Hmmmmm. They do have a pedestrian street. We did have an amazing dinner on that street with a woman server that we loved. But. BUT. It just feels like you’re missing out. Like you are right next to some of the most beautiful places in the world and you decided to stay 10 minutes away from it? Are you stupid? Well yes. Yes I am. In this particular case, we only had one night. The hotel was right next to the train station, and the train is like 10 minutes and 2 euros from the first cinque terre town. For us, it was perfect. Especially after I saw the layout of the Cinque Terre towns.

I mean, it’s Barcelona. What’s not to like? La Ramblas may be one of the best pedestrian drags in the world…well maybe, except every restaurant kind of sucks, every street peddler is kind of jerky and expensive, every 5 feet there’s an ice cream hut, and it’s crowded as all hell, BUT it’s still cool! haha. There is a market right off it called the Mercat De La Boqueria which is old as all hell and has some of the coolest most boutique finds you are going to get. They say if there were unicorns, they would sell them here…both morbid and kind of awesome.

It’s probably not fair for me to judge PR much since I was brought there by a cruise ship two times and on a company resort trip another time, but I will say this, while I liked Puerto Rico, I found it to be a little too Americanized with fast food and the like, without the infrastructure that one would expect from being Americanized. In other words, they got all our crap but haven’t gotten any of the good stuff yet.
I would agree that the Old San Juan area can be quite charming, but it also closes really early and can be found in many countries to be honest. Perhaps I just need to spend more time here, the people are nice, the beaches are nice, at the end of the day what really is there not to like…

I spent a couple weeks driving around Spain and Portugal (with my girlfriend at the time). It has to be one of the best vacations one could take. I had been to Spain before, but not Portugal, and I really didn’t appreciate any of it until doing it like this. Obviously they are beautiful countries, but it’s easy to miss how geographically diverse they are as well. Lisbon is one of the best European cities there is, but like London and Paris (and others of course), it’s a giant sprawling landscape of old buildings mixed with new developments.

The first time I “went” to Beijing was a fucking disaster. My friend and I missed our connecting flight due to utter incompetence, something I am not prone to nor do I tolerate it. We still blame the Thai pilot who quoted the wrong time when we arrived but nonetheless, when you miss a very long international flight when you are sitting in a bar less than 150 feet away from the gate and the airport is completely empty, you’re a fucking idiot, there is really no getting around that. So when we watched our dreams slowly slipping away from that gate (it was our ride home after a long trip), we fell to the floor and made certain that Beijing understood our contempt.

Even just going into (and out of) Innsbruck on the train you know you are in a special place. The alps are simply amazing and European trains zig zag through them like they were made to go together. The alp towns, bridges, rivers, castles, chateaus, and really everything you see will just amaze. What a place to live, if you like living in the 1500’s, haha. Gorgeous though. Innsbruck itself is pretty small. The outdoor activities seem to be aplenty, but the main thing to do, as far as I can tell is to take the Hungerburg funicular and the Nordkettenbahnen/cable car gondola thing (gotta love those kinds of names) up to the top of the Hafelekarhaus…er…take the cable car up to the top of the mountain.

This was the city I was supposed to love. Rich with history. Rich with restaurants and bars. Rich with fun loving, booby flashing, beer drinking, bar shouting Germans. I think maybe I was thinking of London, or I don’t know, anywhere else.
Now, how is it that I’ve visited more cities in this country than any other country other than my own. Think about it, honestly, how many cities can you really visit or do you even want to visit in a single country that isn’t your own? I guess I’ve done a bunch of Spain and a bunch of France, but Germany is certainly up there. High up there, and I just don’t get it.

We were spent when we arrived having just rocked it out at carnival in Rio. Mostly we were just anxious to get to St. Maarten and the beach.
I’ll need to go back to Panama.

To be fair, I just did Tangier because I took a ferry from Tarifa in southern Spain. I mean you can literally see Africa from there so ya gotta hop over right?
Well 10,000 people a day feel the same way apparently and the Africans are ready. They will pick at you until you can’t take it anymore…kind of like Jamaica. So anyway, you try to get a guide at the ferry port. Go for someone who looks greedy rather than evil…those really are the 2 options as far as I could tell.

So surprised at how much I liked Bruges. I thought it was going to be small. I thought it was going to be boring. I was wrong about that, I was wrong about a lot of things…yes, Legends of the Fall, but you have no soul if you don’t like that movie.
The center area is the “Markt”, guess what that means. It is a huge square that could rival any square in Europe. Tons of patios, tons of old as shit stuff. Perhaps the only downside is this gigantic modern glass sculpture in the center of the square, which I thought was completely out of place.

Auckland is weird. I’m not totally sure how I feel about it. The people are nice and very good looking, which always helps. They have a nice waterfront area and a decent city center with a big casino. They have a pretty kitschy road filled with hippie shops and strip clubs. They have ferries going all day to surrounding islands. I think I really like Auckland, but it must serve as a jumping off point to other areas.

BA is what I expected Rio to be but without beaches. It might be one of my favorite cities in the world. Now I did stay in some of the nicest hotels on the planet while here, so I am a bit biased, but man I had a great time here. Parillas (grilled meat restaurants) are everywhere, patios are everywhere, classic European squares, old as shit monuments, gorgeous people, etc. I found BA to be just easy and beautiful.
What may be most striking, and what I most often repeat, is how uninterested and unimpressed they are with anything American, or United States of America(n) I should say. They are prettier, more sophisticated, their history is far older and richer.

Belize is probably very similar to how Mexico was 20 or so years ago. It has a bunch of cool shit and a ton of potential but it just ain’t there yet. Belize city is very interesting if you can get away from where the cruise ships let people off (they built a giant cruise zone made to look like what Americans think Belize should look like…it’s fucked up). Orange Walk Town (where my friend was from) is as authentic Latin America as it gets. We even went to a pig roast in someone’s backyard where they had been roasting the pig 6 feet in the ground for days (which is great but also slightly unsettling when they started serving it with their hands).

I got to Athens and jumped right in, maybe 5 minutes at the hotel. I was only planning on staying for a little less than 48 hours so I really needed to pack it in. I walked down the street and immediately met a man who was an American who wanted me to follow him to his car, after saying no I met another man very quickly who wanted the same. I became discouraged so I immediately booked the hop on hop off tour bus. Good way to see the city and maybe get away from the douchers surrounding the Parthenon. The bus wasn’t great, but it did help…some good info and many drop off points to help me out. I decided to walk through “Plaka” that night and was relatively entertained.

Bangkok is a full on dirty, crowded, constantly grabbed, constantly hustled, smelly, “you wan massaaaa?”, tuk tuk drivin’, ping pong show askin’, mecca. And I think I love it. The best scenario for me in any place is to have the ultimate luxury next door to the real world. If you’re in a foreign place, you want to feel like it, and Bangkok forces that upon you like no other. They have some of the nicest hotels in the world, some of the nicest restaurants and bars in the world, but inevitably across the street is some kind of amazing market, or a street food destination, or a ping pong show, haha. It’s remarkable and just so unique. Bangkok is what you make of it, and I prefer to try it all.

Burlington is coooolllll! I’ve always wanted to come here. The main drag is just like home except better! haha. Why don’t more places in the US have pedestrian malls. I just don’t get it. In Burlington they do have chains on Church Street (main street really), but every building is small enough that it feels great. There are a boatload of stores and a boatload of patios. It is truly one of the better strolls you can do.
They don’t allow smoking which is not only awesome but it also cuts down on the regular unsavories you usually find in those types of places.

Boston was a ton of fun!
I happen to love history, and Boston is obviously old as shit and full of cool stuff. I’m guessing non Americans would care far less but our founding fathers were right here…before there was a country! How cool. The Freedom Trail is killer and a great way to spend a nice day. The city does a pretty good job of explaining most of the things you stop at. Seeing the 54th Massachusetts Monument was particularly moving (Glory is one of the best movies ever made of course).

Love the inner harbor. Love the power plant section. Love Fells Point.Baltimore always seems like a great night away from DC kind of option, if the weather is nice. When it’s gorgeous, the place is just hopping, and at night the bars are spilling out everywhere. Like DC, the hotel selection is really really fucked. I don’t understand why cool boutique hotels (in good locations) haven’t made it everywhere, but I will continue to seek them out.

Everyone loves Asheville!!! I did not I mean it was fine. Many of the shops are cool. The brewery scene is definitely cool. But it just feels like a mountain town without the cool snow scene. It’s small but yet it’s still spread out. They couldn’t plan for a main drag? I was a bit disappointed about that.