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 […]

Breakfast of Champions in Taiwan

One thing that never stopped surprising me about Taiwan is how you can be strolling down a sidewalk one moment and the next, you are suddenly in the middle of a busy restaurant. And I don’t mean just outdoor seating, which is common enough around the world. I am talking […]

Little Teapot Short and Stout

If your country historically has rocks and water in close proximity to each other, I will probably end up writing a post about it. Let me explain. Anywhere in the world where there are rocks and water, there will usually be deposits of clay, created by the breakdown of igneous […]

The Mist, the Cloud, the Tea, and the Sunset: The Trails of Shizhuo

The hardest part of any itinerary is usually not where to visit or when, but for how long. There are always disagreements online over how much time each place deserves, with some people claiming to have fully explored everything in one day, while others take a week. And when it’s […]

Me, Myself, and I: Traveling Solo Through Poland

By Julia / July 30, 2020

To begin understanding why I was alone in Poland, please start with the previous post “Back to U.S.S.R.”, a story of pain, betrayal, and Belarus. I disembarked the plane in Warsaw after a 9-hour flight, my backpack pressing heavily against my back, my crumpled itinerary sheet in hand.  I stood […]

Back to the U.S.S.R.

By Julia / July 16, 2020

I had no plans to travel alone.  Traveling alone sounds tedious, lonesome, and possibly dangerous.  Ever since Victor and I took our first road trip to California back in 2004, the thought of traveling alone never even crossed my mind.   What I did want, and what I still want to this day, was […]

Normandy: Not Just Another Day at the Beach

By Victor / July 9, 2020

On the morning of the fourth day of our French trip, I was both apprehensive and excited. The main reason we came to Normandy was to tour the D-Day beaches. The history geek in me had been waiting for this day in great anticipation. Before the trip, I read what […]

Baskets, Oysters, and Omeletes – A Day Wandering Through Normandy and Bretagne

By Victor / July 2, 2020

We woke up in Bayeux and had a busy day ahead of us.  The plan was to explore not only the sights in Normandy but also those in neighboring Bretagne. But first things first-breakfast at a Saturday market. Visiting a Saturday market is one of those truly not-to-be-missed French experiences. […]

Normandy, France or How We Spent Nearly $4,000 in Four Days

By Victor / June 25, 2020

In the summer of 2009, after I finished another year of law school, we traveled to France. I flew to Paris two days before Julia to get my “art museum” fix and managed to visit four museums in that time. But once in Paris, I immediately discovered that food prices […]

The Highway to Our Own Personal Hell (Wyoming)

By Julia / June 18, 2020

Our road trip in 2004 had many memorable moments in California, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, but the one anecdote we always associate with this trip actually happened in the “drive-through” state of Wyoming, on a long stretch of a highway, deep at night. We were eight days deep into our […]

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