What a treat it was to go back to Tokyo in April after having just been there in January. Alex went for work, so it was a bit of a last-minute trip that we hadn’t originally planned on. I invited myself along, and while he worked long hours every day, I had lots of time…
We were lucky enough to visit Tokyo not once but twice this year, and we were doubly lucky to catch the tail end of cherry blossom season on the second trip. Since it was a work trip for Alex and we weren’t able to book things until the last minute, we got very lucky (again)…
We’ve finally reached the final post of our Taiwan & Japan travels from this winter! Rewinding a bit from the Japan portion of our tour, we circle back to January first, in Taipei. After having watched the famous Taipei 101 fireworks the night before from our friends’ place out on the west side, we ventured…
Tokyo! After a whirlwind eight days visiting four other places in Japan, we finally reached its biggest city, Tokyo. We stayed for five nights in Ginza, a nice, relatively quiet commercial district filled with luxury brands and nice hotels and restaurants. Alex had made a reservation ahead of time, so after checking in to the…
From our lovely stay in Kyoto, we continued eastward, where we made the train-equivalent of an extended layover in Nagoya en route to Tokyo. My friend Julianne happens to be living in Nagoya for two years, so we took the opportunity to do a one-night stay to say hello and even do some laundry! Our…
Halfway through our Japan trip, we had such a lovely time in Kyoto. It’s quite the darling of Japanese cities, as we enjoyed plenty of its historical attractions, food, shopping, and even some nature. Anchoring it all was our stay at the Ace Hotel Kyoto. Something about this West Coast American (from Portland) property in…
From the quiet, meditative spaces of the art islands, we traveled straight into the center of the chaos when we took a shinkansen into Osaka. The trains were all nearly full, as it seems like everyone else was also going back to the big city after their New Year’s breaks. We spent only two nights…
I first heard of Japan’s art islands when my friends visited a couple years ago and declared it their favorite place in the entire world. The islands of Naoshima and Teshima are set in the Inland Sea, west of Osaka. They require at minimum a train and a ferry– half a day’s travel– to reach,…
We flew out on Christmas night, skipping over the 26th and arriving the morning of the 27th in Taipei. I hadn’t been to Taiwan since before the pandemic, and Alex hadn’t been in a decade. This would be our first Asia trip together! After dropping off our luggage at the hotel in Gongguan, we then…
So much to see and do in Mexico City! We’re continuing on with part two of our holiday trip to CDMX. Jumping right in with a walk around the neighborhoods of Condesa and Roma Norte. There’s apparently a small Japantown of sorts budding in Mexico City. We happened upon a Japanese grocery store, where we…
Mexico City is home to 22 million people and has also become quite the draw for tourists, food-lovers, and digital nomads. I had never visited, but Alex has been to Mexico City several times. We had grand plans of going together back in 2020, but of course that never happened– until now! We arrived in…
It’s the final leg of our honeymoon! Since it was November, we wanted to get a bit closer to the Equator in hopes of finding warmer weather. So we chose Gran Canaria to round out the vacation after Portugal. Gran Canaria is the second most populated Canary Island and thus part of Spain, although it’s…