a travel blog
This is the second part of our highlights and recommendations for Paris. For more about our time in the wonderful French capital, please see part one. Day Five We started today by fueling up on cappuccinos at Matamata Coffee Bar. France doesn’t have a huge coffee culture, but since it’s a huge international city, hipster cafés with good roasts are slowly emerging. […]
This is the first part of our highlights and recommendations for Paris. For more about our time in the wonderful French capital, please see part two. We loved our time in Paris—it is definitely our favorite European city we visited, plus in the top five of cities from the entire trip. Why did we love it so? Beautiful streets lined with the classic […]
I ended up really enjoying our time in Hoi An—but not because of its famed and historic Old Quarter. Don’t get me wrong, the Old Quarter was beautiful. It’s full of traditional homes, assembly halls, and shophouses built around 300 years ago when Hoi An was a main trading port in the area. Most buildings are a deep yellow with […]
I was so excited to get to Hanoi because we were meeting up with our friends Margaret and Jessica! It was great to explore the lively Vietnamese capital with them—from simply catching up in local cafes to brainstorming Hanoi-related puns (e.g., bringin’ “ha-noise”) while taking in the sights and sounds the Old Quarter. The city’s Old Quarter is always on the […]
Bangkok: I had no idea what to expect coming here. While I was super excited about Thailand in general—the food, the beaches, the jungles, the mountains—I felt largely lukewarm about visiting the capital city. What I had heard included that Bangkok was extremely trafficky, loud, and overwhelming. Doesn’t exactly sound all that pleasant. But really, aren’t most big cities somewhat like […]
From Australia, we ventured to our first Asian city: Hong Kong. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the “Pearl of the Orient”—I had been there once before when I was 10, but only for one night, and dreary smog and intimidating buildings dominate my memories from that. Yet Hong Kong ended up being my favorite city of the trip so […]
While Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef were definite highlights of our time in Australia, really the best part was getting to spend time with Vikram’s extended family in Brisbane. Vikram has about 20 family members in Brisbane, including aunts and uncles, cousins, second cousins, and one grandniece. Because we wanted to prioritize time with family, we used Brisbane as […]
After 48 hours in transit, we officially ended the South America portion of our trip and arrived halfway across the world in Australia. We spent most of our time here in Brisbane, visiting with Vikram’s family (which will be covered in a future post), and we also visited Sydney for three days. Our first recommendation for Sydney is take more […]