The Best Daytrips from Major European Cities

March 2, 2021

In this seemingly never-ending spiral of COVID, I’m dreaming more and more of the day when we can explore the world again. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the places I still want to see, the places I want to return to and some of the places that have had the biggest impact on me. And as I mentioned in my post on what I think travel will be like post-COVID, I think we’ll all be having to take longer trips for a while, spending more time in one place and exploring around there. One of the best ways to do that is to base yourself in a major city and take day trips to other areas nearby. That’s what I’m hoping to do once we can get to traveling again and as I plan my future escape, here are some of the best day trips from major European cities, so that wherever you find yourself someday in a post-COVID world, travel can take your breath away again!

Paris to Lyon

A few years back, we accidentally ended up spending some time in Lyon and absolutely fell in love with this less-famous French city. While I’ll always be a huge fan of Paris, Lyon offers a charm all its own and is an easy train ride from Paris, easily accessible to spend a day wandering around Lyon and then heading back to the City of Light. Lyon feels a little bit French, a little bit Mediterranean, a little bit Italian. Lyon’s buildings are pastel-colored, the views are breathtaking and it’s easy to explore on foot for as long as you like.

Amsterdam to Bruges

Hop on a train in Amsterdam in the morning and head to Bruges in Belgium. This little historic town is beautiful but the real winner here are the outdoor markets in the old village squares, where you can grab a Belgian waffle and a strong cup of coffee and wander to your heart’s delight. Cobblestone streets, canals and waterways, and cafes everywhere, Bruges is where you go to feel completely European for a day.

Munich to Hallstatt

While I wasn’t a huge fan of Munich, it’s central location in Europe offers incredible day trips to lots of places – one of those being the beautiful town of Hallstatt in Austria. Only 2.5 hours by car from the center of Munich, Hallstatt is one of those storybook places that really does live up to the hype. Snow covered mountains create a backdrop that seems other-worldly, a tiny town that feels like it’s exactly perfect and lunch in an Austrian cafe, it doesn’t get much better than that!

Edinburgh to St. Andrews

I fell hard for Scotland the first time we visited and every subsequent visit has been just as great, but our first trip there we drove from Edinburgh to St. Andrews for the day and it’s still one of my favorite travel moments of all time. This quick and easy drive (or train ride) will leave you wanting more. First off, driving through Scotland is gorgeous. Second, St. Andrews on the Coast is a beautiful town and third, sitting in a Scottish having sticky toffee pudding might be my favorite travel experience ever. We also happened to see one of the most stunning sunsets of our lives in St. Andrews a few years back, so you know, there’s that too.

Reykjavik to Vik

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ll know how much I adore Iceland. Like when I’m having a bad day, my life backup plan is to escape to Iceland and live in a little house in a little town somewhere where no one knows where I’ve gone. And one of my favorite areas of Iceland is the Southern Coast where the town of Vik is tiny, the sand on the beaches is black, and the waterfalls are magical. The drive from Reykjavik to Vik is a pretty easy one (unless there is inclement weather), and you can easily do it in a day.

Rome to Umbria + Tuscany

Ahhh Italy. It’s no secret that on our first trip there years ago, we hated it. We left saying we never wanted to go back. And then a few years later, we decided to give it another go and guess what? We fell in love. Italy is one of those countries that you have to let go of what your preconceived notions are, that you have to let go of your Type A personality, that you have to let go of your schedule. If you can do that, you’ll fall deeply, madly in love. And while the cities are incredible, where Italy really shines is when you start driving out of the city centers and seeing the countryside. The drive from Rome up through Umbria and Tuscany is magical, from rolling hills and hilltop fortresses-turned towns, this drive is beyond worth it. Whether you only do this as a day trip and return to Rome in the evening or you stay for several days, Umbria and Tuscany are perfection.

Nice to Monaco

If you’re into ticking off as many countries as you can on trips, then this daytrip is for you! When you find yourself in Nice on the French Riviera, hop a quick 20 minute train and you’ll find yourself in an entirely different country for the day. Monaco is a little tiny spec on the map but will feel entirely different than France. Wander by the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo and take in the seaside views and tell everyone you spent the day in a different country.

Updating our Bedroom : At Home with LOM

February 26, 2021

As we’ve been stuck at home a lot more this past year than in the past due to the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to do a few touch ups to rooms in our 1925 Dutch Colonial house in Portland. While most of the large renovations happened the first year we moved in, we’ve spent this past year doing smaller updates and making other changes to spaces in the house that were fine, but just needed a little something extra. One of those spaces is our bedroom. As the largest bedroom, it’s a pretty corner room, has lots of light and beautiful original hardwood floors and moldings. Most of the furniture there is the same furniture that we brought with us from our townhouse, but we just felt like it needed a bit of an update without spending too much money or changing out too much. In the end, it really only took some art and a new rug to make a huge change in the space and I’m so excited with how it turned out!

Step 1 : What’s the Budget?

I really didn’t want to spend a lot in this room and I wanted to do only try out things that we could do ourselves and not have to hire out. We have spent some money on this room over the past couple years having our contractor build a window seat in the dormer window, replacing the lighting and I spray painted our hamper black to match the room better, but overall, this re-design was supposed to be low cost and easy. In the end, we spent only about $300 total for frames and a new rug to brighten up the space.

Step 2 : Think About Color

One of the features in our bedroom that I love is that artwork. We have an assortment of art in this room, from a large black and white photograph that Nick took of our favorite cafe in Paris, to a handful of local art from places we’ve traveled that I’ve turned into a gallery wall in the room. Most of the art in here is pastel pinks and blues so when looking for a rug, that’s the color scheme I was drawn to, alongside a base of gray that ties in everything else in the room.

Step 3 : Try a Couple Options

I ordered two different rugs in the size I needed (which was a strange 8’x8′ size) and when they arrived, I laid them both out in the space. Immediately I could see which one worked and which one didn’t (the one I didn’t choose was too blue). I do this a lot with rugs as it’s so important to see them in the space and then I return the one I didn’t use.

The Final Result

Overall, just a few minor changes really freshened up our bedroom and made it feel lighter and more mature. Eventually, I’d like to paint the walls a light gray but that project will need to be down the road due to our limited amount of time for house projects these days because of our crazy work schedules. All in all, I love the simple changes that brought this room alive and remind us of our travels.

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A Snowy Valentine’s Pandemic Weekend in Portland

February 19, 2021

Outfit Details:

J Crew Insulated White Coat (similar) | Boden Scarf (similar) | Hat

This past weekend, Portland was covered in a blizzard of white snow, falling for several days and with temperatures dropping way below our normal winter temps, the city came to a complete standstill. All in all, we ended up with about a foot of snow after three days, which for this mild rainy area of the Pacific Northwest, is a lot of snow! Our infrastructure just isn’t built to withstand the low temperatures here and when we get any more than a couple inches of snow, it shuts down the city. To add on to that, we get a lot of ice and freezing rain accompanied with the snow, so our roads and trees become sheets of treacherous ice and driving conditions become really bad. Long story short, our Valentine’s weekend was basically spent inside, watching the snow fall outside.

We did however get to explore a bit and take some pictures in our snowy city. We haven’t had this much snow for three or four years and the ice storm that accompanied the snow is a once-in-40-year-event. And while our typical Valentine’s weekend would have looked a lot different if it weren’t for the pandemic and the snow, we did what we could to make the most of it!

Headed to my home town of Portland?

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My 10 Favorite Places in California

February 12, 2021

Since my parents moved to Pasadena, California in May of 2020, Nick and I have spent a good amount of time in SoCal this past year. In the past, I haven’t been a huge fan of Southern California but after a lot of time spent there this past year, I’ve found that there are so many beautiful places in the state of California. While I still have more to explore in California in the years to come, here are my 10 favorite places in California from the places I’ve explored so far!

Pasadena

While SoCal has never been my favorite part of California, I’ve grown to really like Pasadena, where my parents now live. It’s green, quiet and has beautiful views of the San Gabriel Mountains. I’m really looking forward to exploring more of Pasadena in the years to come and enjoying more of the restaurants that have been closed due to COVID. Pasadena feels entirely removed from LA proper and I love that it feels simultaneously so far away but is still so close to explore Los Angeles too.

Napa Region

The area in the Napa Valley, home to California’s famous wine-country, is truly one of the most beautiful areas in California. From rolling hills of vineyards to beautiful little towns, the Napa region of the state is definitly a must see. The Fall is one of my favorite seasons in this area when the vineyards turn gold, the weather is temperate and you can drive through as many little towns as the day will take you.

Santa Barbara

One of the places that first had me fall in love with California long before my parents moved there was Santa Barbara. This beautiful area on the coast about an hour and a half from LA will have you swooning over coastal views and Spanish style architecture. I’d love to spend more time in Santa Barbara in the years to come and it’s one of those places that feels like a little town but yet is fairly large and has everything you could ever need.

Ojai

This little tiny town in the mountains about 2 hours from LA is a beautiful scenic area of SoCal. While the town can be seen in just an hour or so because it’s so small, the area around Ojai is gorgeous and worth a drive in itself. Head to this area if you want to drive through tiny towns, ranches that sprawl beneath the mountains and scenic vistas that feel entirely removed from California.

Palm Springs

Palm Springs had been on my list for years so when we happened to be in the area in late 2020, we couldn’t help but find a couple hours to explore. This city that’s about 2 and a half hours East of LA is well worth a visit for the scenic desert views, amazing shopping and incredibly renovated mid-century homes. I found Palm Springs to feel a bit like Waikiki in Hawaii but placed in the desert instead of the beach… the vibe was just great in this desert community.

Santa Monica

In LA proper, Santa Monica is one of my favorite places to explore. With ocean views, interesting hotels and restaurants and a very cool vibe, Santa Monica is a great spot to explore and get away from downtown LA. If you’re looking for the typical California, beach, cool vibe, this is where it’s at. The Historic Venice Canal District is only a few minutes South of Santa Monica and that’s a worthy destination to check out as well, as you wander through the neighborhood that sits on the famous canals.

Carmel + Monterey

I’ve visited Carmel and Monterey on the central California coast several times now and these two cities right next to each other are definitely some of the most beautiful in California. With coastal views, a very different weather pattern than most of the state (it’s pretty cool here year round), Carmel and Monterey will give you a much different view of the California Coast than almost anywhere else in the state. I’m hoping to spend a long weekend in Carmel this coming year at some point and would love to explore the town a bit more than I have in the past.

Big Sur

For incredible scenic, California coast views, Big Sur is perhaps the most stunning. As you drive up the California coast, Big Sur has it all: foresty, incredible views over the ocean, and stunning vistas to see the beauty of the California landscape. The scenic spots along this route, driving the coast highway, are unbelievable and this drive should be done at least once to see that incredible views of Central California.

Solvang

For a little European escape, Solvang, in the mountains above Santa Barbara is a perfect day adventure in California. This Danish town feels like a complete escape from Southern California and offers charming restaurants, a perfect place to wander and explore, and scenic landscapes. Plus the drive to get to Solvang feels almost reminiscent of driving in the mountains around Provence and that’s always a plus in my book!

Malibu

I feel like a top 10 list of California wouldn’t be complete without Malibu on it. While it’s a little cliche, Malibu is one of those spots you just have to see at some point on the Southern California Coast. With ocean views, cute little shops and restaurants, this little town on the Pacific Coast Highway is also a great celeb spotting area.

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A Winter Escape to Cannon Beach

February 9, 2021

Last weekend, Nick and I woke up early, long before the sun was due to rise and after weeks of our days looking pretty much the same as well as being slammed with work, I had an idea. That idea was to drive to over to the Oregon Coast for sunrise, explore a bit and then drive back to Portland to have a restful day at home. And that is exactly what we did.

We headed to Cannon Beach, one of the towns on the Coast that’s about an hour away from Portland. And while there was no real “sunrise,” and the beach was fogged in and the rain was pouring down and it was freezing cold, it was still an adventure. We walked on the beach, took some photos, and then raced back to the car, dripping wet. After a quick stop at a local bakery, we dried off and sat in the car overlooking the ocean, eating raspberry scones and drinking oat milk hot chocolate. The moral of this story is that this adventure was wet and cold and short, but at the end of the day, it was an adventure, it was something different. In this year of COVID, the one thing I’ve learned is that we take so much about our normal lives for granted. I personally took travel so much for granted before COVID and this little, wet, cold winter escape to Cannon Beach was just what I needed to bring that sense of wonder alive again.

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Myanmar

February 5, 2021

Over the last week, news out of Myanmar has emerged that the military has overthrown the democratically elected leaders running the country and detained a large handful of leaders and activists. Now let me back up for a moment, Myanmar, formerly Burma, is a country in SE Asia that not many people know much about in the Western World. And before visiting, I knew little to nothing about it either but as news started filling my Twitter timeline last weekend about the coup, I have found myself thinking about the country every day this week and I think it’s worth sharing my thoughts here today.

A little over a year ago, I landed in Yangon, Myanmar late at night. After a few hours of sleep, I woke to the most brilliant purple and pink sunrise over Inya Lake behind my hotel that started a morning of exploring in a country that I would soon fall in love with. My dad was looking into a potential job opportunity in the country and I tagged along on their trip to explore a country that I had never been to. Upon our landing in Yangon, my parents went off with the people that were interviewing my dad, whisking them off on a 3 day adventure visiting other cities and spots around the country. I stayed behind in Yangon by myself, exploring on my own for 3 days before meeting up with them on the last day to explore the city that by that point, I had fallen hard for. Of course this was all before COVID, but my days alone in Myanmar were my last adventure before the world basically shut down and I think back to those moments now with such a fondness, remembering the way I felt so free, the way people smiled at me in the street and greeted me with “Mingalabah,” the way it felt in the back of a taxi speeding through the city, windows down and the wind in my hair, an intoxicating culture racing by. I remember the Burmese people I came to befriend at my hotel that I introduced to my parents when they returned to Yangon and couldn’t believe I had met so many people in just 3 days. From the young boy that helped me plan my days, so excited to have me experience the places in his home city and then helped me get a taxi early in the mornings, just as the sun was rising and no one else was around, to the server that sat me every morning at breakfast and asked me what I had planned for my day and offered suggestions on what to see and explore, so excited that I was so excited to see Myanmar. Or the tour guide taking a group of us around the old parliament buildings in Yangon, telling us about the country’s history, proudly exclaiming that they had finally made it to a democracy after years and years of military rule. I’ll never forget her face, she was so proud of her country, so proud that the people of Myanmar finally had a voice in their futures.

And so here today, that is why I think this post is warranted. I acknowledge that I have a limited knowledge of the political situation going on in Myanmar and there are a million things that go into issues in other countries that we, in the West, have no business getting involved in. I know that things like this are happening all over, all the time. In fact, my own country had an attempted coup or insurrection or whatever you want to call it, just a month ago. I get that I don’t know all the facts and I’m just an outsider, but at the end of the day, I haven’t been able to get Myanmar out of my mind. The people I met there, the pride on their faces for their country and the hard-fought years to gain independence and democracy. The progress made in just a few short years to connect to the rest of the world. And have they been perfect? No. The crisis and genocide of the Rhohingya has been happening for far too long and it’s horrific. Has Myanmar progressed perfectly along the way? No. Their people are still very much segregated from the rest of the world and the amount of people that live in the country in poverty is not good. But here’s the thing, the millions of Myanmar citizens aren’t the ones causing those problems, they are beautiful, kind, welcoming people that just want their country to be better. They know they have issues to solve and they know that there is much work to be done. That’s perhaps why reading the Twitter feeds of people on the ground in Myanmar and thinking of those lovely people I met on my travels there is hitting me so hard. They are just trying to get through their days, just trying to use their voices to make a difference, just trying to live a happy and fulfilling life. Under military rule, now again, that most likely won’t happen. Under military rule, Myanmar will lose the progress made under their fragile democracy these past several years. They will lose access to the world and the poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer. Those ordinary people that I grew to love in Myanmar, they deserve to live in a place where their voices are heard, not where they are silenced by fear.

Would I be writing this today if this were happening somewhere else? Maybe not. But that’s the thing, this is why travel is so important, why it’s so important to witness new places with your own eyes, to meet people from different walks of life, to gain an understanding of other countries and their histories. I know the world is messed up, my own country is ripping apart from the seams as we speak. But empathy doesn’t need to only be directed at one thing. I can raise my voice and try to help my own country as well as stand for the people in Myanmar. I can use my voice for places I’ve seen, people I’ve met and help others to understand that might not have had the opportunity to see these places or to help others understand what exactly is happening.

And so, I guess I would just ask to keep the people of Myanmar in your thoughts and if you have the power to do something, please do. We are all citizens of this beautiful world and just by lifting our voices, we have the power to make a difference.

Life Update : Part IX

February 2, 2021

It’s been a long while again since I’ve done a Life Update post and as there seems to be a lot going on lately, I figured it’s time! I kind of can’t believe we’re already in February as January seemed to fly by in an instant. I feel like COVID has completely warped our sense of time this past year and I’m not sure when that might go back to normal or not! Anyways, here’s what I’ve been up to in the past few months.

Life + Everyday

While I started off 2020 fairly slow with work, my schedule really picked up in Fall of 2020 and is continuing on rapidly into 2021. I’m working on design projects, teaching multiple classes at 2 different colleges in the Portland area and just generally really busy with my day job. Nick has also been really busy with work so we are trying to balance everything alongside everything happening in the world daily which often seems like it requires such a daunting amount of emotion to process. Overall, while COVID and world events have obviously upended our lives, our daily routine is basically filled with work these days and I’m kind of glad for it… the distraction makes the time pass quickly.

Travel

Like so many of you, I don’t have any travel scheduled for the near future. With so much uncertainty and not knowing when the majority of people will be vaccinated against COVID, I’m not sure when travel will pick up again. I would like to make it down to LA to see my parents again at some point soon, but honestly with their COVID numbers down there I’m not sure when that will happen. I’ve also got a few day trip options that I’d like to do locally in the Portland area once the weather gets a bit better so we’ll see if we can make those happen at some point. For now, we in Portland for the foreseeable future.

As we head into Spring in the next few months, we’re throwing around the idea of doing the road trip around the South Western part of the US that we were scheduled to do last Spring, potentially sometime in early May. We’ll see if we can make that work based on what’s happening in the next few months with COVID but if we can, we’d love to do a 10 day road trip heading down through California, then over through Arizona and New Mexico and into North Western Texas, then up into Utah and seeing a ton of National Parks along the way. I’m hopeful about that trip only because hopefully by May we’re in a better COVID situation as a country and it would be all in our own car and mostly in areas that aren’t super populated. We’ll see what happens with that, but fingers crossed!

House Renovation

In the past couple of months we’ve been so busy with work we haven’t done a ton of home projects, but I did do a small one in December that created a travel gallery wall going up our staircase. After not traveling for so long, I wanted something as a daily reminder of all the amazing moments we’ve had around the world and it definitely serves that purpose, seeing it everyday as we go up and down the stairs. We’ve got a few in-process projects happening right now (like a very slow update to our master bedroom which I’m hoping to share sometime soon) and in the next month or so we’ll begin doing some garden renovation projects. Our retaining wall is going to be built new, our fences stained and new outdoor furniture laid out in our backyard. I’m looking forward to some garden updates as we move into March!

Creating a Travel Gallery Wall : At Home with LOM

January 29, 2021

We’ve been in our house for 2.5 years now and it wasn’t until COVID hit and it forced us to stay home as much as we are to make me realize that some spaces in our home really needed some love. Our stairwell was one of those places and to be honest, for the first 2 years it barely bothered me that I hadn’t bothered to hang anything on the walls going up the staircase. One day during quarantine though, I was missing travel so badly and decided that what the stairwell really needed was a gallery wall of some of our favorite travel moments. So today, I’m sharing how we went about creating a travel gallery wall in our staircase and everything that went into it!

Step 1 : Deciding Which Photos to Showcase

The first thing I decided was that I wanted the photos in this gallery wall to be more small moments we’ve had while traveling versus larger landscape or cityscapes like most of the rest of the art in our home. I wanted this to be less “art” and more “memories.” I started going through my archives of photos and deciding which ones to include. I also decided I wanted to do them all in black and white so that also helped me decide which photos to use, as some didn’t translate great in black and white.

Step 2 : Order Prints + Frames

Once I had the photos chosen, I then decided what sizes I wanted to do. I ended up doing a mix of 8×10’s, 11×14’s, and 5×7’s. I made sure I had some vertical to mix in with the majority of landscape orientations. My idea for this project also stemmed from gallery walls I have seen in old homes that have a mix of ornate frames so I found frames on Amazon that worked for what I was looking for and proceeded to order them. They only had the frames I wanted in white, so I ordered them and ended up painting them black when they arrived. Next, I ordered all my photo prints from Mpix which is our go-to printer for high quality photo prints.

I used these frames: 5×7, 8×10, 11×14 and then painted them black with this paint.

Step 3 : Layout the Gallery Wall

As my gallery wall layout goes up the include of a staircase, it wasn’t going to a straight cross layout, so I began by figuring out the order I wanted photos to go and the spacing between them. Once I had a general order, I began the layout somewhat freeform without measuring and doing the spacing by eye, which created that loose layout that I wanted to mimic what you might see in an old house. I used command strips to hang them so it was easy to move them if necessary as I went. In the end, I went back a couple times to confirm that everything was straight and move anything a bit as needed.

The Final Result

This is one of those projects that I did sort of on a whim, but I’m so glad that I did! Now everyday walking up and down the stairs, we are reminded of those amazing moments we’ve had all around the world. I love that some of the images only mean something to Nick and I and the photos represent some of our favorite moments and some of our favorite locations around the globe. Making them black and white just pulls the nostalgia out of them even more and it is one of my favorite projects that I’ve done in our house!

All the Items We Chose for This Space

These are the touches in this space that we purchased to do this renovation project:

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All the Places on My LA Travel List

January 26, 2021

Since my parents moved to Pasadena in May of 2020, I’ve begun to start a list of all the places in LA that I want to see over the next handful of years while they are in SoCal. Honestly, LA has never been one of my favorite places to visit but I will say having someone live there that I love to visit, makes me want to explore the area even more. In the months since my parents have lived in Pasadena, we’ve visited quite a bit and seen a lot of places already that I’ve been wanting to for a while like Ojai, Venice, Solvang and Palm Springs. Now I’m looking forward to all the places on my LA Travel List and all the places I hope to see in the years to come when I’m visiting SoCal!

Here’s what’s on my LA Travel List:

Silverlake

This hip neighborhood has long been on my list to explore. From all the great restaurants and shops in this area to the homes surrounding the downtown Silverlake area, I’m definitely looking forward to exploring Silverlake post-COVID when everything is open again.

Disney Concert Hall

This famous architectural draw of downtown LA has long been on my list and I’m hoping to make a downtown LA excursion on one of my next trips to Pasadena. With it being a quick 20 minute drive (without traffic) to this part of downtown from where my parents live, I’m hoping to explore this building in the coming months!

Downtown LA

As I mentioned above, Downtown LA is high on my list for one of my next visits to SoCal. I’ve never spent much time downtown when in the area so I’ve got a lot of places in the DTLA area to explore. I also have a couple friends who live in downtown LA and I’m hoping they’ll show me the sights when I make it there.

Urban Light Exhibit at LACMA

This famous art installation is an Instagram fave, but I’d love to experience it with my own eyes as well as seeing more of LACMA.

Explore the Huntington Library

This huge museum comes up high on my list to see considering it’s so close to my parents’ house. Filled with exhibits and gardens, the Huntington Library is one of those places that I feel like you could spend all day exploring.

Indulge my inner Vanderpump Rules persona at SUR + TomTom

I’ve long been a Vanderpump Rules fan and at some point in the post-COVID future, I really want to have dinner at SUR and drinks at TomTom in West Hollywood. Honestly, I just want to indulge my reality tv side and go all out with a night out at some point when we’re able to do that again.

Griffith Observatory

This observatory up in the mountains is on my list mostly for the views of the surrounding areas that you get up there! It’s also fairly close to my parents’ house so I’m going to try to make a visit work sometime this year!

Sunrise at Mount Wilson

This spot way up in the mountains behind LA is a spot I’d love to take in at sunrise sometime when you can see the whole of the city. Fingers crossed we get to do this sometime this year on a visit to LA.

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What I Miss Most about International Travel

January 15, 2021

For the first time in 10 years, 2020 was the first year in a decade that I didn’t step foot outside of the USA. And like many of you reading this, the idea of international travel became what seemed like a distant memory and very out of reach for who knows how long ahead. I know that in all that’s happened in the last year, having international travel taken away is not nearly at the top of the list of priorities, but as this is a travel blog and travel is a huge part of my life, I think it’s still important to talk about the psychological effects of having that freedom of movement taken off the table. Do I think we needed to stop traveling to combat COVID? Absolutely. Did I love the idea that I might not know when the next time I could jump on a plane and head outside of my own country’s borders? No, definitely not.

When something is taken away that we are used to having, something like travel that brought comfort and exhilaration, it’s hard to understand fully how that effects us emotionally and mentally. I have found this past year that the feeling of loss has come in waves. There are months that fly by and I’m so wrapped up in my day to day life that I sort of forget that travel is off the table. And then all of a sudden, some days, it hits me like a ton of bricks. I found myself really feeling the loss in December for a number of reasons. We usually travel internationally over Thanksgiving and that weekend brought a lot of moment that had me remembering some of my favorite trips like the Great Wall of China in the snow or exploring the wilds of Iceland. Then I found myself realizing that it was at the end of 2019 that I was wandering around and exploring Yangon, Myanmar before returning home to start what would become one of the most difficult years of our lives in 2020. All of the memories, they hit me hard in December and I realized that while of course local travel is great and I spent most of 2020 trying to explore as much as was possible and safe locally, there is just something about international travel that you can’t quite replicate at home.

I think it’s also worth noting during this historic time period in history with so much unrest and news cycles full of hate and blame, it’s important that we acknowledge what travel actually does for people as an education. International travel allows us to see things with new eyes, it allows us to learn that our way isn’t the only way. We meet new people, see new things and learn to understand that diversity is the solution, not something to hate. International travel is, especially right now, a much needed form of education and I wish more people would have the opportunity to experience it. For me, so much that I know about the world and my own country has come from travel and I hope that after COVID, international travel is allowed to teach us the vital lessons that our world so greatly needs right now.

So while I found myself making video compilations of pre-COVID trips and creating gallery walls at home with my travel photos to combat that feeling of loss, I realized what I miss most about international travel.

The Giddiness of Exploration

There are certain things in life that just make us giddy with excitement. One of those things for me is that feeling on a descent, the plane slowly dropping into the clouds, as the land below starts to appear, a foreign place emerging below you. Those first few moments of exploring a new place, the new languages, the new views, the new sounds. Those first few hours upon landing, seeing a new place for the first time or a return visit to a place that you love. That feeling of exploration, that newness, that feeling that you only get upon exploring a foreign place – it’s like a high.

Being Thrown out of your Comfort Zone

Perhaps my favorite thing about travel in general, but even more so when traveling internationally, the feeling of being thrown completely out of your comfort zone is exhilarating. It’s scary and uncomfortable, yes. But ultimately, it’s what makes travel so rewarding and so enriching. You can’t understand that language, how are you going to communicate? You can’t read the streets signs, how do you figure out where to go? In the moment, it can be extremely uncomfortable. But in the rear view, it’s one of the best ways that we grow as humans when we have to figure things out in the moment and react to a situation that is foreign to us. Travel is the best way to throw yourself into a situation and figure out how to swim, instead of sink.

The Education

I will forever say, travel is the best education you can provide for yourself. I have learned more in my travels throughout my life than I have in any school or degree. Travel shines a light on things in this world that you’ll never learn anyway other than seeing it with your own eyes and experiencing it yourself. Travel is an education in every meaning of the world and it’s been invaluable to me.

There is Nothing Quite Like Seeing the Planet we Call Home

As I look back on some of the trips we’ve taken and some of the places we’ve witnessed with our own eyes, one thing rings true over and over: we call this planet home, why wouldn’t we want to see it? From the glaciers of Alaska to the aqua lakes of New Zealand, from the barren landscapes of Iceland to the temples of Japan, this wide world has so much to offer, so much to see, so much to understand and I want to spend the rest of my life exploring it.

Paris to Lyon

Amsterdam to Bruges

Munich to Hallstatt

Edinburgh to St. Andrews

Reykjavik to Vik

Rome to Umbria + Tuscany

Nice to Monaco

Step 1 : What’s the Budget?

Step 2 : Think About Color

Step 3 : Try a Couple Options

The Final Result

Outfit Details:

Headed to my home town of Portland?

Pasadena

Napa Region

Santa Barbara

Ojai

Palm Springs

Santa Monica

Carmel + Monterey

Big Sur

Solvang

Malibu

Life + Everyday

Travel

House Renovation

Step 1 : Deciding Which Photos to Showcase

Step 2 : Order Prints + Frames

Step 3 : Layout the Gallery Wall

The Final Result

All the Items We Chose for This Space

Silverlake

Disney Concert Hall

Downtown LA

Urban Light Exhibit at LACMA

Explore the Huntington Library

Indulge my inner Vanderpump Rules persona at SUR + TomTom

Griffith Observatory

Sunrise at Mount Wilson

The Giddiness of Exploration

Being Thrown out of your Comfort Zone

The Education

There is Nothing Quite Like Seeing the Planet we Call Home

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