Prompt #21: When we travel, our senses are heightened. We feel more alive and we’re more free to do things we might not at home. We can be who we want. There’s an air of urgency to everything we do – we know our time here, in this place, and with these people, is limited. If we want to do something, we have to do it now. It’s…
Prompt #20: Just as the cuisine of a place reveals clues about its culture and history, so does its signature local drink. What’s the best drink you had on the road, and did the drink have any connection to the place where you drank it or the people you drank with? “Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.” –G. K. Chesterton I love trying…
Feeling connected to nature, the universe, and higher powers comes very easily to me. As a child, we took many a nature walk, learning to appreciate the beauty of our surroundings. Living in the Pacific Northwest, with four strikingly different seasons, it wasn’t too hard to learn to appreciate beauty. Every walk was an adventure. I suppose it’s easy to be amazed by the beauty of nature as…
Prompt #18: Every traveler has a budget; for some it just might be higher of lower than for others What’s your style? What do you spend very little on and what are you always willing to pay more for? “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.” –George W. Bush I can be a notorious cheapskate while traveling, but I also like to splurge…
Prompt #17: It’s easy to be passionate about travel, but does that passion permeate the rest of your life? Do you live and work with passion? Why or why not? “There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.” –Federico Fellini Passion. Purpose. Living consciously. Ten years ago, ‘passionate’ is probably not the first word you would have picked to describe me.…
My favorite city in the world is Portland, Oregon. Wherever I go, if I stay long enough, I get a crazy longing to be back in the Pacific Northwest. In 2008, when I landed in Christchurch, New Zealand after traveling for a two months of my RTW trip, I felt like I had landed at PDX… it was drizzly, everyone was wearing fleece jackets, drinking coffee, and I…
Good Life
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” –Ayn Rand
November 14, 2011
This Ayn Rand quote is so concise and meaningful to me. I’ve always been a big believer of the “don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness” way of living. I was raised to question things, so my mild problem with authority and questioning ‘why?’ apparently started pretty young. But after reading Atlas Shrugged, this quote has really stuck with me. The book itself, has a lot of issues…
What is home? To me, home isn’t a house I grew up in or a specific city, or even a state… it’s an entire region of the United States, usually deemed “the Pacific Northwest”. We moved around a bit as a child. So by the time I left home for college, I’d lived in 11 different cities. From the Seattle area to Eastern Washington, to central Oregon, where…
Prompt #12: Travelers meet dozens, if not hundreds, of new people on every trip. They may become friends, enemies, lovers, and resources; they may stay in your life forever or be forgotten the next day. Tell about a time you felt a powerful connection – for however long – to another person while traveling. “The great difference between voyages rests not with the ships, but with the people…
Food + Drink• Travel• Travel Tips
67 Best Meals from Traveling 23 Countries: World’s Best Food!
November 11, 2011
Trying new food is one of my favorite things about traveling. The world’s best food is literally all around the world! It’s incredibly exciting to me to try something new, or something familiar with a different spin. I’m also a Pescatarian, so I’ve found that food + traveling brings both challenging and amazing experiences. I’ve never felt like too much of an outsider on the food scene. I…
Prompt #10: At what point in your travels have you felt most in tune with the Earth? Share a story of how you interacted with the local environment or nature. “”I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,…
“Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” –Benjamin Disraeli A perfect day I had this year while traveling, was our first full day in Maui in April. It was the first morning in about six months that I’d woken up to sunshine and warm air, and so relaxing to get away from the rainy spring in Portland,…