Introduction

I’ve been meaning to start a travel blog for ages, but, you know (life, work, too busy, sleepy, etc.). But I love traveling, and I love planning trips almost as much as I love taking them, and with no big journeys on the horizon for the next year or so, now seemed like a good time to direct my travel energy in this direction.

A little bit of background on me: I’m a lifelong Washingtonian, but I’ve wanted to see the world since I was small. Being from a family of homebodies, most of my childhood trips involved camping in-state, and I was 13 the first time I flew anywhere (Salt Lake City, for a school choir trip). My next trip was when at 19, when I flew by to England by myself to meet up with my friend Amanda, who was doing a work study in the north of England. We traveled to London where we spent a few days, and then Amanda went back to work and I went on to Spain by myself, which was a real eye opener. In ten days I traveled to six cities all over the country, so the end result was that I spent most of my time on a train, or in the train station buying my train ticket for the next day (this was before automated ticket kiosks were a thing). Before that trip, I’d never had to navigate public transportation or needed to use a map of an unknown area. I’d studied Spanish for six years, which was about the only thing I had going for me. Despite all that, and the fact that I pretty much lived on croissants from train station cafes (remember, I was in Spain, not France, so that wasn't really a positive thing), I had an amazing time and couldn't wait to take another trip.

Fast forward to the present, and I live in Seattle with my husband Geoffrey and our dog Maddi, both of whom are great travelers. I've been to Vietnam, Italy, Spain several more times, France, England, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Like most people, I don't get to travel nearly as much as I'd like, but my boring day job at least affords me a lot of vacation, so we try to do a bigger international trip every other year, plus shorter trips closer to home whenever we can. I've usually got a few trips that I'm planning or helping other people plan. I'm a big fan of house swapping - we're on Home Exchange and we've taken some amazing trips and met some great people, and ended up going places we wouldn't have normally gone for the sake of a swap. It's a really unique way to travel and really experience a place like a local, which is my favorite way to travel. When we aren't doing a house swap, AirBNB is the next best thing. 

I love eating and shopping at farmers markets, and I'm a bakery and chocolate shop devotee, so any place we visit will absolutely include some exploration in that direction. I studied photography and never travel without taking a million photos, so there will be lots of those mixed in. I'll be sharing my lists for some of our favorite cities that we visit frequently, like Vancouver BC, Portland OR, San Francisco, and, of course, Seattle.

Thanks for visiting, and stay tuned for more!

Krissi