I spent a week in Budapest to follow up on last year’s first visit. This time around, I had enough time to walk around the city and explore more. I stayed in the city center, an area crawling with ex-pats, digital nomads, and short-term vacationers. I wasn’t able to get as much of a local feel for how the city operates outside of these influences as I would have liked — my own fault. Next time I hope to spend more time, and outside of this vacationer bubble. I did manage to escape during a rainy weekend outside of the city to an Airbnb in the town of Pécs, which was the perfect weekend hideaway from the storm of cold, wind, and rain. Another highlight of Budapest this time around was my visit to a locally famous bodybuilding gym, which is apparently often frequented by Hollywood movie stars who spend time filming in Budapest. I didn’t see any, but there were a lot of pictures on the wall of them with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who seems to have some sort of association with the gym—there was a metal statue of a Terminator robot in the gym’s lobby. AS visiting local gyms […]
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When I was in Madrid this summer I had drinks with my friends, Adam and JP, who invited me to join them in on two islands in Greece for two weeks while we worked remotely. Of course I accepted – I hadn’t been to Greece since the 1990s, and never to an Greek island. We spent the first 5 days on the island of Kos, a small island, and then moved to Rodos, which was much larger. I had a lot of work to do while we were there, but so did the guys. We did a good job of balancing the work with exploration, beach time, the gym, drinks and conversation, and eating as much Greek food as we could. I thought both Kos and Rodos were really great. I was surprised at how delicious the food was — authentic, inexpensive and plentiful too. The three of us relished the local house wines, flavors and dishes at a local bistro whose father and son made their small homestyle operation seem effortless. We kept returning for the beef liver that didn’t taste like you always expect liver to taste — livery. Our local neighborhood didn’t have other tourists and it […]
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After visiting Prague last summer for my friends’ wedding and enjoying the city, I intended to return again to enjoy more Vietnamese food and a respite from the hot hustle and bustle of typical western European cities during the high-tourist summer. Just a week here this time in Prague passed too quickly. So I’ll return again, for more.
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I spent July and parts of August and September 2024 bouncing around Spain: Madrid x3, Valencia, Barcelona x2, Ibiza, León. Summer in Europe is exhausting! Madrid Valencia Alicante Barcelona Ibiza Leon
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I have heard it said that you either like Barcelona or Madrid, never both. Each city has its own charms, culture, personality, food and history but are uniquely distinct — so distinct that if you like the style of either, it probably means you won’t be into the other. I have found this to be true of other country’s cities too; e.g., Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, Los Angeles and New York, USA, Munich and Berlin, Germany, Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia. Well I really like Madrid. Unfortunately, it’s so freaking expensive to find housing there that I can’t spend as much time as I’d like (months!). This year though I was able to find a week there before heading back to North America. I was again working too much, so my routine consisted of working from the hotel lobby where I was stationed in front of a big window where I watched passersby while pounding on my computer. The highlights of my trip were meeting with my friend Richard and his family who hosted me for a dinner in their house in the suburbs for a night. I met the family while I was living in the Maldives in 2020. Every […]
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I have wanted to explore the north of Spain for a few years, since it has been one of the many places that is still a blank slate to me. I was looking for a place that was off the beaten path a bit, not so touristy and famous and hopefully a little smaller. Well I when a friend recommended I consider Léon — I took a look and liked what I saw after doing some research on accommodations and my initial impressions of the town. It’s very historic with a lot of old buildings and monuments to famous knights that gives it a romantic quality. Ancient walls and this famous cathedral sit at the heart of its city center which is so small that it’s quite charming. Only 130,000 people live in Leon and I have no idea why it isn’t a larger city. It was founded in 74 AD by the Romans – making it nearly 2,000 years old. Since that time its culture and personality have changed through each of the time periods that succeeded. Even though the city is small and historic there is an artsy feel to it, a sort of creativity that you can […]
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My niece was spending a semester studying University in Barcelona, Spain and so of course I wanted to go visit her while she was there. I visited Barcelona just once before, in 2017, but just for a few days so I was excited to return again and hopefully see more and do more around that city that increasingly seems to be one of the most popular places to live in Spain, and Europe. Well unfortunately, my job didn’t accommodate my intentions as much as I had hoped. I ended up working from the hotel lobby for my entire duration in Barcelona; well most of it. I took a Thursday off since my niece had the day off from school, and I rented a car so that we could drive an hour and half east to check out the beaches around Girona, which were on her list of places to see. We collected beach glass from the sand which happened to be more fun than it had any right to be. But the most fun was spending a day with my niece, just the two of us. In the evening we met my friend, Silvia, for dinner in El Poblenou, the […]
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Budapest is one of those cities that has been in my travel queue for too long. Though I spend plenty of time in Europe each year, it was never convenient to squeeze it into my itinerary. I did finally manage to make a ten day reconnaissance trip to scout it out for the first time to see if it’s the type of place I could and should stay for longer. My friend Will, who also is location independent and works remotely, was in Budapest and had encouraged me to visit while he was there. Like I’ve said previously, I rarely turn down an invitation. I took the opportunity to see that I was finally fated to visit Budapest for the first time, and embraced it. Will recommended a gym to me to use while I was visiting that was a fifteen minute walk from my Airbnb apartment. My daily routine involved going there in the morning, stopping at the grocery store on the way home, and then working all day before falling asleep, or meeting Will for dinner (if it was the weekend). Unfortunately I was working a lot during my time visiting Budapest and wasn’t able to explore the […]
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I spent 8 days in Vevey, Switzerland which is an affluent town on the other side of the Lake from Geneva and about an hour away by train. During this time I also visited Gstaad (sort of like a Swiss Aspen), Geneva (but just for a day) and took a train to Chamonix, France. The trains to both Gstaad and Chamonix were both scenic trains with big windows and beautiful views.
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After Venice it was a quick few days bouncing around Florence and Tuscany. I had visited Florence once as a child, but this time I found Tuscan food some of my favorite. I also came to understand that Florentine people are very fashionable and interested in fashion! I did see the original statue of David previously (which is impressive of course) — there are other copies of it to which are neat as well. Continuing Tuscany adventures, next in line was Follonica, on the western coast of Tuscany, but just for four days while working. Still managed to do some exploring around the seaside towns and beaches in the area. This would be a great place to spend a summer.
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