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🇦🇷 Buenos Aires: A Cemetery, Shopping and ¿Dónde Está la Biblioteca?
After an unexpected 10-hour delay in Houston due to “operational issues” (which is airline code for we don’t have our shit together), we made it to Buenos Aires. The flight to Argentina is long, but there is one enormous advantage to flying almost directly south: no real jet lag. Buenos Aires is only an hour off…
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📸 Meanwhile: Behind the Camera
Just a quick photography note from behind the camera . . . I’ve updated my photography portfolio with new photo essays from Japan, South Korea, and Shanghai. I’ve also added new images to my ongoing projects — Street Photography and Street Art & Graffiti — and started documenting my apparently inevitable descent into photographing manhole covers. I’m not entirely…
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🇯🇵 What to Drink in Japan: A Sip-by-Sip Guide to Japanese Drinks Culture
If you want to understand a country, don’t just visit its museums. Go stand in the drinks aisle of the nearest grocery store. Watch what everyone else is drinking. Order something you’ve never heard of. I’ve spent more than twenty years studying wine and spirits, and whenever we travel, I am obsessed with what I…
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📸 The Great Travel Camera Debate
Here is the situation I find myself in every single time we travel: I own a Nikon D800, a Leica Q3, a Sony RX-10, and an iPhone 17 Pro Max. That is, objectively, too many cameras. And yet somehow, packing for a trip always involves the same impossible calculus: which one(s) comes with me, and…
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🇷🇴 Bucharest: A Herd Free Last Day
I booked an extra day in Bucharest, so we’ve broken free of the herd – on our own today! Switching Hotels We’re switching hotels this morning. Not sure when/if I’ll be in Bucharest again, and I wanted to stay at the famous spy hotel, the Intercontinental Athénée. During much of WWII, Romania remained unoccupied and diplomatically…
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🇧🇬 Ruse: The Little Vienna (?) of Bulgaria
Good morning from Ruse, Bulgaria – about 75 kilometers south of Bucharest, Romania. Viking had the herd buses lined up and ready this morning. One was going to a monastery made out of rocks. Maybe interesting, but also a 2 hour bus ride. Pass. The other bus was a shuttle into town. Kind of a…
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🇧🇬 Vidin, Bulgaria: Tracksuits, Roses, and an Underground Communist Toilet
Good morning from Vidin, in the extreme northwestern part of Bulgaria, on the border with Romania. What to say about Vidin? If someone were to design a travel brochure for Bulgaria, Vidin isn’t going to make the cover. Hell, I’m not sure Vidin would make page six. Vidin is one of Bulgaria’s oldest cities –…
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🇷🇸 Belgrade: Three Weddings and a lot of Gray
We are docked in Belgrade, Serbia today. And we can walk into town from the port – no herd bus. Huzzah! If nothing else, I’ve learned a lot more about Eastern European / Balkan geography on this trip. Belgrade is located at the meeting point of the Danube and Sava Rivers. The Danube connects Belgrade…
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📸 🇭🇷 Photo Essay: Croatia
My Croatia photos are almost exclusively from our Danube River cruse visit to Osijek and Vukovar. I do have a few shots of Dubrovnik from a visit in 2022, but most of my photos from our day in Dubrovnik are not of the town, but of my daughter and her friend (we were there on…
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🇭🇷 Osijek & Vukovar: Homemade Brandy and the Scars of War
Good morning, Croatia. Woke up to more fog, but prettier fog. Celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary today. I got Ken a very special anniversary gift this morning – Diet Coke for breakfast. We are docked in eastern Croatia along the Serbian border, in the town of Vukovar, which saw intense combat during the Croatian War…
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📸 🇭🇺 Photo Essay: Budapest & Hungary
We spent four days in Budapest in advance of our Danube River Cruise. And as much as the photographer in me wants to be using my Leica or my Nikon, you cannot beat the iPhone camera for convenience. It has become my go-to travel camera – it fits in my pocket (or purse), weighs next…
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🇹🇷 🇭🇺 Istanbul to Budapest: A Security Surprise, Bullet Holes & Wine Tasting
Phone. Wallet. Passport. On the move today. New experience unlocked: in Istanbul, you have to go through a full security check just to enter the airport. They aren’t messing around. But they are also not especially organized. A massive crowd, and total confusion about which line you’re supposed to be standing in. Good times. So, heads up…