Pottery for Pets
I woke up the next morning with my heart fluttering. It was the first day of my pottery retreat. I threw on older clothes I didn’t mind getting dirty with clay and hurried outside. I hadn’t really seen the courtyard the night before. We arrived after dark, when little was […]
First Lesson. Rishton.
It was late evening, and we had just arrived at the pottery studio of one of the most famous ceramic artists in Uzbekistan. We were exhausted and sweaty and weren’t sure if our long day of travel was over or if we would now need to look for alternative accommodation. […]
Getting There. Rishton.
I’ve been talking about doing a pottery retreat for a long time – somewhere I can learn new skills, work with different types of clay and glazing techniques, get some fresh ideas for my craft. It was always “one day” and “wouldn’t it be cool” type of idea. I might […]
A Long-Overdue Affair: The Wisconsin State Fair
Last year, it finally happened. I went to the Wisconsin State Fair! Although I had lived in the state for over a decade, for whatever reason, I’d never made it to the festival grounds in West Allis until last year. Ironically, it took me to move out of Wisconsin to […]
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 […]
Albania: When The Price Is Right
I never planned on going to Albania. Albania was never on my “Top Ten Places to Visit List” or even on “If I Live to be a 100 Travel Bucket List”. Albania was not even on the radar. Until one evening when Victor and I were both on our computers, […]
The Magic Dancing Dolls or The Scam That Took 15 Years to Solve
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
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
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
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
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 […]