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🇦🇷 On the Move: Buenos Aires → Entre Ríos
We’re on the move today — leaving Buenos Aires and heading north to the province of Entre Ríos. We will be staying at an estancia (essentially a ranch) for the next few days. The guys will be hunting, and the ladies will be not-hunting. Last Minute Shopping in Buenos Aires Our flight didn’t take off…
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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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📚 Destination Bookshelf: What to Read Before Your Trip to Argentina
Some people plan trips with guidebooks. I plan mine with slightly obsessive reading lists. Argentina is not an easy country to understand from the outside. Its history is layered. Its politics are emotionally charged. And its cultural identity feels distinct even within Latin America. This is a country shaped by Spanish colonialism and enormous waves…
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🍶 Understanding Sake: The Drink That Explains Japan
Sake has been part of Japanese life for more than 2,000 years, which makes determining exactly who invented it a little like identifying the first person who looked at grapes and thought, I wonder what happens if I leave these unsupervised in a bucket. What began with rice, water and fermentation became something much bigger than…
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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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🇯🇵 Yokohama Frühlingsfest: A German Walks into a Biergarten in Japan
Lots of folks are disembarking the ship in a hurry and heading straight to the airport for flights home. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life, so we have an extra day in Yokohama. The taxi situation at the cruise port in Tokyo was so efficient. Truly impressive. And then our taxi…
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🛳️ One Last Day at Sea: How to Spend Your Regent Bucks
We are at sea again – our last at sea day – steaming back toward Tokyo. We got a drum send-off in Kagoshima yesterday. It was very enthusiastic. 🥁 We need to get our lives together today and jenga all of our purchases into our suitcases. I always pack an empty duffel bag in case…
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🌋 Mt. Sakurajima: Between Eruptions
We are docked in Kagoshima today – the southernmost tip of the Japanese archipelago. Extremely windy today, but the sun is out – a good laundry hanging forecast. Kagoshima is home to Japan’s most active volcano, Mt. Sakurajima. Her last major eruption was only about three weeks ago. Dammit. I would have loved to photograph…
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🌊 The Ocean: I Am the Captain Now
We’re crossing the East China Sea today on our way back to Japan. Mother Nature apparently decided we’d had enough pleasant cruising and cranked the ocean up to: washing machine. Gale-force winds, steadily building seas, and absolutely zero chance anyone was reading by the pool under a cozy blanket today. The ship’s library, on the…
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🇨🇳 A Food Tour of Shanghai: A Whole Universe of Bao and Some Chicken Feet
It’s pouring rain in Shanghai today, so the city is a sea of wet umbrellas. ☔️ This morning’s agenda: a walking food tour of Shanghai. Ken was worried we were going to be eating chicken feet. He wasn’t completely wrong. I believe you can learn almost everything about a place by looking at what people…
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🇨🇳 Shanghai: Jade, Tea, and a Whole Lot of Capitalism
As an American, I almost didn’t want to be impressed with Shanghai, but dammit, this is an impressive place. I booked a guide for us so we could maximize our time here. Because I don’t want to spend time figuring stuff out. I want to get straight to the stuff. Our guide, Sunny, took us…
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🛳️ At Sea: En Route to Shanghai, China
At sea days on board the ship are quickly becoming days I look forward to. It’s a nice change of pace – a chance to sleep in, read a book, and just take the day as it comes. I’ve discovered one of the restaurants on board has Swedish pancakes and lingonberries for breakfast. This is…