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…
Labor Day is a great time to visit New York City, especially if you like the city relatively quiet and empty! Alex and I were able to spend two whole weeks in New York thanks to the generosity of friends who let us stay in their place on the Upper West Side while they were…
Our good friends Do-Hee and Josh up and left the San Francisco city life in 2022 and moved to upstate New York to start a farm! This was our second year in a row visiting them at Vernon Street Farm. This time we flew in for a stay in Manhattan for the week before and…
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…
As the capital and largest city, Lisbon is generally lauded as the must-visit city of Portugal. But rather unexpectedly, we actually enjoyed Porto more. Of course this was very skewed for various reasons, not least of which is Alex got food poisoning and was sidelined for two days. Plus, we arrived in Lisbon on a…
The Douro Valley is one of the most beautiful wine regions in the world. We visit our California wine country (Napa, Sonoma) all the time, but we were told that it would be well worth the time and effort to take a day and drive from Porto to the Douro Valley, and that was absolutely…
Nearly one year after we were married, Alex and I finally went on our honeymoon! When it came to our honeymoon destination, we came up with a huge list of possibilities all over the world and eventually circled back to the first idea for a travel destination that we’d had even before the pandemic, Portugal. …
After a couple days in Manhattan, Alex and I met up with our friends and boarded a train from the brand new Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station. We headed northward for two hours and arrived at Hudson Station for the farm portion of our New York trip. Our good friends Do-Hee and Josh had …