In Palermo, Arab craftsmen carpeted the Norman palace with glittering mosaics and 18th-century artisan Giacomo Serpotta fashioned fanciful scenes from stucco in chapels around the city. Few interiors in the exotic, enchanting, and at times exasperating capital of Sicily, though, are as enchanting as the stately dining room of the Palazzo Lanza Tomasi.

When you’re self-isolating at home, whiling away the hours scanning the internet for recipes, did you ever stumble across Mexico’s most-watched television show, “Master Chef Mexico?” How about the celebrity chef herself, Betty Vasquez, one of the show’s three judges?

With more than 7,000 islands, the Philippines is customarily known for its tropical climate, beaches, rainforests, islands and dive spots. However there are also wide swaths of mountainous areas waiting to be explored.

At a time when travel has come to a complete standstill, award-winning photographer Dennis Cox releases the perfect anecdote for cruise-starved readers – a luscious, photography-laden look at all aspects of the worldwide cruise phenomena that defined the last decades.

For decades the province of Masbate has been the cattle capital of the Philippines with its well-stocked ranches spread out over gently rolling hills. Cattle-raising here is so extensive that an annual rodeo festival in the provincial capital of Masbate City was launched beginning in 1993. But during our two visits to this province we discovered that Masbate offers so much more.

On the other side of the English Channel back in WW 2 – 1943 to be exact – there was another imaginative and vibrant character – known as “The Desert Fox" to many, but also by his more recognized name, Field Marshal Rommel. I’ve always thought it was intriguing that Rommel was highly regarded by many of the higher echelon of the British and American military leadership.

You may not be traveling to far-away places in the immediate future, but we can bring them to you. Here’s T-Boy’s Fourth installment of Virtual Trips by our staff. We hope you’ll be able to put on your traveling shoes and experience the following distant destinations soon.

So there I was in my white lab coat examining the 40 different vials and trying to determine which combinations to mix to get the best outcome. Admittedly, I wasn’t enacting some important scientific discovery or creating a medical breakthrough but it felt almost that significant. What if I screwed up, made ridiculous choices as to the most effective ingredients and came away with an awful smelling product?

Some stories seem too bizarre to believe but this did happen to me. It was 1999. We were working as missionaries in the Philippines. We developed a livelihood program which helped impoverished churches support their pastors in extremely depressed communities. One of the products we trained the people to make was handmade paper from banana plant fibers.

You may not be traveling to far-away places in the immediate future, but we can bring them to you. Here’s T-Boy’s third installment of virtual trips by our staff, and we hope you’ll be able to go there and to other distant destinations soon.