Bad Things

We arrived in Taipei on December 13th and left on the 18th to explore Alishan. On December 19th, 2025, a 27-year-old man threw smoke grenades and stabbed people in a Taipei metro station, killing three people and injuring eleven others. He then killed himself by jumping from a building. This […]

Taiwan: Shaking in Our Boots

It was an evening of our last day in Kaohsiung, and we were visiting the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas.  Temples in Taiwan usually have dragons painted by one set of doors to indicate that those doors are used to enter the temple, and tigers by another set of doors, which […]

Day Lilies, Yuli Noodles, and the Mountain Mist

Of the four days in the East, we spent three days driving up and down the coastal highway.  These days were filled with stopping at ocean viewpoints, exploring the shoreline’s rugged geoparks, and learning about local indigenous culture. But as we navigated through this narrow stretch of land, sandwiched between […]

The Wild, Wild East: Taiwan’s Enigmatic East Coast

Like Alishan, we considered cutting the East Coast out of our itinerary entirely. The region was remote, and it was a logistical puzzle to plan.  Also, it was the only place in Taiwan where we needed to rent a car and potentially drive through what looked on the map like […]

Food.  Taiwan.  Must I Say More?

I wanted to write about the top 10 dishes we ate in Taiwan and quickly realized that the list was way longer than 10 and each dish deserved its own blog post, and this would quickly spiral into Two Cats Backpack Eats Taiwanese Food for Entirety of the Foreseeable Future […]

How to Sneak into Cuba

By Julia / January 26, 2023

There were two types of reactions to my last post about visiting Cuba and bringing gifts of hygiene supplies and medicine: “Did you really have to bring soap and pills with you? I thought Cuba had everything by now…” Or “Wait… You went to Cuba? Is that legal? How did […]

More Souvenirs: Part II

By Victor / January 19, 2023

Last month, we wrote about some unique souvenirs that we brought back from our travels.  Today is Part 2 of that post. African masks, Egypt In our collection, we have eight African masks, which is a lot, considering we haven’t really visited Africa yet.  The only nominal African country we’ve […]

An Honest Conversation in Havana

By Julia / January 12, 2023

There is a conversation that happens in every country we visit.  The locals earnestly ask, we honestly answer, the locals are thrilled, and by the end of it, everyone is happy.  But this one time, it went off script. “How do you like Cuba?” the taxi driver asked, flashing us […]

Our Own Museum of Travel

By Victor / December 15, 2022

Our condo is a museum of our never-ending globetrotting.  African masks, religious statues, souvenirs, and mementos from all over the world constantly fight for shelf space with the cats.  The more we travel, the more things we bring home.  Our minimalist way of life directly conflicts with the constant desire […]

Unexpected Food Capital of South America

By Victor / December 8, 2022

How come Peru has two restaurants in the top 10 restaurants in the world list, while the U.S. has none? This was the question we puzzled over while boarding our flight to Lima.  The answer was found shortly thereafter, during our nine-day crisscrossing of the land of the Incas, alpacas, […]

Peninsulas of Ireland Part II: The Luck of the Irish

By Julia / December 1, 2022

Start here with Part I: The Undiscovered Peninsulas of Ireland. Day 4. Ring of Kerry on Iveragh Peninsula. We spent a long time discussing the Ring of Kerry during the planning of the trip, and it all came down to this not-very-common itinerary question: clockwise or counterclockwise?  I can’t recall […]

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