Let me be completely honest with you: I have never once planned a trip around a museum. I have, however, rerouted an entire European itinerary because a four-day wine festival in Verona fell on the exact dates I’d originally booked for Milan. Zero regrets. If you’re the kind of traveler…
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Best Food Festivals in March to Travel For This Spring
Let me tell you something about myself: I have absolutely booked a transatlantic flight because a chef I admire was doing a pop-up dinner. I have rerouted an entire road trip for a regional barbecue competition. And I have — not once, but twice — planned a vacation around a…
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Best Chocolate Festivals Around the World Worth Traveling For
I have planned entire vacations around a single meal. I have rerouted flights for a cheese market, extended a layover for a street food festival, and — yes — once booked a train to a small Portuguese town almost entirely because I heard they were handing out free chocolate at…
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Best Carnival Food Festivals in February Around the World
Let me tell you something about myself: I have never once booked a trip based on architecture, museums, or beach ratings. I book trips around food. Specifically, I book trips around the kind of food that only exists in one place, at one time, surrounded by people who are way…
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Best Food Festivals in Asia: January & February Picks
Let me be completely honest with you: I do not plan trips around landmarks. I plan them around meals. Specifically, I plan them around the kind of meals that only exist once a year, in one place, eaten standing up with grease on my chin and zero regrets. January and…
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Best Food Festivals in January Worth Traveling For
Let me tell you something the travel industry doesn’t advertise loudly enough: January is secretly one of the best months to be a food-obsessed traveler. While everyone else is nursing post-holiday credit card guilt and doom-scrolling gym memberships, I’m booking flights around the best food festivals in January and eating…
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What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before My First Trip to Southeast Asia
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I landed in Bangkok for the first time in 2009 with a 35-liter backpack, a Lonely Planet that was two editions out of date, and the absolute certainty that I had prepared enough. Within 48 hours…
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The Packing System I Have Used for 10 Years (I Have Never Changed It)
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I used to be a chronic overpacker. Not mildly — embarrassingly so. I once checked a 32-kilogram bag for a 10-day trip to Southeast Asia and spent three days of that trip doing laundry anyway because…
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What 16 Years of Solo Travel Taught Me About Staying Safe
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The first time I got truly scared traveling alone, I was 24 years old on a night train from Budapest to Bucharest. A man had been watching me for two hours. I had no alarm, no…
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The Airport Mistake I Made Once and Have Never Made Again
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It was 2013, and I was standing at a gate in Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport watching my flight to Tbilisi push back from the jetway. My bag was on that plane. I was not. I had made…