Five Ways to Spend a Weekend in Porto

Climb the Torre dos Cliergos One of my favorite things to do when visiting a new city is to climb the tallest height and survey the city below. This leads to some of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen. Porto was no different. The Torre dos Cliergos is a bell tower attached to the…

Five Edinburgh Restaurants for Expats Missing Home

Now, it’s not that pub food isn’t delicious… but England and the UK in general aren’t really known for their amazing cuisine options. Hailing from the state that has some of the most amazing restaurants in the country (including 29 of the top 101 best American restaurants), I am big lover of food. California, and…

48 Hours with the Salzburg Card

Tim’s work has brought us back to Germany for the week and last weekend we decided to come to the continent early to spend the holiday weekend in Salzburg. While planning what to do in Salzburg, I discovered the Salzburg Card, a flat-fee card that gets you into over 30 attractions and offers discounts on…

Blogette #2 – An anxious traveller in Milan

Sometimes, I am able to do semi-solo travel when I’m with Tim for his work trips. But often, due to my GAD and C-PTSD, it is very limited. In places like Edinburgh, a small big city, I am very comfortable. But when it comes to traveling alone in a new large city, I like to…

Connecting to the past in Athens’ Ancient Agora

When you think of Athens, an image of the Parthenon perched high above the city on the Acropolis is probably the first thing that comes to mind. But I’m here to tell you about another ancient site that you need to visit when you go to Athens (not if), the Ancient Athenian Agora. From the…

10 things about British houses that seem quirky to Americans

Expat life comes with a lot of big changes, but none are as noticeable on a day-to-day basis as those oddly different aspects in your new house. As we approach out first year here I thought it would be fun to compile a list of things that we as Americans think are quirky home features…

Cahoots! takes me back in time

Did you know you can time travel in London? Last Saturday my friend Kaitlin and I found ourselves back in 1946, celebrating the end of WWII in an air raid shelter below the streets of London. Okay, so we didn’t really find a hottub time machine, or even (spoiler alert) fist-shaped time-hopping ship made of…

My Meerkat Meeting

Sam circa 1993 was a Girl Scout and in my troop we each had animal names. I don’t remember why or what the purpose was, but these names followed us for a few years. My best friend was otter and I was meerkat. My mom tried to convince me to be muskrat for the 1976…

Firenze’s Phenomenal Food

Besides the amazing museums, architecture and general feeling that you’re walking through history, my favorite part about Italy is the food. Everywhere you turn you can find delicious pasta, melt in your mouth gnocchi, pizza unlike anything you’ve ever tasted and of course gelato to make you drop to your knees and praise the ice…

Lyveden House…a dream interrupted

Deep in the English countryside stands the shell of an Elizabethan garden lodge a symbol of a dream that was cut short when it’s creator, Sir Thomas Tresham suddenly died in 1605. Tresham’s dream wasn’t just to have a fancy garden lodge, but to stand steadfast in his Catholic faith in a time where Catholics…