Day 2 in Tokyo and we ended up in some cafe. Meh, thought I.
What I didn’t know was that this was an art cafe, where the staff are trained to create 3D foam art with your drinks. With the choice of drawing anything, Nicholas had the smarts to pick the only real option.
I love this place.
We also went to some crazy animal cafe where they had a bunch of strange pets you could hold. I already have way too many pets, so I just asked if we could go back to the other cafe.
After a long hiatus, it’s back to Japan I go!
The last time my bud took me, he was tired. It was wet. I remember we slept in the hotel a lot.
This time we were determined for it to be different. Less sleep, more exploration.
I checked into a nice hotel, have a good view of the palace. Let’s go!
This time we’re traveling with Michael and Savannah, it’s their first time in Japan and they are super excited. In addition to that, Pokin will be busy for a few days in a work conference and another friend, Reesa, will be joining us. This is starting to sound like a crowd, but I’ll roll with it.
The first thing Nicholas, Reesa, Michael and Savannah did was book a food tour. Normally Pokin would handle this sort of thing, but since she isn’t here, we’ll have to make do with a regular guide. Unfortunately nobody told the guide about my allergy to anything non-chocolate, so he picked traditional japanese places instead. The rest of the gang seemed to love it though, they ate and drank all evening at different places.
After successfully navigating our way back to the hotel, we decided to call it a night.
For almost my whole life, Pokin’s been talking about wanting to pet baby whales. I don’t know what the big fuss is with them, but this year we finally actually made plans to see them.
Gray whales migrate south during the winter to have their calves, and apparently one year, some baby whale got the idea that it’d be a good idea to swim up to humans on boats and get pets. Other whales got FOMO, and pretty soon, generations of whales got used to swimming up to humans. Of course the humans loved it, and now it’s a tourist hot spot where people from around the world come to touch whale.
Within the Sea of Cortez, there are multiple places to visit whales. The two main places are San Ignacio Lagoon, and Magdalena Bay. Based on the logistics of where we had to go, Pokin went with Magdalena Bay (although whale sighting odds are apparently better up north in San Ignacio.) Pokin picked an outfitter called Magdalena Bay Whales, and booked it.
That was the easy part. Now we had to get there. The getting there took 3 full days.
First we got up. Too early.
Then we took a connecting flight from Phoenix to Loreto.
We got in too late to make a transfer so we slept for a night in Loreto. Loreto’s one of the best places to go Blue Whale watching, but we decided to ration our whale watching time and opted to wander around the town and the malecon instead. Outside of whale watching, Loreto is definitely primarily a tourist sports fishing town.
The next morning, we got a car hire to take us 3.5 hours across the peninsula over to San Carlos, where we were to spend another night. I didn’t know what to expect of San Carlos. It was also mostly a fishing town. We got dropped off at the Isabella B&B (which is affiliated with Magdalena Bay Whale Camp), my bud paid for the tour with money he raided from my bin, and we were left to our own devices for the rest of the day.
The town was pretty small, but fairly spread out. The roads were paved with sand, and it was really windy, so walking around took a while. It was also incredibly exfoliating as fine sand particles continually blasted us in the face. We took a loop, ate sand, snorted sand, spit out sand, and went back to the hostel.
The food at the hostel at least was pretty good. There were plenty of chips that everyone liked. Pokin ordered all sorts of weird seafood stuff, and since there wasn’t much to do everyone went to bed early, because we were told the boats would depart the next morning at 6am.
Oh she also ordered some sort of weird margarita.
The next morning, before sunrise, we got up to wait for our guides. Breakfast was included, but everyone was nervous about being on a boat so only Pokin ate much of anything. She got huevos rancheros. Brave. The sensible people got oatmeal. I decided to fast.
As the sun started to rise, our guides in gumboots showed up, and it was time to make it to whale camp!
We loaded up on these small boats, and zipped across the bay as the sun rose. What a sight! I would have loved it if I wasn’t freezing so much. I guess even freezing, I loved it and made an exception for being on the water again.
I thought we were going to unload our luggage but it turned out we were starting to whale watch right away. Whales are morning mammals, so no time was to be wasted to the whale meet and greet.
I didn’t know what to expect as the boat headed out to the ocean, but pretty soon I realized there were blowholes and spouts all across the bay. Everywhere I looked there were whale spouts. Whales everywhere!
While this area has the best chances of having whales, it turns out it’s not a given that whales will swim up to you, or that you can every touch one. We later ran into a family that has been back 3 times, but has yet to touch a whale. Well the big goal is to be able to pet a whale. They swam close, but not close enough…
And then one swam up to my bud and got a quick pat.
“How was it?” I asked my bud
“It was alright’ he said
“Cool.” Good enough for me. Glad my bud got to pet one. For me, I came to see whale. No need to paw one.
A few more hours out at sea, and I was done . I was cold, I was sleepy, and I think the rest of the boat felt the same. We saw plenty of whale and got lots of video, so it was time to head to whale camp.
Our boat starts speeding towards shore, and soon enough, we pull up to a number of glamping yurts flanked by two giant whale bone carcasses. Epic!
I loved it, my bud loved it. This is going to be cool.
My bud turns to Pokin “why didn’t you book us more nights here?”
“I had no idea how much you guys would like it,” was her rather unsatisfactory answer.
I got in, claimed my bed, then decided I’d rather see what was available for lunch. They actually had hot cocoa on the menu. I like the spirit-bear-friendly menu. But Pokin went for more disgusting seafood instead.
Whale watching was only once a day, so we were left to our own devices for the rest of the day. Anna and Adam explored camp, and my bud, Pokin and I went on a short trek from camp to the other side of the bay.
In all, it was maybe a 1 hour round trip.
The next morning, we got out on the boat for more whale action. Compared to yesterday, it was much quieter. We didn’t see any whales who wanted to play for quite a while. Jerks! Luckily they eventually came around.
No one got to pet any whales today, but at least they came by pretty close.
Everyone started getting pretty cold (because no one told us it’d actually be cold in February in Mexico – apparently we should have known that. I blame Pokin for not sufficiently communicating this to the group, even though I guess she did tell us it’d be windy and to dress warm. I still blame her.), so because everyone was cold we decided to head back to camp for a quick last break, before getting back to the mainland.
Whale watching was pretty fun. I’d hang with whales again.
From San Carlos, it was a 3.5 hour drive to La Paz. Onwards!
It’s been a while since we had a good adventure, so I told my bud we needed more bear and bud adventure time.
Off to camping we go – we’re headed to the valley of fire to do some solo camping. Annoyingly, my bud seems to have misplaced the poles for my Sumi tent. Fine, I’ll share his. The red rocks look pretty nice, I’ll accept the shared accommodations compromise.
Suddenly I hear - “Clomp, clomp clomp”. What is that? I look out from our tent to find wild big horn sheep trotting around my camp like they own it.
I guess they were kind of cool. They climbed up the rocky mountains super quick. Time to tuck in for the night since we have plans in the morning.
We wake up early and drive to the nearest little airport. Nicholas has decided to finally learn to fly like I do, and there’s no better way to learn than trial by fire. Time to jump out of a plane! That’s right - Nicholas couldn’t find anybody that wanted to go skydiving with him, so it’s just me and him. The instructor wouldn’t let me go in the plane for some reason. I told him that I was a pro and I should be the one teaching people to fly, but he ignored me. Jerk. I guess I’ll just see Nicholas in the air.
Really I’m the real pro and they should have brought me.
It’s been a while since I last visited the Grand Canyon, and one thing I was upset about last time was that I didn’t get to go down. Sure, it’s pretty up top, but who wants to see the canyons without actually going into them. This time would be different. Although Pokin is still recovering and can’t hike, I’m forcing my bud to gear up and go all the way down. PoOn had the idea of doing this hike called Bright Angel Trail, which involves hiking 9.9 miles and descending 4380 feet. Sounds good.
Eric and Po On joined him, and we all had lemonaide at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon. Nice work. Now it’s time to haul it back up.
Overall I like the Grand Canyon, it’s nice, but definitely better when you do the whole trip. It did take a long time though, next time I’ll make my bud run it. Pokin met us up for part of it, thinking it would be a shorter trek. Little did she know she was just making herself suffer by going down the steep switchbacks to immediately come back up. Sucker!
We arrived in Rome at night, which is the correct way to arrive in Rome. You stumble off the highway, navigate increasingly chaotic streets, and then suddenly the Trevi Fountain is just there, lit up like a movie set someone forgot to take down.
The hotel was old in the way that Rome hotels are old — stone stairs, questionable plumbing, and an elevator that was essentially a wrought-iron cage with a brass call button and a prayer.
We hired a guide. Not just any guide. An actual archaeologist. The kind of person who gets excited about mortar composition and can tell you which emperor ruined what by looking at a brick. This turned out to be the best decision of the entire Italy trip.
The Colosseum is one of those places where the scale doesn’t make sense until you’re standing inside it. You know it’s big from photos. You don’t know it held 50,000 people, had a retractable awning system, and could flood the arena floor for naval battles. The Romans were insane in the most impressive possible way.
Our archaeologist guide didn’t just tell us facts. He showed us a display case containing a piece of pottery that he personally dug up. His own artifact, excavated from a site in Rome, now sitting behind glass in a museum. He pointed at it the way a parent points at a kid’s school photo. “That one. I found that one.” I’ve never seen someone so proud of a piece of broken clay.
From the Colosseum we walked to the Roman Forum, which is what happens when you leave an entire civilization’s downtown abandoned for a thousand years.
The Forum is a strange place. It’s simultaneously the most historically significant few acres in Western civilization and also just… a field of broken columns with cats sleeping on them. Temples, courthouses, marketplaces, everything that made Rome Rome was here, and now it’s a park with informational signs.
Up on Palatine Hill, the view opens up and you can see the whole thing laid out — the Forum below, the Colosseum in the distance, the city spreading in every direction.
After the ancient half of Rome, we did the Vatican half. It was hot. It was humid. Pokin was cranky because it was hot and humid. We went anyway.
The Vatican Museums are overwhelming in the way that only a 2,000-year-old institution with unlimited acquisition budget can be. Every hallway has more art than most countries’ national museums. You walk past things that would be the centerpiece of any gallery on earth and they’re just… on a wall. In a corridor. Next to a fire extinguisher.
From the Museums we went straight to St. Peter’s Basilica. If the Vatican Museums are “a lot,” St. Peter’s is “too much, deliberately.”
After all that history and religion, we needed drinks.
Jane and Pokin had discovered Aperol spritz somewhere around day three of Italy and hadn’t stopped ordering them since. The blue one was somebody’s idea of adventure. The limoncello was mine by default because it was the closest thing to a dessert drink available.
The next morning we did what you do on your second day in Rome. You walk.
The Pantheon makes you feel small in a way that’s different from the Colosseum or St. Peter’s. Those places are big because they wanted to impress you. The Pantheon is big because someone solved a structural engineering problem that wouldn’t be solved again for over a thousand years, and they did it with concrete.
We ended Rome the way we ended every Italian city.
Rome is exhausting, overstimulating, too hot, too crowded, and completely worth it. Two days is not enough. Two weeks probably isn’t either. But we had pizza, we saw an archaeologist point at his own pottery, and Pokin got her spritzes. Not bad at all.
On the way from Tuscany to Rome, Pokin found us somewhere to stay that was exactly Bob’s speed.
La Badia di Orvieto. A 12th-century Benedictine abbey, converted into a hotel. One of the oldest hotels in Italy. Bob used to work as a chaplain, so staying in an actual abbey was basically a professional field trip for him.
The abbey was founded around 1100 by Benedictine monks and has been through the usual Italian gauntlet of centuries — built, abandoned, fought over, rebuilt, abandoned again, eventually converted into a hotel by someone who understood that tourists will pay good money to sleep where monks used to pray.
The inside is all rough stone walls, antique furniture, and the kind of coffered ceilings that make you wonder how many people it took to carve all that by hand. The rooms used to be monks’ cells, which sounds grim until you see the view from the window.
The tower is a twelve-sided Romanesque structure with a crenellated top. Twelve sides. Not eight, not ten. Twelve. Someone in the 12th century decided a round tower wasn’t complicated enough and a square tower was too boring. I respect the commitment to geometry.
But the real draw was the ruins.
Part of the original abbey church is still standing — roofless, open to the sky, with Gothic arches framing views of Orvieto on its cliff in the distance. It’s the kind of place where you walk through a pointed stone archway and suddenly feel like you’ve wandered into a video game cutscene.
The abbey was actually for sale around this time. Someone with deep pockets and a love for medieval restoration could have bought the whole thing. I looked into it. Briefly. But I’m not sure the credit card I took from Nicholas’s wallet would cover it.
After exploring the abbey, we headed up to Orvieto itself. The town sits on top of a massive tufa cliff, and unless you feel like driving up a series of increasingly questionable switchbacks, you have two options: a funicular (a cable railway up the cliff face) or the Percorso Meccanizzato — a system of escalators and moving walkways carved directly through the rock.
We took the funicular up and the escalators down. Because why use one ridiculous cliff transport when you can use both.
Yes. Escalators. Through a cliff. Most towns build stairs. Orvieto said no, we’re going to carve a mechanized pathway through solid tufa and install moving walkways inside it. The funicular gets all the fame, but the escalator tunnel is the real flex.
Once you’re up, Orvieto is classic Italian hilltop town — cobblestone streets, stone buildings, and views that drop off into the Umbrian countryside like someone forgot to build a railing.
And then you turn a corner and see the Duomo.
Orvieto’s Duomo is absurd. Gold mosaics, Gothic spires, a rose window the size of a small apartment, carved portals, striped marble — it looks like someone took a normal cathedral and then let a very enthusiastic committee add things for 300 years. Construction started in 1290 and the facade wasn’t finished until the 17th century. That’s the kind of timeline that produces this level of excess.
The interior is all alternating dark and light striped columns — a style that makes the whole nave feel like it’s vibrating. Frescoes, stained glass, and the kind of silence that only exists in buildings where people have been whispering for seven centuries.
I tried to get everyone to visit the weapons museum. There is, apparently, somewhere in Orvieto where you can see medieval arms and armor. But nobody wanted to go. “We’ve been walking all day” and “my feet hurt” and other excuses. An actual weapons museum. In a medieval town. On top of a cliff. And we skipped it. I’m still upset.
We ended the day the way we ended most Italian days.
Dinner on a terrace as the sun went down over the Umbrian hills. Pizza, because sometimes after a day of 12th-century abbeys and Gothic cathedrals and escalators through cliffs, you just want pizza.
Tomorrow: Rome.
Our last morning at Villa Cicolina and there was only one thing on the agenda.
That pool.
We had spent two days running around Tuscany — olive oil tastings, dairy farms, wine, Montepulciano, photography tours — and hadn’t properly used the pool yet. Criminal.
Now, to be clear, I do not approve of pools. Pools are just organized water, and water is my enemy. Pokin has threatened me with baths enough times that I have a healthy distrust of any body of liquid larger than a cocoa mug. But I will admit — from a safe distance, on a dry lounger, under an olive tree — this pool looked very good.
Nicholas was in his SpaceX shirt, lounging under the olive trees, scrolling his phone. Pokin was somewhere being productive. I supervised from the lounger. Dry.
This is what the villa was for. Not racing to appointments. Not navigating bollards. Just sitting by a pool that drops off into a valley and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Preferably without getting wet.
We could have stayed all day.
We did not stay all day.
On the way out of Montepulciano, we stopped at a vineyard. Not for a tasting this time — just for the views. At this point we’d had enough wine education to last a lifetime. But the landscape around these estates is something else entirely.
The vineyard had a little garden, neat rows of vines running down toward the valley, and that view of Montepulciano up on its ridge that makes you understand why people have been making wine in this exact spot for centuries.
Before getting on the road to Rome, we stopped for lunch at a little deli in town. The kind of place with a glass counter full of cured meats and a guy behind it who just starts putting things on a board without asking too many questions.
Salami, prosciutto, cheese, bread, pickled vegetables. Simple. Perfect. The kind of lunch that doesn’t need a menu or a reservation, just a counter and someone who knows what they’re doing.
Then we got in the car and pointed it south. Rome was waiting. But Tuscany had been good to us.
Today was tour day. But first, Montepulciano itself.
Montepulciano can be a little bit confusing because it’s the name of a medieval hilltop town in the province of Sienna in Tuscany, and it’s also the name of a wine that is not produced in Tuscany.
We had a photography tour booked for the evening with Alfredo, so we spent the day exploring the town. The real Montepulciano. The one on the hill.
The thing about Montepulciano is that it’s built on a ridge, so every street either goes steeply up or steeply down, and the alleys between them are narrow enough that you can touch both walls.
Every few turns you pop out to a viewpoint where the rooftops give way to the Tuscan countryside below. Terracotta tiles stepping down the hillside, cypress trees in the distance, the whole postcard.
We found a quiet garden terrace tucked behind the town walls, rested on the steps of an old church, and eventually did what you do in any Italian hilltop town at lunchtime.
Come photography tour time we got into the car and it became a game of racing for light.
We started at the Windows 95 wallpaper spot.
This involved pulling onto the side of a highway, scrambling down the embankment of an overpass and wading waist deep into grass for the perfect angle.
Then we moved to the Gladiator ending scene. To get here, we wound our way up and down various semi-steep roads, down the back driveway of a school before wading through more grass.
From this angle, outside of the wheel marks of mowed lawn, it would be difficult to discern what era we were in. We rested here for a good long while, crouched on the hillside, watching rippling waves of grass fields and feeling the breeze, waiting for Alfredo to take a smoke as we heard his tales as a reportage photographer. And tales Alfredo had, from stories of how he gained the trust of DRC Congo generals to facing down guns on the inner streets of LA in his search for the story.
The sun was starting to set, so we set out towards another set of hilltops, turning up and down more roads, questionable roads, then finally definitely not roads. Alfredo didn’t care. The man was chasing light.
We hiked up through fields of golden wheat to catch the ridgeline, our little group trudging uphill with tripods and camera gear like the world’s most over-equipped sunset pilgrimage.
Alfredo continued to tell us tales of his time as a reportage photographer as we watched the light change and the sun set –
– before we finally raced back to catch Montepulciano at night.
So here’s what happened.
Pokin had booked a wine tasting at a place called Podere Le Berne, a family-run estate in the hills outside Montepulciano. It was supposed to be for all four of them — Nicholas, Pokin, Bob, and Jane — plus me. A nice afternoon out in the vineyards, learning about Vino Nobile di Montepulciano from the Natalini family, who have been growing grapes here since the 1960s.
Bob and Jane weren’t feeling up to it. Too tired from the previous day’s adventures.
So it was two humans and a bear.
Two humans who don’t particularly care about wine.
And a bear who definitely does not care about wine.
But we had a guide, we had an appointment, and Pokin does not cancel things. So off we went.
Podere Le Berne sits on a hillside about fifteen minutes from the villa. The kind of place where the vineyard rows run right up to the front door and the views go on forever.
The tasting was conducted by the family — not a hired guide, the actual people who make the wine. They walked us through the vineyard, showed us the cellar with its big oak casks and aging barrels, and explained far more about soil composition and fermentation than two reluctant attendees and a stuffed bear needed to know.
Nicholas bought some obligatory wine. As one does when you’ve just been given a private tour by the family who made it and they’re standing right there watching you.
The real highlight of the day was getting back to Villa Cicolina and actually enjoying the place. The morning had been a rush — arrive early, drop bags, run off to tours. We hadn’t actually settled in.
Now we did.
The room had terracotta floors, exposed beam ceilings, an iron-frame canopy bed with white linens, and an antique wardrobe that looked like it had been there since someone important lived in this place. Which, given that it’s a Tuscan villa, was probably several centuries of important someones.
The villa had that specific quality where every room felt like it had been decorated by accumulation rather than intention. A fireplace here, a china cabinet there, a rug that predates everyone staying in it. Nothing matched and everything worked.
The next morning, with no tours booked and nowhere to be, I finally got to see the grounds in proper daylight. And this is where Villa Cicolina really earns its reputation.
An infinity pool that drops off into a valley of vineyards and olive groves. Sun loungers under ancient olive trees. The kind of view that makes you briefly consider abandoning your entire life and becoming a person who just lives in Tuscany and reads books by a pool.
Briefly.
There are games to be made.
But I’ll admit — Tuscany does something to you. The light, the rolling hills, the cypress trees. It looks exactly like you think it will, and then it looks a little better than that.
Not bad at all, Villa Cicolina. Not bad at all.