Voyage Junkie

Several years ago we had the opportunity to take some good friends of ours, Bo and Liz, to Japan. I'm going to focus on the new things we did and then link to previous blog posts for reference to the things we repeated from our time living in Japan. The trip started out awesome and then kind of fell into a bad place for me and Matt, unfortunately. I chalk it up to our inability to tell Bo and Liz when we wanted to do something different from what they wanted to do, and Matt's desire to be a good guide in the country as he was the only fluent Japanese speaker. He felt a lot of responsibility and then got really tired and very stressed out, which in turn made me very stressed out. I say this not as a rebuke of our friends, who had no way to know how we were feeling since we didn't communicate, but as a gentle suggestion to anyone who travels with friends. Say how you feel and don't be passive aggressive about it. Own up to your limitations and ask for what you need. Your ...

The final day trip we took was to Nuremberg. It was a pretty quick trip from Munich, and it was good we'd saved it for last, as we had tired ourselves out with the long trips to Berlin and Heidelberg. Nuremberg is a smaller, solid city. It's downright normal and charming, while also being very much a city. It's like Cincinnati in that way. We spent a leisurely day walking the cobbled streets, checking out the famous market space, wandering the castle grounds, and of course eating lunch at a delightful restaurant. This is a view of the city skyline from a garden at the castle. We didn't spend a lot of time in the castle because much of it is rented out much like Burghausen . Also to go deeply into the castle requires money, and we spent this trip more in search of free experiences. Below, the top image shows the outdoor market, and the bottom image shows some of the architecture over a canal downtown. Matt was really excited to get this photo of Albrecht Dur...

Oh, Berlin. This is a city for artistic souls if ever there was one. Matt and I spent a lot of time trying to work out a way to do a successful day trip here, which was incredibly ambitious of us as Berlin is quite far from Munich. We had just watched Babylon Berlin  on Netflix and were determined to make it work. Before our trip we researched the heck out of the German Rail Pass , a rail pass for non-European travelers. We decided to get a 4-day pass that we could use any 4 days of one month, on all DB lines. We used this for the first time on our trip to Berlin, and the cost of that train just about covered the cost of the pass for us both! We visited Berlin on the 4th of July, 2018. Since 2017 we've made it a priority to be out of DC on the 4th and it's lovely. The history of Berlin shines through its recovery, and they seat it center stage. It felt a lot like visiting Hiroshima, another city who wears its tragic past visibly as a warning to the future. The hope, vibrancy,...

Last summer, in July 2018, we went for a lovely week in Iceland. Much has happened between now and then which has precluded my writing about it until now. However, Iceland and all that we experienced is still there, and I feel confident that recommendations I give from that time will still be valid. Strap in and enjoy the beauty! Iceland is one of those mystical places. It has breathtaking beauty and people who are actually happy and take care of each other for the most part. Visiting there, I felt very welcome, even as I felt the keen cultural and linguistic differences. It's a place I could return to again and again, and always find something new. We started our adventure in Reykjavik, as I believe is most common. The international airport is very easy to get around and it's also accessible to the city by bus if needed. We rented a car from Blue Car Rental  after a lot of research, and I recommend this company fully. It was a great experience from start to finish, and the...

Matt and I came back from a quick trip to Montreal yesterday, and I wanted to jot down our trip for anyone who needs recommendations in the future! We discovered the Passeport Montreal , which is a 2 or 3 day pass card for the city. It covers tons of interesting sites, museums, and activities, all while providing a transit pass valid on all metro and bus lines. We have a history of loving city passes (see our Osaka trip from 2011 for example), and jumped at the chance to experience the city this way. We were able to easily purchase the pass from an infotouriste center at Peel, and immediately began using it. We chose to visit the following sites: Jardin Botanique These are a series of outside gardens and indoor greenhouses. We took a whole morning and explored the grounds, and could have done much more. The photo above is from the Japanese gardens, as we sat at a viewing pavilion. The gardens are easy to get to from the green metro line, and just a wonderful place to be. MAC...

I had a love-and-friend-filled birthday this year!  I got flowers from a student whose father runs a flower shop, four of us with the same birthday exchanged gifts, and I went out to sing karaoke and eat delicious rice flour crepes!  I ate a green tea cheesecake crepe (amazing).  Below, the karaoke group picture.      L-R: of course us, Sachiko and Io-chan, Shio, Atsushi, and Kiri. My birthday present to myself?  A rice cooker cake!  Skeptics: yes, that's it, in the rice cooker just post.  Recipe: 200 grams gluten-free hotcake mix, 1 egg, 1/2 cup maple syrup, 1/2 cup canola oil, 1/2-1 cup plain yogurt.  I added 3 mashed bananas, 1 small package dark chocolate chips, and unsweetened dried coconut (topping).  You simply mix it all together, drop it in a slightly oiled rice cooker, and start the cycle!  My cooker has a cake setting on it, which runs for 45 minutes (in the winter it takes 2 cycles).  If you don't ha...

Since we were staying in Kobe, we ordered some cake from an allergy-friendly specialty shop in Akashi, a few train stops from the city.  We should have been able to hop off the train, find the store, and see the castle ruins in under 2 hours.  But Google couldn't tell where the address was, and every time we checked someone's iPhone it placed the store in a different place.  This lead us on a 2.5-3 hour hike, until a nice lady finally told us the map was wrong and the district we were looking for was... by the station.  How no one else we asked knew this, I don't know.  We luckily ran into a Max Value grocery store, where the baker picked us up and drove us back to the station.  On the way, she showed us where her store was - sure enough, it was around the corner from the station, beside the park - exactly the opposite way from where the maps sent us.  Oh well, we got the cake and it was delicious: mango raspberry, zebra, mont blanc, and strawberry ...

Our third day in Kobe took us to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art located near the waterfront in the HAT district.  It was an interesting building designed by architect Ando Tadao , who we later discovered also designed Gifu's convention center.  He had no formal architectural training, although he traveled and took in famous buildings.  His style is sleek and spacious, and his designs often take the environment into account rather than making the environment bend to the design.  He uses natural light to a great extent, as with a church he designed, where the cross is made from cutouts in the building's wall so sunlight shines through.  This museum didn't work so much with light, but the design played impeccably between lines and circles . The permanent collection was probably the best laid-out of any museum I've seen.  The first floor began with self-portraits, showcasing primarily Japanese artists with a few Westerners thrown in.  This slowly t...