Categories
Asia Georgia

Tbilisi Time

For the whole time we were in Georgia, we stayed in Tbilisi and took day trips from there to explore the countryside. I’ve gone through all our day trips, so now it’s time to cover what we did while we were in the capital!

On the first day after Alan and I arrived from Armenia, we took a cooking class. It was with Georgian Flavors, who I had found online from recommendations on blogs. They noted that she was good at adapting for vegetarians as well which was a big selling point for me. It was a private class, so just Alan and I in her home.

It was a really fun experience. We made vegetables with walnut paste, which is a classic Georgian dish, and of course, the classic Georgian cheese bread! All of the food was delicious, and it was nice to get a pretty authentic look at Georgian culture immediately after we got there. Irma told us all about the culinary traditions of Georgia, and we also had great conversations about the general culture and history of Georgia.

The next day, Colin had arrived and we did a sort of self-directed walking tour of the city. In total, I had about three full days in Tbilisi, so I did get a pretty good sense of the city.

I quite liked Tbilisi, I think it has an interesting mix of old and new and it feels cool. Georgia went from very off the radar to a big tourist destination, and with that came more remote workers, more expats, more people who want to be in Tbilisi. It felt very cosmopolitan.

Tbilisi, like Yerevan, also has a large metal woman on a hill. We took a gondola up to the top to go see her and then walked back down. I would definitely recommend doing this on a clear day, because the views of the city were amazing!

We also went to the National Museum. There were a lot of animals that are native to Georgia featured, and I thought the natural history portion was pretty solid.

At the top, there’s a hallway that describes the history between Georgia and Russia, which was interesting but could have used a little more broad context in my opinion. While we were there, we saw multiple protests about Russia and the fact that their government seemed to be supporting Putin. We had local guides express negative opinions toward the country of Russia and the number of Russians living in Georgia. I think I have a decent sense of it all from my own knowledge of USSR history and other tours across the week, but I do think the museum itself could have more of that information accessible for someone who is starting with the basics.

One of the other interesting cultural experiences we had in Georgia was trying chacha. Chacha is a local brandy, similar to vodka or grappa, and it is made from the grape residue that’s left over from making wine. Georgia really is out here inventing all the new ways to drink liquor!

We went to a chacha bar and asked the guy for a tasting. It was sort of half bar, half liquor store, and he was clearly an expert. We tried three different types between us so we could each take a sip of each kind. It was very strong. I had the flavored one, which I was happy about because it went down a lot smoother than the original!

We also visited the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi. Every time we found ourselves at a church in Georgia or Armenia, it was very well attended. This one seemed to be having some sort of confirmation or performance for children or something – there were tons of families there and the kids seemed to be in fancier outfits.

During our last night in Tbilisi, Colin was heading to the airport and it was just Alan and I again. We started talking about how we were both missing the chance to see Wicked: For Good with our friends at home, so we decided to see if it was available anywhere in Tbilisi in English. We found an English-language screening at the theater in the mall near the apartment we were renting and so we headed to the movies! I haven’t gone to the movies when I’m abroad very often, but it was kind of a great way to finish out our trip. Although I do wish the movie hadn’t been in 3D since it made the sets look a bit fuzzier than I remembered in Part 1.

I had an amazing time in Georgia! I feel like I saw a lot, but I would go back to explore more of the western part of the city and just spend more time there. I found the culture very warm and the food and wine there was great. I will definitely be back to the Caucasus region to visit Azerbaijan, and I would happily stop back in Tbilisi at that point.

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Asia Georgia

The Birthplace of Wine

For our last day trip out of Tbilisi, we headed east into wine country! One of Georgia’s claims to fame is that it is the birthplace of wine. Archeologists have found evidence of grape cultivation and wine-making pottery as early as 8,000 BCE in Georgia. There are also still unique wine-making practices in the region. While we also got to see that a bit in Armenia, I was excited about a tour that was focused on Georgian wine-making tradition.

We went with a tour company called Eat This! Tours, and they were great. It was meant to be a small group tour, but it ended up just being the three of us, so we had a private experience at the various wineries. We started at a larger family-owned winery and got a tour of their vineyard.

So what does make the Georgian tradition unique? (And not 100% unique, to be clear, as we saw the same traditions in Armenia. Maybe I should rephrase to the Caucasus tradition.) They age their wine in ceramics instead of wooden barrels, and then those ceramic jars are buried underground for the aging process. It looks like this:

Once we had learned about the process, we had an elaborate lunch with wine and food pairings. Georgia definitely takes their food and wine seriously. Everything was delicious!

From there, we headed to Sighnaghi, which is one of the most well-known towns in the region. It was beautiful – I can see why it’s risen in popularity for the tourists coming to the Kakheti region for wine tasting. It has a cool set of city walls that were used to fortify it in the 18th century.

We had a short tour of the town before our next wine tasting!

Allegedly, if it was a clear day, there would be an amazing view of the mountains behind this town

We headed to our second wine tasting, which was at much smaller winery. It’s also family owned but it’s on a much smaller scale than the first place where we had lunch. It was nice to get a sense of the wine industry in Georgia. Not just the fancier ones that cater more to tourists, but also the places that are a little more off the beaten path. The wine was delicious!

Our last stop was a family home that makes their own artisan wines! They cooked an amazing dinner for us and showed us their own personal vineyard and wine-making set up.

All in all, it was a great day! Georgia’s food and wine and hospitality are excellent, and this was such a fun way to experience it. I think anyone who visits should do some sort of food and/or wine tour during their time in Georgia. I’ll have one more post from Georgia to summarize our time in Tbilisi, and then it will be on to the next destination.

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Asia Georgia

The House of Stalin

The next day, we hired a driver and headed east from Tbilisi! I had read about a service called GoTrip, which worked so well. It functions as a long distance taxi service, and gives you a flat rate for a specified route. You can match with people in various languages as well which was helpful to have a driver that we could talk to. The route I picked started at the Uplistsikhe archeological site.

The site is from around 1000 – 2000 BCE, and is a town carved out of the rock. It was really cool, and we got there pretty early so we had it practically to ourselves. The one negative is that there isn’t a ton of information about it on site, so most of what I know about it I’ve gotten from Wikipedia. Still, it was interesting to climb over the rocks and explore the various structures.

Fun fact, when we first bought our tickets, the woman at the counter asked us if we wanted to see the wine cellar. It was a little extra, but it was interesting, she said. So we paid a few extra dollars and went on our way. When we got to the part that said wine cellar, we learned that what we had actually paid for was a wine tasting – at about 10:30 am! It was fun to try a couple different wines, but it was also quite a bit earlier than any of us had planned on drinking that day.

Once we had our glasses of wine, we got back on the road toward Gori. Basically the only thing that Gori is known for is being the birthplace of Stalin. There are statues of him, the house where he was born, a park named after him, and a museum that talks about his life.

As you know, I am fascinated by propaganda, so I had a great time at the Stalin museum. Which, by the way, gives an unexpectedly rosy view of his reign. I would say the general narrative is that he was a part of the Russian Revolution alongside Lenin, then he defeated the Nazis, and then he died. Here’s a photo of him signing a new law! A law that does what, you ask? Don’t worry about that at all!!! He got rid of Nazis!!! Did we mention that part???

There is a small annex in the ground floor that mentions some of the death and prison camps and exile to Siberia, but you have to go looking for it. The majority of the museum is beautiful oil paintings and Central Asian carpets with his face on them and gifts that were given to him from various other world leaders. It was very interesting to see the way they presented this period of history.

Once we were done at the museum, we headed to the Memorial of Georgian War Heroes. My friends were deeply unprepared for the scale of this monument as we rounded the corner. The statues were super cool, especially with their location at the base of the Gori Fortress.

It took us a while to find lunch in Gori. There weren’t a lot of options and most of them seemed to be closed. But we eventually found a place to eat more of those delicious Georgian dumplings, and then it was off to our last stop of the day before we headed back: Borjomi!

When you go here, you’re going to be tempted to try the water. You will not enjoy the experience of drinking the water

Borjomi is a resort town known for its mineral water. There’s a brand of bottled water called Borjomi, although I certainly hope its water tastes better than what we tried out of the spring. Allegedly, it has some sort of healing qualities, although I would have to be pretty sick to want to drink its hot and sulfurous stream again.

The park was pretty nice, and we walked along for a while until we were ready to go back to Tbilisi. During our walk, we found another probably-haunted Soviet amusement park, which is still one of my favorite aspects of this region.

Borjomi was unlike anywhere else we went in Georgia, but it was also pretty small and didn’t have much to do. There is a Romanov palace near by but it’s now on private property and not accessible to the public, which is a big bummer. Maybe in the summer more of the park would be open, but that also seemed like it was more designed for children. There might have been more to do on the other side of the river in town, but it didn’t seem worth having our driver take us back into town to wander around when we could just go back to the city. It was beautiful, though, and it wasn’t that far from Gori, so definitely worth the visit as a part of this day trip.

My friend calls this the Sonic the Hedgehog bridge

It was a really interesting day out of Tbilisi. I think this is the most “off the beaten path” we managed to get in Georgia – Tbilisi is very popular, and the two other day trips we chose are the two top choices for most tourists. And with good reason, I loved Kazbegi and I loved the wine tasting tour. But it was also nice to get a different side of the country, both literally and metaphorically. Also, if you’re like me and you’re interested in propaganda, the Stalin Museum is top tier. 10/10 would recommend.

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Asia Georgia

The Georgian Military Highway

The image that I’ve always had of Georgia is of one specific landmark – the Gergeti Trinity Church in the Kazbegi region. The photo of it on a hilltop, surrounded by snowcapped mountains, is perhaps the most iconic image of the country, and it was a top priority to see it while we were here. I scheduled it for our first full day out of the city so that we had some flexibility just in case there was weather up in the mountains.

We started at the Zhinvali Water Reservoir and the Ananuri Fortress. The reservoir is man made, created from a nearby dam. Ananuri sits on the water’s edge and has beautiful views of the valley.

Ananuri was built in the 13th century and is on the tentative list for UNESCO status. It’s famous for surviving a siege. It has secret tunnels that allowed the inhabitants to continue to get food and water. The name comes from a woman named Ana from the town of Nuri, who was captured by the enemy and tortured in an attempt to reveal the entrance to the tunnels, but she chose to die rather than betray her people.

After we had explored the fortress, we continued north to our next stop, which was a honey tasting! I’ve done one or two honey tastings before, and I’m always amazed at how different the honey tastes based on which types of plants the bees are pollinating.

As we continued north, the landscapes became more stunning! We stopped for lunch and then made our way to Stepantsminda, which is the closest town to the Gergeti Trinity Church.

We even had to switch from the small bus to cars that had 4×4 enabled to get up to the church! Thankfully, we were doing this all on dry roads. There was snow on the tops of some of the nearby mountains, and we saw a few patches of snow near the road, but our weather was perfect.

Once we were done at the church, we had one more stop on the way back to Tbilisi! And outside of Gergeti, this was the one I was the most excited for.

Welcome to the Russia – Georgia Friendship Monument! Our guide put the “friendship” part in very heavy quotes. Anyone who knows me should know that this is exactly the sort of Soviet-style pseudo propaganda I’m looking for when I travel. This particular monument was created to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Georgievsk, which was signed in 1783 between the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Georgia. By 1983, Georgia had been subsumed by the (soon to be defunct) USSR, and the narrative on the monument reflects that.

Our guide went through all the symbols with us, and while I don’t remember all of them, the gist is that Russian folklore and national symbols are to the right and Georgian folklore and national symbols are to the left. The center depicts a maternal Russia holding Georgia, her child, on her lap, and has an inscription in both Georgian and Russian. The design of it is absolutely stunning. I loved the vivid colors of the monument, even if its message is quite patronizing toward Georgia. It was interesting seeing the Russian perspective toward Georgia, especially since the majority of our trip was giving us the other side of the story.

And with that, it was back to Tbilisi! Heading up to Kazbegi was amazing. I would love to spend more time in the Caucasus Mountains. This was our only day trip into the mountains, because I wasn’t certain if it would be snowy or bad weather; that said, I think the hiking and trekking in the summer and fall are some of the best of what Georgia has to offer, and I would love to spend more time in the region. But we did have a few more fascinating stops that were included in our itinerary. More on that next time.

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Armenia Asia Georgia

North to Tbilisi

It was time to make our way north to Georgia! We woke up very early in the morning to head up to the border. On the way, we made a few stops. First, we headed to Sevan Lake, where the temperatures were absolutely frigid and we watched the sun rise over the misty lake.

We were flanked by a few dogs, who tried to follow us all the way back to the car. The whole region is full of mostly friendly dogs. In Georgia, they even have an ear tag system that indicates they’ve had their shots and whether they are friendly, with a green-yellow-red system to show you whether or not you should try to pet them. All the ones we met were friendly!

From there, we went to another monastery complex, Haghartsin. We arrived right as they were opening the doors, so it was very peaceful during our visit.

Armenian cross-stones, or khachkars, are a part of Armenia’s history and culture, and have actually been registered with UNESCO on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. They date back to the 9th century and have elaborate artwork and motifs based in medieval Christian Armenian art. Some have been lost to time, and others have been lost to genocide and conflict with Azerbaijan, but you can still see them around the various monasteries in Armenia!

Something that we saw signs for but didn’t get to experience was the corn of Northern Armenia – either it was too early in the morning or out of season or both, but it would have been fun to try that if we had been in the right time frame.

One aspect that I found fascinating as we made our way north was the border with Azerbaijan. As I mentioned in my last post, they do have a complex relationship, and a lot of that stems from conflict over the borders. The border had barbed wire across it and each side would put their flags all around the border, on various hills so that it was clear they had marked their territory. You can see the Azerbaijani one in the image below.

The border between Armenia and Georgia was smooth. One of the better land crossings I’ve done, really. And then we were in Georgia!

Once we crossed, it wasn’t too long to Tbilisi. I’ll have a lot to post on Georgia, but my first impressions were very positive. Georgia had been very high on my list for a long time. It had been under the radar for a while, but at some point it got popular and I was seeing it everywhere in the travel community. I was excited to check it out for myself!

We quickly discovered that the relationship between Russia and Georgia has gotten… strained, in recent years. We saw multiple protests against the Georgian government for capitulating to Russia during the time we were there. Various local guides we had over the course of the week also talked about their negative relationship. It stood in contrast to Armenia, who seems to have a much friendlier relationship with Russia. Armenia’s primary taxi app was Russian and we heard a lot more Russian on the streets. In Armenia, the signs were in Armenian, then Russian, and maybe English; in Georgia, they were in Georgian and English. I suppose Armenia has a lot of other enemies surrounding them. Compared to how Azerbaijan and Türkiye have treated them, Russia probably looks a lot nicer by comparison.

I have a lot more pictures from Tbilisi and from the Georgian countryside for next time! Can’t wait to share the rest of this trip.

Categories
Armenia Asia

South to Tatev

We headed out from our hotel at 6:30 the next morning to start our tour to Southern Armenia!

When we first got outside of Yerevan, we ended up in a patch of thick fog straight out of a Stephen King novel. I’ll admit, it isn’t so comforting when your driver is taking pictures and videos because he’s never seen anything like it before. But eventually, it cleared up, and we ended up on a beautiful drive.

We saw Mount Ararat, which is an important symbol of Armenia even though it’s located outside of Armenia’s present day borders. It’s now a part of modern day Türkiye. In pre-Christian Armenian mythology, Mount Ararat was considered the home of the gods, similar to Greece’s Mount Olympus. After going through all that fog, it was nice to have good enough visibility to see it!

One of the most interesting parts of the drive was watching where we were on the map. The borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan are complicated. A lot of this comes down to the post-Soviet conflicts in the 1990s, and localized conflicts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the border zones where the minorities were marginalized, displaced, and sometimes murdered. Various enclaves and exclaves still exist as holdovers from this conflict, including the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan that we passed right next to on our drive. There are also tiny ones that are technically a part of Azerbaijan that had no indication that anything had changed, and you would never know that the borders were shifting around you unless you were closely watching the map.

There are still tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, although they did recently sign a peace agreement in 2025 that has theoretically calmed things down. There are no open land border crossings between the two countries and no direct flights between them as of this writing.

We had a few stops on the way to get a coffee and stretch our legs, but we had a long way to go to get to Tatev Monastery.

Our first bigger stop was Khndzoresk cave village, which reminded me a lot of the underground cave villages in Cappadocia. We started by walking down a ton of stairs (which was really fun on the way back up to the car) and across a bridge.

It was a nice visit, and I was enjoying the chance to see a side of the country outside of Yerevan. Yerevan is pretty modern and developed, but it went from urban to rural quickly as we left the city.

so many stairs 🙁

From there, we headed even further south! The next stop was Tatev. Specifically, we were starting at the Wings of Tatev, which is the longest reversible aerial tramway in the world. It takes 12 minutes to go across the gorge from the starting station to Tatev Monastery. The views were incredible.

Armenia had a very clear vision when they built all their churches and monasteries. Most of them look extremely similar, which meant that when I was recently in NYC, I had no trouble recognizing an Armenian monastery from a brief view out of a bus window.

We also went to another outlook nearby to admire even more views of the mountains!

Once we were done visiting Tatev, it was time for the long drive back to Yerevan. But first, we had one more stop to make….

It was time to do a proper Armenian wine tasting! This region has a unique winemaking culture, and they often age the wine in beautifully decorated clay pots instead of oak barrels. A couple that they had available to try were the same grapes aged two different ways so that we could taste the impact of the clay. We got to try three types of wine and one shot of their hard liquors, which were flavored by all kinds of different fruits.

It was a long day with a lot of driving. Still, I think it’s worth it to get out of Yerevan, and the landscapes and cultural sites in the south are the most impressive sites for visitors. I would recommend this same tour for anyone who wants to get out and see some of Armenia beyond just the capital city.

Categories
Armenia Asia

A Visit to Yerevan

After a few more days at home to frantically unpack, do laundry, and repack, I headed off to Armenia! Thanksgiving remains one of my favorite times of the year to travel, and so Alan and I reunited for a trip across Armenia and Georgia. This region has been on my list for ages and I was so excited to get a chance to explore it.

All the flight options landed at weird times, so we took a very badly timed one that left from Frankfurt at 9 pm and got to Yerevan at 3:55 am the next morning. Thankfully our hotel had an open room that they let us book for essentially a half night, so we were able to sleep and shower and change out of our airport clothes, which was especially important for me since I had also taken a 7.5 hour flight to Frankfurt. Which, incidentally, was delayed by 3 hours. By the time we got to our hotel in Yerevan, it had been a series of very long days and I was ready to pass out.

After sleeping, it was time to venture out into the city. Our first stop was the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum.

We never learned about the Armenian genocide in school. I mostly heard about it in the context of why Türkiye hasn’t been allowed in the EU – their continued refusal to acknowledge that the genocide happened has been a huge sticking point. But leading up to this trip, I read The Hundred-Year Walk, by Dawn Anahid MacKeen, which did a great job contextualizing it. Her grandfather lived through it and left a series of detailed journals, which she used to start her research, and then she also took her own journey in his footsteps across modern day Türkiye, Syria, and Armenia.

The museum was very well done, with a lot of information about the events leading up to the genocide as well as the international community’s response as the world looked on. The memorial was nice, although it was under construction. Weirdly, we were also there at the same time as a large group of people in suits, who seemed to be politicians going for some sort of PR opportunity. We never did figure out who they were or what was happening there.

From there, we took a taxi over to Mother Armenia, which is a giant statue of a woman that overlooks Yerevan. There’s another museum in the base of it, which seemed to be run by a Russian woman who was very confused that we didn’t speak Russian and quickly lost interest in us when it became clear we weren’t going to donate to the museum. Very little was in English, which was a shame because it did seem to focus on more modern skirmishes that Armenia has been having with its neighbors. There’s a lot going on between them and Azerbaijan, which I will get to in my next post.

Once we were done at the museum, we stumbled upon my favorite thing that we found in Armenia, which was Victory Park. It was founded in the 1950s while Armenia was still part of the USSR and you can certainly tell. Nowadays, it seems moderately haunted and the perfect location for some sort of horror movie. I loved everything about it.

We have Lightning McQueen at home

There was so much to love here. Off-brand characters that would trigger a cease and desist letter if Disney or Nickelodeon knew about them. The Mother Armenia statue lurking in the background. The half-built dinosaur park with massive animatronics in the background, which were moving and making screeching noises despite being in an area of the park that couldn’t receive visitors.

It’s honestly hard to describe how delighted I was here. Every corner we turned had something new and bizarre. This wasn’t the last Sovietesque theme park we came across in this region, but it was the best.

Once we were satisfied with our visit to the most unhinged theme park I’d ever seen, we worked our way down to the Cascades. It’s a large stairway complex that has great views of the city and altogether a good vibe – it functions as a sort of vertical Central Park for Yerevan, and it was the most people we saw out and about at any of the touristy sites.

We found a nice café for lunch and regrouped, since we had done the top three tourist sites in Yerevan. We ended up just walking through the city and soaking up the vibes. It’s a nice city, and I enjoyed our time there.

The day after was a very early morning, as it was our day trip down to Tatev Monastery – more on this in the next post. Then we were back in Yerevan on Sunday. We started off with Saint Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral, which is the largest Armenian orthodox church in the world. Armenia is very proud of their Christian history. They were the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as their official religion, back in the year of 301. I can tell you that this particular cathedral was very well-attended on this Sunday, so it seems like that Christian tradition is alive and well.

Once we were done visiting the cathedral, we found another haunted Soviet amusement park! Another day, another series of viscerally upsetting slightly-off brand rides. Ask and Yerevan shall provide.

From there, we headed to the History Museum of Armenia. Most of what it had to offer was ancient history, about the earliest civilizations that settled in the region. This is less interesting to me than the recent history, which I really would have loved a deeper dive on, but alas. Instead, we saw the oldest leather shoe that’s ever been found, which is 5,500 years old and was found in the Areni region.

After the museum, we had a splurgy late lunch with a fancy bottle of Armenian wine at Lavash, which was excellent. Definitely the best meal we ate in Armenia!

A few more images from our wanderings in Yerevan:

I really liked Yerevan. Georgia is obviously the tourist darling of this region, and for good reason, but I think Armenia is still a bit slept on. In my opinion, Yerevan is an underrated city and, as you’ll see in the next post, the southern part of the country is also quite nice. It also was an interesting cultural contrast to Georgia. I wish we had time to go to Azerbaijan as well to round out my understanding of the Caucasus region, but I would definitely recommend including Armenia if you’re going to be in this area! We spent four days there total and I felt like that was a great amount of time.

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North America United States

Celebration in New Orleans

Landing in New Orleans marked an exciting achievement: I had visited all 50 states! It’s been a fun project. Once I got down to the last ones, there were many that I had been either avoiding or ambivalent to for years that I found much more interesting than I’d expected. I’ll do a proper reflection soon.

Once I got down to my last 12 or so, I determined which one I was saving for last, and that was clearly Louisiana. New Orleans is a great city for a celebration. In fact, this weekend wasn’t just a celebration for the culmination of my goal – it was also my friend Angeli’s birthday!

Brb starting our girl band

We had a weekend full of food and drinks and sightseeing planned. New Orleans is a peak foodie city. There are tons of regional specialties, like po’ boys and gumbo and jambalaya and beignets, and we went to a pretty wide variety of restaurants, from incredibly fancy to hole in the wall. Some highlights were Jewel of the South, which was Angeli’s official birthday dinner and was more fine dining; Sun Chong, the Korean-Creole fusion restaurant with some inventive spins on the flavors, and of course, the beignets at Café du Monde, which were everything I had hoped for. In truth, though, we didn’t have a bad meal the entire time we were in the city.

It’s also got great nightlife. I loved the live music that was found at a lot of bars, especially on Frenchmen Street. We avoided Bourbon Street mostly, which seemed like a much more raucous vibe, but there are a lot of other options with good cocktails and more relaxed vibes.

Mostly, though, we walked around a lot. Explored the city. I will say, I was surprised at how small the French Quarter is relative to the total area of the city. In my mind, when I pictured New Orleans, it was most of the city, but there are a ton of other neighborhoods beyond it.

Something interesting we came across while we were there – the Keep IV Waste signs. We saw them everywhere. On buildings, on cars, on trash cans. As it turns out, there is an ongoing battle over waste management in New Orleans, and particularly in the French Quarter. From what I could glean based on a few articles I read, the county went through a search for a new waste management company and picked one, Henry Consulting. But before they could get started, there were some contractual issues to resolve. In the meantime, while Henry Consulting worked through all of that, the city put together an emergency contract for IV Waste to act as a stopgap. But IV Waste turned out to be amazing, making the city cleaner than it had ever been, and so when the emergency contract period was up, the city rallied behind IV Waste and asked the city to keep them in place over Henry Consulting. It’s a very interesting local drama. Do you know how good a waste management company has to be for citizens to go to bat for them like that?

In August of last year, it was the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I ended up watching a documentary about it, called When the Levees Broke, which was absolutely devastating but a very worthwhile watch. It left me with a lot of feelings, but the real takeaway from it was how incredibly resilient New Orleans is. I know people say that it isn’t what it used to be and that it probably never will be, but I think it’s incredible that it’s been rebuilt to the level that it is today. I remember when it happened, but I was young, and I wasn’t necessarily watching the news regularly and understanding the real effects on the people there. After seeing what happened to the city with fresh eyes, I am amazed at the city that stands there today.

We did venture out of New Orleans proper in order to visit the bayou. I was really excited for this tour! It was great to get out and see a bit more of Louisiana, and we got to see so many animals up close and personal.

It’s wild to get that close to alligators. I’ve grown up with a healthy amount of fear of them, since they are very much not native to anywhere I’ve ever lived, and so it’s not an animal that I was ever taught how to interact with safely. I don’t think I register as a snack for them now that I’m not a child, but as the original predator that hasn’t evolved in millions of years, they do still activate that primal instinct.

It was also strange to see all the alligator heads that you could buy at the gift shop. A little jarring, to be honest.

We also took a ghost tour of the city, which was interesting. The guide was great and very knowledgeable about the local history, telling us all kinds of dark stories about what had happened in the city over the years.

We also walked around the neighborhood of Treme, which is generally considered the oldest Black neighborhood in the United States. It was founded in the 1810s and has been a huge part of New Orleans’ cultural history. I found its colorful houses so charming!

We also walked in the downtown area, where there’s a nice walkway along the Mississippi River. No matter how many times I’ve crossed it, I’m always amazed by the scale of it. The transition between the French Quarter and the skyscrapers is strangely abrupt, going from one to the other in course of essentially a block.

In some ways, Louisiana was an interesting choice for my last state because it is so unique. The French influence isn’t as strong anywhere else in the United States, and Louisiana does still have a fundamentally different legal system than the other states in the union. There was something nice about that. Even after going to 49 other states, there are still new things to discover!

New Orleans was a great spot for a long weekend, and an even better one to finish off my goal of going to all fifty states! I will be thinking about the food we had there for a long time.

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North America United States

Viva Stark Vegas!

Welcome to Mississippi, the penultimate state on my journey to 50 states! Phil and I flew to the Golden Triangle Regional Airport, which was a bit of a stressful journey because it was in the midst of the government shutdown and this was the weekend where they started cutting the numbers of flights that airports were allowed to run in an attempt to keep everything from coming to a screeching halt. I had to switch to an earlier flight to Atlanta to get there, and my flight home got cancelled and switched to a route that took me through Charlotte, but I did successfully make it to Mississippi and back.

A funny thing happens when you tell people that you’re almost done going to all 50 states. They inevitably ask which ones, and then weigh in on what they thing of those. I got a lot of people telling me that a certain state would be “nicer than you expect,” including West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Unfortunately, no one said that for Mississippi. Instead, in Arkansas, a man I met at a bar winced and told me, “maybe you should just drive through Mississippi really fast and count it that way.”

….ominous.

Here’s what I will say. I don’t think Starkville is the nicest town in America, and probably not even the nicest one in Mississippi (which is probably Oxford, from what I’ve heard). But the experience of going to a football game at Mississippi State was awesome. It was everything I wanted in a proper, Southern, college football experience. The stadium is intense and loud. The fans bring in cowbells and are capable of producing an absolutely deafening noise. They were playing Georgia, who was pretty unfazed (and ultimately won), but I can imagine it could be pretty intimidating as an opposing team. I had a great time.

Fun fact, Mississippi State and Georgia both have bulldogs as their mascot!

After the game, we headed out of Mississippi and up to Memphis. Memphis, like Mississippi, has an interesting reputation. I’ve come across discussions online that make it sound like an active war zone. In fairness, it does have the highest crime rate in America, and while the next few positions are disputed across different lists based on how the various statistics are weighted, Memphis always seems to take the #1 spot. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got there.

I loved Memphis. As anyone could tell you, I love a misunderstood place. Personally, I didn’t feel unsafe there, even after Phil left and I was walking around downtown on my own. And I think the history and culture surrounding Memphis is top tier.

During my various travels across the South, I’ve been going to a lot of museums and monuments focused on Civil Rights. I think this one was the best one I’ve done. It was comprehensive, it felt as though all of the exhibits had been refreshed recently, and decidedly NOT fun fact, it is the site of MLK’s assassination. While that is a pretty bleak moment in history, they built a section where you could go into the hotel room and learn about the assassination, which was really well done.

Of course, the most important part of my impromptu walking tour of Memphis was the Bass Pro Shops Pyramid. You know I love a weird place, and this is one of the weirder ones out there. Depending on how you measure, it is the tenth-tallest pyramid in the world. It was built in 1991 as an arena, and used to host all kinds of events, including but not limited to basketball games, concerts, WWE, and high school graduations. After a attempt to turn it into an NBA arena ended in abject failure, it was taken over by Bass Pro Shops and developed into some sort of sporting goods fever dream. I didn’t go inside, but I was excited to see it in the context of the Memphis skyline.

I went to one other museum in Memphis, which was the Rock n’ Soul Museum. Memphis is inexorably linked with Elvis – I didn’t quite have enough time to do a proper tour of Graceland, although I certainly would have if I’d had one more day in Memphis. I spent a lot of time on the musical history when I visited Nashville, and it seemed only right to give Memphis similar consideration. My favorite part was the audio guide, which…. if you didn’t want to listen the explanations, you could go find a jukebox and have it play you some of the best and most significant music that was produced in Memphis, which was an awesome soundtrack to my visit.

One other quirky place to talk about in Memphis, which was the Peabody Hotel! Phil assured me that it was “the only place to stay in Memphis,” and as usual, was correct. The Peabody is historic. It opened in 1925 and it is best known for the tradition of the ducks.

The ducks were brought to the hotel sometime in the 1930s by the General Manager, after a hunting trip where he and some friends had taken along call ducks. When they got back, they left the ducks in the fountain, where they quickly became fixtures of the hotel. Later, a bellhop who had been a trainer at the circus decided to up the ante, and he trained the ducks to march into the hotel lobby in the morning and back up to the penthouse in the eventing, where they sleep. It’s so charming! It was very chaotic to go and watch in person, since it felt like the whole hotel was lining up to try to see the ducks, but I’m glad I got to see them.

All in all, a solid weekend. And the following weekend, I had a big celebration planned – I was heading to New Orleans for my 50th state!

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North America United States

The Road to 50 States

At the beginning of this year, I decided that this would be the year that I finished visiting all 50 states. I had started the year with Alabama, and then put the project on pause through the summer because I refuse to go to the south in the overwhelming heat of July or August. But as it turned to fall, it was time to tackle my last three: Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana!

I have been specifically saving Louisiana for last. Once I got to my last ten or so, I looked at what I had left and picked that as the one that I was the most interested in, and the one that felt most like a celebration. And it ended up working out perfectly, because one of my friends decided to celebrate her birthday in New Orleans this November! It gave me a deadline, and so I set out to visit Arkansas and Mississippi before that weekend.

And as luck would have it, this dovetailed really well with a different travel goal that my friend Phil was working on! He has been working on going to a football game at all of the SEC stadiums, and so we decided to join forces for these penultimate states.

We flew into the Northwest Arkansas airport in Bentonville. This region of Arkansas has a lot of investment in it, because this is where Walmart is headquartered. The airport was modern and beautiful, and I was pretty impressed with Fayetteville as well.

I found Fayetteville quite charming. There were cute local cafés and restaurants, and boutique shops, and I went to the farmer’s market as well when it was running. It was a nice town.

On Saturday morning, we made our way through the University of Arkansas campus to watch the game! They were playing Auburn. The weather was not great, raining intermittently, but the game itself was good. Not a good ending, if you were an Arkansas fan, but Phil and I didn’t care about the result and the game was interesting up until the end.

The next day, we drove down to Little Rock to see a bit more of the state. The timing wasn’t ideal, unfortunately – it was during the government shutdown, so some of the things that I was interested in doing in Little Rock were closed because they’re run by the National Park Service.

It was still raining, this time much harder than it had been at the game. Phil and I walked from our hotel over to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library, which we thought would be open but apparently that is also impacted by a government shutdown. So instead we walked around the grounds for a bit and headed back to the hotel in defeat.

All in all, Fayetteville was much cooler than Little Rock, but I also don’t know that it was a fair view of Little Rock with the weather and the closures of the few tourist attractions they do have. I was impressed with Northwest Arkansas, though. Definitely worth the trip, and it put me one step closer to my goal!