Traveling to distant lands and taking home souvenirs, other than touristy junk, can preserve and help to share memories of good times abroad. Sharing a cheese experienced in Holland, a fragrant fruit from a tropical island or wine from a quaint vineyard far away with friends is, if nothing else, fun. But rules and regulations, often thought to prevent that from happening, are not as tough as we might imagine.

U.S. Customs stands watch over our borders, not allowing a variety of products to enter. Plants, fruits, vegetables, meats and most food items are not allowed. There is good reason for the ban too. Dutch elm disease, hoof-in-mouth disease and the Mediterranean fruit fly epidemic were all supposedly caused by travelers sneaking stuff into the United States.

Still, there are exceptions that may offer a good reason to plan ahead when visiting a destination outside U.S. borders. Baked goods, cheeses, candy, roasted coffee beans and dried teas are products that may be brought into the United States.

When planning in advance, travelers are commonly considering that list of exceptions as a compass. Targeting coffee shops, bakeries and confectioneries as events to be experienced and documented with photos or video, travelers then share the experience with friends back home. Actually sampling what we may have traveled thousands of miles to see is a unique experience.

Last week, Klout announced "Klout for iPhone," and this week, the influx of app-based perks begins. Their first partnership is one we'd actually enjoy – if we were traveling internationally from SFO. The company that pioneered social media influence measurement has partnered with Cathay Pacific Airways to allow anyone with a score of 40 or over to show their Klout score at the door to enter the airline's First and Business Class Lounge.

This applies to any visitor traveling through the "A" boarding area at SFO's international terminal, even if they aren't a Cathay Pacific passenger.

Inside the lounge, you'll get access to the airline's signature noodle bar, workstations and showers, as shown in the video above.

Have you used this perk? What did you think?

This quirky time lapse shows how Europe's borders have expanded, contracted, and expanded again. We're pretty sure the original intent was to help those studying for a World Geography test or the like, but it's a fun tool for travelers too – is the area you're visiting this summer a part of the original Hapsburg empire? Has the hotel you're staying in always been in France? Watch it. We're sure you'll enjoy.

When most people think of backpacking, they picture a bunch of youths in their mid-20s eating street food, hiking to city sites and sleeping in dorms of 10 or more travelers. Australian nomad Keith Wright is breaking the stereotype, and at 95 years old, has planned a two-month backpacking tour of Europe for this summer.

Nicknamed the "world's oldest backpacker," Wright began backpacking when his wife passed away 10 years ago. Since the age of 85, the Aussie has been exploring the world solo, selling his home, staying in hostels, sipping brews with fellow travelers and trying as hard as he can to get off the beaten path.

"I have seen things most tourists haven't seen, because I walk the back streets and take trains or buses to nearby towns for the day," he told The Daily Mail.

Travel has become a large focus of Mr. Wright's life, as he carefully budgets all year long for these special trips. Starting May 28, the backpacker will spend his summer visiting Madrid, San Sebastian, Paris, Munich, Vienna and London.

Often, it's the sights that are just around the corner that you somehow never get around to exploring. You say that you'll go one day, but there's never a real rush. You tell yourself that it will always be there.

For me, that sight is the Tenement Museum, located in the heart of New York City's Lower East Side, a block and a half from the apartment I've called home for the past three years.

The Tenement Museum celebrates New York's immigrants by exploring the history of a single tenement building at 97 Orchard Street, built in 1863. From the outside, the museum doesn't look too different from the other apartment buildings on the block, including my own. But inside lies a rich tapestry of stories tracking the major immigration waves of the 19th- and 20th- centuries, starting with the Germans and followed by Eastern European Jews and Italians.

According to a recent New York Times article, yes, they are. This is scary news for a destination whose economy is not only tied to the billions of dollars beachgoers spend annually while visiting the islands, but whose sandy shores also provide a way of life for ocean minded locals and surf enthusiasts who have literally been raised on the state's golden sands.

According to the New York Times piece, over the last century approximately 9 percent of the sand on the state's three largest islands – Hawaii, Maui and Oahu – has completely disappeared. Due to various forces, which include the rising of sea levels and natural erosion of the volcanic islands, the point at which the water meets the sand is gradually beginning to encroach shoreward with every passing year.

The largest cause of beach erosion, however, is the copious amount of seawalls, which restrict the natural ebb and flow of the constantly shifting sand. Unable to progress and regress at its natural and healthy rate, the sand is eventually swallowed by the growing ocean and coastal landowners are left with nothing but pictures of what their beachfront home at one point used to look like.

While you can take the time to read through the entire New York Times piece, I can save you the stat-crunching and tell you for a fact that yes, the beaches in Hawaii are getting smaller. I've lived on Maui for 23 years, and in the years, which have passed from childhood to adulthood, there are segments of beaches which have undoubtedly shrank or completely disappeared into the sea.

Geologists say the solution lies in a proactive maneuver known as a "retreat." By removing out human presence – hotels, mega-mansions, restaurants, storefronts – from the shoreline and moving them slightly inland, this simple maneuver would give the beaches enough space to continue their own natural cycle of advance and retreat.

But, as Dr. Charles Fletcher was quoted as telling the New York Times, "It's easy to say retreat; it's much harder to implement it."

[Photo by Heather Ellison]

Today is St. Brendan's feast day. To the Irish, St. Brendan needs no introduction. For those less fortunate in their birth, let me tell you that he may have been Ireland's first adventure traveler.

Saint Brendan was an Irish holy man who lived from 484 to 577 AD. Little is known about his life, and even his entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia is rather short. What we do know about him mostly comes from a strange tale called "the Voyage of St Brendan the Navigator," written down in the ninth century and rewritten with various changes in several later manuscripts.

It's an account of a seven-year journey he and his followers took across the Atlantic, where they met Judas sitting on a rock, landed on what they thought was an island only to discover it was a sea monster, were tempted by a mermaid, and saw many other strange and wondrous sights. They got into lots of danger, not the least from some pesky devils, but the good Saint Brendan used his holy might to see them through.

They eventually landed on the fabled Isle of the Blessed far to the west of Ireland. This is what has attracted the attention of some historians. Could the fantastic tale hide the truth that the Irish came to America a thousand years before Columbus?

Sadly, there's no real evidence for that. While several eager researchers with more imagination than methodology have claimed they've found ancient Irish script or that places like Mystery Hill are Irish settlements, their claims fall down under scrutiny.

But, as believers like to say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and there are some tantalizing clues that hint the Irish really did journey across the sea in the early Middle Ages. It's firmly established that Irish monks settled in the Faroe Islands in the sixth century. The Faroes are about halfway between Scotland and Iceland. Viking sagas record that when they first went to settle Iceland in the late ninth century, they found Irish monks there. There are also vague references in the Viking sagas and in medieval archives in Hanover hinting that Irish monks made it to Greenland too.

Gallery: The Voyage of St. Brendan

I've felt an odd kinship with Malta ever since I created a minor international incident with the tiny island nation by dressing up like Colonel Gaddafi in an 8^th grade model U.N. exercise in 1986. When my teacher decided to throw me a curveball by assigning me the task of dressing up like a citizen of Malta, I was initially displeased. In the pre-Internet age, it wasn't easy to ascertain how the Maltese dressed if you lived in Buffalo, New York, as I did.

I dressed up like Gaddafi because Malta and Libya seemed close enough on the map and I had no better ideas. A photo of me in Arab garb made it into The Buffalo News and once the Maltese got wind of it, they were none too pleased. In their indignant response, Mario Cacciottolo, the private secretary of the Prime Minister of Malta, told me that I should try to correct the misperception I'd created regarding their country. But I was a 13-year-old kid living in Buffalo. How was I going to do that?

My school was alarmed by the letter and sent it to the State Department. Several months later, the Desk Officer for Malta sent me a letter encouraging me to consider a career in diplomacy. I did just that in my 30's. Over the last quarter of a century, I've traveled extensively in more than 50 countries, including most of Europe. All this time, Malta's been on my radar, but I've been circling the place without actually landing there.

I see more and more iPads in transit these days – on airplanes, on the bus, and one of my in-laws drags hers around and uses it as her camera. I remain a netbook user; I never really fell for my iPad as a travel computer. The fragility of it makes me nervous. I don't like carrying it around with me; it's too slippery and shiny. Bag makers are tapping into that anxiety by designing carry cases for your iPad (that are, handy for me, often exactly the right size for a netbook, too).

OverLand Equipment makes a nice little bag to keep your iPad stowed and safe while you're schlepping it through security or on the express bus to work. It's the Ellis Large, a shoulder bag with a lightly padded pocket that's just the right size to protect your hardware.

The back pocket has two sections: one for your iPad or netbook and the other for your power supply. The front section is divided up into a series of pockets and easily accommodates your wallet, phone, keys, lip balm, boarding passes; the kind of stuff a traveler drags around with them.

There's an adjustable shoulder strap, long enough so you can wear it messenger-style, across your body. The hardware is plastic; it feels heavy duty enough to handle some wear and tear, but I've come to have a preference for metal hardware because it lasts longer. The one thing I really wanted was a key hook; it seems I'm always digging around in the bottom of my bag for my keys.

Here's my dilemma. There is nothing wrong with the Ellis; it's a perfectly nice bag for the price. But I've also tried the Ristretto from Tom Bihn. At $125, it costs nearly three times what the Ellis costs but it spoiled me for the Ellis. I kept mentally comparing the Ellis to the Bihn bag, and it didn't stack up.

I'm sensible; you should be too. If you don't want to drop a C-note and change on a bag, the Ellis Large will serve you nicely. It's a good little bag and stows your gear nicely. It comes in two colors, Poppy (red) and black. The bag retails for $45 directly from OverLand Equipment.