The
Years
in Focus

This may actually be our first real photo together. I'm sure there are probably polaroids or cell phone shots floating around from weekend get-togethers, but I believe this was the first one with a proper camera. This was six months after our first date, and we were sharing a seat on Madison and Dave's balcony overlooking McCarren Park in Williamsburg.

It was a regular spot for holiday weekend parties over the years. The balcony faced the East River and Manhattan — one of the best spots to watch the Independence Day fireworks. Jon, Omar, and I had just flown in that morning after spending Canada Day weekend in Ottawa. We brought some Clamato juice with us to introduce the gang to a Canadian specialty: Caesars. With drinks in hand, we spent the day on the balcony grilling burgers and catching up.

This trip to Toronto was our first adventure out of the city together. Having just moved my belongings down to NYC from Toronto early in the summer, I returned with Cindy for a weekend to see friends and celebrate birthdays. This was Cindy's first trip to Toronto, and we rented an Airbnb on Ossington for the weekend.

During the day, Cindy and I wandered down Queen Street West in search of some juiced-up Caesars, then explored Kensington Market and made our way through Trinity Bellwoods Park. At the time, Esther and Laura were still living in Liberty Village, and we were lucky enough to enjoy their rooftop deck in the afternoon. When the sun went down, Esther led us to a few spots that stretched into very late nights. It was our first of many trips to Toronto over the years.

Our first big trip together was Paris in late January 2017. Neither of us had ever traveled to Europe, so this was a completely new city for both of us. We found a tiny Airbnb in the historical 4th district. The bathroom shower was so small you had to crouch, and it barely had enough hot water for one person. On top of that, we had underestimated how cold and damp Paris could be in winter.

All of this barely mattered because the city was incredible. We spent hours meandering through the tiny streets and along the river, discovering something beautiful around every corner. Bookstores, wine shops, museums, palaces. Cindy grabbed early tickets to the Louvre and we saw the Mona Lisa before the crowds. One evening, we picked up a bottle of red from a local wine shop. Not expensive, but fantastic. Writing this in 2025, we both agree this was one of our top trips to date. Paris will always be one of our top cities and our first big adventure together.

After Paris, Cindy had officially caught the travel bug. By June, we were back in Europe and venturing into Africa. Lisbon was full of art, plazas, and delicious food, beautifully situated on a large river near the Atlantic. From Lisbon, we headed south to the Algarve for some beach time in Portimão. Next came Morocco — a complete eye-opener.

We landed in Casablanca, planning to catch a train north to Tangier, only to find it canceled. Tangier itself was overwhelming. The day trip to Chefchaouen was fascinating. From Tangier, we took an overnight train to Marrakech. Somewhere there, I got very sick. Cindy navigated the situation like a pro — getting directions, carrying luggage, and eventually taking me to a Moroccan hospital. I owe her everything for what she did that trip. She handled an incredibly difficult situation in a place far from home.

This was just a quick weekend trip. After I had brought Cindy up to Toronto, she wanted to return the favor by taking me to Philadelphia and showing me around her city. We grabbed a small Airbnb room near Fairmount Park. Looking back now, it's funny to remember the kinds of places we used to book. Pull-out couches, bedrooms in shared apartments with strangers — all of it felt totally fine because it was what we could afford.

We strolled downtown by City Hall and through Love Park. We tried to stop in to see the Liberty Bell, but the line was jammed, so we skipped it. We ate at some great restaurants, found a brewery or two to duck into, and made the obligatory stop at Reading Terminal Market. Philadelphia has history, art, food, and a gritty character that feels a lot like New York, only with its own unique flavor. I am a proud Philadelphia supporter.

Our trip to Copenhagen didn't start exactly as planned. A major snowstorm in NYC had caused our flight to be cancelled. Determined not to let the trip die, we rebooked a flight from Newburgh Airport the next day. We took the Metro North that morning and made the trek up north. When we finally arrived, the weather was grey and damp, but that didn't dampen our excitement.

Walking around the city, we were immediately struck by how beautiful Copenhagen is. The colorful buildings, canals, and cobbled streets make it feel like a living postcard. We got to meet up with an old Toronto friend who had moved there and was working in the food industry. One of the highlights was our first taste of Mikkeller Brewery. We went to the original bar and bottle shop, and stumbled upon an oatmeal stout so good we returned multiple times. We even took a day trip to Sweden, where we caught a SHL game. Copenhagen quickly became one of our favorite cities.

This was our most ambitious trip by far. In hindsight, I think this trip was a turning point for us. We learned that cramming in as many countries as possible isn't always better. This trip was also special because we met up with Cindy's brother David in Spain for the first time. We started in London. One morning I half-heartedly checked the EPL schedule, only to realize my favorite team was playing in town. After some pre-match chaos, I managed to scalp tickets and suddenly we found ourselves inside the stadium.

From London, we moved on to Madrid, where David joined us. The city completely swept us off our feet. To this day, Cindy and I still talk about how Madrid is one of our favorite cities in the world. From Madrid, we traveled south to Seville, then took a day trip to Córdoba — one of the highlights of the entire trip. After saying goodbye to David, we traded sunshine for rain in Budapest. Cindy had planned for us to visit one of the city's famous ruin bars — massive, half-crumbled buildings converted into sprawling cocktail spaces. They were unlike anything I had ever seen.

Italy had been on the list for a long time, and it didn't disappoint. After the lesson learned in London-Spain-Budapest, we approached this trip with more intention — fewer cities, more time in each. Rome first. There's something completely disorienting about walking down a narrow cobblestone street and stumbling into a two-thousand-year-old ruin. We spent days just wandering, letting the city reveal itself without too much of a plan.

From Rome we made our way north. The food alone could have justified the entire trip. Each region had its own dialect of pasta, its own relationship with olive oil. We ate well and often. Standing in front of certain buildings and paintings, you become suddenly and unexpectedly aware of the scale of human history. Italy has a way of making everything feel both enormous and intimate at the same time.

Japan was unlike anywhere we had been before. The contrast between the ancient and the ultra-modern is something you can read about but not quite prepare for. Tokyo moves at a speed that should be overwhelming but somehow isn't — it's organized in a way that makes a city of fourteen million feel manageable. We arrived jetlagged and immediately set out to walk until our feet gave out.

We made our way to Kyoto after several days in Tokyo. The shift in pace was immediate. Narrow lanes lined with wooden machiya, temples tucked between convenience stores, a canal that seemed to exist slightly outside of time. We spent a morning at Fushimi Inari before the crowds found us, walking higher than the tourist maps suggested, through thousands of torii gates until the path narrowed to something almost private. It was one of those mornings that stays with you long after you've stopped being able to remember the details.

San Francisco was our first real trip to the West Coast together. The city rewards walking in a way that surprises you — each neighborhood feels distinct, the hills give you views you don't expect, and the light, particularly in the late afternoon, has a quality that's different from anything on the East Coast. We stayed in the Mission and ate our way through it over several days.

We rented bikes one morning and rode across the Golden Gate. The famous fog had burned off and the bridge sat in unusually sharp light. On the other side, we walked through Sausalito and sat looking back at the city across the water. There's a particular feeling to being far from home in a country that technically isn't foreign — familiar enough to be comfortable, different enough to feel like travel. San Francisco does that well.

We got married in Brooklyn on a day that exceeded every expectation we had set for it. We had been planning from the city we called home, in a neighborhood we had spent years building a life in. The venue sat on the water with a view back towards Manhattan that felt almost cinematic. It was the kind of day where you're simultaneously present and aware that you won't fully understand its importance until much later.

Looking through the photos now, what strikes me most is how candid so many of them are. There's very little that feels posed. People mid-laugh, mid-conversation, mid-dance. The camera caught the day as it actually happened, not as it was staged to happen. That's a harder thing to achieve than it sounds, and it speaks directly to Cindy's ability to find the genuine moment inside the organized chaos of a wedding day.

After two years of a world that had largely stood still, Yellowstone felt like a reentry. There is nothing in the Northeast that prepares you for the scale of it — the geothermal landscape, the open valleys, the bison crossing roads with a complete indifference to the cars waiting for them. We drove slowly and stopped often. Old Faithful went off while we sat in the sun eating lunch and neither of us had quite prepared for the reality of it.

The Grand Tetons were a different kind of landscape. Where Yellowstone felt wild and unpredictable, the Tetons had a stillness to them. The mountains reflected in the lake on a morning with no wind in a way that made you feel like the world was showing off. We hiked until our legs hurt and sat down wherever the view demanded it. These were the first true national parks either of us had spent serious time in, and they set an impossibly high standard for what came after.

Joshua Tree operates at a different frequency than most places. The desert has a way of stripping everything back — there's very little visual noise, very little to distract you from what's directly in front of you. We arrived in the late afternoon and by the time we'd set up, the light had turned the rocks a color that felt slightly impossible. We sat outside for a long time doing nothing in particular.

At night, the sky was the kind of dark that city people forget is possible. We stayed up later than we should have watching it. The Joshua Trees themselves are stranger in person than any photograph suggests — they look like something a child would draw and yet they've been there for hundreds of years, unbothered. We hiked Skull Rock in the morning, ate lunch in the shade of a boulder, and drove back through the park slowly, stopping whenever something caught our eye. It was the right kind of quiet.