August is a month when things are supposed to slow down — at least in Europe. This is the time when everyone leaves their jobs and heads to the sea for a few weeks. And we did! The Black Sea in Varna, that is. Plus a brand new region in Italy, and some local exploration …
After a year and a half of pandemic — a vacation. Finally. This month Charlie and I traveled to a destination we had been dreaming about for years — the Aeolian Islands, a volcanic archipelago off the northeast coast of Sicily. And notably, we left our laptops at home. I genuinely can’t remember the last …
It’s summer and PRAGUE IS BACK, BABY! COVID levels in the Czech Republic have dropped enormously (funny how we can go from the worst in the world to the best in Europe in a few short months) and the city has finally reopened after six months of everything being closed. It’s amazing. This is my …
I touched down in Boston at 12:08 PM on April 26 — and realized I had time to kill. Almost four hours before my important appointment. My mom picked me up at the airport. We stopped at an Italian grocery store in Revere and picked up an Italian sub, something I had been craving for …
March 2020 was endless, confusing, and frightening. March 2021? Not as scary, but defined by exasperation and resignation as we entered the 13th month of the pandemic taking over our lives. It was mostly spent indoors. It wasn’t interesting. But most importantly — there’s light at the end of the tunnel, vaccine-wise. Scroll to the …
This month, I got to enjoy something I hadn’t enjoyed in a while. I ordered a coffee at a cafe. Temperatures were in the low fifties, so I sat down and drank it in a chair placed outside the cafe. It was sublime. We’ve been under the strictest restriction since Christmas, yet case numbers are …
Welcome to the dark months. January is dreary and cheerless under normal circumstances; I knew that it would be even tougher during the pandemic, especially since we’re still under the strictest lockdown in the Czech Republic. And so I checked in with myself. Was I doing okay, this far into a pandemic? Yes. I’m okay. …
We did it! 2020 has come to an end! When I wrote my last monthly update, I wrote that we were leaving lockdown in Prague. And we did…for two weeks. Now, we’re back in the situation that dominated November: restaurants are closed, cafes serve coffee out their front doors, non-essential shops are closed, and we …
It’s official — I’m a cat mom! This month, Charlie and I discovered a pair of rescue kittens that needed a home, and we decided to adopt them! They are two gray tabbies with white bellies and white paws, and their names are Lewis and Murray. Their foster family originally named them Harley and Davidson …
It’s crazy how different October 1 looked from October 31. At the beginning of the month, life in Prague was almost normal. Restaurants and bars closed at 10:00 PM, and masks were required indoors, but other than that, it was Prague as usual, operating in full. Then the Czech Republic’s COVID infection rate became the …