal, for $169. Perfect!

For $83, we booked a room at Hotel Shanker (Lazimpat, Kathmandu 44600, Nepal; phone +977 1 4410151, www.shankerhotel.com.np) because it was a family-owned heritage hotel. The location was excellent, and they had a pool and Internet access.

Hashima, an island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, is shaped like a battleship and is nicknamed Battleship Island.