Find travel guides, planning tips, advice, and resources for where you want to go for all the destinations I’ve visited! Everything is sorted by country and/or state for easy searching. Great for dreaming, planning, and making your trip a reality!
Stepping into Strasbourg is like stepping into a fairytale. Scents of freshly baked breads waft through the air, causing you to stop and debate whether you want the crunchy exterior of a french baguette or a rich bite of a buttery croissant. When you’re about to decide — “un croissant s’il vous plaît” — church […]
A lot of times, my city breaks all seem to be variations on the same. You eat some good meals, spend half a day at a museum, and join a walking tour past fountains or skyscrapers or monuments. Unless you really have time to dig in, it’s hard to get to know what makes the
I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, but I’m a beer drinker. Alaskan Amber is my drink of choice, but whenever I’m traveling, I love to sample the local beer — especially craft or microbrews. Except as much as I love solo travel, I hate drinking alone. I can go to restaurants alone, head
Biking from Pint A to Pint B – It’s a Wheely Good Time! Read More »
It still blows my mind that I spent five days in Colorado this summer without ever going into the mountains. In fact, I barely even saw them due to hazy conditions. That’s heresy considering that my heart lies on the top of a snow-capped peak. So why was I even in Colorado if I wasn’t
Perched on the top of a hill, the village of Motovun Croatia is a scene straight out of a storybook. It’s surrounded by medieval walls that overlook vineyards, each direction more beautiful than the last. While most tourists flock to the beach and seaside towns in Istria, Motovun is just far enough to remain an
Growing up, it was a joke in my family that every good vacation included a fort tour. Year after year, I rolled my eyes in boredom at battlefields and battleships, a sign that even then I preferred sightDOING to static walk-throughs. But now that I live in Richmond, revolutionary and civil war history is a big piece
Experiencing Civil War Battles: The Action at Wilson’s Wharf Read More »
“But Mom, it’s so far away and we’re spending so much time in the car already,” I said, annoyed that she would even bring up the option of driving to Mount Rainier for a day. We were in the midst of planning a family get-together for after my Olympic Peninsula trip ended and before my parents’ trip to Vancouver
For tourists, there’s one key difference between national parks and national monuments: there are generally far fewer visitors at national monuments than at “full-fledged” national parks. National monuments can be just as beautiful, offer just as many hiking and camping opportunities, and you still get in free with an America the Beautiful Pass. Actually, side
Chiricahua National Monument: A Perfect Day Hike Read More »
American tourists in particular fall into the trap of trying to do everything when they travel. It makes sense: after a long, expensive flight from home, you want to make the trip worthwhile. A one-week trip to Spain might include Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla, and even another stop or two. Don’t do that. When you arrive
A Contrarian Plan for Visiting Barcelona and Skipping Spain Read More »
My husband is the one who convinced me to go to Macau. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested; it just seemed like on an already short trip, there was no reason to squeeze in a third city. And Macau would just be shopping and casinos anyway. That was my first Macau mistake and probably one
