It has a pretty face on its cover like so many magazines on the rack, but right away, you can tell that Gastronomica comes from a different part of the herd.
EAST DORSET, Vt. - There are plenty of rustic inns in Vermont. There are even plenty of inns in Vermont that are on the National Register of Historic Places. But there's only one inn in Vermont where the founder of one of the 20th century's great social movements was born.
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico -- At the end of a narrow, cobblestone street in San Cristobal de Las Casas, hopes for an ancient Mexican people and their home in the rain forest reside in the house of a jaguar.
PUERTO ANGEL, Mexico -- What seasoned tourist hasn't complained about the paving of paradise, those once-unique destinations that have been transformed into ugly commercial monsters by developers spurred on, well, by tourists?
Take Mazatlan, for example, or Acapulco. You can have them.
But then there's Puerto Angel, a tranquil fishing village down the coast where developers, thankfully, have missed the boat. Here, charm and character and ease have survived.
And there isn't a swinging hot spot to be found.
It was a long, hectic, tiring journey, the day I didn't go to Spain.
My destination was not only Madrid but adventure itself, the excitement of deciding on Friday to hop across the pond on Saturday. No reservations, no plans, no luggage. I was going to be an air travel courier.
Air courier outfits view airline tickets as a two-course delight, where the booked space in the cargo hold is every bit as valuable as the space in the passenger compartment. They buy the tickets to meet the needs of shipping clients, and then sell off the seats almost as excess.
HAVANA -- If not for the embargo, I probably would have been no more motivated to vacation in Cuba than I am to go to Puerto Rico or Guadeloupe or any other Caribbean hot spot.
JAFFREY, N.H. - For 364 days a year, the high point in Jaffrey is Mount Monadnock, 3,165 feet tall and considered the second-most-climbed mountain in the world.
But on a latter Saturday in August every year, Monadnock is eclipsed.
That's the day of Jaffrey's Festival of Fireworks, when the ground shakes, the sky explodes, and the town's population bursts from its usual census of about 5,400 to more than 40,000.
BALTIMORE - Many cities boast about their array of fine art, science, and children's museums, and coastal burgs can throw in a brag about their aquariums, too. Baltimoreans can do that, but they'd just be getting started.
OAXACA DE JUAREZ, Mexico — The zocalos of Mexico are in many ways what New England town greens once were, places where townspeople come to socialize, find shade at siesta time, and listen to concerts in the evening.
NYERI, Kenya -- Moses Ndungo, a Kikuyu tribesman from Kenya's Central Province, spends his days trying to sustain the traditions of his tribe. He is the front man for a troupe of dancers that performs in a mock Kikuyu village on the grounds of a hotel in Nyeri, about 140 miles north of Nairobi, the capital.
