Category: Worth Another Trip

First trip to Taiwan (lots of eating involved)

1/12/2016

Even though the streets were filled with English coming out of the airport, I’ve never felt so lost in a developed Asian country before. Trying to figure out where to eat (or what was even good) was confusing!

I now understand why so many of my friends’ parents wanted them to be literate—you wouldn’t be very independent in Taiwan without being able to read a few words. I actually discovered that my cousins learned simplified Chinese in Singapore and actually couldn’t figure out the traditional characters either. It made for some very interesting experiences. (Also, Singaporeans have a very different mandarin accent—must be from all those other dialects that get smushed together.)

Pretty hard to order food if you're illiterate....

Kind of a mashup of Vietnam and Hong Kong—it may not have been as clean as Singapore but it was a lot cheaper and had a lot more character overall. The history of the country is a little strange (well I mean, it’s hard to really say who was right or wrong when you consider what happened in the last century as both Japan and Chiang Kai Shek did do some good for the country).

For Foodies:

Overall most things were pretty tasty and cheap. I’m still biased towards my Singaporean roots, so not every Taiwanese-style dish I tried was my favorite. However their fried donut (yu-tiau) was probably the best I’ve ever had, Ding Tai Fung is definitely better in Taiwan, and the night markets are unlike anywhere else I’ve been. But don’t go looking for fishballs here-- those are better in Singapore.

Breakfast

Toh-giang: Breakfast of champions that involves wonderful tasting yu-tiau and soymilk (tou-hueh).

Best place for traditional breakfast? You can't miss it (with the woks and the lines in the morning)-- it's directly across the street from a fruit vendor and just past the local wet market on the opposite side of the street.

This place is good.

Lunch/Dinner

Jin Din Rou-- we came here because of Uncle Joe's recommendation as this place is supposedly better than Ding Tai Fung, The quality of all the dishes was amazing.

Ding Tai Fung. Where consistently good xiao long bao can always be found. I swear it's better here than the branches in LA and Singapore. Taipei 101 has a decently large place but be prepared to wait!

Mah-lah Huo Guo (numbing spice hot pot) is a big deal here. This place was pretty good (good beer selection and good plum drink, too. Chicken feet has my seal of approval. Also, yutiau with spicy savory soup is pretty tasty!

DING WANG MALA GUO near the Daan MRT Station
(Detailed review and our inspiration came from here)

This place is amazing. Definitely smells like a fish market from the parking lot below, but you can find everything up above. From live octopi in crates (seriously!) to durian inside of deep-fried yams (quite tasty) and a whole lot of fresh sashimi and grilled meats served at a hipster-esque stand-up sushi joint, this place is pretty awesome. Apparently the area is sectioned off depending on how you want your meats cooked (fried, raw, bbq, etc). Definitely worth a visit!

Snacks/Dessert

Mango ice. Yum!

Ice monster is pretty famous for it's mango ice.

Shaved ice is taken very seriously here! Ice Monster (this particular branch is within 2 blocks of Taipei 101) is really well known for its mango ice.

Night Markets

Raohe Night Market; This night market had more food than the other ones we had been to. Definitely worth going to for the fresh mochi, fried pancakes, and pan fried chicken. (There are also outfits for your lap dog....)

Shilin Night Market: Food, street performers, and clothes and stuff. Highly recommend the frog eggs drink and the torched beef here. Fried chicken was pretty decent, too.

Historical Taipei: The Red Playhouse, Chiang Kai Shek's House, and the National Palace Museum

1/8/2016

A historic theater in the Taipei Ximending area-- I noticed it as we came out of the MRT to go to Ximending (which is a local night-life/young people area). Great history (most of it was in Chinese) and there are some local artists with their wares in the back. It was built when Taiwan was a Japanese colony-- originally as a market building, then a theater, and now a tourist attraction.

Yangmingshuwu (aka Zhongxing Guesthouse) was the summer residence for Chiang Kai-Shek in the mountains of Taipei. Full of historical photographs of meetings with important people (mostly Western powers) and relics from the Chiang's life (like old outfits and a watercolor stand)-- it was a pretty grand place (which made me wonder about how lavish their life must have been). Beautiful grounds with secret tunnels, alcoves for hidden guards and machine guns-- this is like Taipei's version of Hearst Castle.

The easiest way to get here is probably by taxi-- and there are roughly 4 tours that run every day (probably best to call them before you go). It didn't seem like you were allowed to wander around the premises.

The National Palace Museum is probably most famous for it's cabbage and pork belly jade carvings. Unfortunately the cabbage has been relocated to the newly opened National Palace Museum to the south (but they have pictures of it up in case you wanted a closer look). Really intricate jade carvings, woodblock prints, furniture, sculptures, cauldrons, paintings, and jewelry are located here. Apparently only 1% of the collection is displayed at any one time. If you walk to the library (which is across from the main building and behind the food court area) there is a timeline that shows roughly when things were brought to Taiwan from China. Basically Chiang Kai Shek "stole" the artifacts from Beijing and brought them (mostly on the beds of pickup trucks) across rafts and into a vault that's been dug into the side of the mountain. Apparently Chiang not only stole the artifacts but also stole most of the gold, which is why Taiwan was a force to be reckoned with in the late 40s.

Easiest way to get here: MRT then take a cab. There is a bus system that runs but it's quite a distance from the station and cabs are cheap.

Toronto: Land of Amazing Food and tiny metro tokens

10/20/2015

No seriously, by LA standards Toronto is amazing.

Here's a place that has basically every Asian cuisine you might have been dying to have.

For example: a Malaysian restaurant with Hokkien mee and rendang and a whole bunch of other deliciousness. (Not very creative name at South Asia Malaysian Cuisine, but oh well.)

Crown Prince Dim Sum
I'm pretty sure this was Crown Prince. It used to be a high-tea place but now it's just a large fancy Chinese restaurant with a bunch of fancy banquet hall rooms. It is a treat to have dimsum on such pretty porcelain plates, though!

O Mei: they really should have named it Oh Man. (Because you will be rolling out the door in a seriously satisfying food coma.)

A trip to St. Lawrence's Market: try some local cheeses, walk around downtown...

Montreal-- my first trip to Quebec province (2nd to Canada)

10/17/2015

Schwartz's Deli

Ok, it's touristy, and I've had better plates of beef. But it is sort of a tradition to go to, and it wasn't bad, though I don't think I'll stand in line for this place again.
I introduced my parents to poutine (gravy + cheese on fries) and creating sandwiches from mountains of meat and potatoes. The district this place is in is kind of cool, though-- and definitely is worth a walk around!

See? Great area to walk around. These are some fantastic wall murals and great architecture. Oh, and there's no shortage of cured meats along the way :)

Crepes! There is a whole chain of restaurants dedicated to crepes and chocolate-- called Juliette et Chocolate (Juliette and Chocolate). Worth a stop.

Beautiful nighttime scenery along the waterfront. It is a walk back up a hill if you're going back into the central downtown area, so keep that in mind. Old town is very reminiscent of European cities.

La Sauvagine is a decent French restaurant (and wasn't hard to find a table at, either).

Thoughts on Yangon

7/29/2015

Ok so my uncle was afraid that I wouldn't like Yangon, but I did. There was so much to be seen on the street, from fresh seafood I've never seen in my life to rickshaws and folks wrapped in longyis (Lohn-gees). Locals lived their lives on the street here way more than any other place I've been in Southeast Asia.

Compared to Hanoi the air was cleaner (perhaps due to the rain) and more people spoke English (and better English than most of the folks I talked to in Vietnam). The buildings were a little run-down, but there was a lot of colonial-era architecture that was still up, in addition to weird fusion buildings and old shop houses.

Facing south-- foreground are the shrines to the days of the week (folks pray to the day they're born on)

I did go to visit the Shwedagon Pagoda which is comprised of many many temples and has buddhas and shrines to the different days of the week (you pray to the day of the week that you were born on), and has the largest bell in Myanmar (which the British attempted to steal but it capsized the ship and sank to the bottom of the river and had to be lifted out by a makeshift raft by the locals). Spectacular.
(Hint, if you want a good view head to the rooftop bar called Vista Bar)

The view from Vista Bar....

Loved the street markets around 19th street-- on Maha Bandula and 19th there was food, and Anawratha Road and 19th had lots of recycled hardware and tools. Tried a bunch of foods and didn't get sick so I highly recommend you do the same if you go! Just be wary of uncooked (the ice cream/popsicle thing I had didn't give me any issues).

19th and Maha Bandula for amazing food (cooked and raw)

Or go to Anawratha if you want to see a lot of tools

Suggested Walk for Architecture

Sule Pagoda is a major landmark around this part of town (Central area)

City Hall on the other hand looks like it has gone through different styles....

High Court Building-- it feels so British

Around the Sule Pagoda, you can walk by the oddly decorated City Hall, and the old Court building. Unfortunately we didn't get to go down to the Strand hotel or walk Strand road to find the other old colonial buildings. If I went back I'd do that and go on the circle train around the city.

Bogyoke (Bow-geok) Market: Pretty amazing place if you want to buy longyis, jade, cane balls, and fruit all in one stop.

Alibaba Amusement Center: Stumbled upon this entirely by accident-- it's the Yangon equivalent to Chuck-e-Cheese. No pictures allowed inside, though (for whatever reason) so I snapped a shot on the way out. Definitely seems like a good place to spend some time on a rainy day. Located somewhere on 25th Street north of Maha Bandula.

Places to Stay

We met up with our friends from Vietnam who stayed in Pickled Tea Hostel (we stayed at Royal 74 Hotel, which I lived in a windowless shoebox of a room and the provided breakfast was fairly greasy and only somewhat good). If I did go again I'd probably stay at a hostel instead (you meet people). We met a lot of good folks through our friends and it was a good few days in Yangon. Do note that there are calls to prayer early in the morning in these places, which was pretty noticeable by my friends at Pickled Tea.

Where to eat (if you need a restaurant)

Shan Yoe Yar -- clean, great service, and affordable. If you like spicy food, then you'll love Shan food. It was so good we ate there twice!

Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park-- Cave Central

7/20/2015

The view from Oxalis HQ

Probably best known for Son Doong, the world's largest cave, thanks to the photoshoot in National Geographic, this Karst mountain region is now fairly well known. The whole area is remote and about an hour'drive from Dong Hoi, which is a major train stop between Danang and Hue. Interestingly enough, all the towns here are practicing Catholics-- the place is full of churches. I could have sworn I saw an Asian-looking version of Madonna and Child.....

interesting facts about the area:

Phong Nha Ke Bang is named for 2 things: Phong Nha is the name of the town that this mountain range is near to, and Ke Bang is the name of the mountain-- so they put it together to get Phong Nha Ke Bang Nat'l Park.
There are many locals here who still remember the Vietnam-American War. In fact, one of the many Australian expats here told me that the Vietnamese are not long-term planners because many of them lived in a time where they thought they only had hours to live.
Tunnels that the Vietnamese used during the war still exist, but it seems that even the expert cavers don't want to go in-- our guide said that he found them scary, hot, and humid. They would hide in the tunnels so that when the Americans tried to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was the supply line to Laos, they could come out and fix the road almost instantly.
Phong Nha cave is where many of the locals fled to in order to stay alive during the heavy bombings.
This area has suffered a lot-- not only did they lose a lot of folks in the war (the whole country lost 2/3 of their population) but in 1990 they had a massive malaria outbreak and lost another good portion of their population.
During flooding season, electricity tends to cut out and the area gets cut off from the world. Folks survive with generators, but this area (although more hotels are going up) doesn't have the general infrastructure to support more folks than it already has to.
Ethnic minority tribes still remain in the area-- in fact it is hard to tell them to change their way of life as they are used to climbing trees to collect honey, hunt, and cut trees down to build houses. Very different language, and the villagers we met on the way to and from Hang En seemed to be slowly adapting to modern times. No electricity, but they had a school for the children. Everyone in that village was a descendant of or related by marriage to the Village Chief and his wife-- and there were over 30 people living there.

Exploring Hang En (Swallow Cave)-- the 3rd largest cave in the world

View of campsite and entrance that is much higher up than the one we came through (came over the rocks sort of to the left of the large entrance)

En route back from the other side of the cave (that other entrance is where you'd go out of to reach Son Doong, the world's largest cave.

Other entrance to Hang En-- we were lucky enough to see the waterfall-- which was only possible because of the rain that came the day before. Sometimes this area floods up to 80m high in the cave-- there was a tree that had been carried by the water to land on top of the rocks!

After some gross camping experiences in New Hampshire a couple of years ago, I was pretty hesitant to go camping again, but overall I had a great time on this 14 mi round trip trek. The whole trek was full of pretty incredible stuff, like the minority village people to the beautiful mountain scenery and of course, the Hang En cave itself. Words and pictures can barely describe how large the place is. It's got great acoustic properties-- imagine my delight when the cave reverberated with my sneeze! Apparently someone brought their banjo at one point and it was a great performance so if you feel up to trekking with an instrument, this could be a cool venue. If you're interested in taking photos (like I am) then most of the time you'll find that since almost everyone on these treks carries a camera of sorts, the guides are quite good at telling you where to take photos, will take photos of you for you, and will help organize the other folks on the trip to do some "light painting" for long exposures.

We've traveled with 2 different companies on this trip, Phong Nha Discovery and Oxalis-- and I can tell you that Oxalis takes very very good care of its customers and ensures that they have great guides who are fluent in English. If you're coming here to go to Son Doong, Hang En, or Tu Lan-- look them up. If you're looking for the standard tourist trap caves (which are impressively lit up and I quite enjoyed because of the various formations they had), then you can either go yourself through the Phong Nha Ke Bang visitor center, or just go with a tour that your hotel/homestay/hostel can easily arrange.

If you're considering going there (and you don't camp often, like me), you might want to be prepared for what's ahead:

Swallow Cave = swallow birds live here in addition to bats and both roost above you and because of gravity, well, shit falls quite often.
Since shit is always falling, there is shit on the ground like everywhere. So I don't recommend walking barefoot (as I groggily did in the morning to go to the bathroom). In fact the area that we sat down to eat meals at had a tarp up, which was like only put in a month or so ago. (Our guide said that eating was very interesting because you basically had to take the food and shove it into your mouth really fast before the poop hit your bowl.
Bugs. Oh man, I had no clue what most of the bugs were that landed on me/near me/flew close to the light. Educate yourself on leeches before you come here. Just warning you. There are scorpions and spiders in the cave.
Tuck your pants into your socks and if it's raining, don't be like me and trudge through with your own tennis shoes (though I didn't get any blisters, but I did almost fall off the trail and did some natural mud slip'n'slides a few times.
Investing in the shoes that the guides wear (five-ten canyoneer 3) or something with a grippy sole is a great idea. Othewise you'll have to wear their Cambodian Army Boots which were not comfortable at all (however thick wool socks may save you from icky blisters).

Long pants and sleeves are essential. If it's raining, you'll still want pants to protect you from all the various poisonous plants (there's more than just poison ivy). If it's not raining (Aka the mosquitoes are hungry) then you will get eaten alive (I saw a few people get 10+ bites on the way back).

The Warmup Act to Hang En

Phong Nha Cave-- must get here by loud motorized boat (that gets paddled through later on)

This is supposedly where the locals hid during the Vietnam-American war

Paradise Cave: Like Jurassic Park minus the dinosaurs (probably because of the golf cart ride from the gate to the carved staircase up the mountain to the entrance of the cave)

Sort of the first leg of the cave before it curves (and I thought it was big)

Beauty of the surrounding area

Most unusual Catholic graveyard I think I've ever seen. Very pretty, though.

Good Food Exists!

the roasted pork place is quite tasty (Its owner is apparently very literal-- It's called "The Best Roasted Pork Restaurant in the World (Probably)"
The Oxalis tours had excellent food, and if you happen to be at their Phong Nha Headquarters they serve excellent food as well! Try their delicious BBQ
There seemed to be a lot of local restaurants but it was hard to tell if they were good or not (if I hop into a local place it'll be where all the locals are at)
If you're dying for Western food, go to Easy Tiger. (We ended up going there for lunch one day and I thought to myself, so this is where all the white people vacation here!)

The view I'm paying for, haha. No but in all seriousness, Jungle Boss Homestay was excellent, even though our host, Dzung, couldn't be there (his wife had just given birth to his 2nd child when we arrived). He leads a tour to the old part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and does a whole history + jungle survival lesson and I bet gives an interesting perspective of the war itself.

Visiting Hanoi: Seeing the Old Quarter

7/14/2015

First impressions:

Flow. It's all about the flow. (At least when it comes to crossing the road.)
There's a lot of energy, and I'm glad I'm not driving.
Tourist traps are all over (but there are plenty of people who are actually decent and not trying to rip you off as badly as the nice storefronts.
Sometimes changing money at a pawn/jewelry shop seems sketchy but hey, if they give you the best rate....
Crossing in groups is better than crossing alone (though still scary when it comes to major streets that aren't well regulated by lights). Tip: Go diagonally across, not straight.
Food. Beer. Follow your nose and just be wary of how they wash things. (I drank a cup of tea that obviously was used for coffee and wasn't well cleaned on the rim-- and that was a nice-looking open-air cafe! Also, some street vendors really do wash their pot on top of the drain in the sidewalk....) Sometimes those reviews on Trip Advisor are really helpful!

I've only been here a little over a day and a half, but this is a remarkable place. Remarkably polluted, yet there's so much of a distinct culture that you can just feel. This is not your sanitary Singapore with air conditioning. This is your 95+ F with 60+% humidity that has you dripping like a ice cold beer no matter what you do, with people who barely speak English, and well, let's just say that neither myself nor my "bodyguards" know enough Vietnamese to get by. As my Uncle Wilfred put it, we are 4 sotongs (squids = clueless people) wandering through Vietnam. It's the blind leading the blind! Living standards are way different, but it's so fascinating to sort of step back in time into what my sister called "Singapore from the 1970s."

My Bodyguards:

Food places I'd recommend going to

Cha Ca at Cha Ca Thang Long Restaurant: BBQ'd fish that gets fried in spring onions and dill at the table, and served with rice vermicelli, shredded spring onions, peanuts, fish sauce, basil, and mint. $6 USD (or 120,000 dong) per head, and we got the combo which came with beer, fruit, and tea for $8 USD/head. Pretty awesome.

Quan An Ngon Restaurant: Steamed rice noodle with BBQ pork, fish sauce, and herbs. This is a good place for trying out dishes with fresh vegetables, and offers a fairly decent array of food from all over Vietnam. Not the best steamed rice noodle I've ever had, but it was pretty decent for the price ($6 including a soybean milk).

Good Wonton Mee in Singapore

6/24/2015

Located on Joo Chiat Road is the famous Fei Fei Wan Tan Mee

Mmm fresh wontons

Must mix the noodles with sauce one otherwise bo-ho-jiak (not good eating).

Fried Wonton Mee! (with fried wontons! yum)

Boston, MA and the surrounding area

6/11/2015

Boston: a city home to so much culture. From museums to historic greens where great battles were
fought, this was definitely a totally different experience from California.

It felt a little deja vu the first time I walked down the streets of Wellesley (a suburb near Olin, where I went to school)-- it felt almost exactly like Old Town, Pasadena (just a lot smaller). I later discovered that Pasadena was modeled after the East Coast. So in some sense, I never really lived in a different place (moved from one highly affluent area to the next), except, the weather was quite different.

It's a small enough place where public transportation actually works pretty well! Be sure to get a multi-day pass or a Charlie Card to get around-- a subway ride is about $2 now (as of 2015).

If you only have a day, well, you have a lot of walking ahead of you!
"Follow the red brick road"-- check out the Freedom Trail-- it connects a bunch of historic sites but they have nothing to do with each other.

If it's a nice day, take a walk across the bridge to Cambridge/go to the Esplanade/check out Beacon Hill (a very pretty neighborhood with a great knick-nack store, The Black In k. Get ice cream at Toscanini's in Cambridge (you might want to ask for a kiddie size).

If it's a crappy day, check out the Aquarium, the Museum of Science, or get some clam "chowda" at Faneuil Hall or Legal Sea Foods. There is also the first public library (aka. the Boston Public Library) located in Copley Square, and the Harvard Museum of Natural History if you're into old-school oddities. Check the box offices at Symphony Hall or Berklee's auditorium if you want to catch a music performance.

If you've got more time, check out the squares in neighboring Cambridge:

Kendall: famous for MIT, it's an interesting walk around. (There's also an interactive music chimes display in the T station underground.) They've got decent food trucks on the weekdays.

Harvard: famous for Harvard, you can join in the hordes of tourists trying to see John Harvard's statue. Lots of great eats here!

Or Somerville:
Porter Square: There's a multi-story building next to Lesley University that's got a Japanese/Asian food court! Additionally, they have an awesome book store in the Porter Square Shopping Center known as Porter Square Books, and just next to the shopping center is probably one of the best ramen places in the greater Boston area.
Davis Square: Good burgers can be found, as well as things college students like. (This is where Tufts is located.)

And if you have a car, you can go see...

Nearby Lexington Green, Minuteman field, and many other sites from the Revolutionary War
Plymouth Rock. (Though it's not nearly as huge as I was expecting it to be.)
Salem. Witches, anyone? (Worth a look during halloween.)
Gloucester/Rockport.
New Hampshire (you'll see the state liquor stores right on the border)
Cape Cod/Buzzard's Bay.
Providence, RI
Haraseeket, Maine, for lobster
New York City (it's only a 4 hr drive/bus ride)

Where to Eat:

Summer Shack (there's one next to Berklee School of Music and another next to the Alewife T station)
Courthouse Seafood, located on Cambridge St (north of MIT)
Legal sea foods-- there's one in the Prudential Center and by the Aquarium-- I think of it as a Cheesecake Factory equivalent

If you're into bars, there are a lot of Irish pubs in downtown Boston near the waterfront. There's also a great Irish/Lord of the Rings-esque pub in Harvard Square known as Grendel's Den. There's also Harpoon and Sam Adams Breweries in town... and they have tours....

In Arlington, there is szechuan's dumplings on Mass Ave.
There is also a penzey's spices, which is a great place to spend time inhaling goodness (that will definitely empty your wallet if you decide to buy some-- highly recommend smelling/trying Sunny Paris).
Check out Wilson Farms if you are into local growing. (CSAs are also common around here.)

Ice cream. New Englanders take this very seriously.

Cabots in Newton (old school parlor)
il Casale in Belmont, and Tosci's in Cambridge
Dairy joy in Weston if you don't have time to drive out otherwise GO TO KIMBALL FARMS!
Try raspberry lime Rickey, fish and chips, fried clam strips, and black raspberry ice cream.

Kimball Farms deserves to be mentioned on its own-- they've got bumper boats, a driving range, a batting cage, a general store, classic summer eats, and they're in quite a pretty part of New England!

Asian Supermarkets (hey, they're important!)

Go experience the dinky places in Boston's Chinatown
Super 88 in Allston (near Boston University)
H Mart in Cambridge and Burlington (Korean stuff)

By the cape

Oxford creamery (easy to stop off at if you're headed towards Rhode Island)
Woods Hole: Pie in the sky. Best pie ever (or at least rivals the place in Milwaukee,Wisconsin that my brother-in-law's mom always gets apple pie from)
There's the Cape Cod chip factory!
Check out the oysters, clams, and lobster at the local seafood joints.

Visiting Genoa: Authentic Italy

6/3/2015

I've been to a bunch of major cities in Europe. I made my first trip when I was 8 (9-day trafalgar bus tour around France). I've been constantly trying to find those beautiful sights folks always talk about, or those quaint little towns. And I definitely loved places like Mont St. Michel, Paris, London, or Edinburgh. But something was missing....

Genoa, Italy feels like an authentic city. A UNESCO site, the old city/port area is full of little shops and narrow streets, reminding me of the feel of side streets in Hong Kong. There are buildings from the 11th century mixed with Renaissance palaces and grand fountains. Unlike so many towns I've been to, this just feels more raw and unpolished. This is the Europe I've been looking for.

Totally by chance that I got to discover this place. Thanks to generous support of the project I've been working on with Ocean Alliance and Olin College's Intelligent Vehicles Lab, I got to tag along as we went to present our work at the IEEE OCEANS/MTS conference in Genoa, Italy. We scored a great airbnb apartment for the six of us, and discovered that food is really cheap in comparison to Boston. (Though apparently it's not as cheap as food in southern Italy.) It certainly doesn't suck to be an ocean engineer, and everyone perks up when you tell them you build SnotBots (flying robots that collect whale breath).

I won't bore you with the details, but here are some facts I found intriguing:

Genoa is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. In fact,his family became very wealthy after he discovered America, and created a cover story that they had acquired family wealth through a pirate uncle, so that people wouldn't try to link them to their working-class background.
Genoa became insanely rich during this period because of their mad pirating skills. In fact, they would intercept Spanish ships combing back from South American colonies, and then loan money back to Spain.
They had a lot of shipbuilding going on, and mostly built ships that were manned by their prisoners of war. 4 passengers to an oar, and 50 oars per ship for a total of 200 prisoners to power the ships.
Today the city still remains a large important Italian port, although most of it goes through the commercial port, not the old port (has also been that way since the 60s).
Most of the folks from the Italian region of Liguria migrated to South America (not nearly as many made it to the U.S.). In particular, many people immigrated to Argentina, and helped to create the tango, and the futbol team is named "Boca," after the small fishing town in Genoa called Bocadasse.

The fishing village called Bocadasse was all we had time to see of the Ligurian coastline!

We ate a lot of octopus. It was pretty amazing food in general.

Example of food at the conference. The pasta was amazing (you could buy it fresh from the bakeries, too) though I wasn't such a big fan of the fava bean.

Tips for traveling here:

Most banks don't have a foreign exchange here. Instead, you need to go to a Cambio (it may also just say "Change" on the front of the store).
Things are mostly closed on Sundays until after church and lunch (~ 3:30pm)
There's a metro line but for the most part it's probably easier to walk.
The streets are made of cobblestones in the majority of the old town, so you may want to rethink about that rolling suitcase.

Sights to see:

The museo del mare (Maritime Museum). You'll learn a bunch about Christopher Columbus, the port's history, climb around a submarine, and see some great models and paintings. Also on the roof of the building, there are some fantastic gardens.
Via Garibaldi. Once a street full of all the wealthiest families in Genova, it is now mostly businesses. Definitely worth the walk through to see and admire the architecture.
Royal Palace Museum. Two different powerful families lived here and it's like a mini-Versailles of sorts. Worth the 2 euros if you're a student (half-price), but even at 4 euros it's a steal.
That museum is also located on Via Balbi, which has some amazing architecture. Across from the Royal Palace Museum is the local university, and there's a nondescript-looking church called Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato that you need to see because it is absolutely amazing.

Piazza de Ferrari. It's got a great fountain and lots more architecture. There's also the Genoa Cathedral around the corner (with some great deadbolts and paintings and organ) as well as a major art museum. FYI there is also a Cambio here (brown awning across from the bronze statue).
Bocadasse/Portofino/Cinque Terre. So, we didn't make it past Boca, but the other places are very well known for their picturesque views.

Piazza de Ferrari at night.

Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato. It was just as impressive as the cathedral that was close by. These folks sure had a lot of money back in the day (this church dates back to 17th century).

Links to my albums on Flickr:
https://flickr.com/photos/133489059@N03/sets/72157653298524295
https://flickr.com/photos/133489059@N03/sets/72157653225567106

<<Previous

First trip to Taiwan (lots of eating involved)

For Foodies:

Breakfast

Lunch/Dinner

Snacks/Dessert

Night Markets

Historical Taipei: The Red Playhouse, Chiang Kai Shek's House, and the National Palace Museum

Toronto: Land of Amazing Food and tiny metro tokens

Montreal-- my first trip to Quebec province (2nd to Canada)

Schwartz's Deli

Thoughts on Yangon

19th and Maha Bandula for amazing food (cooked and raw)

Or go to Anawratha if you want to see a lot of tools

Suggested Walk for Architecture

Places to Stay

Where to eat (if you need a restaurant)

Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park-- Cave Central

Exploring Hang En (Swallow Cave)-- the 3rd largest cave in the world

The Warmup Act to Hang En

Phong Nha Cave-- must get here by loud motorized boat (that gets paddled through later on)

Paradise Cave: Like Jurassic Park minus the dinosaurs (probably because of the golf cart ride from the gate to the carved staircase up the mountain to the entrance of the cave)

Beauty of the surrounding area

Visiting Hanoi: Seeing the Old Quarter

My Bodyguards:

Food places I'd recommend going to

Good Wonton Mee in Singapore

Boston, MA and the surrounding area

Visiting Genoa: Authentic Italy

Adela Wee

Archives

Categories

For Foodies:

Breakfast

Lunch/Dinner

Snacks/Dessert

​Night Markets

Schwartz's Deli

19th and Maha Bandula for amazing food (cooked and raw)

Or go to Anawratha if you want to see a lot of tools

Suggested Walk for Architecture

Places to Stay

Where to eat (if you need a restaurant)

Exploring Hang En (Swallow Cave)-- the 3rd largest cave in the world

The Warmup Act to Hang En

Phong Nha Cave-- must get here by loud motorized boat (that gets paddled through later on)

Paradise Cave: Like Jurassic Park minus the dinosaurs (probably because of the golf cart ride from the gate to the carved staircase up the mountain to the entrance of the cave)

Beauty of the surrounding area

My Bodyguards:

Food places I'd recommend going to

Adela Wee

Archives

Categories

Night Markets