Just over a year ago we were sitting on the summit of Gunung Sinabung – a docile, extinct volcano in northern Sumatra. It took us three hours to climb from base to summit – not the hardest volcano we’ve climbed, but well worth the work. Shrouded in mist we celebrated summiting with a photo [...]
If you’d seen me just one minute ago, you would have caught me in a rather telling position. With one hand covering my eyes and one on my keyboard, I was scrolling through our website, peeking through my fingers at our recent posts. How many days have passed since I’ve last made an appearance? My [...]
Once upon a time my Dad raced airplanes. Yes, you read the right. There is such things as racing airplanes. For those of you who haven’t been to a race, it’s sort of like NASCAR – a fast race ran around a track. But that’s where the similarities end. The machines racing are airplanes, so [...]
The ladies are burned to a bronzed crisp. The men’s hairdos are greased into stiff perfection. The sun is shining and tanned skin is as abundant as bad taste. This is the Jersey Shore, a surreal strip of boardwalk that has been featured in a number of popular reality television shows recently. We were in [...]
Shakira was Bacon’s obsession. We used to catch him dancing wildly to her songs, singing along in his little soprano. Maybe it was her goat-like voice that did it for him? Something familiar and barnyard about it? Either way, she was his gal. That is, until we returned to the States a few weeks [...]
My sister hated to go to school. She could come up with a million and one excuses why she shouldn’t go. Her throat tickled. She hadn’t slept well. Her stomach hurt. There were bumps in her socks (that was one of her favorites). Just over a week ago, in New York’s Madison Square Garden, [...]
Istanbul is not cheap. It’s a bustling metropolis of European caliber price points. But it’s also one of the coolest cities we’ve been to. So how did we handle our day there while managing to stay within our meager backpacking budget? A good pair of shoes, a little imagination and loads of sunscreen. Before letting [...]
Am I a totally new and improved person? No, not exactly. Do I feel different? Yeah, I do. The feeling is a special one: poignant yet incredibly hard to describe. For the last thirteen months we’ve been on the road: living out of our backpacks, finding our ‘happy-places’ on bus rides, bargaining our way into [...]
Traveling Americans have a habit of falling into a number of stereotypes. There’s the loud travelers, the cheap ones, the I’m-an-American-so-F-you crowd, and the people who refuse to eat anything that isn’t served at their local restaurant; the list goes on for longer than your attention span. While I may fall in to some of [...]
Batumi is being pimped out as the next “it” place on the Black Sea coast. Construction workers are furiously working to revamp this coastal town. It looks to us like they’re trying to turn the town into a Nice of the East. While I understand their desire to bring in more tourists, I can’t help [...]
I think it’s great when a town shows a bit of age. A few cracks here and a little rust there creates character. Knowing this, it’s no surprise that I’ve fallen in love with Batumi, the popular seaside town on the southern tip of Georgia. The air feels Mediterranean, the streets are wide, the [...]
I love food. It’s as simple as that. Catch me a few hours after a good meal and I’ll most likely be thinking about my next meal. It’s a habit that becomes heightened when traveling. Sure, it’s great to see pretty things, explore soaring mountains or wile away on an island beach. If I were [...]
Traveling as a couple has its ups and downs. For the most part it’s worked out incredibly well for Martin and I but only because we found a system that works for us. I call it Divide and Conquer. I ventured out into guest writing last week for Pam at Spunky Girl Monologues. My post [...]
We don’t make hotel reservations. Rather, I should say that we don’t usually make reservations. I think we’ve made maybe two in the last year of travel. That’s just our style. If a guesthouse doesn’t have a room available, the one next door probably will. We weren’t picky to begin with; we’re especially not picky [...]
Hasankeyf wasn’t on our itinerary a week ago. We were in the southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey to check out Urfa and Van Lake, before heading further north. As Martin explained here, we got a last minute tip from a family staying in our guesthouse. They told us that the town was a bit of [...]
You know the saying, “to fly by the seat of your pants?” Well, that's been our philosophy for most of our adult lives – before and after meeting, falling in love and marrying. We're now taking that idea on an extended round-the-world trip. Follow us as we share the good, the bad and the downright nasty of life on the road.
