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…
This was a sweet session for Ailan and her family, walking around Lake Chabot in the East Bay. Her two sons were home from college for the holidays, and their energetic new puppy was ready to steal the show. Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. View her work at…
As a bit of an epilogue to our stay in New Mexico, we booked just one night at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort And Spa before flying out of Albuquerque the next day. It was a beautiful resort, and an incredible use of our Hyatt free night certificate. View our brief but beautiful stay below,…
Taos with my spouse! After a beautiful drive from Santa Fe, we arrived at our home for the week, an airbnb not far from town. Our first dinner was wonderful, at The Love Apple. We got to visit Taos Pueblo, which is the oldest continuously inhabited community in the US. We were given a lovely…
There are two main routes connecting Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico: The Low Road and the High Road, each named for its respective elevation. The Low Road follows the Rio Grande, while the High Road weaves through the mountains. If you’re making a round trip between the two cities, almost everyone recommended driving the…
Unless you’re an avid skiier or from the state, you probably don’t think of New Mexico as an attraction for winter sports. But it is! Located at the southern end of the American Rockies, Santa Fe is almost 2000 feet higher in elevation than Denver. This February, we decided to visit New Mexico for a…