Destinations

When you live in your quiet corner in a massive, sprawling metropolitan area of Los Angeles, it’s easy to get comfortable in your own neighborhood with your favorite restaurants and stores in a 5-mile radius. To escape our corner, we then take transatlantic flights to explore the world. Everyone in a while, when we are on those vacations, jet lagged and bleary-eyed, exploring a boutique store or enjoying a culinary experience, we wonder, surely something…

I have wanted to visit Hong Kong, ever since I fell in love with its skyline on a postcard calendar someone gifted me in high school. I don’t know what it was about tall buildings on the waterfront with shimmering neon signs, but it spoke to me.And just before the pandemic hit the world, we finally made a trip to Hong Kong, a place one needs to experience to experience to even begin to understand.…

Continuing our Alaskan adventure from this post…Pippin Lake was half way mark on our trip. Next on was Wrangell-St. Elias National Park – highlight  being the glacier hike! Day 5: Glacier Walking At Wrangell St. Elias National Park There are several glaciers that you can hike in Alaska. Wrangell St. Elias National Park is neither the most touristy nor the most easily accessible. If I had to replan the whole trip, I will skip this part…

Somewhere in the middle of the 2021 pandemic, Alaska had tentatively started opening for travel. It was quite the ideal summer to travel to Alaska, flights were back on, national parks were open, and the cruise crowds had yet not made the return to the shores of the northern state. With our COVID shots and masks in place, we decided to venture out to Alaska. Our itinerary was ambitious, a 10-day saunter around the southern…

During the pandemic, literary guides seemed quite the rage or at least that’s what seemed to be the case in our local library. I discovered a few gems myself, notably Sarah Baxter’s Literary places. A beautifully illustrated book, where Baxter Sarah Baxter, a travel writer, compiles a list of famous books that are defined by the places they are set in. Baxter’s list touches upon both traditional yet global collection of classics, acting as literary…

  I have put this in its own section as you could spend an entire day exploring the street markets or just an evening. There is a lot of opportunity for shopping, eating, and photography. One could also spill out the market exploration over multiple days as something to unwind in the evenings.  For a three-day itinerary, I recommend covering the markets in one day or over two evenings. We made a walking tour of this and…

Read Matsuo Basho Create your own poetry. On this day of Spring! It’s April 17th, when we celebrate International Haiku Day worldwide because this form of ancient Japanese poetry is that awesome. If you are nerdy about poetry, then I expect your social feeds to be full of haiku memes, forwards, and jokes. On this day, haiku gets a lot of love in the world. So, What’s A Haiku? For those who are not familiar, haiku…