Tag: Food

Phnom Penh: Happy to be Back in Southeast Asia

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I love Southeast Asia and when we landed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I couldn’t have been happier to be back. I first visited the area just under two years ago on a two-month backpacking trip by myself where Dan joined me for two weeks in Thailand – our first trip together. My love of SE Asia is hard to explain – it has something to do with hectic cities that are somehow calm and refreshing; the amazing mix of nature and ancient cultures with hints of westernization everywhere and of course, the people. Continue reading →

100 Days in Europe: From Iceland to Hungary

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It’s been less than two weeks since we left Europe for Asia, and yet it feels like a lifetime ago. That could possibly be because we’re in Varanasi, India which is a whole world different than Europe. Having had enough of the sensory overload from the city, we’re hiding in a café drinking coffee (made with filtered water) and reflecting on our 100 days in Europe. Continue reading →

Cappadocia: A Surreal Landscape

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Our first views of Cappadocia, a region in central Turkey, were from the window of our shuttle van which picked us up at the Kayseri airport and drove us roughly an hour to our hotel in Göreme. Although we had Googled the area and had an idea of what it would like, it was still pretty cool to see the mars-like landscape in person. When we arrived at our hotel the receptionist asked us if we had already signed up for the red, green or blue tour. Neither of us had a clue what he was talking about and excused ourselves to go Google it in our room. We clearly had done very little research of the area because the first thing that comes up is those tours and almost everyone (who doesn’t rent a car) does a tour. We are usually fairly anti-tour but this one was the only way possible to see everything in the region in a limited time – and I was really interested in learning more about how the landscape was formed. Continue reading →

Istanbul – Not what we Expected

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I was really getting used to flushing toilet paper, transit systems that were integrated with Google Maps, organized infrastructure, and pedestrian crosswalks that were respected. I was enjoying simply being left alone when I walked down the street. I was getting used to people who respected queues, waited their turn, didn’t push and shove or budge their way to the front. I started assuming that all food was safe to eat and drinking the tap water was OK. I loved getting on trains that left the second they were supposed to and travelled at speeds upwards of 300km/hr to get you to your destination in a timely manner. We’d been enjoying all these ‘privileges’ (without thinking of them as such) over the past four months of our trip, ever since we left Latin America. Don’t get me wrong; Europe was by no means perfect and there were some exceptions to the above, but they were just that: exceptions. By and large, Europe is very efficient and extremely Westernized.  Continue reading →

Budapest: My New Favourite European City

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Budapest has it all. Seriously, within a few hours of being there I had settled on the fact that it was my favourite city so far in Europe. And that’s not an easy feat, we’ve covered most of the ‘must-see’ European cities: Reykjavik, London, Brussels, Paris, Zurich, Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Athens, Munich, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, Prague, Vienna, and Bratislava. Yes, I admit we’ve missed a few, but you get the point. I thought Budapest would be cool, but I didn’t expect that much – and it blew my expectations away. The city just has so much to offer from modern vegan and raw food eateries to wine bars and hip cafes to a huge influx of craft beer and brewed-in-house bars to organic food markets and Christmas markets all mixed with traditional markets and delis selling Hungarian sausage and around the corner from a crumbling church hundreds of years old is a crumbling building turned into a Ruin Bar. I mean, every European city is a complex mix of hundreds (usually thousands) of years of history and modernization (which in many ways is synonymous to Westernization) but Budapest seemed to pull off the mix of new and old best. It has managed to keep it’s complex and lengthy history alive while showcasing how far the economy and people have come in the past decade. Continue reading →

Recharing and Relaxing in Prague

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After an activity-packed 11 days in Poland, we were exhausted when we arrived in Prague. We booked an Airbnb room in someone’s apartment but lucked out and had the place to ourselves for the first two days and we took the opportunity to sleep-in and relax. Our first day and a half in Prague we really didn’t do anything, and it felt great. The apartment was spacious with a beautiful view and a Starbucks across the street; it was pretty easy to do nothing. Continue reading →

A Polish Wedding (Poland: Part II)

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Attending a Polish Wedding was never something I imagined myself doing. So, when the opportunity presented itself, I was pretty excited. First off, it’s an honour to be invited to a wedding – anywhere in the world. Second, a wedding is an incredible way to get a better understanding of local culture and traditions. Continue reading →

Meeting Dan’s Family (Poland: Part I – Warsaw)

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We left Berlin early in the morning to ensure we arrived in Warsaw on time to meet Dan’s sister, Jessika, and his mother, Ewa, at the airport when their plane landed. When we arrived (a bit late) they were waiting for us with Ewa’s brother, Krzysztof. We picked up our rental car and followed Krzysztof back to Otwock, a small town about 45 minutes from Warsaw where Ewa grew up. Her entire family still lives in that town and her brother and his family currently live in the same apartment she grew up in! Since she left, Ewa has only returned to Poland twice, once in 1998 with Jessika and Daniel. Dan barely remembers this visit and was essentially re-meeting his entire family; a very special part of our trip! Continue reading →