Japan Recs

Japan Recs

Overview This post will be a condensed version of the more detailed Japan journal post. This post will just be rapid fire recommendations for where to eat and what to do in Japan based off our travels while we were there. There won’t be a ton of details here as there are countless other posts online with way more information and better writing skills than me. This post will only cover recs for places we actually went to and experienced....

November 23, 2024 · 6 min · Grant Birkinbine
Greek Islands

Greek Islands

Greek Islands 🇬🇷 This post is a continuation of the “Birkinbine EU Trip”. The first post can be found here: London and the Cotswolds The second half of the “Birkinbine EU Trip” took place in the Greek Islands. My mom had done a lot of research before the trip and really wanted to visit the Greek Islands for their great scenery and to escape the very snowy winter they had in Colorado....

May 10, 2023 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 8 min · Grant Birkinbine
London and the Cotswolds

London and the Cotswolds

London and the Cotswolds 🇬🇧 This trip was a monumental one for my family (Joe, Betsy and Brooks). While I have been “over the pond” and have traveled all over Europe, they haven’t been to Europe before. This would be their first big international trip and we were all extremely excited! Brooks has wanted to visit London for a very long time and years ago Leah and I even gave him a “voucher” for a trip to London and visiting the Harry Potter studio tour....

May 5, 2023 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 8 min · Grant Birkinbine
Caragol UK Trip

Caragol UK Trip

Caragol UK Trip 🇬🇧 While Leah and I were in the UK, Leah’s family came over to visit us and do a whole bunch of traveling all over the UK! Dublin, Ireland 🇮🇪 We started the trip off by exploring Ireland for several days. Our first stop was to meet Michelle, Ian, and Steve in Dublin. The greater Caragol family flew from Denver ➡️ Dublin, and Leah and I flew from London ➡️ Dublin....

April 6, 2023 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 11 min · Grant Birkinbine
Morocco

Morocco

Intro In the past, Leah has done a lot of planning for our trips. During Leah’s first semester at King’s College London, I had planned a trip on my first visit to London and Norway. The majority of the trip to Norway was a surprise and it was a huge success! Before my next trip out to London, I started planning another “surprise trip” for Leah and I to go on, and this time we were heading to Morocco!...

February 17, 2023 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 35 min · Grant Birkinbine
Paris

Paris, France

Paris The whole reason for this trip to Paris was to see a musician that I have seen a few times before. His name is Apashe and I wrote about going to one of his show’s in a previous blog post. When I was in London a few months ago, Apashe announced that he would be playing a show in Paris but this time it would be at the Bataclan theatre and with a full brass ensemble....

February 10, 2023 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 8 min · Grant Birkinbine
Bean Quest 2.0

Bean Quest 2.0

Bean Quest 2.0 👋 Hey, if you are looking for the first post about Bean Quest 1.0, click the link here It had been about a month since the legendary Bean Quest 1.0 event and we knew we had to go bigger and better. I reached out to DC to see if we could book Vision Quest for another Saturday in a couple of weeks. It was short notice but he penciled us in so we got to planning....

January 28, 2023 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 3 min · Grant Birkinbine
Ouray, CO

Ouray, CO

Ouray Ice Festival 2023 Back in 2021, Leah got me into rock climbing. Initially, I really didn’t want to get into the sport in any meaningful way. I had fun doing indoor sport climbing and bouldering, but I wasn’t really interested in improving. This changed pretty quickly though when I first tried outdoor climbing. It proved to be rather challenging and I set out to improve in the gym to be able to climb better on real rock....

January 20, 2023 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 5 min · Grant Birkinbine
Bean Quest 1.0

Bean Quest 1.0

Bean Quest 1.0 The very first “Bean Quest” took place December 10th, 2022 and was an iconic event. Back in October, the “Beans” (my friends) were looking for a place to throw a Halloween party. Since several of us now DJ, and EDF was such a success this past summer, we wanted a place to DJ. We were planning on doing a party at Nick’s house for Halloween, but we wanted a follow up event where we could really throw down some DJ sets....

December 10, 2022 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 4 min · Grant Birkinbine
December 2022

December 2022

December 2022 December 2022 was a really great month that was just absolutely packed with good times. Reaper 🤘 The month started off with Reaper at the Church. We started off in the “riddim room” and then proceeded to wreck our bodies to Drum and Bass for hours on end. The “riddim room” Reaper Bean Quest Weekend 🥳 We started off Bean Quest 1.0 weekend with Korean Karaoke Ian and Taylor...

London and Norway

London and Norway

London and Norway In the fall of 2022 Leah was accepted into one of the best Global Health programs in the UK. She had the opportunity to study at King’s College in London and earn her masters while living abroad. It was pretty darn short notice as when her acceptance came through she had only a few weeks to get a visa before she set sail. At this time it just wasn’t feasible for me to join right away....

November 2, 2022 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 12 min · Grant Birkinbine
Apashe

Apashe

Apashe The Apashe concert at The Ogden in Denver will forever be a core memory of mine… Apashe is one of my all time favorite artists. He does experimental music by blending classical music and electronic music together in a way that is just absolutely magical. He is one of the few artists that I can just listen to their music on repeat for hours and never get bored. The first time I saw Apashe was in Seattle in 2021....

September 9, 2022 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 3 min · Grant Birkinbine
EDF 2022

EDF 2022

EDF 2022 For many years now, my friends (the beans), has done a Fourth of July party. In reality, this usually takes place on the 2nd or 3rd as our families always had their own 4th of July parties growing up. Our “2nd of July” parties usually involved shooting each other with Roman candles and other assorted things that go “bang”. This yearly tradition slowly evolved as we did. It once started out as just a few friends shooting guns at bottles and fireworks at each other; however, it grew to be more and more people....

July 2, 2022 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 4 min · Grant Birkinbine
Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan 🇹🇼 ℹ️ Note: Before I begin, it should be noted that I am retro-writing this blog post. Leah and I went to Taiwan in 2019 and I am now writing this blog post in the fine year of 2023; while on a plane to Greece with my family. This post will be more “highlights” of what we did and less details as it is being recalled from my memory years later....

March 25, 2019 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 10 min · Grant Birkinbine
Colombia

Colombia

Colombia 🇨🇴 Only about 6 months ago, Leah and I had returned from our Europe backpacking trip. Since then, we had moved to Seattle. Leah had started nanning and had saved up a good chunk of money for another trip. I had started working at a small bagel cafe called Eltana and had just enough money to do a budget backpacking trip somewhere. Leah and I started looking for cheap international flights and had our eyes set on South America....

February 25, 2018 · (updated November 23, 2024) · 18 min · Grant Birkinbine