People from New York might object, but my vote for America’s coolest city goes to New Orleans. It was my first time visiting, and it was only for four days, but I loved everything I saw, heard, ate, and felt while I was walking around doing stuff. The city doesn’t feel like the rest of the United States, which is a bonus—it feels like an alternative reality, a post-apocalyptic jambalaya with a French twist, in my opinion, even better than France. Now every city, especially New Orleans, has problems. But I’m going to completely ignore them here because I was a tourist and it is completely within my right to just enjoy the things I like about a place I visit and leave the rest to an NPR think piece (‘did Katrina really end?’). The little donut beignets are delightful. The chicory coffee was likewise cute (even though I couldn’t tell a difference compared to normal coffee; maybe it’s just my broken sense of taste). Cajun and Creole food — so special. There is a difference between Cajun and Creole, and I already forgot what it is — let me see if I can save you a Google search while […]
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My Brazilian friend, Valquiria, was going to speak at a conference in Austin, Texas in early November and it would be her first time in the United States so I wanted to be there to welcome her as an ambassador to the USA like she has been an ambassador to me for Brazil. I have never been to Austin before but living in Denver as an adult I met a lot of people who either love Austin, previously lived there or were hoping to return again. The city gets a huge amount of hype within the USA owing to a vibrant music, party and food scene. What once was kind of an edgy, unique and cool alternative city has blown up in the past twenty years to become a mainstream tech hub. During the pandemic people from both coasts moved to Texas to work remotely and save on paying federal income taxes and in the process engineered a sort of cultural revitalization or at least transitioning, at least from my perspective as an outsider who just heard lots of people telling me their opinions about Austin. My post-college roommate Nick back in Allston, Massachusetts and his girlfriend both went to […]
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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, 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 Chamonix, France. The trains to Gstaad and Chamonix were 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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After finishing the European bike trip through Austria, Italy and Slovenia, we all took a shuttle van to Venice Italy where we spent three days and two nights exploring fun and interesting things around town. I have only been to Venice once before, when I was fifteen years old, on a school trip and this time around I got a better sense of what Venice is really like thanks to Costanza who patiently explained, guided and accommodated me across the various islands. She made an appointment for us to visit the island of Murano, where famous glass art is crafted, to have a business meeting to investigate sourcing materials to her Los Angeles design company. She let me tag along and accompany her as I stood wide eyed with my hands in my pocket making a concerted effort not to break anything. Murano glass is apparently world famous — they produce chandeliers for retail locations of major Italian fashion designers and prices there I saw were over $50,000. One of the head salesmen of the company greeted us when we landed on the island from the free boat he was kind enough to send for us (well really for Costanza). […]
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When someone invites me to do something somewhere in the world, my default is yes. Well I’ve had to re-evaluate that position since meeting Costanza – a woman whose sense of adventure and desire to travel and explore new places vastly outshines my own. She was doing a bike trip through Europe (Austria, Italy and Slovenia) for 7 days that her friend had organized and invited me to join alongside five others. So I reorganized my itinerary (sorry Vancouver, some other time). A cool thing about the bike trip was since I was in the central European time zone (which was about 7 hours behind in the USA timezone I work within) I didn’t have to take any time off work. Each morning we started biking with an early start to avoid midday European summer head and then arrived at the next destination in the afternoon which allotted plenty of time to attend my remote work meetings and grind on client work. The best part though was that the project I was currently working on during the trip got canceled half way through it, so I didn’t end up working at all during the entire six days, which was great. […]
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