We’ve been asked a lot if we are taking a “babymoon.” We thought about it, talked about it, researched all kinds of different places but in the end we decided not to take a big trip this year. As avid travelers, this was a little hard but ultimately we didn’t want to spend the money, I didn’t want to go very far on a long plane ride while pregnant, I wanted to save PTO at work, and we did have an EPIC trip to Japan about a month before I got pregnant. And earlier last year we went to Cuba and I went to India, and a bunch of US weekend destinations in between. Not like we don’t travel!

So we decided to spend time with friends and family on different trips to different places with the longest being 9 days visiting Charlotte and Outer Banks, NC, and Savannah, GA at the end of May/beginning of June. It was a lot of fun – even with several days of rain in the mix. Continue reading →

I’ll start by saying that Osaka food is sooooo good. Not that the food in Kyoto, Tokyo or Kobe wasn’t because it was. It’s just food in Osaka kind of exceeded our expectations and we had some really memorable experiences, bites and flavors that started with a cooking class on Thanksgiving day. Continue reading →

We arrived in Kyoto on Monday evening after taking the Shinkansen high-speed train from Tokyo. Kyoto was incredible and I described all the beautiful sights and activities in my post on its temples, etc. This post is all about the FOOD. Kyoto is known as a “foodie” city and its reputation did not disappoint. 

Our first night we discovered that the hotel included in our package deal was very far from the center of town – about 30 minutes by car! The room was also minuscule, with the bed again against the wall and almost no room at the end to walk around it. We made the most of our first night be first researching and booking a new hotel in the city center for the next 2 nights, and then finding somewhere nearby for dinner.  Continue reading →