Travel enthusiast ◆ Consummate planner
Coming up next week is the lunar new year; 新年快乐 to all who celebrate! It’s on February 5th this year. To celebrate, I’m sharing some of my China favorites from our expat adventures. We spent two years teaching English to college students in northeast China shortly after we got married. It was an amazing experience….
As odd as it sounds, research adds value to your vacation. While it may feel like doing “work” for vacation, and that may be the last thing you want to do, it’s kind of like the cliché saying that you get out what you put into something. Are you a bunny? The way I see…
So you’re inclined to do some research for your vacation; where to start? My go-to research item is a book, but there are other ways as well. The internet abounds with information. There are travel sites providing options and comparisons. Bloggers such as myself offer their own spin on various destinations. Hotels, local businesses, and…
A friend of mine is going on an exciting two week trip to Australia in just a few short months. She asked for some helpful travel tips, and I sent her a list of my packing essentials for traveling. These are some of the things I always bring, and please check out which seat I…
There’s a lot of hype regarding the window seat on a plane, but on long overseas flights, I really prefer to choose the aisle seat. It provides hours of benefits whereas the window seat provides only a few minutes of view at take off and landing. Access Have you ever been on a 12 hour…
Let them be good ones One of my first overseas misadventures involved not being prepared for the weather. Mom and I packed our bags for Prague and Austria based on what we wanted to bring (which for us meant what we bought for the trip), not what the weather dictated. When we arrived at the…
Oh, how I love going new places. I’ve said that before. It’s hard for me to justify the time and money to visit a repeat destination overseas when there are still so many new places to see. I’m careful that when I have the opportunity to visit somewhere new, I do my best to get…
… with sand, with lists, with destinations – preferably all three. It’s the new year. ‘Tis the season of hopes, dreams, and plans for the next twelve months. Some people have a word of the year; others have a to-do list; Pantone has a color. I’m a woman of lists, and while we’re dreaming here…
Picture this: Crazy life, two little kids, an energetic pup, a hardworking husband. At the end of the day, all work has been completed, laundry has been folded, floors swept, and bottoms wiped umpteen times. And yet there’s still that fabulous vacation you’re so looking forward to that has not been planned. At all. Still….
If I had a map of places to which I wanted to travel, it really wouldn’t be that helpful. I think it would be covered with so many pins that you could hardly tell one from the next. It would take a lifetime free of other responsibilities to adequately visit them all. But I have…