We live in the Pacific Northwest, so by February, deep enough into winter that the season has stopped feeling new, warmth stops being a preference and the cold becomes something that needs correction. The trouble is doing that from the PNW in February isn’t especially convenient. The obvious short-haul answers, Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, Caribbean, […]

My last issue was about how our Spain trip took shape: the flight credit, the back-and-forth between known and new, the itinerary trifecta, and how we landed on five stops. This one picks up the thread I mentioned then: how close some of that came to not working out at all, and what almost losing […]

It’s been longer than usual between posts. Our son got married at the end of August and most of the last month since we returned from our Iceland and Norway trip was consumed by activities surrounding that. Between the wedding and my growing client list, Spain planning (and the newsletter) got less of my attention […]

Most trips unfold pretty close to plan. This one didn’t always, and by the time we’d been at sea a few days, we’d stopped being surprised when the schedule changed. Some days ended up better for the change, some were simply different. That unevenness ended up shaping the trip a little differently than we had […]

I’m writing this from our cabin on the Scenic Eclipse I in comfy clothes while Greg naps. The ship is about to leave Húsavík, Iceland. The North Atlantic, it turns out, does not particularly care about our planned itinerary. More on that next week. Before all this, there was London. Last week I wrote about […]

Every year, a short list of curated journeys lands in our inbox from a vacation club that we belong to — trips already vetted, already designed, already priced. Greg and I go through them together, which sounds civilized but usually involves some negotiation. Last February, he landed on an Iceland and Norway expedition cruise. I […]

Packing for a week on a catamaran is strange compared to other types of warm weather vacations. You need swimsuits, a cover-up, some t-shirts and comfortable shorts. That’s nearly the whole list. After three newsletters this month built around logistics, access, and the kind of planning that takes months, this one starts with the opposite: […]

I have planned every trip Greg and I have taken. The destination, the hotels, the flights, the experiences — the entire architecture of how a trip comes together has always been mine to design. And I loved it. Planning was its own form of anticipation. The problem is that by the time you arrive somewhere […]

Healdsburg is one of those places I keep coming back to, and I’ve written before about why familiar destinations often reward return visits more than new ones do. The town has a certain quality to it — the square, the walkability, the wineries close enough that a morning tasting and a long lunch don’t require […]

In late June last year, on a hillside above the Adda River valley in northern Italy, Greg and I spent an afternoon walking through vineyards with a man named Luigi who spoke not a word of English. Valtellina isn’t a place most travelers have on their list. It’s a beautiful, narrow alpine valley in Lombardy, […]