Within a month of my arrival in Mexico I was complaining about the food, saying: “If I have to eat one more tortilla, I’m going to barf.” Fortunately, soon after that I began discovering that there is more to Mexican cuisine than beans and tortillas. I sampled cheese enchiladas smothered in mole, a sweet-spicy brown sauce made with chocolate; fried Platano (a dense type of banana) topped with with cream and cheese; and scrumptious sherbet flavors like Guanabana (sour sop), mango, and mamey, a tropical fruit that tastes like a combination of sweet potato, cantaloupe and pumpkin pie. But of all the unique foods I have sampled, my favorite are the nopal cactus sold by vendors in the Mexican markets.

Vendor sells nopalitos at Hidalgo market in Guanajuato, Mexico

Most will recognize these oval green pads as the same spine covered Prickly Pear cactus that grow like weeds throughout the American Southwest. While they are virtually ignored and even scorned in the U.S., nopales are considered a delicacy in Mexico. After carefully peeling to remove its needles, the pads are boiled or roasted until tender. I have tried them in a cold salad flavored with green chiles, Read the rest of this entry »

Like everyone, I appreciate a good restaurant. But perhaps because I used to be severely overweight, food is not overwhelmingly important to me when I travel. I generally eat only one meal a day, and most of the time I am happy enough with something from street vendors, who usually offer selections more appropriate for my vegetarianism than those found in most restaurants. However, once in a while I discover a really good place to eat, and in La Paz, Mexico, I hit the jackpot.

La Fonda de los Briseno, corner of Revolucion and Bravo, La Paz

At La Fonda de los Briseno, owner Jorge Briseno Jimenez hovered over me like a mother hen. I liked him immediately and the reason soon became apparent: ten years ago, Jorge and his wife Sylvia Gonzalez Ariola both walked away from their professional careers as lawyers to open La Fonda. At the time, they weren’t quite sure what they wanted to do with their lives, but they did know they no longer wanted to be attorneys. In Jorge’s family, food was a passion. “I would come home from school and find my mother at the table surrounded by three kinds of bread and a half dozen cheeses, with a pot of Shoemaker soup simmering on the stove; enough food for an army! And my father studied natural foods and vegetarian cooking long before they were popular.”

The outdoor patio of La Fonda

The couple decided to open a restaurant, featuring traditional Mexican recipes of Jorge’s mother and the business philosophy of his father, who always insisted that it is better to make a little bit of money from many people than a lot of money from a very few. The combination has been a huge success, with the La Fonda being named as a top restaurant in La Paz by AAA Guides, Read the rest of this entry »

The young Latina leaned against the door jamb, disinterestedly watching tourists stream past. Her four-inch stilettos, strapless bustier, and leather hotpants suggested the oldest profession on earth, yet she stood in the doorway of a family-owned bodega where Ybor City’s residents gather each day to sip strong espresso, share gossip, and slam dominoes. Unlike Miami Beach, where I was disappointed by the lack of Latin flavor, Ybor City is the real deal: an historic Cuban district in Florida’s Tampa Bay area.

A lady of the night or just waiting for the party to start?

Some years ago I had lunched at Ybor City’s Columbia Restaurant, famous for their  authentic Spanish cuisine. In the light of day, empty storefronts, peeling paint, and wind-blown trash suggested despair and decay. I checked the neighborhood off my list of places to see, never intending to return. But as fate would have it, I was unexpectedly detained in Tampa this past Halloween eve. As the last rays of daylight slowly faded I searched for a hotel along unfamiliar streets and suddenly found myself in Ybor City.

This was not the Ybor City I remembered! Curvy metal trellises decorated with white lights arched over the main street as far as I could see. Vivid neon signs threw reflections into the street and the aroma of strong coffee mingled with rich Cuban cigar smoke. Under cover of darkness, neglect melted away, replaced by pools of golden light spilling from bars and cafes and throbbing Latin beats. Buildings that had once seemed dilapidated suddenly oozed charm.

Ybor City owes its existence to the cigar industry. In 1884, Henry B. Plant completed his railroad to Tampa and was in the process of improving the port facilities at Port Tampa. Realizing that Cuban leaf tobacco, the best in the world, and the finished tobacco products could easily be imported and exported, Vicente Martinez Ybor founded Ybor City as a cigar manufacturing center in 1886. He quickly attracted experienced cigar workers from Spain, Cuba and Italy, establishing Tampa as the “Cigar Capital of the World.”

Ybor City at night is a fun cultural travel destination

Life in those early years revolved around social clubs that were organized to serve specific ethnic groups (L’unione Italiana for Italians, El Circulo Cubano for Cubans, Club Marti-Maceo for Afro-Cubans, among others). Not only did these clubs preserve the cultural heritage from one generation to the next, members could also subscribe Read the rest of this entry »

After a few weeks on the road, I returned to Sarasota for a few days of R&R before heading out again. As usual, on my first day back I stopped by my favorite coffee shop, Pastry Art On Main, for a cup of java. Instead, on this particular day the owners of the shop, Forrest and Alex Shaw, invited me to sample a cup of Samboya Tea, a new brand they would soon be serving.

I am no stranger to tea – my kitchen shelf is lined with many flavors and several different brands. But though I keep trying to find one I like, every brand comes up short. Some are too bitter. Most don’t even taste like the flavors they represent. So I was game to sample a new brand, especially since Forrest insisted that once I tried Samboya, I would never again want to drink tea bought at the grocery store.

A delicious fragrance immediately suffused the air when the Earl Grey tea was set before me. Raising the cup, I inhaled deeply, enjoying the musky scent reminiscent of exotic Indian cardamom and turmeric spices. I sipped and rolled Read the rest of this entry »

Moon Fiji by David Stanley

Most people who travel a lot – especially budget travelers – have at one time or another invested in a guide book. Lonely Planet and Rough Guides are well known names in the genre; less well known are the Moon guide books. In fact, I had never before read a Moon guide until a copy of Moon Fiji came my way, courtesy of author David Stanley.

I have never actually read a travel guide. It usually gets stuck it in my backpack and pulled out for reference when I’m looking for an affordable place to stay, a decent meal, or to figure out which sights are must sees. Moon Fiji, however, is a different kind of guide book. That may be partly due to its author, who has crossed six continents overland and visited 193 of the planet’s 245 countries. For his first trip across the Pacific in 1978, Stanley bought the longest ticket ever issued in Canada by Pan American Airways. Though Stanley has traveled widely and become a specialist on many parts of the world, he keeps returning to his favorite area, the South Pacific.

I read this guide book from cover to cover and I highly recommend purchasing Moon Fiji if you are South Pacific bound. This compact guidebook does everything right. Take, for example, the following examples of what I found within: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve never attended a County Fair before, but when my girlfriend, Marlene, told me there would be pig races at the Sarasota County Fair – well, that’s something I just had to see. On opening day last Friday we arrived in time to see the very first race.

Pigs race around the track to get to their sweet reward of cookies

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember the movie Funny Girl? The one starring Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice? Remember the scene where Nicky Arnstein takes her to Maine and introduces her to lobster? And she eats herself stupid?

Since arriving in Maine I’ve had lobster in just about every way it can possibly be prepared. I’ve had lobster bisque, lobster stew, lobster pot pie, and a lobster sandwich. I’ve had lobster atop a Caesar salad. But until last night I hadn’t splurged on a whole lobster. Since I will soon be leaving Maine, I figured it was now or never. My server suggested a 1 1/4 pound lobster, which sounded just fine to me. A few minutes later, she plunked down a giant plate in front of me. On it was an entire lobster – claws, head, body, tail and all.

Now, I’m not a particularly squeamish person, so the antennae and the itsy bitsy feet didn’t really bother me. My problem was Read the rest of this entry »

While it might seem simple to find food while driving down the Interstate, in my case the options are few, since I am vegetarian. At the moment I am traveling down I-20 in western South Carolina, examining the restaurant options at each exit, hoping beyond hope for something other than a diner, a buffet, or fast food. Around Columbia, the capitol of South Carolina, I spot McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Bojangles (now there’s a healthy option, with it’s butter-drenched biscuits), Popeye’s – absolutely nothing for me. A bit further along the highway the selection includes Waffle House, Perkins, KFC, Burger King, and Arby’s. Nope.

But wait! Here’s a sign in the distance that I don’t recognize. I am excited; there may actually be a restaurant that suits me in this remote pat of the Southeast. Hmmm….what does that sign say? Huddle House. Huh? Huddle House. The image conjured up by my mind Read the rest of this entry »

Having had my fill of art and culture, I headed for the district of Liguria, located in Italy’s northwestern corner where it borders France. Liguria forms an arc, with one side facing the Tyrrhenian Sea and the other backing up against the Apennine Mountains. Better known as the Italian Riviera, it is a continuous line of rugged cliffs dotted with long beaches and lovely coves. The capitol of this district, Genoa, divides Liguria into two parts: the Riviera di Ponente to the west and the Riviera di Levante to the east.

While the Rivera di Ponente, with its famous San Remo, is more well known, it was the eastern part of the Riviera that interested me, with its lesser known and lesser visited Cinque Terre area. My train departed Pisa, quickly leaving behind the Tuscan hills for more rugged terrain. We rolled through a dozen towns that clearly owed their prosperity to the mountains – factory yard after factory yard was filled with giant chunks of exquisite Italian marble and sparkling granite, drilled from the faces of the Apennines. The train terminated in La Spezia, the southern terminus of Liguria and the location of my hotel for the next three nights. La Spezia is a convenient destination for visiting Cinque Terre – trains run around the clock to all five villages, with the furthest village requiring only a 25-minute ride at a price of slightly more than five Euros. A ferry also runs during daylight hours, although the sea option takes two hours.

Trails notched into the stony cliffs lead between the villages

In Italian, cinque means “five.” In medieval times, the word “terre” (land) meant village, thus the name Cinque Terre. These five tiny villages: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore, cling impossibly to rocky bluffs suspended over the cobalt and turquoise waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Beginning in the thirteenth century, generations of local farmers carved steep terraces sloping down to the sea, held up by over 7000 kilometers (about 4200 MILES) of stone walls built without any kind of cement. These terraces are Read the rest of this entry »