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Versailles, France
Once home to the kings and queens of France, the Chateau de Versailles is an opulent, extravagant, gold-flecked experience that should be part of every Parisian itinerary!
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San Diego, California
San Diego has always had my heart. It’s vibrant, colorful, and close to the ocean. Its proximity to Mexico means that it has a rich Mexican culture and history.
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Montmartre, Paris
I currently have cathedrals on the brain, largely due to the fact that I just finished reading Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth. And while I fully understand and intend for this to be a travel blog, I can’t help but use my Internet platform to tell my readers to read this book. Its 900+ pages detail the story of a monk’s quest to build the most beautiful cathedral in all of medieval England. Halfway through reading it, I declared to Matt: “this is my new second-favorite book” (truly nothing will ever push Virginia Woolf’sMrs. Dalloway out of the top spot). Thinking about cathedrals has made me nostalgic for the…
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Lincoln Park, Chicago
A sprawling, 1,208 acre green space spans the length of the beach, encompassing a lakefront trail, museums, and the Lincoln Park Zoo.
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The Luxembourg Gardens, Paris
The Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, France will always hold an incredibly special place in my heart. In 2016, Matt and I traveled to Paris on our first international trip together, and if you’re a friend or family member, you’ll be familiar with the story I’m about to tell. Matt and I first met during our freshman year at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. We didn’t have much to say to each other then, and we stayed mere acquaintances for the next four years of college. After we graduated, Matt and I met again on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where we both were interning for the summer. (I…
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Chicago, Illinois
Let’s time travel to August 2017: I had just taken the Tennessee Bar Exam to become licensed as an attorney, and I was due to start my new job in early September. Matt and I were just two weeks away from getting married! So we did something spontaneous—we decided to take what I termed a “pre-wedding, post-bar, mini-moon” to Chicago celebrate everything that was happening to us. We would depart four months later for our real honeymoon to New Zealand, which you can read about extensively on this blog. Matt pulled out all the stops to impress me that August—he booked us a swanky room at the Omni in downtown…
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Seaside, Florida
When I was a little girl, Seaside, Florida was a dreamy, magical world full of colorful houses, sandy pathways that darted into hidden green groves, and warm, aquamarine waters perfect for body surfing.
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Salem, Massachusetts
“You sure you want to go to Salem?” Matt asks me, staring at my all-white Padmé Amidala outfit and then giving a pointed nod at the downpour outside. I clutch my cape-blanket closer to my chest and nod resolutely. Halloween awaits us on this chilly Saturday night.
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Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee
It’s a pretty cool thing when your mom and mother-in-law are friends. It’s even cooler when you get to take trips together! The weekend before Thanksgiving 2018, my mom decided to rent a cabin in Sevierville, Tennessee, and invite all of us to come up and celebrate the holiday together. Matt and I both completed our undergraduate degrees at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville (go Vols!), so we are both very familiar with nearby Sevierville and Gatlinburg, both of which are situated in the Great Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee. Gatlinburg is about a three-hour drive east from our hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. To start our trip, we set…
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Mexico Beach, Florida
I recently read the book Florida by Lauren Groff, who describes the title state as “an Eden of dangerous things.” Perhaps unintentionally, I read this book while I was in Florida for New Year’s Eve this past December. My husband’s family very graciously invited us to join them the week after Christmas at the beach house they rented in Cape San Blas, Florida. Cape San Blas is located on the Florida Panhandle in the Gulf of Mexico, surrounded by the nearby towns of Port St. Joe, Mexico Beach, and Panama City. An Eden of dangerous things. As someone who spent many childhood summers in Florida, I never considered Florida in…
