The Financial Times had a Travel Gastronomy special this weekend.  In case anyone could quibble with the morality of eating well as a tourist in a country with as much poverty as India, Ashutosh Khandekar got straight to the point in Authentically Indian and argued ‘to get to the heart of India…you have to go via the nation’s stomach.’  Feasting in Morocco is not an outdated thing by any means.  Miranda Green had a traditional ‘diffa’ involving tens of dishes and numerous courses.  Rather tongue in cheek it seems, the paper also visited the World of Coca-Cola Museum, Atlanta’s ode to Coca-Cola, which literally boggled the mind. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it – the The Double Club in Islington – for Congolese food at a ‘pop-up’ restaurant.

The New York Times had an Asia-Pacific special this weekend, which included a review of a strange gallery-shop-think-tank called ‘The Shop’ in Beijing.  At Se Wong Yee in Hong Kong, the paper invited you to eat snake soup with the locals and 36 Hours in Shanghai told you what to do with a day and a half in mainland China’s most cosmopolitan city.  Banishing the Ghosts in Cambodia is now possible on the southern coast of Cambodia, where you can explore ‘the unusual pleasures that occur at the intersection of the luxurious present and the ravaged past’…by staying in one of the new crop of luxury resorts.  Moving off the mainland of Asia, in Savoring the Tastes of Bali With a French Accent, a French-American chef at Mozaic restaurant in Ubud tantalises Jen Lin-Liu with unlikely but intelligent fusion cuisine, such as foie gras with cherries and cocoa.  The paper also took a peek at Nakameguro, ‘one of Tokyo’s hippest neighborhoods, a harmonious melding of old and new, urban and rustic’: Still Hip After Blossoms Fade in Tokyo.  A glut of new restaurants and hip places to stay enticed the paper to the old wharf area of Walsh Bay in Sydney in A Return to the Classics in Sydney.

In The Guardian, Gavin McOwan retraced some of the journey made by the drag queens in Priscilla Queen of the Desert (just opening as a musical in London) and stopped over in the bizarre opal-mining town of Coober Pedy in Queens’ land.  Terrible weather in the Atlas Mountains nearly ruined Esther Addley’s holiday, but Jacqueline Brandt – the host at Riad Samsara – changed all that by anouncing, ‘This is your Moroccan home…’.  The newly-opened Free Store, just around the corner from Ground Zero in New York store asks ’shoppers’ to only take what they need, but Don’t pay as you go.  Fiona Campbell reveled in a “Single is Beautiful and Tasty Too” cooking course at the glamorous Villa San Michele on the outskirts of Florence, even though all the other participants were married!  The ultimate recipe for amore? And in case you needed it, a quick reminder why it’s always the time to visit Rome:  Instant Weekend … Rome.

It was a thin weekend for The Telegraph’s travel features section, with mainly promotional articles.  There is always Manchster: A girl’s guide to lighten your spirits though.

The Independent pried into Chris Patten’s Life In Travel, in which he has picked up an “intimate knowledge of the insides of hotel bedrooms, which all look the same.”  The paper featured a series of articles on the Midi-Pyrénées region of France, with this search for fauna in the Pyrénées National Park the pick of the bunch: The hills are alive in the Ariège.  Uruguay is dwarfed by its neighbours Brazil and Argentina, but Lucy Gillmore was happy to take advantage of the plentiful space to go on a horse-trekking and hiking holiday in beautiful surroundings in The gaucho club. Even though Guinea-Bissau is probably not on your list of future holiday destinations, in Trail Of The Unexpected: Wild in West Africa Gill Harvey had a wild adventure island-hopping on an overcrowded boat as well as taking in the carnival at Bubaque.  It is good to know that Schnitzel and chips is off the menu in Pula: This now-Croatian city on the Istrian peninsula is successfully playing to its strengths by promoting itself as a gourmet tourism destination, according to Adrian Mourby.

In Cuba’s revolutionary mountains in The Times Zoë Barnes concluded that if you are a committed historical tourist then trekking in the Sierra Maestra (to see Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s hide out) is worth it, but if not you should stick to the piña coladas on the beach.  In the same paper, it was surprising to find that the renowned chef and owner of Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons pays as much attention to the eclectic details in the 32 rooms of his hotel as he does to the dishes on his menu: Raymond Blanc: the cook, the restaurant and his hotel rooms.