We are Michael Hodgson and Therese Iknoian, the husband-and-wife team behind the HI Travel Tales curtain – and, yes, despite travel’s occasional travails, we remain happily married and always look forward to the next trip together. We are veteran travel journalists and photographers — not Instagram bikini influencers (no one wants to see Michael in a bikini anyway!)
HI Travel Tales is dedicated to inspiring meaningful travel adventures around the world with a focus on immersive travel experiences. We discover the unexpected and extraordinary even in the most common of destinations. Our award-winning writing and photography guides travelers and non-travelers alike on a journey of discovery and wonder.
We love sharing stories from other travelers, too, and have a growing slate of wonderful contributors. We are also surrogate parents to a rather large and still growing family of stuffed animals who all have names and invariably fight over who gets to go on the next trip (Michael sometimes insists two go, hiding one in Therese’s carry-on.)
Want to know what it’s like to work with your spouse – and stay married? Then listen in to two CoupleCo podcasts featuring Michael Hodgson and Therese Iknoian below.
We are travelers. Always have been. We engage. We explore. We immerse ourselves everywhere we go. We are both uber-curious and enthusiastic about sharing our experiences. Here are a few of our latest travel adventures.
Reading Time: 6 minutes Located along Highway 99 in the Central Valley, Fresno doesn’t immediately grab you as a place worth spending much more than a night. But appearances can be deceiving. There are quite a few historical, cultural and culinary gems waiting to be explored in California’s fifth-largest city. Read on to know what to do in Fresno.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Traveling to tour the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is on a lot of travel bucket lists these days. That’s where the nuclear plant exploded in 1986. I had the chance to visit Kyiv and the Chernobyl area in Ukraine on a winter photography trip.
Reading Time: 6 minutes The Icefields Parkway, linking Banff and Jasper in the Western Canada’s Rocky Mountains, is considered one of the most scenic highways in the world. Here are 10 things not to miss as the road passes by glaciers, icefields, rivers, lakes and waterfalls.
Reading Time: 4 minutes The Mauthausen Memorial in Austria offers a sobering look at Nazi terror during World War II. The former Mauthausen concentration camp, located not far from the Danube River, was one of the Nazi’s most notorious camps. It is estimated that of the 190,000 prisoners held at Mauthausen during the seven years the camp operated, at least 90,000 died.
Reading Time: 4 minutes Whether served hot in the winter or cold in summer, this Ukrainian-style ginger tea with lemon, mint and cloves is sure to make you smile. Subscriber Club members can download the ginger tea recipe as a PDF for free.
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the last days of World War II, the Battle of the Seelow Heights to the east of Berlin was a bloody massacre. The small Seelow Heights museum and memorial features exhibits, artifacts, and graves documenting the Battle of Berlin and the tens of thousands of lives lost in just three days.
Reading Time: 12 minutes Take a Berlin gasometer tour to experience what could arguably be one of the best views of the city, sunrise to sunset. View a photo gallery of our gasometer tour to get a look at the adventure of a lifetime you could have. The 360-degree views of Berlin are stunning, night or day.
Reading Time: 17 minutes From exotic villas to ecolodges to family-owned boutique hotels, make sure your stay in Morocco will be nothing short of amazing with our pick of the best hotels in Morocco. If it makes our list of a top Morocco hotel, it is because we have stayed there and personally recommend it.
Reading Time: 9 minutes In the hills above Imlil, where there once were kasbah ruins, you find a grand mountain retreat called Kasbah du Toubkal hotel, carefully curated to maintain its historic flavor and local connection with an emphasis on sustainable operations. But Kasbah du Toubkal is much more than a glorious historic hotel on a hilltop. Read on to learn why you WILL want to stay here on your next Morocco visit.
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