Eat. Travel. Do cool stuff.
What a fun change of pace from our last locations! We had so many visitors in Porto that we could barely get anything done! We arrived knowing shockingly little about this town (just that I had really wanted to check out Portugal) and it was fun to get to explore it with friends.
Continue reading “Porto: Wine, Tiles and Soccer”
After quite a few months in Central America the move over to Europe brings some significant cultural differences. Before we just into specific read-outs on our destination, let’s just examine a few of the changes.
Continue reading “Europe vs Central America”
When I was growing up, I had only bad impressions of Mexico City—too big and too polluted. It’s funny that this city has unexpectedly been one of our favorites—already on repeat.
The city is overwhelmingly enormous, but if you break it down and just focus on the neighborhood you are in it quite manageable. We really only know the smallest, most privileged part of the city—Condesa and Roma Norte. While we explore far beyond these areas, the layers of the city are so thick that I won’t say that we properly know them.
Continue reading “Much love for Mexico City”
Our Oaxaca portion of our trip was both great and frustrating—in ways we never would have expected beforehand. It made for a super jam-packed month dealing with both these highs and lows.
Let’s start with the frustrating:
Continue reading “The Good & Bad in Oaxaca”
Lake Atitlan is an amazing scene of beauty. Some 84,000 years ago, a volcano erupted and the crater it left behind is now a 1,100 foot deep lake with steep volcanos and small towns scattered around the shores. Because there is no road around the lake, each town is connected mostly only by boat (lancha). This also uniquely means that there are multiple different languages spoken in these towns—3 Mayan languages, and most of the younger generation speaks Spanish as a common language to interact with tourists.
Continue reading “Amazing Lake Atitlan”
I didn’t know much about Guatemala before we arrived, and now that we are here it’s impossible for me to share how this city has captured my heart. But, I’ll try to share with you the things I love here in Antigua.
Continue reading “6 Reasons I love Antigua, Guatemala”
El Valle de Anton (El Valle) is a small town developed in the crater of an extinct volcano. While I can guess that this area was super fertile and that’s why it was chosen, I wonder who (back in the day) was willing to say “I’m sure this will never erupt again; let’s build our town here!”. Regardless of how they conned their fellow townspeople into settling there, the decision seems to have been a safe one thus far.
Continue reading “El Valle de Anton Roadtrip”
Old San Juan is a contrast of buildings, that somehow work perfectly together. It’s a walled city, with two massive fortresses dominating the coastline and the interior is a cozy city of pastel-colored buildings and blue cobblestone streets. Add in some thoughtful urban planning and you’ve got an amazing 500 year old city.
Continue reading “Old San Juan: 500 years of changes”
As everyone you meet will tell you “Puerto Rico is not San Juan”, so we decided to hit the road for a few day trips to see what’s out there.
Continue reading “Puerto Rico: Day Trips!”
After spending an amazing summer in the Colorado mountains, we are ready for a little international travel!
We’ve passed the summer doing as many sports as we can cram in—and even decided to learn rowing/sculling at Dillon Reservoir to mix things up. What I can say is any minimal time on the rowing machine at the gym did absolutely zero in preparing me for the real sport! You can’t just go get a cardio workout trying to go as hard as possible when you are worried about wobbling around in a very unstable boat and not wanting to swim in ice-cold waters. Fortunately, we took lessons with the Frisco Rowing Center where we learned how to stabilize the boats (oddly enough, it’s mostly to do with holding your hands at a certain height), how to position your hands and wrists (oddly challenging to get this right), and how to put together the pieces of the stroke/recovery (not at all what I was doing when I was on the gym rowing machine!).
Continue reading “Are we there yet?”