ORD to Anywhere

When it comes to the Iberian peninsula, it seems Spain always gets the glory. Not for me last year though! I had yet to visit any of the countries that occupy the peninsula and I decided my first trip to the area would bypass the more popular Madrid and Barcelona and start in Lisbon instead. My visit came at the tail end of a two week exploration through Senegal and Egypt and really was just a short three day stop over on my way back home to Chicago due to the cost of fligh

People often ask me “what kind of job do you have that lets you travel so much?" And I often begrudgingly have to tell them that I am an employee of the United States federal government. Why begrudgingly? Well, you see .... Americans of just about all political persuasions tend to have a very poor view of federal employees. It almost seems like a tried and true national past time to skewer civil servants, Democrats and Republicans alike. We're perceiving as lazy, mindles

I'm the type of traveler that likes full flexibility when I'm out exploring, so it should come as no surprise that I tend to avoid hard and fast rules when I'm on the road. Rules often end up being the antithesis of what good travel is all about - they trip and tangle, wither and hinder. I feel the most engaged in travel when I'm unburdened and rules take me in the opposite direction. If anything, my rule is "no rules" on the road. And yet with every maxim comes the inevit

I recently got back from a three day jaunt through the city of Minsk, Belarus. While not exactly as rare a destination for travelers as somewhere like Somalia or Yemen, Belarus is still a relatively untouched country on the tourism trail. One report I saw from 2014 by the World Tourism Organization ranked Belarus 140th overall in overall visitors, making it the third least visited country in Europe that year behind Liechtenstein and Moldova. That's twenty one times fewer v

Let's be dead honest for a minute folks - 2016 was a freaking rough year for most of the world. Whether it was the Syrian refugee crisis, the siege of Aleppo, the slew of celebrity deaths, the UK's Brexit vote, the insane US election cycle, or the poisoning of Flint's water supply, it's been difficult to limp into the last week of December without feeling like the whole world is nothing more than a series of raging dumpster fires. But it wasn't all bad news this year! The Ch

My stay at the Westin Grand Munich wasn’t intentional. When I was planning this entire trip I was much more focused on securing hotels for my stops in Berlin and Budapest than anything remotely related to Munich. In retrospect I believe it was because I simply wasn’t that interested in Munich as a destination and that quickly translated into general apathy regarding anything on that leg of the trip. In the end all I wanted was a comfortable hotel for the three days I’d be e

Unfortunately I lost about half of my stash of photos for this hotel stay, so it’s going to be pretty short and sweet. This was the last hotel on a fairly epic journey that started in New York City and took me through Tokyo, Frankfurt, Budapest, Munich, and Berlin. I needed a place to stay overnight between the Lufthansa economy class leg from Munich and my departure on AirBerlin back to the US of A. Since I was traveling on separate tickets I figured it was safest to give

After a few short days in lovely, overcast Munich hanging out with the Vice President of the United States, it was time for me to finally start the journey back to Chicago. At this point in my trip I had left Chicago and arrived in Munich through Tokyo, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Budapest. My flight back to the US of A was departing from Berlin though, so I needed to find a good way to get back to Tegel Airport (TXL). Being a oneworld devotee the obvious choice was AirBerlin (

After the trials and tribulations associated with my short fight with food poisoning in Berlin and Budapest, I was looking forward to better health in Munich so I could actually enjoy a bit of my trip. It seemed luck wasn’t going to be on my side though, as the weather was pretty atrocious for the majority of my time there. One day was entirely rained out and the rest of the my stay remained overcast and drizzly, making touring a bit uncomfortable and photography difficult.

Similar to my previous photo essay from Berlin, my illness really limited the amount of time I had in Budapest. The three full days of touring I had planned was whittled down to an afternoon and evening touring the Castle Hill. Despite only having a half day to explorer, I was pretty happy with my short stint as the area I wandered around was pretty picturesque and enthralling. There’s definitely an old world charm to this area of Budapest, and it left me hungry for more ex