Categories
Oceania United States

A Layover in Guam

The best way to get between a lot of these small Pacific islands is the United Island Hopper route, which starts in Guam and finishes in Honolulu. We took it from Guam to Chuuk, Micronesia, and then again from Chuuk to Majuro in the Marshall Islands. For people who are super interested in weird plane routes, it is one of the ones that’s on a lot of bucket lists. It was an interesting experience – the timing of the flights was often not ideal, and it was hard constantly stopping and having people get on and off the plane, because it meant that it was harder to sleep on the flights. But the views landing and departing from the various islands were pretty spectacular, and I’m glad the routes exist because it definitely made it easier to traverse the Pacific on this trip!

In order to start our United Island Hopper journey, we had to get to Guam. You may remember from my last post in Palau that we had gone straight to the airport after dinner for a late night (early morning?) flight. We were all a little loopy by the time we finally boarded, a little after 1 am. Two hours later, we landed in Guam! We didn’t have an incredibly long layover, but there was enough time to leave the airport and get a taste of the island.

Watching the sun rise

Guam is a US territory. This was the first overseas US territory that I’ve been to, although hopefully not the last! The others, for those of you following along at home, are Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. It was so strange to have American passport control, Global Entry, and TSA at this airport in the middle of an international trip like this. The airport infrastructure was really nice – outside of probably Taipei, it was far and away the nicest airport we flew through during the trip.

Guam has a large US military base, and according to Wikipedia, about 30% of its land is reserved for the military. A friend of mine grew up here because her dad was stationed at the base. There were signs in support of the military practically everywhere we looked. In general, there is a lot of US military infrastructure in the Pacific, for strategic reasons during WW2. When we were on the Island Hopper, there was a stop in the Marshall Islands where they noted that we couldn’t take pictures out the window because it was a US military base.

We headed into Hagåtña, which is officially the capital of Guam. We went to Plaza de España, which is a square with a lot of monuments and Spanish colonial buildings around. Given that it was so early that most shops would be closed, it was the best option for us to see something of Guam!

First impressions – I could definitely see a difference in the level of development between Guam and the other Pacific islands we visited later in the trip. It felt as though they had stronger infrastructure compared to Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Nauru. From the airport to the roads to some of the very new restaurants and shops, it seemed to be doing fairly well.

Guam, like Puerto Rico, has expressed interest in US statehood. As a fellow resident of a place in the US that would like to be a state, the District of Columbia, I hope they are able to get more self-determination and more political representation moving forward!

All in all, I didn’t get to see much of Guam, but I am glad I got a chance to leave the airport and see a little of the island. As I’ve been on my journey to finish all 50 states, a logical next step would be to visit the overseas territories as well to see another dimension of the US. It isn’t the top priority for me right now, but it is certainly another consideration for travel!

Categories
Oceania Palau

Spectacular Palau

From Taiwan, it was on to the next adventure! This was the beginning of a trip across the Pacific with Wander Expeditions. It took two flights for me to get to Taiwan and it would be 13 more before I made it back home. The first of the 13 was an easy four hour flight from Taipei to our first island destination, Palau.

Beautiful from the very first look

Of all the places I visited on this trip, Palau is the one that impressed me the most! Going into this, I had the highest expectations for Taiwan and Fiji, both of which delivered, but I didn’t know what to expect for the rest. As best I can tell, 4 of them are in the bottom 15 countries in the world for tourist visits per year. It makes sense – they are far from pretty much everywhere, with infrequent and not always reliable flights. Palau, though, had quite a bit more tourist infrastructure than the rest and was absolutely stunning.

The first night, we had dinner and drinks at a local bar near our hotel. As the night got later, more and more locals showed up for karaoke, and they did a fantastic job. It was so fun watching them absolutely crush it at Elvis songs and serenade each other in duets. It definitely felt as though it was the place to be in Koror!

The next morning, we headed out for a scenic flight over Palau! I was so nervous that the weather was going to be bad and this would get cancelled. I had been in some absolutely pouring rain in Taiwan and this was really the only weather-dependent item on our itinerary. Luckily, though, the weather was perfect! It did get gloomy on us a little later in the day but that was fine.

It was such an incredible experience. I’ve never done a scenic flight like this. The smallest plane I was in before this one was a domestic flight in Costa Rica, and this was significantly smaller than that one. I guess the closest experience I’ve had to this was a hot air balloon in Cappadocia, but going by plane was drastically different from a hot air balloon. This covered a lot more ground and felt more exhilarating, whereas the hot air balloon was much more peaceful as we drifted through the landscape. It was a great way to see Palau, which is beautiful from both the land and sky!

One more thing from our scenic flight. If you’ve heard of Palau before, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it because of Jellyfish Lake. Those photos of swimming with the golden jellyfish went viral and drew in a lot of tourism to Palau. That said, as of this writing, the lake has gotten too hot for the jellyfish and you can’t really see or swim with them the same way that you used to. We did get to see the lake from the air, which is in that photo above! And we did swim with jellyfish while we were there, just with a different species and in a different lake.

Once we returned to the ground, we headed out for a boat tour! Our first stop was the Milky Way Lagoon. It is full of limestone mud, which the locals recommend you smear on your skin to make you appear younger. We swam in the lagoon as well, which was full of these translucent jellyfish. If you think it’s disconcerting having something brush up against your legs while you’re swimming, multiply that by having that something be both gelatinous and invisible!

Not my best picture but you can see a turtle!

We also went snorkeling. Throughout this trip, we saw some of the most incredible, vibrant reefs I’ve ever seen. To be honest, my GoPro is better at video than photos, so know that the images here are a pale imitation of how cool it actually was under water. While Micronesia was probably the best, Palau was also really good.

After all our snorkeling stops and sight-seeing around Palau, we headed back to Koror for a final dinner and then went straight to the airport! Our next flight was a red eye, or rather, a series of flights that started with a red eye. And while I can’t necessarily recommend taking a flight that leaves at 1:50 am, I can absolutely recommend Palau as a great Pacific destination.

Categories
Asia Taiwan

Journey to Kaohsiung

Kaohsiung was my most ambitious day trip from Taipei – it’s basically on the other side of the country! It would be about a four hour drive, but the bullet train cuts it down to about an hour and a half. I was also looking forward to taking a bullet train in Taiwan. I’ve taken them before in China and Japan, and I’ve always been impressed at the pinnacle of what train travel can be.

The train itself is beautiful and clean, with seats that remind me of a domestic first class plane experience. The scenery out the window was really cool – the majority of the cities in towns in Taiwan fall on the same spine in the west, and we passed right by Taichung and Tainan, among smaller towns and cities.

My first stop was one of the most famous sites in Taiwan: the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas! It was about a half hour walk from the high speed train station, Zuoying. It was a nice enough walk but it was very hot and humid, and the final part goes over a giant road (although thankfully they built an overpass).

Still, I was relieved to make it to the temples! They’re on the shore of Lotus Pond, which has several beautiful temple complexes nearby. It made for a nice morning to explore the various buildings and statues nearby.

It’s free to enter the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas and you can climb to the top, which I did. It was a nice view. And more importantly, there was a breeze at the top!

Once I had my fill of the temples, I called an Uber to get to my next destination. I didn’t need Uber very often while I was in Taiwan, since the public transit was so good, but it was nice to have it when I was out late at night or the routes that didn’t have great connections!

I headed off to Pier 2 Art, the arts district in Kaohsiung! It was a great area to walk around and explore. It’s full of art installations, restaurants, and museums, so it was where I spent the rest of my time in Kaohsiung until I headed back to the train station to make it back to Taipei for the evening.

I spent some time in the Taiwan Railway Museum, which was a fantastic break from the heat, with the best air conditioning I experienced all day, and had a very charming diorama representing the trains across Taiwan. There were some interesting relics showing the history of the train as well, although I spent most of my time in the miniatures room.

From there, I did a little more exploring and found a local brewery to try, which was a real highlight of the afternoon!

I made one more stop on the way back to the Zuoying high speed rail station to see the world’s largest glass art installation! The Dome of Light, at the Kaohsiung metro station, shows Taiwan’s history alongside the stars and the broader history of humanity. It was a pretty easy detour while I was already in the Kaohsiung metro station, and definitely worth a stop. It’s absolutely stunning. It’s probably the most beautiful metro station I’ve ever seen.

I’m glad I made it out to Kaohsiung! If I’d been more strategic going into this week, I could have spent a night or two down in the southern part of Taiwan, and maybe made it out to Tainan as well, but that would have required a lot more planning than I did for this leg of the trip. Even with just a day, though, I felt like I got a chance to see some of Kaohsiung and a lot more of Taiwan from the train’s window, which definitely made it worth it. It was a pretty great week in Taiwan overall!

Categories
Asia Taiwan

Day Trips in Northern Taiwan

With how well connected Taiwan is, it was really easy to explore other parts of the country! I visited a couple other areas near Taipei. Some of these might even technically count as the Taipei metro area, but they did still feel distinct enough that I wanted to include them here instead of my main summary of Taipei.

Jiufen

This is the first day trip to come up on almost any list of recommendations. It’s about 45 minutes to an hour east of Taipei. I was absolutely delighted to find that there was a bus that picked up about five minutes from my hotel and went directly there, so it was the first place I went outside of the city!

Jiufen was originally a gold rush town! There is a museum there about this time period, but I wasn’t able to go because it was closed while I was there. When Taiwan was occupied by the Japanese, their time in Jiufen made a big impact on the architecture as well.

The mine shut down in 1971 and the town fell into decline, as so many old mining towns do. However, it was revitalized because it was a filming location for a Taiwanese film, A City of Sadness. The tourism boom from that movie led to a lot of development there, including the cafés and teahouses that remain popular today.

It is also known for its resemblance to the town in the Ghibli movie Spirited Away. While Miyazaki has denied that Jiufen was any sort of inspiration for the town in the movie, it’s still a popular destination for the many fans of Ghibli’s films.

I had a really nice day in Jiufen. I loved the teahouses and ended up waiting out a massive rainstorm at one of them – it had such a beautiful view from the patio when it wasn’t pouring rain! There are a ton of souvenir shops, as well as a lot of paths to walk around the city and see the views over the valley. It definitely has enough to stay busy for a day. I imagine the lanterns would look beautiful at night as well.

Beitou

This was even easier to get to, as it is on the red line of the metro. Beitou is known for its hot springs, which smell very strongly of sulfur.

Wikipedia informs me that Beitou has one of the largest concentrations of hot springs in the entire world! What was fascinating to me was how accessible they are. From the metro, it was a short walk to a public park that went right into the Thermal Valley area.

I also visited the library while I was there, which was beautiful and peaceful, and had a really delicious lunch at a local restaurant. It was one of those where I walked in right after it started pouring rain and I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed at figuring out what I wanted to eat, and they were so kind and made sure I got an English copy of the menu and knew where I was supposed to go to get service.

I didn’t go to any of the actual spas, which I think would have been fun, but there are always trade offs in travel and I paired Beitou with Tamsui, which was just a little farther along on the red line.

Tamsui

Tamsui sits at the mouth of the river where it meets the sea, and the Old Town is primarily located alongside the water.

Tamsui was one of my favorite areas to walk around – I found it very charming, and it also felt a lot more walkable than some of the other areas where I was. Most of the Old Town was closed to cars and the areas right next to the river functioned more like a boardwalk.

One other fun note – I love the instinct in East Asia to make these kind of charming, personified characters out of everyday objects. This one was the best that I saw on this trip!

Tamsui was a solid half day, although there is probably enough for a full day if you keep going to the fort or end up having a leisurely lunch along the river. It also was rainy while I was there, so my walk could’ve been longer if I hadn’t been trying to beat another potential downpour.

All of these were so convenient from Taipei and I would say they were all worth it. You could give Beitou and Tamsui their own full days, but I do think it was sufficient to do a half day for each due to their proximity if you’re short on time, like I always feel like I am. That said, I feel like I got a good sample of a few different areas in the north!

Categories
Asia Taiwan

Exploring Taipei

My next trip started out with a week in Taiwan! I based myself in Taipei the whole time and explored the city, with a few day trips outside of it. In hindsight, I might have considered spending part of the time in a different city just to get another perspective of Taiwan, but I also didn’t want to plan that much in advance. From Taipei, there were so many good options of what to do each day and I wasn’t locked in to any one itinerary in particular.

One of the things I love about East Asia as a region is the level of public transit that’s available. Taiwan was no exception! I used the metro and buses to get all over Taipei, and I also took a bullet train all the way to the southern tip of the country. The options were frequent, clean, and efficient. It made this whole week so easy to put together.

I was staying in Ximen, very close to the Ximending Night Market. The night markets are one of aspects that Taiwan is best known for, which was really fun to explore. It was always lively near my hotel. Even in the middle of the night, it was a fun vibe and felt safe to walk around.

There are a few bigger sites in Taipei that are well-known, but a lot of the fun of the city is just walking around and exploring the neighborhoods. I would try to pick an area of the city that looked fun, get to that metro stop, and walk around.

One of the more well-known sites is the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the surrounding square. The memorial itself is a monument to Chiang Kai-shek, who was a former president of China. The memorial hall reminded me a lot of the Lincoln Memorial in DC in its structure. It’s surrounded by a square, which has the National Theater, National Concert Hall, and the Liberty Square Archway. Liberty Square has been the site of a number of mass gatherings and demonstrations throughout Taiwan’s history.

Taipei is also home to the National Palace Museum, which is generally one of the top things on most Taipei itineraries. It’s a massive museum, with a very impressive collection of art, pottery, relics, and plenty of other things that I probably didn’t even get the chance to see while I was there!

All that said, if you had to pick the symbol of Taipei, it would probably be Taipei 101. It was the world’s tallest building from December 31, 2004 until the completion of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It’s by far the most recognizable building in Taipei’s skyline! My friend Lucy joined me at the end of my time in Taiwan, and our first stop was to go to the very top for the views of Taipei and the surrounding area.

Ultimately, a lot of big cities have a really tall building where you can go up to the top for an observation deck. The views of Taipei were great, don’t get me wrong, but if you’ve done something like Tokyo Skytree or the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, it’s not going to be a unique experience. That said, what I was pretty excited about was seeing the damper. Taiwan is prone to both earthquakes and typhoons, so the structural engineering that went into Taipei 101 had to be pretty impressive. The tuned mass damper is designed to offset movements within the building, and when you go up to the observation deck, you can see it in the core of the building. Thankfully, it wasn’t moving too much while we were there!

I also visited Lungshan Temple and the nearby Bopiliao Historical Block. I was in the area both during the day and at night, and was more impressed at night, as the lighting was very well done and highlighted how intricate the architecture of the temple was.

Since so much of my week was wandering and exploring, it’s hard to even pinpoint all the places that I thought were cool! I definitely visited the Songshan Cultural Park, the Red House, and walked all around a lot of other neighborhoods. The great thing about Taipei is that type of exploration is a really rewarding way to see the city. There aren’t the types of sites where you have to schedule or buy tickets in advance, so it can be a very organic experience of discovering a cool area and trying food from all the different stalls in the night markets.

Speaking of, a big shout out to the final meal I had, which was at Ningxia Night Market. This one was my favorite of where I went, as it felt really intense with the amount of stalls in such a small space and the variety of food on offer. It was such a fun week in Taipei.

I did also get the chance to explore a few places outside of the city, with a couple day trips in Northern Taiwan and one long day trip all the way down to Kaohsiung, but those deserve their own post!

Categories
Europe Malta

A Party in Malta

Just as the beginning of my trip was a celebration, so was the end! My parents and I headed back to the airport in Rome, and they headed home while I headed off to Malta. I was going there to celebrate a friend’s travel milestone. Alvaro, who runs Wander Expeditions, was about to visit every country in the world twice! He threw a big party in Malta. It also functioned as a sort of reunion for all the travel friends I’d met on trips with Wander, where I got to see people I’d met in PNG, West Africa, and my various other trips. It was so fun to catch up with everyone and meet some of the other travelers who I had heard stories about!

Our first full day, we did a boat tour. It was a bit of a rough start for me since I was hungover from the gala and bar hopping the night before, but once we were out on the water and I had rehydrated a bit, I had a great time! Malta is so beautiful. Fun fact, Valletta was originally used as King’s Landing in Game of Thrones during the first season, until the film crew didn’t take enough care and they were banned for future seasons. It was very cool to see the city and the coastline from the water, which is one of my favorite ways to see any place.

Every night, we would have a big dinner and then go out to the bars and clubs. As it turns out, Malta has some pretty fun nightlife!

The second full day started with a travel competition that Alvaro calls Wander Games. I was on a competitive team and we made it through all the team rounds, and then when the individual competition started, I was up against someone who had been living in Malta for a month, so she smoked me in the scavenger hunt. Still, it was a great way to see the city of Valletta as we rushed around following the clues.

After a hectic morning, I spent a chill afternoon at the pool before our last big night out.

All in all, it was an intense two and a half days. I did manage to see a lot of Malta, but more importantly, I got the chance to catch up with so many of the friends I’ve made in the last two years of traveling. It was a really fun experience. I definitely wouldn’t mind returning to Malta!

Categories
Europe Italy

Food and F1 in Emilia-Romagna

From San Marino, we headed up north! I had found a nice bed and breakfast, Sotto i Sassi, and we were staying there for a few days. It had looked nice online but it turned out to be even better than I expected – it was run by a man who had inherited the place from his grandfather, and turned it into a series of apartments and a bistro. It was clear from our dinner that first night that it was a labor of love! He came over and explained all the dishes to us, including what was available as a daily special, and the food was incredible. The bistro wasn’t available during the week, but we did eat there both times it was open during our stay, which was a dinner and a lunch.

One of the other cool aspects of the bed and breakfast was that it was located in a national park, so the scenery was gorgeous and the area around us was so peaceful. We didn’t have a very ambitious itinerary for this region. I had a chance to do laundry, and we had some time to really relax.

But we didn’t stay at the bed and breakfast the whole time! Our first outing was quick. We went to the grocery store, which is one of my favorite things to do abroad.

I also had signed us up for a tour of Imola! It’s one of two Formula 1 tracks in Italy, although it has been historically associated with San Marino to get around a previous rule that no country could have more than one race on the schedule. Interestingly, Imola was not on the calendar for 2025 and might not be in the foreseeable future depending on how the contracts work out with Monza and the new Barcelona track. Still, even if we don’t get to see another race around Imola, it’s got a lot of history and was really cool to see in person.

In the history of Formula 1, one of the most significant moments was one that happened at Imola: the death of Ayrton Senna. Senna remains one of the most famous drivers to ever be in the sport, and his death at the age of 31 in a high speed crash was a really dark moment for Formula 1. Imola has been the site of three deadly crashes, and one of the other two was the same weekend as Senna’s, which sent shockwaves through the sport. At Imola, there’s a whole section that is a memorial to him, with a statue and flags and notes from fans all over the world.

After our stop at the memorial, we took a bus ride around the circuit. What surprised me the most was how much elevation change there was in the 3 mile track. They talk about that on TV when you watch the race, but it was different to experience it, even if we were going at a much slower pace!

Once we had gotten back to the starting line, they took us through one of the garages and into the Control Room, which was super cool. It was fun to see all of the screens and imagine what it would be like during the race, when the FIA has to adjudicate various incidents and assign the penalties. They also took us to the podium and let us stand and take pictures on it!

Afterwards, we headed into Bologna to meet a friend of mine for drinks! I don’t have great pictures of the city because it was pouring rain, and we didn’t spend too much time there outside of when we met my friend. We did almost get trapped in a parking lot because we couldn’t figure out how to pay, and then by the time we did learn the process, the ticket had gotten soaked.

The next day, not content with the amount of Formula 1 activity we had already had, we headed to Maranello! Maranello is where the Ferrari factory is, and they have a beautiful museum about the history of Ferrari, both as a car brand and as a Formula 1 team. I’m not specifically a Ferrari fan, I tend to root for specific drivers over teams, but I of course was not going to admit that here!

We also had a chance to walk around Maranello a bit (partially because parking was crazy and we had to park quite a ways away from the museum). We had lunch there as well. The restaurant had exclusively Ferrari and Formula 1 themed decor, of course. There, we all had the chance to try various forms of tortellini, which is from the Emilia-Romagna region. My dad tried tortellini en brodo, which is a particular specialty of the area. It was amazing!

And of course, there was a Formula 1 race on the weekend while we were there, so we watched it on my laptop while we drank wine that we’d bought at the grocery store – no one can accuse us of not being true fans!

Emilia-Romagna was amazing. The food was so good, and outside of a few specific touristy activities where we were surrounded by Formula 1 fans on a similar pilgrimage as us, it felt as though we were outside of the traditional tourist trail. I would love to return to the region some day – I think there’s plenty still to see, and more importantly, to taste!

Categories
Europe Italy San Marino

The Microstate of San Marino

I find the microstates of Europe to be such a strange thing. The Vatican is one thing, but it’s so strange to me to see places like Monaco and Andorra and Liechtenstein and San Marino hold the small territory that they carved out through wars and border shifts over centuries. San Marino considers itself to be the oldest surviving sovereign state and the oldest constitutional republic, which is a pretty impressive feat!

We arrived and parked at the bottom of the hill, and then from there you can take a cable car up to the top where the city of San Marino is. Once we were up there, we had a chance to explore the city a bit. We also had lunch at one of the spots that has a great view of the surrounding area. It was probably the worst meal I had on this trip, but the views made up for the weaker food experience. It is so beautiful to look out over the landscapes of San Marino and Italy!

San Marino had an interesting experience in the 20th century. They declared themselves neutral in WW1, which put them at odds with Italy and led to some tension. They developed their own fascist party to try to keep themselves in Mussolini’s grace, but maintained that same neutrality during WW2 as well. They were bombed in 1944 because the Allied forces incorrectly believed that they had been occupied by Germany.

They also had the world’s first democratically elected communist government, which was in power between 1945 and 1957. These microstates seem to have these really fascinating parts of their history – no one is paying that much attention to them on the world stage, so they can kind of do whatever they want.

San Marino was a good detour if you’re in the region, but isn’t a place I would necessarily say you need to go too far out of your way to see. It does have some beautiful views of the surrounding area, though! It made for a nice stop on our way up to Emilia-Romagna.

Categories
Europe Italy

A Road Trip Through Umbria

After Warsaw, I headed to Italy to meet my parents! We met up in the airport in Rome and drove straight out into the countryside. I’ve been to Italy once before, with my cousin Megan, and the two of us did a very on-the-beaten path itinerary – Rome, Florence, Venice, Cinque Terre, Pompeii, Pisa. It was such a cool trip, and it was all of the places in Italy I’d always heard about. So this time, I took advantage of the fact that I’d already gone to the well-known areas and I planned an itinerary that was away from all the crowds. We were focused on one thing: finding good food.

For the first day, I wanted us to get away from the airport and the city right away, so we headed to Bracciano. It’s about 45 minutes from the airport, in the direction we were going, and I thought it would be a good balance of easing into the driving but still going somewhere more interesting than the area around FCO!

Despite trying to ease into the driving, my parents were a little overwhelmed at first with the experience of the Italian roads. The drivers can be pretty aggressive, and the narrow streets in the towns can make it more challenging to drive than the US. Nonetheless, we made it, and we found a nice place in town to grab a light dinner.

We stayed at the Hotel Villa Clementina, which was so charming, and they cooked us a beautiful breakfast before we headed out the next morning into Umbria! When we finished up with breakfast, we headed out to our next stop, Oriveto.

Orvieto was beautiful. It’s at the top of a hill, so we parked and then took a series of escalators up to the old town. From there, there are so many twisty medieval streets to explore. We went in a lot of local shops and stopped for lunch. One of the things that I love about Italy is the al fresco dining – it can be hot there, especially in the summer, but in the shade and with a breeze, it’s so pleasant to eat outside for every meal. We also saw the outside of their famous cathedral, although we didn’t end up going in.

From there, it was on to the main event! My mom has always had a dream of staying in a castle somewhere in Europe, and this trip seemed like the perfect place to do it. I found one near Perugia, called Castello di Monterone, and we stayed there for a couple nights.

It felt pretty magical to stay at a castle! It’s the kind of thing that you imagine when you’re reading fantasy books or learning about the history of royals. It had beautiful grounds, including a garden and an courtyard where we sat and had some drinks and some snacks. That first night, we had dinner at the restaurant at the castle, which was delicious.

The next day, we headed off on a tour. This was something I was super excited about – we did a cooking class and wine tour! We started at someone’s home for the cooking class, which was pretty amazing. Megan and I had done one in Tuscany, as a day trip from Florence, so it was cool to get the chance to compare and contrast. Italy has so many different regional culinary traditions. I think you could take classes all across the major cities and get unique experiences each time. I made pasta in both classes, but the one in Tuscany was flour and egg-based and this one was semolina and water-based. After we learned how to cook the pasta, the woman teaching the class showed us all the different ways it could be shaped, which was incredible. She could take a spoon and make it into some sort of perfect corkscrew that I can’t imagine being dextrous enough to shape. We made eggplant and stuffed peppers and pasta with asparagus and chicken, and for dessert there was tiramisu. It was so good!

From there, we headed to a winery for a tasting. The woman at the winery was so knowledgeable, and taught us all about Umbrian wine and the different regions across Italy. We got to try a lot of different varieties, and even got some to drink back at the hotel! It was such a good day. And the next day, we headed off to our next adventure – a whole different country, San Marino!

Categories
Europe Poland

Exploring Warsaw

I’ve been to Poland once before, back in 2014. I went on a class trip that visited Krakow, which was a really fascinating experience. After that, I’ve wanted to return and explore more of Poland, and especially Warsaw. Because the Croatia birthday party and meeting my parents were both set dates, I found myself with a couple days in between to make my way from Split to Rome, and the flights worked out for me to stop over in Warsaw!

I find their “new” Old Town to be very interesting – their original Old Town and the castle were razed to the ground in WW2 and so they rebuilt it to replicate it exactly. What’s funny is that if you didn’t know this in advance, there’s nothing obvious about their Old Town that would indicate that it was redone in the 1950s. They did a spectacular job making it look just as it must have before WW2. It matches a lot of places that you would see in cities across Central Europe.

To be honest, I didn’t do much in the way of “tourist” things in Warsaw. I went to cafés and wandered around, and I ate pierogis as often as I could. They’re so good there!

I did also make sure I went to go see the Palace of Culture and Science, which is another one of the most fascinating parts of Warsaw in my opinion. When it was completed in 1955, it was the eighth tallest building in the world, and it is really impressive with its art deco vibes.

The Palace of Culture and Science was a gift from the Soviet Union and was formally dedicated to Joseph Stalin. When I was reading the Wikipedia about it to make sure I didn’t miss any important points about it, I found a delightful anecdote on how they decided on the height of the building. They apparently decided that they needed to properly visualize it, so they sent a small airplane that was towing a balloon to fly over the city, and then the architects kept telling the plane to fly higher. It was finally set at 778 ft / 237 m high.

All in all, I had a very nice time in Warsaw! I think Poland is underrated – while it isn’t my top country in Europe, I think people often forget about it when they’re planning and it does have a lot to offer. I had a great experience in both Krakow and Warsaw and I look forward to eventually returning for the smaller cities and towns as well!