[BrianR]

About beef tongue: you are supposed to remove the outer casing (taste buds) before eating it. It otherwise is fairly tasty. I enjoy experimenting with foreign foods and I prefer to NOT know what it is until after I've finished eating it.

Italy was a good place to experiment...lots of yummy things and combinations of foods that are not found in American Italian restaurants. Colombia was also fun, but never eat dog meat. Trust me on this. This is also the place where I broke a statue with a coconut. This was inadvertant and a story in itself. For another thread. Eating in Egypt was...an adventure. Never again, but once so that I can say I did it. And survived.

I will never understand those Americans who visit another country and insist on eating only familiar American foods, or McDonald's. Note the separation between their menu and actual food. This is intentional. It's more fun to try new things, if only to say you did it and offer an educated opinion on them. What fun is it to say I visited a country and ate nothing but hamburgers? And spent $500 on booze in "the Gut" but didn't visit any touristy sites?

I always will lament that I missed the port visit to Greece. I like Greek food and would love to try new things there. Also to see the various historical sites like the Parthenon and such. I might even remember to take pictures. I once took a piece of advice from a chief. To wit: Think of what you will tell your grandchildren when they ask what it was like in such-and-such country. Will you have only drinking stories of how plastered you were? Or stories of how you saw this and that? Decide for yourself. After that I hung out with the older hands and saw a few wonderful things and avoided most of the drinking stories. Save Palma de Mallorca and Rota. I will NEVER be drunk enough to repeat those stories again.

Brian