The Ghost Town That Wasn’t

We were in San Miguel de Allende, enjoying all the classic traits of a pretty Mexican town  – a gorgeous church dominating the skyline on the main plaza, colonial architecture with carved wooden doors and wrought-iron balconies, winding cobblestone streets, and quaint local markets where indigenous women sold traditional crafts. […]

From Tulum Trauma to San Miguel Magic

Our flight to Monterrey got cancelled again.  The first time, a year ago, we rebooked it for Mexico City, but this time airfare to León was cheap enough to make us consider going there… again. We had already taken the same flight a few years earlier and spent three wonderful […]

Mexican Chicago

Back in 2003, when I’d just arrived in Chicago, my first apartment was in Hermosa on the city’s northwest side. One evening, when I was in the back porch relaxing after a day of work, the street was suddenly filled with the sound of the revving engines. Motorcycles and cars […]

Go For Gözleme

The previous post about fish, bread, and never giving up on food dreams reminded me of something that happened two years ago, during a road trip from Izmir to Antalya in Türkiye. We left our Airbnb early in the morning, eager to start a long day of sightseeing, and skipped […]

Searching for Fish and Bread in Istanbul

Two years ago, when we did a road trip through southwest Türkiye, I kept looking for balık ekmek.  If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry.  Neither did I.  But Victor kept mentioning how he and his parents enjoyed a delicious balık ekmek in a restaurant by the Bosphorus […]

San Diego. Finally.

By Julia / June 20, 2024

After twenty years of traveling, we have been to over forty countries, almost every U.S. state, most national parks, and basically every major U.S. city.  But there are still places out there to explore. “We have still, somehow, not been to San Diego,” Victor said. I vaguely remembered how.  We […]

King’s Day in Amsterdam

By Victor / June 13, 2024

Earlier this year, we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago and saw the city turn into one big green, drunken mass.  Despite having lived in Chicago for over 20 years, we rarely participate in St. Patrick’s Day festivities and normally avoid the downtown area during that weekend altogether. So, when […]

Tulip Paradise

By Victor / May 30, 2024

As we started to descend toward Schiphol Airport, I was peeking through the plane window and couldn’t contain my excitement: “Look! Tulips!” I shouted. Colorful strips of tulip fields started to appear out of nowhere and stretched to the horizon. On the train ride from the airport, we passed more […]

Stop and Smell the Flowers

By Victor / May 23, 2024

“Dead bushes,” I muttered. “We need to do something about it.” It had been more than a year since the pandemic started, and I was looking through the window of our condo at the lifeless branches dangling outside. “Why don’t we get rid of them and plant some flowers? We […]

The Prettiest Town in Mexico

By Julia / May 16, 2024

“We are going to the prettiest town in Mexico,” Victor said as we were packing our backpacks for the flight. “Says who?” I demanded, “Who decides what’s the ‘prettiest town”? What’s the prettiest town in the US? In Europe? In the world?  I’ve never even heard of Guanajuato before you […]

Rhode Island: Gilded Age of Our Travels

By Victor / May 2, 2024

How do you spell “Victor”? How do you spell “Julia”? I wasn’t sure what I expected before visiting Rhode Island, but learning a new language was certainly not what I planned for. But here we were, at the gift shop of the Sailing Museum in Newport, unexpectedly immersed in the […]

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