Monterrey, Mountains, and Unexpected Mexico

For those of you following along, I mentioned how our tickets to Monterrey had been canceled twice, and it was becoming increasingly unclear whether the universe really did not want us visiting this part of Mexico or whether Viva Aerobus was only pretending to offer flights there. Well, we finally […]

In the Saddle: Conquering Cerro de la Silla

Its image is everywhere — on labels of tostadas and tortillas, wall murals, and even in the logo of the local baseball team. It’s the symbol of the city. The most recognizable landmark.  It is as iconic as Rio de Janeiro’s Sugarloaf or Cape Town’s Table Mountain. Cerro de la […]

São Paulo: Hate At First Sight

“Skip São Paulo. It’s just a concrete jungle. Nothing to see there,” was the advice I received while planning a trip to Brazil. Nonsense. We are big city people. We love architecture, museums, and restaurants. Big cities have this never-ending energy and are always full of activities and things to […]

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 […]

Valladolid: Exploring Yucatan’s Pueblo Mágico

By Victor / December 2, 2021

We spent the night before visiting Chichen Itza in Valladolid.  For years, this colonial town had been overlooked by visitors and served primarily as a lunch stop for people traveling to or from Chichen Itza.  Recently, Valladolid finally started to get tourist love as more travelers began including it on […]

Accidental Fare Dodgers in Hungary

By Julia / November 18, 2021

Part I of EuroTrip 2002 Here Part II of EuroTrip 2002 Here In Munich, we met up with Andrey and George, and later with Max’s long-distance girlfriend. We went from a cozy group of 3 people, 2 of whom unconditionally followed me everywhere, to a group of six highly disorganized […]

Train Wreck of a Trip

By Julia / November 11, 2021

Start with “EuroTrip 2002 Begins” Here. Looking back at the European trip 2002, I am amazed at just how many things went wrong and just how unbothered by all this we were. Being young and optimistic and most importantly not being too concerned with screwing up our itinerary played in […]

Eurotrip 2002 Begins: Breaking and Entering in Hamburg

By Julia / October 28, 2021

When I met Victor in 2003, I proudly told him I was an experienced international traveler.  After all, I’ve been on four trips out of the country!  Victor, who at that point had only been on the plane once, from Belarus to the USA, was properly impressed.  Straight out of […]

Gaudi’s Barcelona

By Victor / October 22, 2021

We arrived in Barcelona early in the morning after a hellish overnight train ride that we still remember more than 10 years later. Bleary-eyed and groggy, our zombie-like entrance into the city was less than glorious. But that didn’t matter after all.  We were in Barcelona. The city of Lionel […]

Walking on Not-Very-Thin Ice in Argentina

By Julia / October 14, 2021

Start From The Beginning:  Hiking in Argentina We arrived in El Calafate a bit beat up from two days of hiking in El Chalten.  My blisters had blisters, all my hiking socks were dirty and torn, and my supposedly waterproof brand-new hiking shoes were very much soaked through.  But none […]

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