As always, you have to take the good with the bad — especially so with travel! As many good moments as you have when you travel, there are plenty of awful moments that sneak their way in. It’s always a good reminder that travel is not an automatic pass to happiness. I’ve seen a lot …
I’ve said a few times this year that I haven’t been reading as much as usual. Far less, in fact — as I type this I’ve only read about 30 books, far from my usual 60-80. One reason is that I’ve been working so hard on my new site, New Hampshire Way, and developing new …
2022 was a year of beautiful travel moments. This year took me to nine countries — Mexico, the US, Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, Iceland, the UK, Portugal, and Austria — and nine new places that I named the best of 2022. Going through my monthly recaps to create this post was an absolute pleasure. And …
2022 was an excellent year of travel. After taking the first steps back into post-pandemic travel in 2021, 2022 was about achieving long-held dreams. The biggest dream was to visit my two remaining regions in Italy — Calabria and Sardinia, which I did in May and June, respectively. Does that mean I’m done with Italy? …
The good times may be sweet, but the bad times keep you humble! I firmly believe that, and that’s why I always write about my worst travel moments of the year. I love looking back and remembering the bad, scary, and oftentimes funny moments that happened on my travels. This is one of my favorite …
I once took a personality quiz and found out that I thrive with audience-based accountability. If I’m setting out to achieve a goal, I need people to be watching. That’s how I’ve been with reading. I’ve always been a big reader, but ever since I started documenting everything I read on this site, I kicked …
My favorite travel moments of the year took me to interesting places. A spa overlooking Mont Blanc. A hot waterslide pool on the edge of the Black Sea. A gymnasium full of vaccine-administering National Guardsmen in Lynn, Massachusetts. And Old Town Square in Prague, where prices on beers were slashed in half to cater to …
After a difficult 2020, 2021 was supposed to be the joyous return to travel! I imagined a hedonistic year of getting to visit all the places I had put off when COVID hit. Plus some new ones. 2021 turned out to be much quieter than I intended. I didn’t leave Prague until late April, when …
I thought that 2016 was bad. This was worse — SO many times worse, universally worse. The year that will be written about forever as the dumpster fire of the early 21st century. We’re going to look back at 2020 as the year when everything fell apart. But even in the year that brought us …
This year of reading was a bit of a slow burn. For awhile, it seemed like I hadn’t read many books that truly grabbed me. Then in the final third of the year, I kept getting hit over and over with fabulous book after fabulous book! So far I’ve read 52 books in 2020 — …