Head tilted skyward, the rim of the glass hits my lips and the Malort slams into my mouth in one violent shot. I grimace, my eyes water slightly and I finally gag a bit. The disgusting taste lingers. Malort, a Chicago invention of vodka-meets-wormwoodto create a foul- beyond-belief liqueur, has been described alternately as tasting like distilled b...

OK, I know this is going to sound pretentious. But, wine tasting at 39,000 feet really is the best. You see, on a recent Taipei-to-Vancouver flight on Air Canada's new Dreamliner 787-9, my wife, Kerry, and I were fortuitously upgraded to business class. Besides flying in your own pod with a seat that folds down into a completely lie-flat bed for in...

From street food and casual dumplings to gourmet, the capital of Taiwan has it all. Pilgrimage-worthy dumplings, hot-as-hell devil chicken, stinky tofu, elegant Peking duck, lobster in yellow sauce, oyster omelette, fish eggs fried rice, stir-fried cuttlefish, barbecued pork and cool mango ice. Even with just 72-hours in Taipei, my wife Kerry and I...

Ride a Mini Cooper in the Windy City for the best skyline Without hesitation, Rey Rosales declares the view of Chicago is best from Adler Planetarium. So, we all pile into the Mini Cooper to drive southeast through Chicago's famous skyscraper-choked downtown. We pull up at the planetarium psyched to look back across shimmering Lake Michigan's Monro...

Private water taxi is the glamourous way to arrive at Venice hotel that was formerly a doge's palace. Channelling our inner George and Amal Clooney, my wife and I glide over Venice's lagoon in a sleek private water taxi. As we pass the mouth of the Grand Canal, the domes of the resplendent Basilica in the pigeon-filled, cafe-lined San Marco Piazza ...

Following Liza the dog to uncover the tastiest, and most expensive, mushrooms in the world. "Isci, isci," ring out the shouts in the hills above Koper, Slovenia. Translated the command is, "search, search." The verbal encouragement comes from Sara Kocjancic and is directed at two-year-old yellow Labrador retriever Liza, a truffle-hunting dog extrao...