September 27, 2017
Today was a looooong drive from Fes to the Sahara just outside of the city of Merzouga. A friend of a friend runs the Sahara Garden. Brahim coordinated everything for us and welcomed us upon our arrival with open arms. Truly an amazing human being. We were welcomed with dinner and singing and dancing around a bonfire.
September 24, 2017
Our second stop in Morocco was the blue city of Chefchaoen. A small city located up on a hill, wandering thru the medina surrounded by so many shades of blue was quite a different experience from Tangier. We stayed at Casa Perleta, a small bed and breakfast recommended by our friend. It was perfectly located within the upper hill area of the medina. The blue hues of the walls of Chefchaoen are believed to have originated when the Jews came while escaping Hilter in the 1930s. The blue is said to serve as a reminder to lead a spiritual life while symbolizing the sky and heaven.
September 11 - 15, 2017
Enroute to our close friends' wedding in Greece we found a cheap flight to Paris via Reykjavik, Iceland and decided to take advantage and do a little stopover in an effort to (fingers crossed) see the northern lights. We decided to restrict our few days to just the southern highlights along the coast. The first thing we noticed was that even though it was supposedly shoulder/low season in Iceland there were significantly more people than when we came the year before in August.
November 21 - 25, 2019
In between Osaka and Tokyo we stopped for a few days in Nagoya, another city we love for food. Sorry, not a lot of interesting photos from this time around in Nagoya. Cody really enjoyed the Nagoya Science Museum, which is totally worth a stop with a kid. Its very interactive and he had a ton of fun.
November 14 - 18, 2019
To spice things up, we decided to fly into Osaka and take the train back to Tokyo. We also like Osaka and our friend Shin and his wife live there too. Lucky for us Shin was available to hang out all day and night on that Saturday. We headed to Banpaku, the Expo ‘70 Commemorative Park outside of Osaka. We posed for the standard photos in front of the famous Tower of the Sun and stopped by some playgrounds for Cody to cruise down some slides. To our surprise there was also a festival going on, the Lohas Festa, which features locally made food and products and also had live music and advocates for reducing waste and taking care of the environment.
Cody really enjoyed the hula dancing and the ice cream.
Afterwards Cody got tired on the train ride back and we feasted on sushi with Shin.
The following day, we headed to the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan. This was an awesome aquarium although as scuba divers it was a little saddening to see all the sea life in tanks. Not much different than seeing animals locked up in a zoo I guess.
November 15, 2019
We decided to make Osaka our base and do a day trip to Kyoto with two things on our agenda, to see some Fall Colors at a temple and to visit the Chionji Tezukuri Market, which happens once a month on the 15th of the month at the Chionji Temple. Its a local craft market that features locally made products. We scored some small pin badges that were locally made that we turned into magnets, sorry don’t have a photo of them, you’ll just have to come to our house to see them on our fridge.
November 5 - 7 and 12 - 14, 2019
We did two stopovers in HK to reduce the layover periods in airports for Cody. We also had this trip planned before the protests started happening. We had heard thru friends of friends that it was still safe but to stay away from where the protests were going on (obviously). Both times it was quieter than normal but we didn’t encounter any actual protesting. Our first time thru we took Cody to a park and mainly just ate awesome food (the main reason we love HK). We also only had one full day each pass thru HK.
October 30 and November 4, 2019
So as I mentioned before, we ended up going to Disneyland twice. The first time was for Halloween, so naturally had to figure out a costume for Cody since only Disney related costumes are allowed. Our first lead was a Chewbacca onesie from the Gap that also happened to be on sale! Sadly, it wasn’t in stock in his size in any of the stores (I think we went to 6 or 7 stores … ). After hunting all over for some sort of DIY situation and trolling around Don Quijote (Donki) stores and not finding any children’s costumes, we decided to take a last chance at the Donki store in Shibuya since that’s where Halloween really goes off in Tokyo. We got super lucky and found a children’s Pluto costume that’s actually pretty legit!
October 24 - November 5, 2019
Allie’s college friend, who lives in Thailand, was married in November of 2019 in Phuket. We definitely wanted to attend, but since there’s no direct flight from SFO to HKT (Phuket) we decided to design a trip trying to minimize layovers and lengthy flight legs for Cody’s sake and our own sanity. Knowing that the multi-leg trip from SFO -> TYO -> HKG -> SFO had been a deal in the past combined with the fact that HK was one of the cities there were direct flights to Phuket we started looking at potential itineraries.
April 17, 2019
On the way down to LA for a friend’s wedding and to visit family, we decided to take the van for a spin and head down the coast instead of down the 5. On the way down we stopped thru Carrizo Plain National Monument since it was the tail end of another super bloom. Anyways, enjoy some photos!
October 15 - 18, 2018
We love meeting up with people in Japan, so on this trip the last leg of our trip we met up with Jonathan’s brother, sister in law and niece in Nagoya. We love Nagoya because of the food, but this time we got to go LEGO Land because we have kids now! None of us had ever been to a LEGO Land before so it was a cool experience for all of us. Also, we had never been to a Japanese amusement park before either. Our overall experience was great. It was easy to access, it was very affordable, it wasn’t crowded and the kids had a great time.
October 10 - 15, 2018
Our first stop thru Tokyo on this trip we were lucky enough to meet up with Cody’s oldest friend Akari and her parents Naomi and Jordan who happened to overlap with us for a few days. We got to check out TeamLab Borderless and also do a block printing class which were both awesome.
October 8 - 10, 2018
We’re missing a few days here, but we did go to Fukuoka October 2 - 6 and then stopped thru Hiroshima October 6 - 8, but we didn't take many photos so there are no posts for those places. Fukuoka had great food and shopping and Hiroshima was a great historical city to visit. Leaving Fukuoka we actually got stuck for 5-6 hours in the train station because all trains were stopped due to the typhoon. We were basically standing in the only train that would leave to go north with tons of other people also waiting for the train to leave.
After Hiroshima we headed to Takayama the the annual Autumn Festival. Arriving later in the evening the city was super quiet and seemed like it was dead. We checked into the hostel we were staying at and found this tiny curry place called Jakson Curry nearby. It was so good we ate there twice.
September 29 - October 2, 2018
We stopped thru Osaka enroute to Fukuoka and managed to hit it right when a typhoon was coming thru. Anyways, as always, we had great food in Osaka, saw some flowers before the storm came thru and also managed to catch a SoftBank Hawks game on the fly which was a cool experience. Much more organized than any American baseball games.
August 20 - 29, 2018
Trying to squeeze a road trip in the new van in, we drove to LA for our close friend’s baby shower and then headed out of town to Bryce. Spending a few nights in Bryce, we then headed north toward Canyonlands and Arches with a quick stop thru Goblin Valley. All places we’ve been to before, but Jonathan wanted to test out the new van and give Cody his first vanlife experience. As usual, all the stops didn’t disappoint. On the drive back home, we stopped at Bonneville Salt Flats again too. Not much to say posting these pics a year and a half later. Enjoy!
June 18 - 20, 2018
After getting our VW van finished, we took a maiden trip to Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite to test it out. With Tuolumne Meadows opening early, we were easily able to get a campsite.
Previously, our friend Wallace and I had done an two night backpacking trip to Young Lakes so I decided to bring Allie and Cody on a day hike to an open meadow high in the backcountry that had incredible views. This definitely was not a short easy hike with a baby, but was well worth the effort.
April 6 - 10, 2018
Next, we flew back to Japan. We were lucky enough to overlap our time in Tokyo with some of our close friends from LA, Lindsey and Clement. Jonathan’s parents volunteered to take care of Cody for one night while we went out with our friends for dinner and drinks. A great break fro parenthood for one night.
Cody wasn’t on solid foods yet, but that didn’t stop us from tempting him with some good eats in Tokyo.
March 31, 2018
From Osaka, we flew to Taipei for a short visit focused only on food. We decided to skip all the sights and just eat our way around Taipei. Immediately after arriving and checking in at our AirBNB we headed out to the night food markets for some snacks. Sorry, we didn’t take many photos in Taipei because we were too focused on eating. Here are a couple shots that we did take.
March 25, 2018
With the cherry blossoms in bloom, we went in search of hanami to enjoy some chill time underneath the sakura. We took the train for the day to Nara. We had not been before, but Nara is known for the local friendly deer that visitors love to feed and take photos with. We found that most of the deer were pretty dirty in appearance and we chose to distance ourselves, quite the opposite from the other tourists. We were lucky enough to find an area with blooming sakura where we had a small picnic and took a break.
March 22, 2018
We joined the rest of our group by flying into Osaka. They had already been in Tokyo for a few days prior to our arrival. After a delayed flight and arriving at the AirBNB very late, we woke up early the following morning in an effort to claim tickets for a sumo match at the Edion Arena in Osaka. There are always a certain number of tickets available first come first served for these sumo matches so we arrived early and waited patiently in line and luckily were admitted. After purchasing our tickets we went to have breakfast and bought some food to take into the arena with us. This was our first time watching an actual sumo tournament inside of an arena. Previously, we had seen a ceremonial tournament in Tokyo, but seeing it in an arena was a different experience that I would say is definitely worthwhile if you get the chance. I think its easy to think of sumo wrestlers as just big fat men, but in reality their agility, strength and flexibility is extremely impressive.
August 21 - 23, 2017
This weekend was the perfect alignment of a new moon at night, perfect for taking photos of the night sky and also the solar eclipse. Young Lakes is the one set of lakes you can hike to from Tuolumne Meadows that Wallace had not hiked to, so we opted for a new location with the goal of doing two nights at upper Young Lake and to do a day hike to Mount Conness. Unfortunately, Young Lakes is higher than 10,000 feet in elevation, so no campfires are allowed, making for a cold few nights. Below are some of the highlights from our first day/night.
