Planning trips abroad… like the really good kind, the kind that change you on a fundamental level, the kind you return to a decade later in daydreams with a buoyant smile— that shit’s hard. And you know what the WORST thing is? You can spend so much time and energy (and $$$) only to come […]

I find myself annoyed often when I’m abroad and things are so delicious and I can’t figure out why the heck food and drink don’t taste as good in the States. Yes, I suppose a solid argument could be made about how during vacation, your nervous system is more relaxed and your taste receptors are […]

The NYTimes had an article a few weeks ago about how beauty is making scientists rethink evolution. It started with a story of the male bowerbird, a bird of paradise-like little guy whose plumage has an incandescent beauty that I’m sure David Attenborough dreams about. The bowerbird’s mating ritual involves creating an elaborate stage area […]

You remember as a kid when you’d carefully fold your super cool Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup t-shirt into your kid-sized luggage and be so excited to head off to summer camp? You’d spend a week in a cabin staying up late and sneaking out to go star gazing and somehow after a few nights under […]

Although we could’ve spent a perfectly happy lifetime within the walls of the abbazia, adventure beckoned. Sicily is the original melting-pot, boasting influences from a Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, and Italian past. The buildings are a century by century lesson in architectural history and we needed to get in on some of that. Plus, we […]

You know those places you walk into and you just can kinda tell they’re haunted? Maybe it’s a little chill in the air or a subtle feeling that makes the hair on your arm stick up. There are times when the energy of a place isn’t settled… and you can feel that. Whatever the opposite […]

The current heatwave in Japan has officially been declared a natural disaster. UK citizens have been issued warnings encouraging them to stay in their homes and out of the heat. Germany has a shortage on beer bottles as the summer blaze this year has dramatically increased demand. Here in Seattle, our pets are splayed frog legged […]