What does it feel like to fly into Iran, to enter the country for the first time? Here’s the story of our flight to Tehran including some things you might expect, and some others you might not.

Destination: TEHRAN. I ogle my boarding pass at the departure gate in Istanbul. We bought the tickets months before, all easy enough. So easy in fact that we wondered if the day of our flight would actually ever come; a rejected visa application snatching it all away in a breath.

But our Iranian visas were approved and there we were waiting to board a plane — our plane — to Tehran. Continue Reading »

Istanbul’s Yeni Camii (New Mosque).  Somehow we’d missed this one during our last visit to Istanbul eleven years ago.

Today, while wandering around and outside the streets of Istanbul’s spice market looking for a head scarf (for Audrey, not Dan), we stumbled across and into Yeni Camii (New Mosque).  While the outside is rather stark gray, the inner courtyard warmed with a bit of late afternoon light.

But it was the inside of the mosque that blew us away.   Continue Reading »

This is the story of Iran, a country we once expected to visit last, as a final bow wrapped around a journey that tells the story of making human connections around the world. It’s also an explanation of why we’re going there this Friday.

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Windmills are a symbol of clean energy today, but wind power is not especially new technology on the Greek island of Crete. In the late 15th century, the occupying Venetians began to use windmills on the edge of Crete’s hillsides to grind wheat. To better catch the wind, they attached fabric-like sails on the blades.

Today, after over 500 years of facing the elements, the sails are gone and the windmills that remain do so in various stages of disuse. In spite of all that, amidst the breeze, it’s possible to imagine the two dozen windmills on the edge of the Lassithi Plateau in Seli Ampelou helping to churn out kilos of ground wheat.

For a glimpse of the windmills and some classic Cretan landscape, open the panorama below. Continue Reading »

Greetings from Crete!

Difficult to keep track of us sometimes, isn’t it? In one week, after a hop (from Berlin), a skip (to Prague), and a jump (from Munich), we’ve landed on Crete, the almost-southernmost island of Greece.

First morning seaside wake-up call.

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A quick visit to a hot sauce store in Berlin turns into an unplanned three-hour hot sauce sampling that made us feel like we just dropped acid.

Have you ever planned a hot sauce tasting? Ever even imagined one? Well, maybe you should.

A few hot sauce favorites from a tasting at Pfefferhaus, Berlin

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Have you ever been hiking and witnessed colors so surreal that you find it difficult to believe they’re natural?

The turquoise hue of Lake Pehoe in Torres del Paine National Park, Chile certainly falls into this category. Open up the panorama below to see for yourself. Continue Reading »

What is marriage, if not a leap of faith?

Fourteen years ago, on or around our second date, Audrey and I went skydiving together. It was, as you might imagine, both terrifying and fantastic. And as much as you also might also imagine that it wiped away my fear of heights, it did not. Perhaps it chiseled away at that wall, but it certainly didn’t tear it down. I still swoon thinking about that airplane canopy above 16,000 feet. I still get wobbly above 10 stories.

So here we are 14 years later in Berlin, celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary. What better way to recognize the occasion than to jump (base fly) from the top of a 37-story building?

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Potsdamer Platz. If you look into the past beyond all that new glass and steel, you’ll find an eventful story — a place where a time lapse sequence over the last 100 years would almost defy reason. Continue Reading »

We offer the following slideshow of girls we’ve met during our around the world travels in support of The Girl Effect, an organization whose goal is to promote awareness of girls’ issues around the world and to highlight the benefits of investing in girls as a means to poverty alleviation, better public health and community development.

The more we travel and see the world, the more I realize how fortunate I am. I grew up in a family that valued me as a female. They supported my education, encouraged me to pursue whatever profession I could possibly imagine and never pressured me to get married.

This favorable circumstance and social flexibility is still a rarity in many parts of the world.

With a group of school girls at a mission school outside Srimongal, Bangladesh

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