Chicago: Keeping the Blues Alive

Today is a special day in Chicago: Buddy Guy celebrates his 90th birthday.  Although we are currently busy writing posts about Uzbekistan, this milestone-and America’s 250th year-makes it the perfect moment to celebrate one of the country’s greatest musical traditions: the blues. At his birthday bashes, Buddy Guy usually tells […]

Not Giving Up on Kymyz

World travelers often disagree about what constitutes “visiting” a country.  What is the minimum requirement that one needs to satisfy? Do you need to stay overnight? Spend a full day? Or is it enough to hang out for a few hours at the airport during a layover without going outside? […]

Uzbekistan: One Conversation at a Time

We were in Margilan, a medium-sized town in the Fergana Valley, on a quick day trip when we stopped at the street market for lunch. We found a tiny café serving hot tea and potato samsas, sat down, and ordered a pot of tea with three samsas to share. As […]

Monterrey, Mexico: World Cup Edition

Back in February, we climbed Cerro de la Silla and marveled at the striking Estadio BBVA from above. There, on the hiking trail, I had an interesting thought: “How cool would it be to see this mountain from the stadium seats during the world’s biggest sporting event?” Later that evening, […]

2026 FIFA World Cup: Hogwarts vs. Narnia

Those who follow this blog know I am a big soccer fan and try to attend games in every country I visit.  This fact is even listed in my section of “About Us” on this website.  So, it won’t surprise anyone that attending the World Cup this summer was on […]

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 […]

Part II:  It’s Good to Be Home

By Julia / April 18, 2024

Start with Part I here.  Short version: Victor became terribly sick with a fever and rash on our 15-hour flight from Dubai to Newark. There was good news and bad news.  Good news – Victor did make it back to the U.S.  Bad news – we were landing in Newark […]

Long Way Home

By Julia / April 11, 2024

On the morning of December 31st, Victor started running a fever.  It wasn’t too bad, and he didn’t even want to slow down or skip any of the sightseeing we had planned for that day.  I gave him a few pills of ibuprofen and forgot about it.  We celebrated that […]

Unexpected Oman

By Julia / April 5, 2024

There were many ways Oman surprised me, mostly due to my complete lack of knowledge about its history, politics, and, as crazy as it sounds, geographical location.  For whatever reason, I only considered countries separated by a land border to be Oman’s neighbors and cultural influencers.  It never occurred to […]

Paying the Price for Visiting Oman

By Victor / March 28, 2024

Recently, we did something we had never done before.  We went for an extended trip to a very expensive country. Or so we thought we did. Oman was our first Gulf country, and all we heard before our visit was that oil-rich countries of the region were not the friendliest […]

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