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.
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.
May 28, 2017
Our last stop for this trip was Sapporo. Stephanie wasn't able to make the beginning of the trip so she missed the purple wisteria. Lucky for her, they were still in bloom in Sapporo so we went to visit the oldest wisteria tree in Hokkaido which was donated by its owner due to its significance.
May 26, 2017
Over the next few days we drove around the northern island of Hokkaido in search of shibazakura. The shibazakura may have been past full bloom in the Mt. Fuji area, but in Hokkaido they were at their peak! And the flower parks were absolutely incredible fields of pink and purple flowers. And of course, they had flower flavored soft serve.
May 23, 2017
Today we took the long train ride from Tokyo to Sapporo. After arriving in Sapporo we rented a car and made our way to the small city of Asahikawa. Over the next two days we drove around to check out the sites around nearby Biei and Furano. Unfortunately we were a little too early (by at least a month) for the lavender season and hillsides full of blooming multicolored flowers. Google Biei and you'll see what I'm talking about. We did, however, still get to catch some flowers in bloom and eat some flower flavored soft serve. Let's just say we took in some beautiful flowers and ate a lot. In fact, some of the best ramen we had on this trip was in Asahikawa.
May 22, 2017
From Tokyo, we took about a 2.5 hour train ride to check out the flowers at the Hitachi Seaside Park. When we first arrived, we were a little confused where we were since the entrance seemed kind of drab or like we were entering an airport base or something. Once we entered the park, we found a large amusement park that also had large spaces of grass to hang out and areas dedicated to different types of flowers.
May 20, 2017
From Kagoshima, we made our way to Nagoya for a day of eating and met up with Stef, Jonathan's cousin who lives in Hong Kong. No trip to Japan is complete without her! :) We stopped in Tokyo for a couple days and took some day trips to different flower parks to see what we could find.
We took a train to the Fujii Five Lakes area and took an hour bus from Kawaguchiko to check out the Fuji Shibazakura Festival. Shibazakura is a flower that covers the ground like a lawn and the flower's petals look like that of sakura or cherry blossoms. It didn't hurt to have Mount Fuji in the background. :)
May 17, 2017
Beppu is most famously known for being the home to over 2,000 onsens. Sadly, because I was already pregnant by this time, I couldn't partake in any of the activities, which included mud and sand baths and a visit to the hot springs. So bummed!
Instead, we took a day trip to Oita, visited a museum, and did a little more people watching outside the train station. Can't help but fall in love with all the little kids in their cute school uniforms! :)
May 15 - May 17, 2017
Since we were in the south of Japan, we decided to hop around to different cities, try the local fare and explore a bit since we didn't know when we would be back again.
Our Airbnb host picked us up from the station and took us to a restaurant in Chinatown with what he considered to be the best champon. Champon is a Chinese style of ramen, where the noodles are cooked with the broth then topped with various vegetables and meat. Unlike Japanese ramen, where the broth and noodles are cooked separately and only put together when served.
November 13 - November 15, 2017
We took a two hour train ride from Fukuoka to Arita, a small town known for its porcelain and ceramics. We heard about Koraku Kiln the last time we were in Japan, which was founded in 1865 and has been producing ceramics for the past 150 years. Over time, they've accumulated overstock and have been housing product in warehouses over the years. Just recently they started hosting a "treasure hunt" where visitors can pay 5000 yen to 10000 yen and can spend 90 minutes digging through the different crates and whatever you can fit in your basket is yours to take home.
