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 […]

Donbas of My Youth

By Victor / April 24, 2022

The train arrived at 3 a.m.  We descended from the passenger railroad car, groggy and disheveled, into a dimly lit platform, the edges of which were swallowed by the night.  Kolya, our team captain, silently motioned, and we marched down the platform behind him.  I was 19 years old, and […]

Museum of Russian Aggression

By Victor / April 7, 2022

The world is shocked by the unprecedented Russian aggression in Ukraine.  But the sad truth is that it was very much precedented, by Russian aggression in Georgia in 2008.  Much like Ukraine, Georgia began eyeing integration into NATO, which led to a deteriorated relationship with Russia and eventually to the […]

Слава Україні! Glory to Ukraine!

By Julia / March 12, 2022

On February 24, we planned to post about El Salvador and Victor’s surfing attempt at Las Flores beach.  Then, Russia invaded Ukraine, and blogging about travel became irrelevant. I was born in Ukraine, in the tiny village of Ponornytsya in Chernihiv Province, because the hospital of Korop, a slightly larger […]

Beyond the Flowers:  Hiking Ruta de las Flores

By Julia / February 16, 2022

If a foreign tourist does venture into El Salvador, he will inevitably come for one of two things – to surf or to visit Ruta de las Flores.  As Victor is diligently working on his “surviving surfing” post, I will, in the meantime, describe one of the most magical regions […]

Searching for Crashed Planes, Helicopters and Guerillas: A Very Unusual Christmas in El Salvador

By Victor / February 4, 2022

We spent the past holidays in El Salvador, and it turned out to be one of the strangest Christmases we’ve had during our travels.  No, it didn’t top our Christmas in India in 2014, when on Christmas Eve we nearly lost our camera, money, and Julia’s passport and ended up […]

El Salvador: The Beginning And The End

By Julia / January 27, 2022

For our very first story about our recent trip to El Salvador, I will start at the end and then, logically, will go backward. It was our last day in the country, and we had our backpacks ready with tourist trinkets, dirty clothes, and at least five bags of coffee […]

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