2026 FIFA World Cup: Hogwarts vs. Narnia
Those who follow this blog know I am a big soccer fan and try to attend games in every country I visit. This fact is even listed in my section of “About Us” on this website. So, it won’t surprise anyone that attending the World Cup this summer was on […]
Travels with My Mother: Uzbekistan Episode
During the pandemic, our favorite show on Netflix was Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father. In this series (filmed in pre-COVID times), the British comedian Jack Whitehall travels the world with his elderly, curmudgeonly father, Michael, who detests travel and the exotic destinations Jack takes him to. The show is […]
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 […]
Normandy, France or How We Spent Nearly $4,000 in Four Days
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)
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 […]
The Trip That Started It All
This is probably going to be the oldest story published on this blog, back from March 2004, before we had our backpacks and cats. Victor has been in the US for less than a year and was itching to discover more of America than just the Chicagoland area. He was […]
A Traveler’s Dilemma: The Human Zoo
In December 2013, while traveling through northern Thailand, we had the option of visiting a hill tribe village. In Chiang Mai, nearly every tourist agency advertised these tours with photos of smiling indigenous women with unnaturally long necks wrapped in brass rings. Initially, the trip looked tempting, and we even […]
Egypt: Camping in the Desert Mustafa-Style
Our Egypt desert adventures start here. As the sun was setting over the White Desert, our Jeep headed towards the overnight camping spot. With no large dunes or stones to block our view of sunset or sunrise, our guide and driver found a spot in a large flat valley, white […]
Egypt: Black Desert, White Desert, Best Desert
We’ve never had a bad trip. We’ve had a lot of mishaps and quite frankly several shitshows, but we never have been to a country we didn’t like. And now, looking back at dozens of excellent trips we’ve taken around the world, I can tell you with complete honesty and […]