Food & Wine

Finishing dinner at Rome’s Ristorante da Fortunato, my friend Stefano explained that his greatest joy is an after-dinner drink called grappa. I tried my best to enjoy the local firewater and failed.

Sipping the grappa, Stefano instructed me, “You must not be in a hurry when taking a grappa!”

He savored it carefully, sniffing the aroma and lingering over every taste. He then told me that his ultimate joy is to have a glass of grappa — and a Tuscan cigar — while cruising on his sailboat to Corsica.

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the United States.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is MARILYNN BROWN of Norman, Oklahoma:

My wife, JoAnn, and I made our fifth visit to Beaune, the wine capital of Burgundy, France, March 1-4, 2012. Beaune was a delight.

If the tide is out, you can walk a quarter-mile cobblestone causeway to St. Michael’s Mount. Don’t worry if you linger on your tour of the castellated mansion atop this tidal island, a mirror image of Normandy’s famed Mont-St-Michel directly across the English Channel. When the tide comes rushing in, a motorboat ferry will carry you back.

Most visitors travel to the island for the sole purpose of wandering the public, grand rooms of the castle, owned and continuously lived in by members of the St. Aubyn family since 1646.

In Budapest in May ’12, my wife, Sandy, wanted to avoid the overpriced hotel restaurants in the area of the Hilton hotel. (A typical hotel dinner cost $80-$100 for two.)

Here are some of the places my husband, Ed, and I enjoyed eating at during our April-May ’12 stay in Naarden, the Netherlands.

ON CROATIA & SPAIN…

When John and I were in Split, Croatia, a couple years ago, we stayed at Le Méridien Lav (Grljevacka 2A, Podstrana, Split 21312, Croatia; phone [385] [21] 500500), where we paid $105 a night and had planned to take a cooking class.

by Birute Skurdenis, Oakland, Ca.

Portugal was not on my travel radar screen until a friend invited me and two others along on a trip. So in September-October 2011 the four of us traveled to Lisbon, Porto and the Douro Valley.