Location plays a big part of travel. “Umm.. yeah of course it does, I am traveling to see other locations, right? Right!?” Yes, of course, but that aspect of location is not what I mean at the moment. One of the things we learned on our Summer of Beyond Vacation was that the specific location […]
A part of Beyond Vacation involved traveling slower, which for us has meant staying in a place more than a week at a time. We have found that staying in apartments is the best way to do this. We had some good luck and some bad luck with our apartments this summer. We learned that […]
Cities all have their iconic sites. The postcard sites that make you immediately think of the city. Even in travel familiarity drives people. Rome has a bunch of very iconic sites. These are however the sites that are mobbed with tourist hordes and the touts which feed off the crowds. It makes being a quieter […]
I heard this idea in the kitchen of our hostel, that you should “see Nice properly.” As in, see the sights of the town and get a feel of the place (I am making my own description, but it seems reasonable, right?) This is actually an admirable goal and sentiment. When there are so many […]
A week ago Friday was my last day of work. I have been an employee for a long time, 13 years on and off at various companies and 5 and a half years at this one. Thus I have had a worker mindset to time and to money, now that I am free I am […]
The ideas of slow travel and quality travel are coming up more and more. The core idea being to stay in a place longer and sink deeper into it as opposed to go skipping by so fast as to only see the major sights before being whisked away on a bus to the next sight. […]
One of the main reasons that I wanted to be an expat was to travel. Yes, I like my home and love having a warm comfortable place to be, but one of the main urges was that, “hey I’m so close to things I want to see.” We are trying more to remember this and […]
I call it the “Aquarium Effect”. It is the idea of going to an aquarium to look at fish. Big fish, small fish, red fish, blue fish.. fishes of all shapes, sizes and peculiar mating habits. But really how many fish can you look at before they just blend together? One fish just looks like the next. This seems to happen in sightseeing as well. Cathedrals are in every European city. And yeah they are different, but after a week long trip going to a different one each day, they all look alike. Castles too after a while. So how to do I deal?