Category: Travel
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Bookshelf: Silk Roads
As much as I love to cook, I’m hopeless at reverse-engineering recipes. I’ve eaten plenty of dishes that I wish I could replicate at home, only to be defeated by my lack of skills. (Also, probably, my unwillingness to use as much butter and salt as the original chef likely did.) I have little sense…
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Wanderings: New Orleans
I’ve been sitting on photos from my trip to New Orleans since January and realized that Mardi Gras would be the perfect day to post them. Laissez les bon temps rouler. I stayed in a hotel in the Central Business District, east of Canal Street, which meant that I was only a 10-minute walk from…
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Weekly Wanderings: January 26, 2025
I was supposed to leave New Orleans late Tuesday afternoon, but by Monday I knew there was little chance my flight would take off as scheduled. The forecast called for 4-5” of snow on Tuesday, in a place unprepared for those sorts of winter conditions. Schools announced closures, the mayor held a press conference, and…
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Weekly Wanderings: January 20, 2025
A raw wind swept down Baton Rouge’s North 4th Street, threatening to wrench the baseball cap off my head as I waited with 3,500 other people for the Louisiana Marathon to get underway. Wearing ankle-length leggings, a tank top, and a long-sleeved t-shirt, I wished I had brought gloves and a knit hat with me…
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Jakarta and Yogyakarta: A Trip Told Through Photos
The biggest trip I took in 2024, in terms of distance traveled, was to Indonesia, where I spent a week in July. Since I traveled there for work, however, I didn’t have much of a chance to play tourist—I flew in a day early at the beginning, then took off a few hours one afternoon.…
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Niagara Falls from (Almost) Every Angle
Eight years after moving to Southeast Michigan, I finally made the four-hour drive to Niagara Falls, Ontario last June. During our five days there, my brother and I saw the falls from virtually every vantage point available on the Canadian side. We started off on our first morning there by walking down Clifton Hill to…
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Weekly Wanderings: December 22, 2024
In lieu of musings and reading recommendations, this week I’m sharing photos from an August 2021 visit I made to the house from A Christmas Story in Cleveland, Ohio. Open for tours (you can also stay the night!), the house is dressed for Christmas year-round and features all the iconic props from the movie—including, of…
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Bookshelf: Indonesia Etc.
In late 2011, Elizabeth Pisani set off on a yearlong trip throughout Indonesia. This was no Eat, Pray, Love-style journey: Pisani wasn’t going to the archipelago in search of herself. Instead, she was looking for Indonesia. Pisani, in many respects, already knew the country. She had been stationed in Jakarta as a journalist for Reuters…
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Pre-Departure Reading: Indonesia
Welcome to Indonesia Week here at The Wandering Life! I traveled to Indonesia for the first time in early July, spending a week there for the AAS-in-Asia conference held at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta. My trip was, of course, very short, and I only made two stops, in Jakarta and Yogyakarta (pronounced “JO-Jakarta,” often…
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Wanderings: Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone isn’t a place conducive to following a strict itinerary. Parking lots fill, traffic stops unexpectedly to wait out animals crossing the road, and geysers don’t always erupt on schedule. It’s possible, I learned, to make a general plan, but there’s a good chance it will be altered in response to circumstances. I realized after…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 