Thornton Winery bills itself as Temecula’s Original Champagne House, so of course we had to go there. We had a marvelous time enjoying the wines and our wide-ranging conversations.

Seagulls and brown pelicans in Bay St. Louis give me a lesson in mindfulness reminiscent of Thoreau’s experience at Walden

A whimsical and tasteful little Christmas tree at Heathrow Airport is just right.

I wasn’t expecting a Texas-sized offering when I ordered the Scottish Beef Burger as part of an Edinburgh hotel’s set menu, but that’s what I got, along with a foodie-worthy smoked trout first course.

Bay St. Louis has sun, sand, sea and serenity galore. It was everything we thought it would be, and more.

A beautiful Mississippi sunset deserves a haiku.

Even the most mundane things can be magic when you love to travel, like wet streets and traffic a chilly, rainy evening in Aberdeen.

The biscuits at the Denver Biscuit Company are devilishly good, on a par with poetry.

If you love cookbooks, New Orleans, or Cajun-Creole food – or if you just want a good read that pulls you into a magical culinary history – you need this cookbook.

A person could love Weetabix in that way you love the familiar, the comforting, the stuff of childhood, the stuff your mother made you eat until you forgot your first reaction to it and it became a welcome part of your everyday life and then later, the fabric of childhood memories and the feeling that all that is right with the world.

The Eiffel Tower looked new to me through the Grill-Meister’s eyes.

A twilight stroll across London’s River Thames on Blackfriars Railway Bridge and back again on the Millennium Bridge, with St. Paul’s Cathedral as a beacon.

Extraordinary architecture and skies in the La Defense section of Paris.

“Don’t take the picture, let the picture take you,” is how this noir-reminiscent image from a walking tour in New Orleans came about.

A video and photos of an unexpected Memorial Day weekend snowstorm in central Colorado, and a haiku to capture the feeling.

A very expressive seagull at the Santa Monica pier deserves a caption.