ORD to Anywhere

My trip to Zanzibar in January of this year was my first trip to Africa since 2012 but it wasn't the last one I made this year. A few weeks after getting back from the eastern coast of the continent I headed back for another adventure, this time on the far western tip of Africa - Senegal! While West Africa has always been an area I've wanted to explore, I had put it off for so many years because (to be 100% real) my French is fucking terrible. TERRIBLE. I can barely manag

At the end of every year I do a look back at all of the trips I've taken and share my favorite photos from each location. I've typically made this as one gigantic post but for 2017 I'm moving in another direction and will be doing each destination on its own. I'm doing this for two reasons, the first being that logistically the omnibus post was horrible to work with due to the number of photos in the post. The second is that I want to give a fuller recounting and depiction

As I mentioned in part one of this "top sights" installment, Delhi is a city that really polarizes travelers. Often seen as aggressive, overcrowded, and polluted by foreign visitors, I would argue that while it is all of those things there is a lot that redeems the city and makes it a great place to start an exploration of the subcontinent. After several trips through India over the years I can honestly say that Delhi is one of my favorite cities, not just in India but in t

I was lucky enough to visit the Kathmandu valley two years ago on one of my (at the time) frequent swings through Asia. This was during a time in my life when i was much less fit than I currently am, so my interest in Nepal was less about hiking in the notoriously gorgeous mountain ranges and much more about exploring the dusty corners of Nepal's biggest city. Unfortunately I made a big mistake on this adventure - I forgot my camera! I'm not sure what happened during my pac

As I detailed in my recent review of Amtrak's California Zephyr service, the absolute best thing about my journey was the opportunity to see some amazingly beautiful vistas and landscapes as I road the rails through the American West. I was truly stunned by many of the sights that passed by my window as I slowly made my way from the coast of California back to my home in Chicago. Whether it was the desert landscapes of western Utah or the snowy mountain tops of the Rockies

In this day and age, it's almost impossible to visit a new country without having learned something about it that will impact the way you experience your trip. Whether you've read the Wikipedia page on the capital city or watched a CNN news report about a newly elected leader, most travelers walk into a new nation with a pre-conceived notion of what they will experience and how they will feel about it. It's an information age and we have the ability to be quite educated abo

Whether rational or not, the Middle East seems to be a daunting travel destination for a lot of people. I suppose I understand why, as every time you turn on your television it seems like there's some sort of breaking news coming out of the area discussing the violence and unrest that plagues parts of the region. Talking my friends and boyfriend into spending our annual travel adventure in the area took a bit of salesmanship on my part, but eventually the allures of natural

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

Okinawa was a bit of an interesting destination for me, mostly because I realized that my fear of renting cars in foreign countries held me back from seeing some of the best sights during my visit. Don’t get me wrong, Naha proper has plenty to do, plenty to see, and more than plenty to eat. But in retrospect I believe I made an error by not securing a method by which I could easily leave the city and explore the island a bit more in-depth. Hindsight is always 20/20, so ther