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 […]

The Magic Dancing Dolls or The Scam That Took 15 Years to Solve

By Julia / July 30, 2021

In 1999, a few girlfriends and I decided to take our very first international post-college trip to Europe.  We had no idea how to go on our own, so we booked a bus tour that would take us across seven countries in a span of two weeks.  The tour company […]

A Lesson On How Not To Get Scammed From People Who Got Scammed

By Julia / July 15, 2021

From the moment we strap on our backpacks, tell the cats we love them and to behave themselves, and head out to the airport, an invisible target appears on our backs.  We are now tourists and therefore the target of every tourist scam in the world.  We are strangers in […]

Tour de World

By Victor / June 15, 2021

When we travel, we generally rely on all modes of transportation available to us. Through the years, we flew on domestic Brazilian and Peruvian airlines, took overnight trains in India and Egypt, rode subways in Mexico City and Barcelona, and bounced in packed minivans in Jamaica and Guatemala. We also […]

NAKED BATH JAPANESE GIRLS

By Julia / June 8, 2021

It’s always interesting for me to see which of our posts get more traction and which barely get a trickle of visitors.  I often find it to be completely unpredictable when some of my own favorite posts fly under the radar (example 1, 2, 3) while uninspired 20-minute write-ups are getting […]

There Is Always Room for More: Exploring Japanese Cuisine. Part II

By Julia / May 30, 2021

My last post was all noodles – soba, udon, ramen, but there is so much more to Japanese culinary traditions.  To expand our food horizons, we visited Dotombori Street in Osaka.  The name “Dotombori” refers both to the Dotombori Canal and to Dotombori Street, which runs parallel to the canal’s […]

Welcome to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Coffee Capital of the United States

By Victor / May 21, 2021

For many people, Milwaukee is and has always been the U.S. beer capital. The stereotype is understandable given the city’s history, but a little bit outdated.  Milwaukee’s breweries thrived in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and for a time, the city was home to the four largest breweries in […]

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