The table was a motif of fresh delights we had never seen before, all the ingredients from the family garden. In due time we would learn about pkhali, chicken tsatsivi and the intrepid Georgian ratatouille, ajapsandali; however, the only thing on our minds was surviving the barrage of toasts our host Aleko was pummeling us with. In Georgia guests are considered gifts from God, though it was clear from the beginning that the god Aleko had in mind was Bacchus. If we failed to drain the water glass full of his wine to the bottom, he would refill it and force us to do the toast right a second time.

Rod is at his seat at the end of the bar, his booming Scottish voice subdued by the spirited dim of a couple dozen Friday night regulars speaking mostly English in a variety of accents. We make our way to the steam table in the corner of the room to find it empty. Looks like there may have been chicken wings in there. If you want to munch free food at the weekly happy hour at Betsy’s Hotel bar, you have to get here at 6 p.m., when it starts.

This funky restaurant’s name was inspired by its address, on one of the main streets in the Athens district known as Neos Kosmos, or New World. It could just as well be called Terra Incognita, so distant is it from the usual areas frequented by locals and foreigners alike for entertainment and good food. And yet, geographically, it’s just a short walk from a new institution that has already claimed its rightful place among the “must sees” of the Big Olive: the National Museum of Contemporary Art.

La pizzaiola, played by Sophia Loren, peddles pizza from a counter on the doorstep of her street level apartment. She kneads dough while crying out for custom in a thick dialect and as clouds of flour fall to the cobbled Neapolitan street. This scene comes from one of the great cinematic homages to a city: Di Sica’s L’Oro di Napoli (“The Gold of Naples”), a 1954 a film that grapples with the bittersweet tastes of comedy, tragedy, hustling and the art of making do. There’s nowhere better to see Naples in all its “golden” glory than in the very neighborhood in which the film’s star, the inimitable Totó, grew up and where parts of the film are set: La Sanità.

Lisbon is a city that knows how to keep a secret. In the early days of World War II, German, American and British spies overran the capital – Portugal was officially neutral during the war – and many of the city’s bars and casinos were hotbeds of international (in)discretion. Later, just before the Carnation Revolution in 1974, many central cafés were meeting points for covert leftist associations. Today, the hidden bars in Lisbon are decidedly less cloak-and-dagger. Yet there is still a real sense of intrigue when you ring the bells of exclusive clubs, private cultural associations and former brothels, and step inside for a hush-hush drink.

In the 1975 short film Gvinis Qurdebi (Wine Thieves), four mischievous villagers sneak into a stingy neighbor’s wine cellar, crack open his kvevri (enormous ceramic urn) and start drinking the wine stored inside. As they get drunk and rambunctious with toasts and song, they wake the winemaker who ends up joining them. It is in this same spirit of Georgian joie de vivre that Avto Kobakhidze, Givi Apakidze and Zaza Asatiani have come together to take other people’s wine and sell it under their own label, Wine Thieves.

Drive west of Tbilisi for about an hour on the backroad to Gori and you will find yourself in the heart of the Shida Kartli wine region. It is an awesome expanse of plains, rolling hills, jagged ridges and hidden valleys that provide a myriad of terroirs that grow some of Georgia’s most exclusive grapes. In ancient times, these were the grapes for the wine of kings. On a warm spring afternoon, Andro Barnovi was tying up vines to the trellises in his vineyard and nursery, four hectares of hearty, clayey soil in Tsedisi, a remote Kartli village 810 meters above sea level. Part of the Ateni wine region, Tsedisi is said to have the richest soil and best microclimate in the area.