Everyone in the world likely has a different favorite after a night out on the town. Back in DC the late-night snack is usually a Jumbo Slice of pizza from the nearest greasy pizzeria. This is the case assuming you’re nowhere near GWU – whose late night of choice is Manouch.  Manouch delivers a greasy hot dog smothered in onions and relish and a philosophy lesson on your Id, Ego, and Super-Ego that you might have received in class had you not been up all night talking with Manouch the evening prior. But I digress.
We were lucky enough to Couchsurf for half of our time in Istanbul and this meant that we were in the company of …

Yes, that’s right. This week we dedicate our food post to what Benjamin Franklin called: “Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!”
Franklin himself spent two months in Germany, and although his love of beer is legendary, I’m curious what kind of beer he actually had on his trip to the country. I say that because everywhere we go, each of the 16 states, (Länder in German) each city, each town, and seemingly each house, has its own kind of beer. In some places it is a re-bottling of a familiar taste under a new label and in others the choice of beer is as important as the language you speak.
We started our time …

A taste of East Africa isn’t complete without tamarind juice. Endemic to tropical African zones, such as the swahili coast, tamarind is the pod-like fruit of a bushy dense tree, that frankly looks completely unappetizing to eat. Fortunately, tamarinds are pressed into juice so you don’t have to look at it to enjoy its flavor.
We first enjoyed tamarind juice in Lamu and couldn’t decide what it was. The flavor was something akin to a tart iced tea and we thought perhaps it was a pre-made mix. It was both sweet and sour. Over the next few days we were served it again and again and finally discovered that it wasn’t a mix at all, but …

We were quite lucky to even get park  reservations over new years and once we arrived at the park were hoping that we’d be able to arrange for a New Years Eve night safari at our Satara camp.
The ride out to the remote picnic spot, where some champagne was waiting for us, was a quick one, but eventful nonetheless. Pulling out of camp we saw giraffe galloping, startled at the light, our first water buffalo, and a group of elephants move to protect a baby. This was interesting to us because during the day the elephants didn’t really feel the need to encircle a baby but I guess it was different at night with a bunch of lights …