RTW backpacking travel in Eastern and Western Europe
Finding a way to stop traveling has been an evolving process. When I booked that one-way flight ten years ago, a year of travel loomed before me, an epic round-the-world trip that would fulfill my dreams to see more of the world while also preparing me to contentedly return to Los Angeles at the end. …
There is something about a church that transports me through time and deposits me at an former version of myself. I step through the doors and past habits and attitudes flood my senses and course through my body. I was raised Christian and, since then, I moved onto a mixed bag of spirituality. I found …
Since childhood Spain pulled my focus and imagination. I studied my history books and learned about the country’s role in early exploration. I lamented the nuances of the Spanish language as my high school brain battled to grasp so.many.tenses. I often plopped myself on my bed and gave intense focus to the photographs of the art …
For no particular reason my mind wandered toward Italian gelato earlier this week, (not an abnormal occurrence in Shannon-land) and as I sat there daydreaming pangs of nostalgia for Italian ice-cream surfaced and I thought, you know what, I need take this gelato love-fest out of my head and share it with you. So without …
Sometimes joy and fun in an experience is directly proportional to how difficult it is… …the short hike to the lookout point for the Blasket Islands in southern Ireland is one of those circumstances. It was cold and windy for my driving/hiking adventure and with the ever-present misting Irish rain a constant companion every time I …
You know that idyllic image of American life in the 1950s? You know the one I mean: Neat yards aligned up and down the streets of pretty suburbs, complete with white picket fences and neighbors pruning their roses while tossing friendly hellos to passerby? I wasn’t alive back then, so I don’t know how much …
Walking the wooden boardwalks around Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia I looked up and saw this dead tree with a very clear thought bubble painted across the sky by mother nature; like something out of a comic book. What would a tree say? Even more pointedly, what would a dead tree say on a …
There’s a secret spot in Ireland. And the locals don’t want you to know it exits. I found it by chance—though I recommend renting a car in Ireland that means a good deal of alone-time for solo travelers. Time spent following the directions of lonely brown heritage signs, standing as sentinels of history on the …