New to our blog? We’re (almost) Senior Nomads, all about Cultural Travel – Art Experiences across multiple countries, with as much Adventure as our bodies will allow.

If you want to know what we did, and where we went in 2024, click here.

But where are we NOW? Read on for ArtNomads’ 2025 Art & Adventure travel itinerary… 

Pro Tip: In Luxor and Aswan, give yourself additional days before and after your cruise if you really want to see more than 1-hour highlights. We’d also suggest skipping the Aswan Dam if you can. It’s a reallly early morning, a realllly long drive, and not too much to see, just walking along the top for 10 or 15 minutes. You’ll want that extra time at Philae Temple. Just saying.

After getting thoroughly templed-and-tombed out in Luxor, Dendera and Abydos (but still not having seen everything worthwhile), we headed to Hurghada for a week of diving in the Red Sea.

Sadly, we both had such terrible respiratory infections, that was impossible.  It was also cold & overcast. We instead filled our days with wandering,  doing laundry and discovering a pretty nice, though oddly-housed, antiquities museum.

Next up:

Our Amazing Month in MOROCCO!

February 2025

Our Art & Adventure Travel itinerary continued in Casablanca, with a return to contemporary, present-day artworks. A walkable, fairly modern city, we don’t agree with those who advise skipping it. In fact it’s maybe the perfect way for first-timers to ease into Africa / Morocco… mostly clean, but has that *edge* that becomes the standard elsewhere on the continent. THIS is what strolling the souk/medina can be like.

A self-drive down the lovely Atlantic coast brought us to Al Jadida, Essouira, and Agadir before heading back up into Marrakech . We timed this to cover the 1-54 Art Fair, and had a generally amazing art & cultural experience; there are many more galleries and museums than we’d discovered in our research and nearly all were fantastic!

After that art-citing week, we did a 3-day hike in the High Atlas Mountains, where we really experienced local mountain life of the Berber /  Amazigh (preferred) herders and famers. Go a bit later in the year than we did, and you’ll be treated to amazing (!) valleys covered in apple blossoms! As you can see, when we went, it was still a bit cold. 

Returning to Marrakech only to rent a car, we drove back toward the Atlas Mountains. We visited ancient Ait Benhaddou, setting of more than 200 movies and TV series, and a key stop on the African Spice Route. We investigated several crumbling rammed-earth ksars and even managed a studio visit with a very talented artist, who has also created an incredible new arts hub.

In Ourzazate, we toured Atlas Studios, Africa’s version of Hollywood, and enjoyed an evening of local cultural performances. Not for the tourists per se, but where the locals gather for their weekend evenings.

More hiking, through and to the top of Todragh Gorge, and an amazingly beautiful but super-challenging 8-hour drive brought us to Meknes… (seriously – this is one of the most geologically-interesting and beautiful drives we’ve ever made, but it’s a lot of work).

After Meknes, we spent several hours (too few in Mr. Nomads’ opinion) at Volubilis, the ruins of a 3rd-Century Roman city where we had almost literal free reign, tromping in and between palaces, temples and homes. The hydrological engineering to distribute fresh, sometimes heated) water from one source through 100+ acres of city supporting 20,000 people (and carrying away the resulting waste) boggled my mind.

Another twisting drive through mountains with endless olive groves brought us to Fes, supposedly the largest and most ancient still-occupied walled city in the world.

Fes is renowned for its souk, which honestly seems never-ending, and of course the centuries-old leather tannery/ies. We made the cross-souk journey twice in order to get those famous insta-worthy shots of the richly-hued vats of dye. You can decide if we succeeded here.

As with much of Morocco, unfortunately many historical sites in Fes were closed due to earthquake damage.

After Fes, we continued our Morocco road trip and visited the blue city of Chefchaouen, Tetouan, Asilah and Tangier/Tanger before leaving Africa for Europe. Some we’d recommend (Helloooo Asilah) and others not (Uh, Chefchaouen – what happened to you!?).

A Month of Art in SPAIN

March 2025

We crossed from Tanger by ferry into Spain which is NOT as simple or easy as it seems like it should be. Still, we got to at least wave to Gibraltar on the way.

MALAGA – Art & History intertwined

We took a bus from the port and spent a lovely few days in Malaga, which was a welcome surprise. We’d imagined Malaga mostly as a luxury beach town, and while there’s certainly some of that, it’s also a fantastic art & food town. Oh, and more Roman ruins!

We enjoyed standout institutions like the Picasso Museum and Pompidou Center, the national museum and the university gallery.

Oh, and we lucked into the opening of “Ireland’s most successful artist“, Sharkey’s new gallery! This man’s personality is as exuberant and colorful as his art!

We had 2 different short stays in Malaga, and look forward to spending lots more time there when we return to Europe.

MADRID – Art, Wine and Carnival

Any given day, Madrid is one of the art capitals of Europe you should definitely visit, with the Prado and Sofia Reina museums ranking on many “best of” lists. But on this trip we discovered a number of other great state-run, nonprofit & private foundations which further bolster its standing. Because it was Madrid Art Week, these combined with a bunch of solid galleries, 4 art fairs (see 2 minutes of ArtMadrid) to keep us running every moment. It was also Carnival, which added a lot of fun moments to the to-do list!

After, we rented a car and drove back down to Malaga & over to Salobrena to visit friends. After a year of traveling, it was a really welcome sort of homecoming. Constant travel can get kind of lonely.

Continuing our Spain Art & Adventure travel roadtrip, we enjoyed art & history in Cartagena, Alicante, & Valencia (for the craziness that is Fallas), went hiking in Cirat, took in the Magdalena festival in Castellón de la Plana, and explored Tarragona and Barcelona before heading to Italy. Whew.

Art & Design in ITALY

Early April

In a whirlwind couple of weeks in Italy, we reacquainted ourselves a bit with Turin (but honestly I was mostly in the hotel doing taxes), took a daytrip to Asti, where we’d lived for several months last year, and then headed to Milan for MiArtFair, the anchor of Milano Art Week and Milan Design Week, more properly called Salone del Mobile Milano, just a few days later. 

It’s spring, so the fairs are back to back; to catch the next one(s), we jetted off to check out…

Art in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

From Milan, we flew to Abu Dhabi in the UAE for its (first) Public Art Biennial, traveled to Dubai where we spent time checiking out the galelry district, the Art Dubai fair, World Art Dubai, and the Museum of the Future before heading down to Sharjah, for the Sharjah Biennale (teaser video) – a three week whirlwind we’ve dubbed the UAE ArtTrifecta.

We were surprised by how different each of the three Emirates was.

We expected glitz & glam in Dubai, and there’s plenty of it to be sure. It seems fairly positioned as a playground for the rich, with incredible shopping (seriously, the malls are enormous!) and exotic cars everywhere – like a Vegas with limited access to booze.

Abu Dhabi is positioning itself as a playground of a different sort, with a great aquarium, Warner Brothers World, FerrariWorld and a pending Disney resort for family-focused travelers, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, TeamLAB, Zayed National Museum and Guggenheim (both still a ways from completion) and the Bassam Freihya / Manayat a Saadiyat complex setting the tone for arts lovers.

Sharjah was a complete mystery before our arrival, and while the larger city has a long way to go to compete with either Abu Dhabi or Dubai for the family audience(s), it’s becoming a huge player for the art crowd worldwide due to the efforts and holding of the Sharjah Art Foundation. We spent a week checking out the Sharjah Biennale; here’s an article, and a recap video.  Should be really interesting to watch further developments. Oh, and no booze here. At all.

Overall, a worthwhile visit, and worth another trip in the future.  Our art cravings temporarily satisfied, we sought out Art & Adventure travel in…

NEPAL – Adventure, trekking and culture

May – June

From the UAE, Nepal, with its incredible hiking – particularly the Annapurna Circuit Trek (we did 12 days) – beckoned. And Kathmandu. And Pokhara. As did short wildlife safaris in Bardiya and Chitwan National Parks. And exploring local villages & culture in the Kathmandu Valley. We really concentrated on the Adventure part of our Art & Adventure travel itinerary.

Sadly, after roughly 6 weeks in lovely Nepal, we hit the road for Thailand. We’ve been before, but Mr. Nomad needed some semi-emergency dental work done, and heard that Bangkok is a good option.

THAILAND – the land of Smiles (we hope)!

June – ?

Bangkok

Ahhh Bangkok. We visited back in 2009 during our SE Asia backpacking trip (the trip that really ignited our wander/wonderlust ).  Our memories of this city are a little fuzzy, and we’re pretty sure Bangkok has doubled in size since then, but this city definitely has some of *whatever* you’re looking for. Except maybe beaches.

As we mentioned earlier, we schedule Bangkok now because Mr. has some dental issues that need addressing, and supposedly Bangkok is *the* place in SE Asia for good dental care. At the moment, that remains to be seen, as it’s been a lot of runaround.

However, we have seen chunks of the city we didn’t on our prior visit. In fact, we think a big chunk probably didn’t exist back in 2009. Up by the Bangkok Art and Cultural Center, there’s a HUGE, interconnected mall complex where you can spend entire days to escape sweltering heat & humidity. It’s like multiple-Vegas-casinos huge.
We visited night and weekend markets, (we were especially surprised & impressed by Chatuchak) temples galore and a number of worthwhile galleries and museums (like Bangkok’s MOCA).

 

Chiang Mai

We had some time in between dental appointments, so we headed to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai for a couple weeks.

We’d been to Chiang Mai before, during our 2009 SE Asia trip and really loved it. So we had high expectations, along with some fond memories. We wondered if the 2025 version would be as nice?

Turns out we did many of the same things we did back in 2009, but with a few twists.

Our visit to Doi Suthep this time included 4 hours worth of hiking through the jungle, both on the “Mon’s Trail” and off it.

We visited Doi Inthanon, and revisited the beautiful waterfalls which were our main goals last time, but this time got to see the pagodas which we didn’t even know existed last time.

Other major changes: “coffee culture” has invaded / overtaken Chiang Mai – there are seemingly multiple coffee shops on every block. Cannabis / Weed shops, too. (Though apparently the Thai government is changing the rules, and only medical-cannabis will be allowed in near future). Street Art & Graffiti is fairly prevalent, and we don’t really remember it on our prior visit.

In all, a nice 5-night “refresher” visit that we enjoyed, but still left us wanting more. We’ll be back. We hope.

Chiang Rai

We didn’t make it to Chiang Rai during our previous Thailand visit due to some -ahem- car trouble (long “C-Fun” story that maybe we’ll write about later), and we always felt like we’d missed out.

We spent 4 nights in Chiang Rai this time and saw some *incredible* sights – including the Red, White, & Blue Temples, a giant Buddha (biggest yet), and had some truly delicious food. Still, we missed some worthwhile stops and sites due to weather.

If you want to go, a week is probably sufficient. We’ll likely be back, as we want to do the Mekong river trip on our way up to Laos (like everyone else).

Back to Bangkok

Sadly, more dental work required a return trip to Bangkok. But we still got around and saw some good stuff.

Onward to Adventure in Borneo!

Mid July –

We mentioned earlier that Malaysian Borneo was not on our projected itinerary for 2026, but a hiker we met in Nepal was soooo adamant about its awesomeness that we changed plans. Well, that and a volcano erupted, grounding flights to Bali, which was our planned destination.

In all, we spent just about 3 weeks exploring the northern Malaysian portion of the island; there is honestly a LOT of territory we missed and might have to revisit in the future.

We spent some time in Kota Kinabalu generally getting rained on, headed to Kundasang & Mt. Kinabalu National Park (did NOT get to hike the mountain sadly; weather would have prevented it, but we DID hike the Mempening Trail), explored Sandakan (more time than we needed), and then headed down to our main goal: orangutans, pygmy elephants and proboscis monkeys on a Kinabatangan River Safari.

After a fulfilling few days there, we headed over to Semporna for diving and snorkeling.

Finally, Bali !

Early to Mid August

We got back on track by flying from Semporna to Denpasar, Bali Indonesia once the eruption threat(s) had subsided.

We’d been to Bali back in 2009; we were interested to see how it changed. But we avoided the main tourist sites like Ubud, opting instead to go diving (we upgraded to Advanced Open Water Certification), and travel along the eastern & northern coast by rental car.

We also did the very touristy but also worthwhile Mt. Batur volcano sunrise hike, which we missed doing in 2009. Fantastic sunrise, worth the midnite wakeup, 2 hour white-knuckle hairpin-turn drive through villages and forests. Have the pics to prove it.

More travel along the more chillaxed northern coast, more diving & snorkeling, LOTS of temples, and a couple days checking out art & beaches in Kuta & Seminyak.

Japan: Setouchi Triennale, Tokyo, Nagano, Kyoto and More

Mid August to Mid/ Late September

Updating this on August 25, from Takamatsu , where we’ve taken a couple days of rest after running through several islands of the Setouchi Triennale, a major art event spread over 17 different islands in the Seto Sea, just west of Osaka.

A quick (expensive!) day trip to Hiroshima – 80 years and a couple weeks from the Atomic Bombing – which was a somber, sobering experience. Hiroshima isn’t what we expected at all, and having seen the site and museums, we don’t feel the need to return. The city itself isn’t so inviting, and the *art* museums were well below expectations.

Next up was a seriously-challenging Mt. Fuji dayhike, before heading down to Tokyo for a big-city fix. Tokyo surprised us – it’s not nearly as “tall” as we’d expected, but earthquakes are a real issue. We took in lots of art (including the pretty great TeamLab Borderless) and delicious food before heading up to Nagano for more hiking & a nature fix. If you go (and you should) we hop you have better weather than we did!

A bullet train took us down to Kyoto, which we thoroughly enjoyed – largely spared during WWII, it’s got some “old Japan” to savor as well as modern & contemporary. Will hopefully return one day. A day or two in Osaka, where we enjoyed some museums, the infamous Dontaburi Street, and another TeamLab installation at the Botanic Garden, before heading off to…

South Korea Art Double-Dip!

Cheongju was our first stop in South Korea, for the Cheongju Craft Biennale, almost exactly 16 years since we last visited. We got to experience more of the city and the museums this time, (including a really great exhibition in an old Cold War bunker!) as we booked a full 4 or 5 days. You probably don’t need that much time.

We of course had to visit Seoul, where we skipped the palaces etc. that we’d seen in 2019 (guessing not many changes to those) in favor of galleries and museums (like the Arario Museum & Gallery) and new neighborhoods. Amazing tacos!? yep!

New Adventures & Discoveries in Laos

October – Mid November

We didn’t get to Laos during our 2019 trip, but everyone told us how awesome it was, so Mrs. Nomad in particular has been pining to visit ever since. We blocked out a little over a month (which we later learned meant getting a visa extension).

We flew from Seoul to Vientiane because it was easy and cheap, but stayed longer in Vientiane than one really needs because we had to wait until our reserved date at the Gibbon Experience, outside Houaxay. Most folks get there from Chiang Mai Rai, Thailand … and if we had to do it over again, we probably would too.

The Gibbon experience, though, where we both ziplined for the first time, and slept in hundred-meter high treehouses, was pretty a incredible adventure.

From there, we hit Luang Namtha, which while relaxing didn’t really need the amount of time we gave it. It’s hard to get to/from and the town is meh. The surrounding countryside is beautiful, and we enjoyed our day scootering the loop, but you *could* give it a pass.

Next up was Nong Khiaw / Khiew, which we were looking forward to ever since we met travelers in Kinabatangan who loved it. Not exactly unknown, but it felt like we had the place to ourselves, and thoroughly enjoyed our dramatic morning views along / of the river as it woke up. Recommend.

Luang Prabang was up next, which was our first taste of remaining French Colonial architecture and infrastructure. Definitely the most *touristy* town we’d visited, but it really is quite charming, and we enjoyed both the town (a lovely birthday dinner at Lost in Baan) and scootering around to the waterfalls. We have some more thoughts on those.

From there, we headed to Phonsavan for the famous Plain of Jars. Sadly, this town has apparently not recovered to pre-C*vid visitation; we were literally the only two visitors to Site 1, which I found historically fascinating: in one spot, you can see megaliths from ~500BC, trenches from 1950s battles against the French, and bomb craters from the USA’s “Secret War” in the 1970s. Sobering.

It’s also a *terrible* road to Phonsavan presently due to heavy mining traffic; we were assured that the mining is coming to an end and the road will surely be repaired soon after. I wouldn’t hold my breath. But the ride, though tortuous, has absolutely breathtaking scenery for the 2nd half.

Another town we were assured is a can’t miss is Vang Vieng. Ehhhhh.. it is the 2nd-most heavily touristed town we experienced, and is largely a playground for 20-30 somethings. The two hottest activities seem to be parasailing and hot air balloons, particularly for sunrise & sunset. I’m sure those are spectacular activities, but we were warned away due to less than stellar safety protocols. Once again, we scootered to and through brilliant beautiful landscapes and enjoyed some challenging hikes & climbs.

After a brief stop in Vientiane again, to get an MRI on my knee, (which I believe I severely injured on Mt. Fuji), we headed to Pakse and the famous Pakse / Bolaven Loop. We chose to do the big loop, and allowed 4-5 days. We enjoyed, though we cut it short due to rain, and would recommend even more time.

Enough with the scootering already – doctors said I needed to rest my knee, so we headed to 4000 Islands (Don Khone specifically) for literal R & R. I’m writing from our deck over the Mekong River, with decent wifi, and nothing much else to do – we’ve already biked the islands we can and seen the waterfalls… and that’s why you’re here: to chill and enjoy (which you can probably do for under $10/day btw). Nice.

Vietnam

2nd half of November

Sadly, due to a couple typhoons and the resulting heavy flooding in Hoi An, Hue, DaNang etc., we reworked our plan to extend our time in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon.

Our AirBnB has a pool, which is nice, and is proving very helpful in rehabbing Mr. Nomads’ knee, which is indeed very damaged from some of our experiences earlier this year.

We have gotten around a bit, though, and seen some art in both museums and galleries. We took in the War Remnants Museum which is a tough pill to swallow.

And we’ve had some pretty amazing food, which matches our memory of our Hanoi (and points north) visit back in 2009.