Once abroad, I eat one meal a day picnic-style: Ive learned that no mature stomach can tolerate an endless routine of rich restaurant meals.

To travel best requires some time preparing for your visit to a particular location - that you don't travel anywhere without spending a few nights reading about the culture and history of the place you are visiting. This is what most of us don't do - we fling ourselves on an exotic destination hoping that someone will tell us what we are looking at, but by that time it's too late, and all the lectures and tour guides simply add to our confusion.

In general, my advice is to seek out people and new ideas when you travel.

My favorite place in the whole world is the city of Paris. to me, Paris stands at the frontier of every major category of travel - in food, art, theater, history, in so many different areas that I simply don't get tired of it.

If I tell a hotel I'm a travel writer, I can't get out of there without spending a few hours looking at every single room!

I find, on my own travels, that the most depressing form of culture shock is experienced when you go into a country that is under the thumb of a dictator.

Nicaragua is becoming the least expensive Caribbean destination.