Category: North America

Weekend in El Salvador

Once, I was at the Dulles Airport very late at night, and I looked at the board and saw that all of the flights leaving were for Central America. There are a lot of direct flights from Dulles. I realized that maybe it might be possible to do a long weekend to Central America, which opened up some options! So far, I’ve traveled through Belize, Panama, and Costa Rica, so I had four countries left of the seven to explore. I settled on El Salvador – it’s small enough that I felt I would be able to see a fair amount, because the distances between things aren’t quite as much as, say, Guatemala and Nicaragua, and I’ve been curious about it for a while now.

It only took 4.5 hours to get to San Salvador. It’s amazing, living somewhere with so many direct flights, where I can get off a plane and find myself immersed in a different culture! I stayed in San Salvador, the capital, and used that as a base to explore a few areas of El Salvador. For such a small country, it has a lot to offer. I started with the Mayan ruins of Joya de Cerén and San Andrés.

I’ve seen a fair number of Mayan sites now, and I went to another on this trip that was more impressive (more on that later), but these were still interesting. I liked being able to peer down into the areas that were still being excavated and studied. The layers of rock were very neat.

From there, it was lunch near Coatepeque Lake! I loved the view from the restaurant. The color of the lake is gorgeous. If I’d had more time, I would have been interested in going down closer to the shore – it looked like there were communities down there that I would have loved to explore.

The whole area near the lake is part of a natural protected area, called Cerro Verde. After lunch, I headed there for an eco-walk, which included a higher viewpoint of the lake!

Overall, it was a good first day, but I liked my second full day in El Salvador a bit more. I did a tour of the Ruta de las Flores! And yes, it’s not completely “off the tourist trail,” but it did feel like a collection of places where locals were out and about, as opposed to that first day that was focused almost entirely on tourist sites.

I’m not saying going to tourist sites as a tourist is a bad thing, but I like to have a mix, and particularly in El Salvador, as their recent transformation is part of what drew me to visit. Their president, Nayib Bukele, was elected in 2019 and has been focused on radical changes ever since. Prior to his election as president, he served as the mayor of San Salvador.

He’s a polarizing figure – there is no question that under his leadership, the crime rate in El Salvador has plummeted, but his methods have led to a number of concerns over human rights. Also, when I say plummeted, murder rates went from a high of 66 per 100,000 people in 2012 to only 1.9 per 100,000 people in 2024, which is a decrease of 98% in only nine years. Those numbers are working in his favor. He was just reelected in 2024, winning a staggering 84.65% of the vote.

I was curious to see for myself what the new El Salvador looks like. I felt totally safe, even walking around by myself to get dinner as the sun went down. The Salvadorans were friendly and welcoming. I got the impression that tourism is on the upswing, with more tourists putting it on the radar now that the crime rate is lower.

One of the aspects of the tour that I really enjoyed was going to a coffee farm! Central America is known for producing great coffee, and it was cool to see the whole process. I’ve been to a few places that produced coffee, but this was a much more in-depth tour on how they get it from the plant to what I would put in a coffee maker or a French press.

There’s something very soothing about the beans drying out in the sun, being raked frequently like an oversized Japanese sand garden. On the other hand, once they’re put into the sacks, that work transporting them and confirming that they’re distributing the correct beans to the right places seems absolutely grueling.

Two full days is a short visit, to be sure. But I made the most of them, and I had a third day in the region that I used for a quick trip out of El Salvador – more on that next time. Because I dipped into my 2025 vacation days allocation for West Africa, I’m tighter on vacation this year, and this was a great use of a long weekend to explore a place that’s been on my radar for a while now. I would recommend longer if you have it, to spend more time in San Salvador and get out to the beaches (especially if you surf), but this was absolutely doable with the direct flight from DC.

All in all, it was a great Presidents’ Day weekend!

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Birmingham, Alabama

I’m very close to visiting all 50 states in the US! After my visit to Alabama in January, I was left with only three more, which is a goal I’d like to finish by the end of 2025. Right now, as the weather gets warmer, I’m putting it on pause, since I’m not interested in visiting the South in the middle of the summer, but I have tentative plans for state #50 so I’ll have to plan the other two as we get into fall.

For Alabama, I ended up choosing Birmingham for my visit. Montgomery was a close second – both cities have fascinating history in the Civil Rights era, but it seemed as though Birmingham would have more to see from a visitor’s perspective and better options for restaurants and bars. I’m sure I’ll make it to Montgomery at some point, but I had a nice weekend in Birmingham!

Birmingham’s story is one of a city rising out of the ashes. The path to civil rights in Alabama was not an easy one, and Birmingham once had the nickname of “Bombingham” for the 50 dynamite bombings that took place over about 20 years, from 1947 to 1965. The most famous is the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, which has been rebuilt and stands across from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

The Civil Rights Institute is absolutely what drew me to Birmingham, and it didn’t disappoint. It did a great job covering the history of Birmingham and the broader Civil Rights movement, from sit-ins to the desegregation of buses to the Freedom Riders movement. The section on the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in particular was so well done, both on the events that happened leading up to it and the investigation that was done after the fact.

The park outside also had a set of sculptures and memorials related to the Civil Rights movement. I found the one where it feels as though you’re walking in between the snarling and barking dogs to be particularly interesting.

Downtown Birmingham maintains a lot of its historical charm, but then some parts of the city felt absolutely abandoned. It probably didn’t help that I was there in January. Still, the areas that were thriving seemed great, and I hope that same energy can sweep over the rest of the city.

After I’d visited all the other things I wanted to visit, like the historical sites and museums, I ended up stumbling upon a very cute indie movie theater! It’s called Sidewalk Film Center + Cinema, and I’m a little obsessed with it. Such cool vibes. If it was in the city where I lived, I would go there all the time. I went to see Nosferatu, which was a good one to see on the big screen. The photos below are from the bathroom, which stayed on theme.

Overall, Birmingham was a good weekend! Pleasant and interesting, with good food options and with plenty of options to fill a couple days. I’ll be heading back to the South a few times this year to finish my last few states, so it’s been nice to get a chance to learn about the Civil Rights history from the locations where it all happened.

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A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Probably Do Again

Post author By admin
Post date May 8, 2025
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In December, I was invited to celebrate a friend’s 30th birthday on a cruise to the Bahamas!

I’ve only been on a cruise once before. My parents and I went to Alaska when I was younger. They had always wanted to try a cruise, but we quickly realized it didn’t align well with our family’s travel style. My parents like road trips because they like to be in control of their own timing and be flexible in their plans, which doesn’t work well with the way that cruises operate with their tight deadlines* to get back on the ship. We only tried it the once. Alaska was amazing, though.

*Side note, I did read an absolutely fascinating article about the people who got left behind on a remote island in West Africa when they failed to make their cruise departure time.

For Phil’s birthday, it was a much better fit. He had pulled together a variety of people in his life, including family, friends he had grown up with, friends from DC, and travel friends, and all had pretty different levels of comfort with travel and interests. The cruise worked well because it meant none of us had to plan anything in advance. We could all grab drinks and dinner and mingle without anyone needing to split the check or pick a location – we could walk into an establishment, sit down, and stay as long as we liked. I can absolutely see it for large groups or families who want to spend time together without needing to plan every piece of their vacation.

We were meant to have two days in the Bahamas, but the sea was rough during our cruise. I took dramamine and was glad I did, because I didn’t get seasick. We did still get our day in Nassau, but our day at Royal Caribbean’s private island turned into a day at sea.

And of course, the first view of Nassau was Atlantis Resort!

Nassau was interesting – parts of it, right off the port, feel like an extension of the ship itself. Well-known international brands, a partially fenced off section that is filled with more souvenirs, drunk Americans and Europeans doing shots at the Señor Frog’s. But all it took was a walk a few blocks away to get out of the crowd of tourists, which was a much more pleasant walk.

We also visited the Straw Market. It had pretty decent souvenir options, but the part that I liked the most was our conversation with one of the shop owners. He explained how people pass down the stalls through the generations. This is one of the best options for making money in Nassau, and they hold tight to the real estate within the market, teaching their family the skills to make handicraft goods that tourists will want.

After having lunch in Nassau and exploring the city, we spent the rest of the time on the ship until we disembarked Monday morning. I had worried that it might feel oppressive. It really is massive, though. There was more than enough to explore over the course of a weekend. There are a ton of bars and restaurants and activities – we even did an escape room on our full at sea day.

There were also some areas of the ship that felt calm. The Solarium, which is an adults only section, had seats where you could lay down and watch the ocean, and I spent a nice morning drinking coffee there. They also have a whole floor that’s designed to look like Central Park. It was nice to have options for when I needed a moment to read and relax without feeling surrounded.

All in all, I enjoyed it more than I expected. I wouldn’t rush out and prioritize a cruise on my upcoming travels, but I also would consider it for destinations where that’s a good way to see the region. It was such a fun way to celebrate Phil’s birthday!

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Virtual Sundance 2025

It’s time to interrupt my irregularly, not-scheduled travel blogging to talk about movies! It’s Sundance time. Miraculously, the online component still exists in some form, which means I still get to partake even though I don’t live in Utah anymore. This year, I watched 11 feature films.

Atropia: Off to a great start! Conceptually, Atropia was super interesting. I liked a lot of things about it. There were some really funny parts, the acting was strong, and I loved the play between reality and what’s scripted. I think that it ended up being a less sharp satire than it could have been. It wanted to say a little about a lot of things, and it also wanted to be more of a romantic story than a satire in the third act, which weakened it for me. That said, I’m not going to punish a movie for being overambitious in its themes, and I did have a good time watching it.

Bunnylovr: As a character study, I think it was decent. Katarina Zhu’s acting was great. It was a little slow for my tastes – I kept waiting for something to happen, and it never really did. I was waiting for it to lean in to the creepiness of her benefactor and go for more of a stalker/horror angle, but that felt a bit underexplored. It had a lot of potential that I’m not sure it lived up to.

The Things You Kill: While it starts as a fairly straightforward revenge plot, it takes a pretty bold turn in the second half. It took me a minute to figure out exactly what was happening but after reflecting on it, I absolutely loved it. The film has a lot to say on the patriarchy, generational trauma, and cycles of violence. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to track down this director’s other work, but that’s on my to-do list. Also, the cinematography and shots of the countryside in Türkiye were stunning!

Sorry, Baby: Incredible. From the very first scenes, I was so drawn in. The acting was amazing, and Agnes and Lydie’s friendship felt like one of the best, most real portrayals of female friendship that I’ve ever seen in film. It was so much funnier than I thought it was going to be, and it paired that with this raw emotion to tell Agnes’s story of healing. Definitely would recommend this one.

By Design: The description of this had me hooked. “A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.” Unfortunately, the reality of the film wasn’t as compelling for me. It was weird, but not in the way that I wanted it to be. I think it has some interesting ideas about the people around Camille projecting their own desires onto her as an inanimate object, but it still never quite hit the mark. There was an animated show about a cult, Praise Petey, that was weird in a lot of ways but had this recurring bit where the main character’s fiancé was a literal wooden board called Brian and no one ever acknowledged that he was, in fact, a wooden board, which was my favorite joke in the series, and I think that’s what I was chasing here. Every so often, I would get a glimmer of what I hoped it would be, but overall it wasn’t for me.

Omaha: So good and so emotionally devastating. There is an action taken about a half hour in and I thought, surely it can’t get sadder than this, and then it did. I haven’t cried this hard at a movie in a while. Really well done.

Rains Over Babel: I really enjoyed this. The concept (gambling years of life with Death in a Colombian nightclub) was awesome, they executed it well, and as a bonus, the set and costume designs were colorful and fun. The beginning introduced a lot of characters all at once, which made me a little worried as we started off on our story, but it did a great job of wrapping up the loose ends. Fun to watch, and hopefully it gets a wider release in the US!

Sukkwan Island: I watched this more or less right after Rains Over Babel and boy, was it jarring to go from Colombian night clubs to an isolated cabin in Norway. A lot of thoughts on this one, most of which can’t be shared without spoiling a fairly major portion of the plot. The ending was very polarizing, if the reviews on Letterboxd are anything to go by. I found the framing interesting, but not necessarily believable. Still, as a thriller in the Norwegian wilderness, it had a lot of tension and very compelling performances by its two leads.

Bubble & Squeak: Similar to Atropia – this one had such a fun idea and I’m not sure it quite lived up to its potential. Great cast, beautiful cinematography, some fun moments. In Sundance 2023, I went to go see Infinity Pool, and one of the funniest things for me is that those two movies have essentially the same premise, a tourist who violates the law in a fictitious post-Yugoslavian country, but could not be more tonally different. I think this could have been a sharper satire but I still enjoyed myself.

DJ Ahmet: This was delightful. It was set in a small town in North Macedonia, and balanced the serious and the comedic quite well. Charming, with a lot of heart, and it offered the most functional father-son relationship of anything I watched over the course of the festival.

The Virgin of Quarry Lake: My final film of Sundance was billed as a coming-of-age horror movie set in Argentina. I liked its witchy, dark vibes and I thought the ending was pretty strong.

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Weekend in Nashville

Of the states I had remaining, Tennessee was one of the ones that surprised people the most. It’s understandable, since Nashville has developed quite the reputation as a party city. It seems as though every other bachelorette party is taking place in Nashville at any given time. I was still taken aback when I left my hotel mid morning on a Friday and found people wandering through the streets, already drunk. I asked my waitress about it at lunch and she told me this was normal.

It’s funny, though, because it really doesn’t take much to get away from the party scene. The first “touristy” thing I did was head to the Capitol, since that was only open on weekdays. It only took two or three blocks away from Broadway for the bass of the music to fade away.

I don’t necessarily seek out US state capitals, because often our state capitals are out of the way, but I do think it’s fun to go to those when I can. In a delightfully moment of Southern hospitality, the man who was doing security at the Capitol asked me where I was visiting from and then proceeded to tell me all about the time that he took his son up to Washington DC so they could go to the Smithsonian together.

The Tennessee Capitol building was really pretty. It was also interesting that they didn’t go the route that a lot of them seem to, where they have the dome and look similar to the US Capitol building. The Utah one looks so similar to the US Capitol that they actually used it as a stand-in in Legally Blonde 2 when Elle goes to Congress. Tennessee has gone with a different structure, which looks more like a courthouse from the outside.

I also headed to the Country Music Hall of Fame! Nashville has a huge amount of country music history, and this museum was a great crash course. There are a lot of options of places to go within Nashville for more music history, if you’re a huge fan of country, but I am not so I figured this was my best place to start.

It was a cool museum. Because so many famous artists came through Nashville, or recorded there, there was enough that even I could appreciate, and if you are a fan of country music, you would probably have a much bigger appreciation than I did!

One of the number one recommendations for a visit to Nashville is to go to a show at the Opry. It came up on basically every recommendation that I saw. The fun thing about the weekend I went is that there was actually a Christmas special being filmed, so I bought a ticket to go see Little Big Town’s Christmas special. I figured even if I had no idea who Little Big Town was, I would at least know some of the songs!

It turned out to be such a good idea. It was so fun to go to a live taping – I’d never been to one before, and it was interesting to see how it all gets made. Once or twice, they had to fully repeat a song. Sometimes they would flub a word on the intro and re-start it, or pause for a few minutes to fully reset the stage. I love seeing what goes into all of it, and then knowing at the end that it will all be re-edited into a seamless presentation. The artists I didn’t know ahead of time all did a great job, and they also had some guests that I did actually recognize, like Sheryl Crow and Josh Groban!

Nashville was a great weekend trip. The party scene was a bit much for me, especially on a solo trip, but even when I didn’t spend tons of time at the bars on Broadway, there was still plenty to do and a lot of nice areas to wander around. The accommodation options were pretty expensive but clearly it’s because of the high demand!

I’m kind of obsessed with this fancy neon Taco Bell

Anyway, that’s a wrap on Nashville. I’m down to my last four states! Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana are the ones I have left, and I’m excited to get to explore those too.

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A Year in Washington DC

It’s the anniversary of my move to Washington DC! One year ago today, Sam and I boarded a plane, each of us having checked luggage to bring just enough to be able to camp out in an apartment while we waited for our worldly possessions to be shipped across the country. We had about 15 apartment tours lined up over the next few days so that we could try to get a lease signed before I left for a week in Mexico and Sam left to visit his family for Thanksgiving. It was a real whirlwind!

Now, a year out, I am so glad to have made the leap. There were a lot of things to love about Utah. I miss a lot of our friends there, as well as the incredible feeling of living in a house that we owned – it was a bit of an adjustment back to having a landlord, although it’s nice not to have to call our own plumber when things went wrong. And the hiking and natural beauty in Utah is unparalleled. But at the same time, I had been living there for about seven years, and I was looking for a change. And I’ve loved living in DC so far!

The best change has absolutely been how walkable the city is. We sold our car in Salt Lake before we moved, and I’ve been loving the ability to go pretty much anywhere on Metro or via bus. Also, I love walking through the city. I love trying to identify the flags at the embassies and coming across new monuments. Salt Lake’s urban design is a lot more car-centric.

Related to that, we are so connected to everything. This is the first time I’ve lived east of Chicago in the United States, and it blows my mind how interconnected and close everything is on the East Coast. We’re only a few hours from Philadelphia or New York, and there are Amtrak connections all up and down the Eastern seaboard. We have three airports, two of which are international, so the amount of direct flights that are available is incredible (even if more of them are on American Airlines).

It’s still strange that the national news is essentially our local news now – a visiting dignitary or a NATO conference can disrupt traffic or close metro stations. I somehow expected the politics to impact me more. I haven’t made any friends who work in politics, which is fine by me, but it means that I have felt strangely disconnected from all of it so far. It’s always a belated realization that the street I need to go down is currently hosting the IMF or something. We’ll see if that changes.

Obsessed with the Australian embassy’s Christmas display

What I love about it being the seat of government, of course, is our proximity to the embassies. I have gone on a lot of trips lately that have required visas. When I went to Djibouti in January, the evisa wasn’t working for me and it was a game changer to be able to show up live and get help applying for a tourist visa in person. I’ve had something of a marathon of visa applications for the trip I’m currently on. It gave me options – for one of them, going to the consulate was just up the road and meant I could get the visa in advance instead of doing it on arrival, so I could carry less cash and have one less that I had to worry about at a border.

The Smithsonian museums are incredible as well. They are world class cultural institutions, and they’re free. It means there are more options of what to go do on the weekends and what to show visitors. I’ve made it a goal to go to all of the Smithsonian museums here, which is definitely a marathon and not a sprint, because it is possible to get museum’d out.

This is the first time I’ve moved to a city where I’ve actually known people. The other times I’ve moved as an adult – to Chicago for school, to SLC for my first job, and to a lesser degree, to Copenhagen and Strasbourg for temporary educational opportunities – I’ve known no one. Moving with Sam obviously made a huge difference, and it was nice to actually have a bit of a network out here already.

The types of people who are interested in moving to DC are more of my type of people as well. While I made amazing friends in Utah, the type of person who would move to Utah as an adult was often so outdoorsy that we had little in common as far as hobbies go. Sam and I once went to a party where every single other person we met did backcountry skiing. The DC vibe is more internationally minded, and more interested in indie movies or trying a new restaurant than hiking a 14er.

Our one snowstorm in DC last winter. It shut down the city for about three days.

It’s wild to see historical places casually?

DC isn’t perfect. No place is, because life is messy and unpredictable and there will always be stressors. But I’ve had a pretty great first year here. It’s impossible to know what the future holds, but at least for now, my future is here in DC!

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Stopover in Detroit

It’s wild that after all the time I spent living and traveling through the Midwest, I never made it to Michigan. On my way back from Washington Island, I decided it was time to change that! I took a flight path that took me through Detroit and had one full day there.

I didn’t have a particularly ambitious itinerary for my visit. I wanted to go to the Motown Museum, but it was closed the day I was there. Instead, I explored the city center. Detroit is such an interesting city – for probably 50 or 60 years, it was thriving due to the automotive industry, but when the industry left, it felt into decline and for a while, Detroit considered the most dangerous city in America. Lately, there’s been somewhat of a resurgence. Definitely not back to where they were prior to going through urban blight, but there has been a concerted effort to improve the city and bring back more cultural institutions.

Part of how this manifests is through street art and outdoor spaces. There are a lot of monuments and murals throughout downtown, and there seem to be a lot of new parks or spaces for bars and restaurants to serve outside. It seemed to me as if some of that was working – while there were areas where I didn’t see anyone else out walking, there were a few streets that had a lot of residents out and about.

Canada is just on the other side of the river, although I didn’t cross over. I’m not sure if there’s anything particularly interesting to see on the Canadian side. I wanted to walk along the Riverwalk, which is meant to be pleasant, but it was closed off for some sort of event.

The main goal, besides exploring the city a bit, was to get Detroit style pizza! I ended up meeting a friend for dinner and trying it. I love that it was invented as a way to reuse the automotive plant parts, and I thought the end result was absolutely delicious.

I came away wishing I’d had a little more time in Detroit! I had a nice time exploring, but I didn’t get to go to any of the museums or anything, and it felt like the city had more to offer. I love seeing cities that are working to change negative perceptions – from what I could tell, Detroit is doing an amazing job to work on rebuilding itself after the deindustrialization that happened in the 70s and 80s. I would definitely be interested in going back.

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Washington Island Weekend

Post author By admin
Post date October 8, 2024
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This is the year that I turn 30. To celebrate, my high school friends and I did a mini-reunion where we all went up to Washington Island together! One of my friends arranged for us to borrow her aunt’s cabin for a long weekend. Washington Island is a tiny island off the tip of Door County, which is that long skinny tip of Wisconsin that juts into Lake Michigan. We flew into Milwaukee and rented a car, and after about a four hour drive, we had to take a ferry to get to the island. Also, a note about the Milwaukee airport: they have a section officially labeled the “recombobulation area” after security, which I found charming and delightful.

Door County is adorable! It feels like the Midwest’s answer to Cape Cod, with boutique shops and local produce off the side of the road. We had stocked up on groceries and each of us brought a craft to teach the rest of the group, so we were ready to have a relaxed weekend of spending time together and exploring a bit of the island.

The main sites of Washington Island, in no particular order:

The local Norwegian-style stavkirke. Fun fact, there are only 9 of these in the United States – most are in northern US in areas that had a large number of Scandinavian immigrants, but one of them is in Epcot in the Norwegian pavilion. So I’ve now seen two of the nine in the US, I suppose.

The lavender farm. For an extra fee, you can pick a bouquet of lavender, which we did, and then they have a café with a bunch of foods that incorporate lavender. The lemonade was excellent!

Schoolhouse Beach. No sand, just rocks! We swam in the lake, which was chilly but doable.

Nelson’s Hall Bitters Pub. I’m going to link to the Atlas Obscura entry here, because their description is pretty thorough, but basically it is the oldest continuously-operating tavern in Wisconsin. Founded in 1899, it managed to survive Prohibition by “prescribing” bitters, which was challenged in court and won. Nowadays, if you do a shot of bitters, you get a card that you sign and stamp with your thumb declaring you a true islander! I wouldn’t do the shot of bitters again but it was a fun night out.

Washington Island was amazing. I cannot recommend it highly enough. We had such a good time exploring the island, and when we weren’t out picking lavender, we were learning how to knit and embroider and basket weave together. I also saw my very first fireflies, which was magical! I would definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a cool destination in the US.

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Shenandoah National Park

Moving from Salt Lake City to DC, I did wonder if I would be able to find good hiking and outdoorsy activities out east. While I stand by the statement that Salt Lake is the best place in the country if you are outdoorsy but also want to live in close proximity to a city, it was fun to explore our closest national park: Shenandoah!

Our friend Chelsea came into town and the three of us headed there for a weekend in June. This isn’t necessarily the time of year I would recommend, as it was brutally hot in the afternoons. We did a couple hikes but we made sure to get up bright and early so that we could beat the heat as much as possible. While I would have preferred a slightly later wake up time, it was beautiful to see the sun rise over the mountains.

The hikes were nice – mostly wooded trails, with a few rocky sections, and a nice payoff of views out over the landscape. We also saw quite a few deer and some raccoons (which, incidentally, is the first time I’ve seen them in the wild. I often heard them rattling around in the trash cans of my college campus but they were concealed).

We spent one of our afternoons avoiding the heat in Luray Caverns, which is a massive cave system in that area of Virginia. The rock formations were incredible! There was one section, called Dream Lake, with a perfect mirrored illusion reflecting the stalactites in the water, and it felt like something straight out of a fairy tale. They also had a pipe organ set up in the cavern near the end that was attached to the stalactites, and we got to watch them play music on it, which was a pretty cool way to end the visit.

The one thing I would say about Luray Caverns is that I struggled with the fact that it was privately owned and operated, instead of being managed by the National Park Service, like the caves I’ve been in up to this point in the US. It felt wildly commercialized, and I’m much more interested in spreading a message of conservation and education – some of the behavior that was allowed in the caves, like throwing coins in the water, was absolutely shocking to me. I would still recommend visiting, because the cave system was amazing, but it is something to be mindful of.

All in all, it was a great weekend trip from DC! Once we rented a car, it was easy to get to, with good hiking and activities, as well as nice local restaurants in the small towns surrounding the park. I would definitely go back. Hopefully on my next visit, the weather is a little cooler!

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Memorial Day in Montreal

Once I returned from Nepal, I looked at the calendar and realized we had a long weekend coming up. I asked Sam if he wanted to go somewhere for Memorial Day, and after looking at flights, we decided to head to a destination that both of us had wanted to explore for a long time: Montreal!

It’s not a long flight from DC, either. Only about two hours to get to somewhere with a pretty unique vibe. Montreal definitely feels like a North American city, but it does have a certain European flair, from the coffeeshops and cute walkable neighborhoods. It’s also got a great food scene, which I didn’t really realize going into this weekend – we had amazing food for every meal!

One of our best meals was very serendipitous – Sam had heard of a specific bakery, and we went there to check it out. As we ordered our pastries and chatted with the man working behind the counter, it turned out that he had worked for a different subsidiary of our same company. He asked if we had figured out our dinner plans, and ended up helping us make reservations at this pasta place that was fantastic. Our seats overlooked the kitchen and it was so fun to see them make the food as we had our meal!

We also checked out several museums while we were there. We learned about the history, saw the old sewer, and explored the art scene. We also went in the Biodome, which was one of the more interesting zoos I’ve been to lately – each section was its own habitat, with open areas for the animals that made it feel a little more like how they would live in the wild than most zoos manage.

I wanted to check out the Olympic Stadium, which was hosting some sort of music festival when we were in the area. There wasn’t much to see, but they did have a small exhibit on the history of the games in Montreal.

And of course, we couldn’t leave without trying both of the Montreal specialties: bagels and poutine! Both classics, and it was fun exploring the neighborhoods that were full of cafés competing to offer the best Montreal bagel.

One of our morning outings was to the titular Mont Royal, where the name Montreal came from. I’m not sure I’d call it a “mountain” but we took a bus up and had great views overlooking the city. There were a lot of paths crisscrossing around and we saw plenty of people who were there to run and bike. Definitely worth a visit, especially if it isn’t as hot out and you want to spend some time outdoors.

My biggest takeaway: I loved Montreal. It felt very livable, with a lot of nice neighborhoods to explore and enough amazing food options that you would never run out of restaurants to try. I would definitely be interested in returning, and I’m excited to explore more of Quebec now that I live so close!