Tucked into the tiny village of Meranges, high in the Pyrenees of Spain and a stone’s throw from both France and Andorra, is Can Borrell. In Catalan, the home language of Meranges, Can means house. This little treasure of a house is a very old inn with 6 rooms for guests and a restaurant that turns out fantastic breakfasts and dinners. We got to Can Borrell the hard way – taking a 5-hour drive with endless switch backs on a cliff-hugging road. This is deep in the Pyrennees, home to Catalan, French, and Spanish speakers in miniscule stone villages, lots of cows and sheep, and granite faced cliffs in the distance. We learned too late that there is a 2 hour drive from Barcelona complete with a tunnel that literally cuts through the mountains. For scenery, the long way is better viewing, but 5 hours of constant vigilance on mountain turns can be nauseating and exhausting, so I suggest the tunnel.
We saw only about 8 of the reported 75 residents of Meranges when we were there for a 4 day stay. There was the old woman with chickens and roosters living on her front patio which was just a few steps down from her bedroom, and another woman sweeping the steps of a small café which never seemed to be open when we wanted it to be, a farmer repairing his tractor alongside his wonderful loping spaniel that accompanied us on a morning walk, and the family that runs Can Borrell, Oliver Verdaguer, the chef, his wife Laura Forn, the manager who spent summers in Meranges as a child, and their 3 adorable and sturdy young sons.
The first time I ate at Coco Lezzone in Florence, it was at the invitation of film producer Dino De Laurentiis, who knows a thing or two about Italian cooking: 
Google Maps will tell you that "we could not understand" the location of Las Aradas, Honduras. Weather.com advises to check your spelling. My trip coordinator suggested looking up the "nearest town over" which was a two and half hour drive away. Packing for a trip like this was a bit of a moving target. Las Aradas is a mountain village, six hours out of San Pedro Sula. For those of you who haven't been browsing the State Department's travel warnings lately--Honduras is not a stable country. The PeaceCorps pulled their volunteers out last year.
One of the most important historic cities in Great Britain is York. Famous for its towering Minster and ancient walls that surround the city, York was the home to the Romans where in 71 AD the first Roman outpost was created. Today beneath the stage of York Theatre Royal lies a well dating back to that era. An important and spectacular part of the Roman defenses was the Multangular Tower built between 209 and 211 that can be visited on your tour of the walls. Monk Bar Gatehouse is the most elaborate and ornate of the surviving gates and contains a dedication to King Richard 111 who is revered in this city. The Vikings came to York in the 10th century intending to make it the trading post of their kingdom and you can visit the Jorvik Viking Center to board the state-of-the-art flying capsules and travel back in time to experience the sounds, smells and images of the city of Jorvik in AD 975.
I know it sounds blasphemous but one of my favorite restaurants in
Paris is an Italian joint. Casa Bini lies just south of the Boulevard
Montparnasse in a two-story building housing the family of Mrs. Anna
Bini. The food is traditional Puglian with a large menu of classics and
house favorites that never change. The principal allure of the place is
the leaflet of daily specials. I have rarely encountered the same dish
twice and the specials always impress so much so that my family, and
most people I know in Paris, list Casa Bini as one of their favorites.