Just can’t get this old Ray Noble ditty out of my head as our jet ferry docks at Marina Grande on the fabled Isle of Capri, playground of the rich and famous! Picturesque wooden skiffs line the beachfront with its cafés and souvenir shops, while tiny white houses perch precariously high above on the rocky cliffs.

Last May, I boarded Malaysia Airlines in Newark, N.J. and set-off across the Atlantic for a 20-hour flight. After a brief stop in Dubai, we landed seven hours later outside Kuala Lumpur. The 88-story Petronas, the world’s tallest twin towers, and other architecturally unique skyscrapers illuminated the capital of Malaysia.

Brian Storen, sommelier for Brentwood Bay Lodge & Spa, is a seer, a visionary and, most of all, a very adept judge of wine. While most north-of-the-border sommeliers can tell you that Venturi Schulze Brandenburg No. 3 is a "nice" Vancouver Island dessert wine, only Storen has the cajones and literary verve to argue that its structure and complexity is as bold as taking a dagger in the heart from a Spartan soldier in the heat of battle.

I am about as technologically proficient, and dependent, as anyone, with the full complement of computers, cell phone, entertainment system, auto with GPS, etc. But I just couldn’t fathom what my life would be like without the natural component to my world. With four grandchildren already in our brood, my wife, Candy, and I decided that it was time to begin introducing them to the wonders beyond the electronic screen.

Cuba is a once-glamorous stage-set now patinated by age. The visitors’ first reaction is of being caught in an eerie 1950s time warp. High-finned, voluptuous dowagers from the heyday of Detroit are everywhere: chrome-laden DeSotos, corpulent Buicks, stylish Plymouth Furies and other relics of ’50s ostentation, when American cars reflected the Hollywood Zeitgeist for excessive wealth, fantasy, gaudiness and sex with which Havana was at that time synonymous.

The pre-dawn humidity and grey mist clings to the morning-dew-laden blacktop on Lexington Avenue & 73rd Street. At 5 a.m.—sharp, the gleaming kitchens of Payard get busy at an hour when most people are still under cover of the night and dreaming—if they are fortunate—of a breakfast of brioche, café au lait and fresh raspberry jam.

We begin this series on "The World’s Coolest Hotels" with the Listel Vancouver, partly because the hotel will help us define cool, which, in the final analysis, defies any kind of objective definition.  In fact, we chose “cool” — not "best," "finest," etc. — because the word is inherently, undeniably subjective.  But what is travel if not a quintessentially subjective experience?

Crossing the Drake Passage for two days had been challenging for this landlubber. I could hardly wait to touch the seventh continent. My heart pounded like a child anticipating a holiday. I imagined how excited Cook, Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen and other polar explorers felt upon initially sighting Antarctica.

—‘Bradley Ogden’ at Caesars Palace in Bradley Ogden is the Joe Montana of the food and beverage industry: A San Francisco Bay Area legend, a fearless innovator, a creative genius, and one heck of a nice guy. Your roving food and wine editor, fresh from a two-month sojourn to points West, sat down for an informal chat with Ogden in the relaxed ambience of the bar at “Bradley Ogden.” In a city that never sleeps, this top-of-the-line restaurant has pushed all the other top dining rooms in Vegas to work a little harder to pack in the high rollers, gourmands and other discriminating clientele.

This spring, they descended en masse along the New Jersey coast, voraciously looking to get their fill and then move on to the next location. New Jersey’s sleepy seaside town of Cape May hardly saw the attack coming. In packs they took to the roads, crowding out local residents and taking over inns and restaurants. Armed with an artillery of equipment — slick green binoculars, spotting scopes on tripods, sunscreen, straw hats and bug spray — the invasion of the birders was in full swing for New Jersey Audubon’s Spring Weekend from May 21-23, 2004.

It must be a coastal thing, the salt air softening brain tissue and turning otherwise rational people into politically correct hothouse plants, protected from everything, including ourselves.

It’s raining. The streets become instantly clogged with cars and buses. Jets of run-off spray splatter passers-by, as the noise level increases with each horn, each call for a cab. Aggressive umbrella holders intent on their way, take no prisoners with the point of their parapleuie.

Most of Manhattan’s streets and avenues are laid out in a numerical grid pattern that is very easy to follow – most. Once you get into the southern reaches of Greenwich Village all bets are off. The urban planner’s T-square and straight edge give way to those streets that seem to have been drawn by someone in knickers following the meandering paths of cows belonging to those early Dutch and English settlers. But, then again, all your instincts tell you, there have got to be hidden treasures down those winding streets. To find the good ones . . . enter Addie Tomei and Savory Sojourns.

As I stretch heavily into a downward dog pose, I glance over at my wife Michelle and chuckle. A playful breeze sweeps a sweet wave of bougainvillea scent past our yoga instructor, Domitila Santoyo, who is doing a Gumby impersonation in a spot of sun under a courtyard gazebo. A distance sprinkler plays a rhythmic percussion to the gentle CD soothing our morning class.

The fact that the first sighting was a robin atop a quartzite promontory above Split Rock Creek at Palisades Park did not suggest anything wildly different, but the bird was gathering building material for a nest in a nearby white oak and that made at least for a modicum of drama. On the other hand, something familiar does create a comfort zone at the start of any adventure and this birding trip throughout eastern South Dakota, unquestionably, held the potential for great things to come.

Authentic Mexican cuisine with enough food & beverage industry street credibility to snag a Mobil 4-Star Rating? I thought it had be a joke, before embarking on my long-awaited journey to La Hacienda—the final installment in my tummy trilogy of restaurant reviews on the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess.

The early summer twilight lingered until well past nine, and a full moon shone over Montréal. I got off the subway at the Pie IX stop, and walked east past the Botanical Gardens, past the strange suspended concrete clamshell of Olympic Stadium, towards Maisonneuve Park.

The Eastern Shore of Virginia is a treasure for outdoor enthusiasts. This is the part of the state that spears down from the Maryland border and literally defines the eastern limit of the lower Chesapeake Bay. Right at the border, are Assateague and Chincoteague Islands, where each July visitors can take part in the famed pony roundup and auction.

The sexual energy runs rampant the moment you walk in the door. The narrow foyer leading into Japonais spills out into a hot zone of smartly-dressed men and seductive women-the latter decked out in tight leather skirts, halter tops and heels.

As someone who writes and performs music, I am, of course, also an avid fan – of many genres. Live performances are very high on my activities list and if you are as fanatical about that sort of thing as I am, Canada is the place to go each summer. For months, festivals run from one side of the country to the other. I've attended music festivals in Québec City, Fredericton, three different festivals in Montréal and last summer, the Edmonton Folk Festival. One of the great advantages of attending these outdoor festivals is the interaction element.

It's an offer I can't refuse, filling out a St. Thomas Carnival parade dance group's complement of spear carriers. I've chased carnivals across different cultures; this was a chance to pursue one from inside.

The cattle industry has taken a major hit in recent years and for no good reason. In an ever-changing food environment, where carbs are snubbed and bacon is viewed as "healthy" by followers of the Atkins Diet, quality beef continues to be a staple on almost every menu across North America.

Having jetted across North America, turbo-propped to the far side of Vancouver Island, motor-launched up to Clayoquot Sound, then horse-and-wagoned to the encampment where we would be overnighting in tents, I'd have to say "The Wilderness Outpost" was appropriately named.

Jorge Gallardo owes much gratitude to fellow Spaniard Salvador Dali-arguably the most important visual artist of the 20th Century. Dali painted melting watches while gazing on the divine softness of ripe Camembert; Gallardo invents plates of colors, textures and flavors that evoke images of the Mediterranean culture and landscape

Our adoption journey started with a conversation. It took two minutes, maybe three, for Diane and I to decide we would adopt a Chinese baby. Then came months of interviews, seminars, recommendation letters from friends, fingerprinting, and mountains of paperwork. And a lot of waiting.

At first blush Hong Kong's ultramodern airport, smoothly paved highways and imposing skyline are somewhat disconcerting. If you're looking for quaint little pagodas, junks crowding the harbor and locals wearing conical hats, you won't find much of that here. Hong Kong is a modern city.

Chef Michael Deutsch is to cooking what actor Anthony Hopkins is to making motion pictures - a brilliant artist with high standards and a passion for experimentation and perfection. Deutsch, restaurant chef at Fleuri in The Sutton Place Hotel - the best hotel dining room in Vancouver (a city that sets the culinary bar very high, indeed), is a born and bred Canadian and proud of it.

"Dolla?" The young brown-skinned caboclo (river dweller) holds up a cuddly three-toed sloth and poses for a photo. "Dolla? Dolla?" Patricia, my daughter, is swarmed by beautiful little dark-eyed children who shove colorful seed beads at her. Cameras click, U.S. "dollas" are hastily exchanged for beads and photo ops and the barefoot children move on to the next tourist. We're a long way from home here in Alter do Chao, "altar of earth," an island fishing village by the turquoise waters of the Rio Tapajos, a tributary joining Brazil's muddy, winding Amazon River.

El Morro National Monument in western New Mexico, south of Gallup and east of Zuni, is a cuesta; a long sandstone formation with an upward slope that quickly drops away at one end. Wind, desert streams and ancient seas deposited sand over thousands of years gradually forming El Morro.

Vancouver is a culinary giant. In the past 10 years it has passed Toronto as one of the two best restaurant cities in Canada (Montreal, of course, is the other). In fact, V-Town rivals the food scene in the Bay Area in the 1980s, when Chez Panisse and Narsai's and Masa's could lay claim to being the top restaurants in the United States. Now, in this Far West corner of Canada, the beautiful city of Vancouver is churning out a host of landmark dining destinations worth perusing.

My camera is trained on a shocked woman who is scooped up onto a tarp by a group of harlequins who repeatedly fling her into the air like volunteer firemen gone mad. I glance over at a squad of prying giant eyeballs bouncing on long flexible stems growing out of figures in purple robes, and then at a half dozen grim reapers, 12 feet tall, their huge skulls grinning out from black robes like judicial nominees run amok, chasing defendants through the crowd.

I saw ghosts that morning. I’m not talking about the kind in white sheets that say boo and make eerie noises. I’m talking about the spirits that belong to a place that still inhabit it – the visible remnants of the past.

Chicago is known for many wild and wooly distinctions: The Cubs curse that reared its ugly head yet again in what is now referred to as “The Steve Bartman Disaster”; the wonders (and dangers) of boardsailing on Lake Michigan on a warm and very windy day in June; the enviable claim of being the best city for copping an awesome steak in the USA.