What is it about this funky little black-and-white magazine that makes people love it so much? Well, a lot! Perhaps the story leading to my personal discovery of ITN will explain what attracted me.

To go way back, after majoring in French in college in Maine, I spent a year at the Université de Caen in Normandy, France, graduating in 1973 without a clue about what to do with French besides teach, which I did not think was right for me.

What I really wanted to do was go back and...

On a trip to Japan, my daughter Stacy and I stayed in a virtual ghost town when we lodged at Ryokan Sakaya - Nozawa Onsen (9329 Toyosato, Nozawa onsen, Nagano 389-2502, Japan; ryokan-sakaya.com), April 17-19, 2019. We arrived at the end of the ski season and all of the ski hotels in the resort were practically empty. The week before, the hotels were full!

We had found the ryokan online and called ahead. We asked for a traditional room with tatami mats on the floor as opposed to...

To treat my travel bug after two years of cabin fever and the humdrum routine of medical appointments, hospitalizations, surgeries and bouts with dialysis, I prescribed myself a dialysis-at-sea cruise of the Western Mediterranean aboard the Celebrity Eclipse of Celebrity Cruises (888/751-7804, www.celebritycruises.com). I did this with the assistance of Brandie Debroux of Dialysis at Sea (800/54407694, ext. 205; brandie@dialysisatsea.com).

My travel companion, Patrick Karst, and I...