Food & Wine

From a trip my husband, Ed, and I took to Greece, I really recommend the following.

On Oct. 18, 2010, four of us left the US for an 11-day Mediterranean cruise on the Costa Cruises liner Costa Mediterranea, sailing from Savona/Genoa, Italy, to Rome and on to ports in Egypt, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey before returning to Savona on Oct. 31. My longtime girlfriend and I had a suite for $8,400.

At the beginning of the cruise, the butler who was assigned to our suite was supposed to help us get our luggage unpacked. He wasn’t there.

by Larry Taylor; Fullerton, California. Photos by Gail Taylor

My wife and I took the tour “Highlights of Spain and Portugal,” Sept. 18-Oct. 1, 2010, with Trafalgar Tours, having booked it through our AAA agent. Including our round-trip airfare, Cleveland-Atlanta-Madrid, the 14-day/13-night tour cost $6,000 for two plus another $1,300 for the optional tours.

Our group numbered 48 people on one bus. The main destinations were Madrid, Cordoba, Grenada, the Costa del Sol, Torremolinos, Seville, Lisbon and Porto, with the tour ending back in Madrid. The distance covered was some 2,000 miles.

by David Patten, St. Petersburg, FL

What is a sense of place, and how might I capture it in the photographs I take on a trip? These questions were uppermost in my mind on a trip to Morocco with Insight Vacations, June 3-12, 2010.

My companion, Judith Martin, and I aren’t drawn to charmless chain hotels, but for a stay in Amsterdam we were intrigued by the name misc eatdrinksleep (Kloveniersburgwal 20, 012 cv, Amsterdam, Netherlands; phone +31 0 20 330 62 41). We stayed in this delightfully offbeat small hotel, on a canal near the red-light district, in September ’10 and were not disappointed.

First-time visitors to Hong Kong usually stay on Hong Kong Island or just across the harbor in Tsim Sha Tsui, on the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula, and that’s as it should be. But for repeat visitors on a budget or those planning a long stay, Sha Tin, just 20 minutes by train from Kowloon, might be a location to consider. My wife, Maria, and I stayed there in January 2011 to be near friends who live in Tai Po, the next suburb over.

Hampton Court Palace, several miles southwest of London, was the home of many monarchs, most notably Henry VIII. Costumed actors there reenact the Tudor world of his time daily, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., gossiping in the Base Court, meeting the king in the Great Watching Chamber, etc.

On the first Saturday and Sunday of each month, there is an exhibition of Tudor cooking in the palace kitchens. The Tiltyard café then serves up some of the food, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. (main dishes from £6.50 and desserts from £2.50).

by Deanna Palic (Second in a series)

Among all the cafés, restaurants and other more elegant and expensive “refreshment stops” in the cosmopolitan city of Brussels, it’s not easy to find a casual pub, but Au Brasseur (rue des Chapeliers 9, 1000 Brussels, Belgium; phone 02 512 6868) is something special.