I’ll be in Senegal! I’m spending three weeks traveling around this West African country and visiting my friend, Kristen, who is volunteering with the Peace Corps there. Kristen and I have been friends since high school, and I’m excited to have her show me around the country she’s called home for the last year and a half. Neither of us speak Senegal’s official language (French), but she’s fluent in Wolof (the language of Senegal’s largest ethnic group) so I’m going to be relying on her quite a bit during this trip. We’re planning to spend some time in the village where she lives and works — I’ll get to meet…
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Underwhelmed by Indian Food
I love to eat. I have a board on pinterest called “The Opposite of a Picky Eater,” because that’s what I am. I will try everything once (or twice) and there is almost nothing I dislike because most everything is agreeable to me. My categories are more or less: 1. this is delicious or 2. this is not delicious, but I will still eat it. Of course, that’s one of the reasons I don’t blog about food very much: I don’t have the most discerning palate. I still manage to be something of a foodie though, because I’m always on the look-out for food experiences that fall into the delicious category.…
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Travel Linkspiration: January 2014
I haven’t done a link round-up in a few months, so, I’m sure you’ve all missed hearing about my excellent taste in internet. When I wasn’t busy curating this list of links last month, I took two trips around New England. One was an overnight to North Conway, New Hampshire with E for our 5-year anniversary, and the other was to Burlington, Vermont to visit my friend, Katie. But enough about me… Early January in the blogosphere includes a lot of reflections on the previous year and hopes for the new one. Although it’s a blog post genre I enjoy (personal stories! pretty photographs!), I’m only including one of these…
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The Obligatory Plitvice Post: A Photo Essay
I can’t NOT write about Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. If there’s a “beaten path” for backpacking Europe, Plitvice is definitely on it. I know many travel bloggers before me have visited and written about this place, but Plitvice is awesome, so I’m going to go ahead and join their ranks. In particular, I feel the need to share my photos because I visited under different circumstances than many travelers. This is the classic Plitvice photo: Beautiful, no? And you can get this shot just by walking along the trail: Well, I visited on a rainy day in November, and this was my experience with the same view: Not…
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A Year of Self-Actualization
2013 didn’t suck. I mean, for God’s sake, I started the year by living in Hawai’i for two months (and it cost less than $1500 — yeah, read that post if you haven’t already) — obviously, 2013 didn’t suck. I’m writing this post from my apartment outside Boston where I live with a wonderful man who loves me and a grumpy cat who also loves me. We sent out Christmas cards that featured this photo: 2013 was not perfect. There were months when I felt unsure of myself and unhappy with myself, and I spent an inordinate amount of time in my pajamas watching tv online and avoiding people. I…
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It’s beginning to look a lot like…
Well, you know how the song goes. The tree is decorated, there’s snow on the ground, and it’s feeling pretty festive at The Beach House lately. This morning I even drank a cup of Winter Delight — the loose leaf black tea that Katie and I bought in Sarajevo last Fall. In order to best preserve their flavor, loose leaf teas should be stored at room temperature in an airtight container and kept away from light, heat, and moisture. I’m not as diligent about this as I ought to be, but I do own a number of tea tins, which are pretty as well as functional. I bought one decorated…
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Namaste, Delhi
(This post picks up where the previous one left off.) After we’d walked through and around and past the beggars, my tour group arrived at the Lotus Temple, which is a Bahá’í House of Worship. It’s open to people of any and all faiths and is meant to be a place for praising God without denominational restrictions. While the outside of the Lotus Temple is a beautiful work of architecture, the inside is almost plain — cavernous and filled with wooden pews, but simple. I realize the irony of pushing past people in need in order to visit a place of spirituality, but at the time, I just sat down,…
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This is a post about beggars
Walking down the street from my hotel to the metro, I was treated to the scents of urine, dirt, and exhaust. Incense, spices, and street food frying in oil. My tour group and I were on our first outing together to visit the Lotus Temple in Delhi. We rode the metro there, and when we arrived at our stop (Kalkaji Mandir on the violet line), we paused outside the station beside an orange vendor and his cart. The fruits were green, but we could tell they were oranges because the vendor peeled them theatrically and their smell was unmistakable. We watched as the fruits released sweet mist into the air…
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Franz & Sophie: Another Reason to Love Sarajevo
Yesterday, I wrote about my love for Sarajevo. And today, I’m sharing the last (and possibly most important) reason I fell for this city. Are you at all surprised that my reason is a teahouse? Katie and I read about a teahouse called Franz & Sophie when we were looking up interesting restaurants in Sarajevo on TripAdvisor. The reviews are so good, it’s number 3 in the restaurants category, and they don’t even serve food. Or coffee for that matter. Be warned non-tea-drinkers, this is not a tea and coffee shop where you can grab a cup of joe and a pastry while your tea obsessed friend (that’s me) ogles…
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I LOVED Sarajevo
I can’t put my finger on why, exactly, but I LOVED Sarajevo. And it’s a good thing too, considering how much trouble Katie and I went through to get there (see: this post). For some reason, Sarajevo called to both of us. When we first met up in Istanbul, Katie and I talked about where we wanted to go over the 3 weeks we’d be traveling together. We knew the trip was going to end in Dubrovnik, Croatia, because Katie had booked a flight to London from there, and after Istanbul we were going to Greece, but it was unclear what we would do in between. Katie shyly suggested Sarajevo,…
