Category Archives: Around the world

Around the world

Oaxaca

1 Comment

This summer we flew to the city of Oaxaca for a week to celebrate my parents’ 50th Anniversary. Incredible milestone! It was also my first time there.

Here’s photos making chocolate, rugs, and their famous black clay, painting alebrijes.

In a mezcalería doing some tasting, and in the beautiful springs of Hierve el Agua.

The Zapotec city of Monte Albán.

Some of the beautiful sights and most importantly insane food. I love mole and this is their thing. I ate so much mole. It was so good.

Something I wanted to see since I was a kid: El árbol del Tule, an ancient and massive cypress tree claimed to have the widest trunk of its species. It’s massive and beautiful and not in the middle of a forest like I always pictured.

And this is the beautiful color-coordinated family, missing just my favorite nephew who we named official photographer for the trip thus does not appear in any of the pictures.

Around the world

Manuel Antonio

Leave a comment

We went to Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica for a family vacation earlier this month. Manuel Antonio is a small tourist town near Quepos, about a 3 hour drive away from San José. It’s on the beach by the rain forest.

We stayed at a small hotel. It was far from fancy, but unlike most of the hotels in town, it had direct access to the beach, a huge advantage. It also had monkeys everywhere, including many loudly jumping on the roof at night.

We had a very full schedule of outdoor water activities and extreme sports and my adrenaline-addicted children loved it. A few of the things:

Manuel Antonio
The beach at Manuel Antonio. Incredible natural beauty.
monkey on a sign
Monkeys! Monkeys everywhere!
pick up soccer game in Manuel Antonio
Of course we had to find the one soccer field in the town and go play pick up soccer with the local kids there. Every chance we had.
Catamaran
The largest Catamaran in Manuel Antonio.
Beach soccer
Beach soccer was good, too.
ATV
ATV riddng.
waterfall swimming
Swimming in a waterfall.
playing with sand
More beach.
hanging bridge
Ziplining in the jungle. It is so much fun.
snake head closeup
Snake in Manuel Antonio National Park. Lots and lots of cool animals.
white water rafting
White water rafting. If you look closely, my two kids are in there.
making chocolate
We learned how chocolate is made. And we ate a lot.
parasailing
Parasailing
small airpliane
We took a very cool short flight back on the way back.
Around the world

Omega Mart

Leave a comment

We took a quick trip to Las Vegas with the kids last month. We heard a lot about Omega Mart being a good place to visit. I was a bit shocked at the prices ($50+ per person) but we went ahead with it.

It’s really cool and unique and worth the admission; and it’s better if you know less about it when you visit. So if you think you may go anytime soon then stop reading.

What is it? You start out in a fake supermarket, playing the part of a new employee going over orientation. As you start looking closely, you will see things get progressively weirded. Eventually you find secret entrances to the back – where you are in the corporate offices but also in some sort of other dimension. It’s huge and super well made.

Your goal is to find clues and figure out what the heck is going on, it’s like being inside a giant interactive Black Mirror. We stayed there for almost 3 hours and couldn’t get to the bottom of it but made lots of progress. Maybe with older kids that don’t get cranky when hungry?

Recommended.