Anyone who knows me, knows I have a thing for ruins when I travel. If something is old, ruined and abandoned, I want to see it and explore it. Little did I know I’ve been living just a couple miles away from the Capitol Stones – the best kept secret ruins in Washington, DC – …
With my first safari experience under my belt in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, it was time to move on to South Africa. My first stop would be Cape Town and my expectations were high. Everyone I knew who had been to Cape Town raved about it. I arrived late at night after a long day of …
It was still pitch-black outside when I heard the ring of my iPhone alarm go off, signaling that it was time to crawl out of my cozy warm bed to get dressed before my morning tea arrived. My iPhone screen showed it was just 5:30 a.m. – a god-awful time to be waking up while …
After spending less than 48 hours in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe to kick off a three-week trip to southern Africa, I headed across the border to the airport in Kasane, Botswana to start my journey to the Okavango Delta – a trip that started with just a bit of drama. My ultimate destination in the …
I spent less than 48 hours in Victoria Falls, but I managed to squeeze a lot in to that 48 hours! Arriving on a Saturday afternoon to the Victoria Falls airport on the Zimbabwe side of the Falls, I waited an annoyingly long time for my airport shuttle to whisk me away to my hotel, …
When I started planning my recent trip to China, I knew I wanted to visit Chengdu to see China’s famous giant pandas. Most tourists go to the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base to catch a glimpse of this endangered animal, but the base doesn’t offer any opportunities to get up close and personal with …
I kicked off my recent trip to China with two days in Hong Kong, but I have to admit, I wasn’t particularly excited about the stop. I pictured Hong Kong being nothing more than a crowded city full of skyscrapers with little of cultural interest to me. Indeed, many of the recommendations I got from …
As I slowly dragged one foot in front of the other, I could feel my calf muscles strain and tighten. I was running on relatively flat ground, on black asphalt, but it felt like I was pushing myself uphill. I thought back to the prior few days – a five-hour walking tour around Beijing, an …
At this time next week, I will be in Hong Kong! It’s been a few months since I’ve left the country and this trip has snuck up on me a bit. Running the Great Wall Marathon has been on my bucket list for years and when I started making plans to finally do it, it …
Four weeks from today I will embark on what will be perhaps my greatest physical challenge: running the Great Wall Marathon in China. Sure, I’ve completed seven previous marathons, two of them in temperatures reaching the mid-80s. Sure, I hiked rim-to-rim in the Grand Canyon in temperatures close to 100 degrees. And sure, I hiked …
