My first time with a car in Italy was driving in Tuscany. If you hadn’t read that article (at the previous link), the quick explanation is that it left a bad taste in my mouth with how difficult it was- especially around Florence.
So when I returned to Italy, it was with a bit of reluctance that I opted to see the island of Sicily by car.
After driving in Sicily for five days, and hitting virtually every corner of the island, I look back on it and realize it wasn’t that bad at all!
Kobe, Japan is an interesting city.
If you would drop me there without telling me where I was and no local signs or people walking around I would guess that I was in a place like London or Chicago – most definitely not Japan.
Hello Kitty and Cartoon figures are all but missing and replaced with upscale dining (mostly French and Italian), expensive stores (Dior, DG, etc), and English is almost always in a larger font than the comparable Kanji text for most big businesses.
It is so eerie and cosmopolitan that I caught myself on multiple occasions wondering if I was even in Japan anymore.
There are really only three things that I could see coming to Kobe for.
The first is the most obvious, to live there. Kobe constantly ranks the top city in Japan for expat living and there is no doubt of that after seeing the city. For me, all the french restaurants and pastry shops (mostly the latter) have me wanting to move there already as well.
The second is as an entry and exit point into Japan via the nearby port of Kobe which has weekly ferries to and from Shanghai and Busan (I later took the ferry from Osaka to Shanghai, instead).
Since I am not able to be classified in the previous two, the reason I went to Kobe falls into category number 3: Kobe Beef.
Presque Isle State Park is a peninsula located just off the coast of Erie, PA, on Lake Erie.
I had known about this one’s popularity for quite some time in being a citizen of Pittsburgh (just two hours away) but only made it up recently to find out why that is.
To say that this one exceeded expectations is an understatement. My expectations were completely wrong!
When visiting cities around the USA, one of my goals is to visit as many of the local craft breweries as possible. From checking out the Pittsburgh breweries at home to breweries in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and others, I really like to get out there and sample new brews.
So naturally hitting up the breweries in Erie along the aptly named Lake Erie Ale Trail was on my agenda when exploring the region. In this one, I wanted to share some of the spots I hit up along the way.
The surprise? Virtually every brewery I visited had some fantastic brews. This is a great ale trail!