A Blog About Things We Do

(places and topics list)

Category: Travel

  • London and a Narrowboat – UK Summer Part 1

    London and a Narrowboat – UK Summer Part 1

    For quite a few years I’ve talked about a hand-wavy future in which I am somehow able to split time between the US and the UK. The dream is to secure a permanent home-away-from-home somewhere inspiring that scratches our travel itch when visiting, but that also also allows us to invest in that place. Join local communities and meet friends, join a local pottery studio, have those friends over for dinner. Maintain a small garden perhaps. Family and friends would have a cool and free place to stay.

    We lived in the UK (York specifically) and we absolutely loved it. The people we met (and ability to easily communicate!), relatively easy and inexpensive access to Europe for travel, and far enough from the US to feel unique – all great things that checked a lot of boxes for us. This summer we are spending around seven weeks back in the UK as a bit of a fact-finding mission to see if the UK still felt like a potential cake we could eat while having it back in the States too. Starting with London and life on a narrowboat.

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  • A few film photos taken during period we lived in Tokyo

    A few film photos taken during period we lived in Tokyo

    A selection of photos taken with film cameras while living in Japan (round 2). Most of these are with my new-ish half-frame Olympus Pen EE-3.

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  • Christmas and New Years in Australia

    Christmas and New Years in Australia

    I must admit (because Lindsay keeps reminding me) that I wasn’t super excited about traveling to Australia over the holidays. I don’t really know why I wasn’t excited, it’s possible it just felt like a hassle, or that we’d been moving around a lot (we’d done lots of trips in November around Tokyo). There was a lot of planning and transportation and such that went into the trip and it just felt like a lot. In the end, the trip was amazing and I have very warm / fuzzy feelings every time I think about it.

    The trip had roughly four phases:

    1. Cairns and a live-aboard, diving the great barrier reef for three days
    2. Sydney
    3. Driving and camping from Sydney down to Melbourne over Xmas
    4. Melbourne
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  • Bali, Indonesia (and some great airport food in Kuala Lumpur)

    Bali, Indonesia (and some great airport food in Kuala Lumpur)

    I’ve read a lot about Bali on reddit in the “digital nomad” community the past few years. Especially since COVID and the explosion of work from home one of the prevailing themes of discussion is the country has been overrun with wannabe influencers and scammy startups. The cynic in me assumed that this was going to be the case, but that turned out to only be part of my experience.

    It turns out a lot of popular destinations do indeed feel overrun with people specifically there to take selfies, but the island is so incredibly beautiful that it largely made up for that.

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  • A real vacation in Cebu, Philippines, (briefly) visiting mainland China, and what’s the point of it all?

    A real vacation in Cebu, Philippines, (briefly) visiting mainland China, and what’s the point of it all?

    I occasionally wonder what sort of value traveling has to me at this point in my life. I’m not sure the best way to word this because it’s not really a concrete thought and it’s not even a serious question, but essentially when I look at the limited resources in my life (primarily: money and time) I wonder if one day in the future I’ll look back and say, “you know, I really should have skipped some of the trips and spent more time <investing in friendships / developing hobbies / doing an intensive language course / watching TV / etc>.” When I’m old and decrepit will the memories I make bring me warm feelings and a smile, a feeling of contentment with a life (reasonably) well lived?

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  • Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau… except not Shanghai

    Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau… except not Shanghai

    Tickets back home to Michigan over Xmas were too expensive this year which meant Lindsay and I had to figure out what to do to maximize our time together over the holiday break.

    To be honest I would have probably stayed in Japan and spent our modest budget visiting a new region or city or something, but Lindsay really wanted to go somewhere totally new and tickets were reasonably cheap to Shanghai, China – unfortunately the tourist visa was something like $185 USD and took a long time to process… BUT you can get a transit visa for 144 hours as long as you are flying through China somewhere else. In other words, you can’t book a trip Tokyo -> China -> Tokyo and qualify for a transit visa but you CAN book a trip Tokyo -> China -> Hong Kong -> Tokyo. So this is what we booked.

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  • A Longer Stay in CDMX – Mexico City (plus Tolantongo and Cozumel)

    A Longer Stay in CDMX – Mexico City (plus Tolantongo and Cozumel)

    Lindsay and I spent a bit of time in Mexico City a few years ago – roughly a week I think. We went there a few days after the Christmas holiday and were there for New Years Eve. It was a really wonderful trip, and I think Lindsay and I both were pleasantly surprised by the “ease” we felt there. We decided at the time to add a longer return trip (if the opportunity should present itself!) to Mexico City (henceforth CDMX) onto our travel TODO list.

    Last year when we were planing our 2023 travel plans we decided it would be a good time to head back, this time, for a bit over a month and a half. The timing was almost exactly the same as before except we found a cheaper flight New Years Eve so arrived in CDMX on the 1st of January.

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  • Three and a half weeks working and traveling between Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, and London, and an analysis of working while backpacking

    Three and a half weeks working and traveling between Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, and London, and an analysis of working while backpacking

    For the month of December Lindsay and I decided to take advantage of the long break Lindsay had from school between classes and the semi-flexible work schedule I have by spending (most of) the month “backpacking.” We actually JUST arrived home last night around 8:30PM.

    I’d say the theme of this trip was “work a lot.” Honestly this isn’t a complaint or a problem, in a way this was a “bucket list” item for me – doing the “romantic” backpacker thing all while working a reasonably stressful and high-intensity full time job. In ways it’s a dream, because I could, in theory, continue to travel indefinitely like we did in December throughout Europe and live out of backpacks and hostels, seeing the world all while maintaining an income. I now at least have some idea of what that would feel like (as opposed to long term travel WITHOUT jobs, which of course is something we have a lot more experience with).

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  • Iceland Part 2 – Ring Road Camping (video)

    After we left Reykjavik, Lindsay and I spent about two weeks driving the “ring road” around Iceland. It was awesome, and really really beautiful. Rather than write another long book of a blog post about this time, I put together the little video above. Sorry, I know it’s pretty long, and you’ll tell I had to heavily rely on the only so-so software stabilization so there are a few wobbly bits of the video. Overall though the video shows a good chunk of the highlights from the trip / the main things.

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  • A month and a half in Iceland – part 1

    A month and a half in Iceland – part 1

    Lindsay and I decided this past year to spend a summer somewhere new / interesting, and after some debate and consideration, we decided on Iceland.

    The decision to spend (ha?) the summer in Iceland was, as is often the case with us, decided in large part (and semi-ironically) based on cost. In particular the cost of the flight through Wow Air. This is a fairly well known “deal” at this point but basically Wow Air had ~$300ish dollar flights out of Toronto direct to Reykjavik.  Lindsay and I had been talking about going to Iceland for a while, and when we saw the cheap-ish tickets within our reach we did a quick search on AirBnB to make sure that an apartment was somewhat affordable (we found a few single rooms for ~900-1000 for a month… which ended up all being “fake”, but more on that later) and just YOLOed and bought the ticket.

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  • Barbados

    Barbados

    As you may recall (I’m actually not 100% sure we talked about this on the ol’ blog), the choice to come to Barbados was based on a few things.

    First, we had expected that sometime in this year of travel we’d have had some opportunities to swim around in some beautiful water somewhere. India we figured that Goa would be this experience, but Goa was not exactly that experience, and we quickly ran into fall and winter in Asia and Europe without ever having any “go to the beach and go swimming” experiences. So, we figured on the way home we’d stop somewhere tropical.

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  • The rest of Portugal!

    The rest of Portugal!

    I’m currently sitting at my kitchen table in Michigan, Tristan and Izzy are to my left and right working on homework. We’ve been home for three weeks. I mention this because although I know it sort of ruins the whole “reading a travel blog real time” thing, I feel like my memory is already fading and so I’m going to write as I remember things, which may not be perfect. After we left the mountain home, we headed to Porto. The drive was somewhat long, but not particularly eventful. Porto was pretty great. I think it was probably all of our favorite city in Portugal. It felt touristy, but perhaps also a bit more casual and a bit more approachable then Lisbon.

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  • Fatima, Grândola + Covilha (Serra de Estrella).

    Fatima, Grândola + Covilha (Serra de Estrella).

    When my parents first got to Lisbon, we really had very little in the way of concrete plans set for the next 2 weeks. Initially, my mom and I planned to take the brunt of it, and the she got really busy with school and passed the task to me, and then I, knowing my lovely mother would want more input than she cared to admit, decided we would just “play it by ear” and plan as we went. That turned out to be a great idea, as it was that mentality that led us here. Originally, in our basic sketch of the trip, the plan was to head north and then take on the south, lounging on the beaches just before they arrived back home. Thankfully, our lack of concrete planning gave us the mobility to look at the weather, head south first and on our way up to Porto, stop in Serra de Estrella. It was my mom’s suggestion, and it turned out to be a highlight of the trip for all of us.

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  • The Algarve.

    After a few days in the country, we headed to the Algarve, specifically, Lagos + Sagres. The city of Lagos was quite small and it was great for easy exploring. My parents went to the fish market, my dad waking up around 6 am one day headed down to pick out some delicious tuna for us for dinner. We celebrated Easter (Kev and i standing the entire mass from the balcony, my parents sitting at the alter) and found about 15 items wrapped in tissue paper hiding in various places around the house. We had a gin + tonic tasting event, “sponsored” by Kevin, who claimed (and was correct, sadly!) that given the chance to have 4 drinks, we couldn’t tell the difference between them. We went sea kayaking and swam in the beach. We went hat hunting for my mom (which turned out to be quite a feat!), and ate a delicious Indian dinner. My dad tried gelato for the first time, and they ate their first salted sardines (another Portuguese specialty). We ran on the beach, looked at cool urchins, played paddle ball while Kev practiced his card trick. We went to Sagres and ultimately to “the end of the world!” aka, the south-eastern most tip of Europe. We geo-cached and ate egg salad sandwiches and chocolate seashells on the side of the road. Needless to say, we killed it.

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  • Foupana + Tavira (Ihla de Tavira).

    So, we drove south. Our ultimate destination was a little city called Tavira, and more specially, a tiny island off the coast called Ihla de Tavira. The plan for my exhausted parents, after weeks of preparing for this trip, was to chill out on the coast for a while, run on the beach, read a book, and relax. Knowing that we were going to be on the beach for the next few days, we opted to check out the Portuguese countryside, and man, what a great decision that was. We literally were in the middle of NO WHERE, or at least it felt like it, and it was a total change of pace from the busy city. We stayed in this amazing log cabin, were greeted by the world’s biggest dogs, and chilled out on the giant porch overlooking the desert-esque landscape. It was pretty cool.

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  • Lisbon.

    Lisbon.

    So, needless to say, we were pretty excited that my parents were coming to visit. We ended up coming in to Lisbon via bus around 11pm the night before their arrival, and were picked up by the world’s most hospitable host (yet another Airbnb success story). Right off the bat, we were feeling quite spoiled, as it has not been the norm for us to have someone PICK US UP from anywhere, let alone in a car. Normally we’d be dealing with following our GPS god-knows-where and walking normally 1-4ish km from our stop to our place with our packs in whatever city it was that we happened to land. The fact that we had a real, live person meeting us to ease our transition into Lisbon was pretty damn awesome to say the least, especially after the 8+ hour bus ride in the back of a giant, bumpy bus with no air. On top of him being just a really wonderfully warm person, he also bought us dinner after explaining that he remembered “how difficult it was, traveling in the past, when [you’d] get somewhere late, and were starving and everything was closed…. ” Honestly, if there could have been a more perfect way to enter a new city, bellies full, warmed with the kindness of this man who we were only paying $22 per night to stay with, well, I don’t know what it would have looked like other than this.

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  • Spain

    Spain

    Well, my last blog post left off with us on the train, on our way to Barcelona. It was an update-to-the-minute blog post. I don’t think this makes sense, but I think perhaps I got too close to the sun. My wax blogging wings fell apart. Also, I might mention that a certain somebody I may or may not be traveling with/married to hasn’t been pulling her blogging weight lately. Regardless, as I type this Spain blog post, I am nearly done with PORTUGAL. But, I want to write a few things about Spain before I forget them! So, here we go.

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  • Carcassone

    We took another very enjoyable train ride from Marseilles to Carcassonne. Carcassonne is a city, and in this city there is “Le Cite” which I believe is something like “the citadel” – basically, to a non-history expert such as myself, a giant walled city. This is a very famous thing, but I had heard of it because of the board game Carcassonne. I’ve been playing this game for a long time with friends from the Bay. It was a monthly-ish event, playing the game. This board game is 99% of the reason we went to this town, along with the fact that it happened to be roughly on the way to Barcelona.

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  • Southern France.

    Southern France.

    Jean Jacques, Elsie, and Christoph

    After the weather in Palermo, Lindsay and I were both really excited to be seeing and staying with a family once again. So after flying to Marseilles and taking a bus to Monasque, we were so thrilled to get out and see Jean Jacques waiting for us.

    Jean Jacques (JJ) is my very, very dear friend Nicola’s father, and Elsie (who we would see in half an hour later) is his mother. I had the brief pleasure of meeting them in San Francisco last year when they came to visit Nicola, but it was only that once. They are, in short, incredibly enjoyable people to be around and Lindsay and I both agreed that not for a second did we feel uncomfortable, awkward, or anything but filled with warmth, and thrilled and lucky to be getting to know them better.

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  • Barcelona Marathon.

    Barcelona Marathon.

    Today, I woke up and decided to run the Barcelona marathon.

    I don’t say that to brag, but it did feel quite a bit like that, if I were to be honest. Last night at around 7pm, Kev and I saw a sign advertising the race. I was a bit bummed, as had I known, I might have trained (I’d like to think so anyway :)) or done something to prepare for it, but I didn’t, and it was starting in about 12 hours from the time I saw the sign.

    I woke up this morning and thought, “what the hell. I’ll just go enjoy the crowds and run as far as I want, and then stop” assuming it was going to be a 12-15km kinda run, as the MOST I have run on this trip was 9km. So we got up, walked to the subway, gave my biggest supporter a kiss, and I squeezed my way through the crowds to the starting gates. I didn’t register (obviously, it was closed) and so I was quite self-conscious the entire time about getting booted off the course. Thankfully, there were close to 20,000 people there, so I was able to remain pretty inconspicuous.

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