Category:  Life Views

 What’s not to love about Ireland? Tiny green men promising  pots of gold and lucky charms? The warm hospitality of the locals who will literally bend over backwards to help you? The possibility of running into Gerard Butler as you wander around aimlessly looking for Killarney National Park? All of these reasons and more made Ireland one of the top destinations on my top list of travels. 

When a local woman I met on the ferry insisted that her father drive me to my hostel after we arrived, it reconfirmed the warm Irish hospitality, but I was unprepared for the shockingly cold weather. Granted it was January and I know the weather there is unpredictable,  but a snow-jacket and boots? Where were all these green rolling hills full of four-leaf clovers? (They were there, just covered in a haze of cold, wet, white stuff.) (more…)

My thirteen year old niece recently came to visit before the holidays. Even though we were meeting on grim circumstances (my 94-year-old grandmother passed shortly after I returned home) it was quality time with family to share the holidays as well as the stories and pictures I have had from my travels so far. As we delved further into the souvenirs and memories, photos of my travels through Germany and Poland came up, and before I knew it a history lesson began right there on the kitchen table in the snowy mountains of Utah. Haley had recently studied the Holocaust in school and I felt it appropriate to show her the photo of her great great grandmother that me and my dad had discovered on our trip last winter through Auschwitz.

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I remember the first time I was“abroad.” I was 14 years old and took a day trip with my dad over the border of Arizona and Mexico into a little town called Nogales. Compared to some of the places I’ve visited over the last year and a half, it’s really not much to write home about, but for a young girl who really hadn’t seen more than my own backyard, it was an eye-opening experience. Seeing young children in the streets selling gum and clay necklaces, the garbage and poverty that appeared almost immediately after crossing the border, and the streets lined with vendors selling postcards and trinkets was enough to make me feel like we had taken a jumbo jet miles away.

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Maybe it’s because I’ve been single for a while, but I couldn’t come to Italy without meeting the sexiest man in all of Europe. He’s tall, handsome, and has abs I could wash my growing pile of dirty clothes on. He’s an extremely good listener, and the best part about him is there’s no language barrier. Without saying a word we completely understand each other. But there is one small problem. Because of his highly successful career, I would have to stay in Florence to be with him, which kind of puts a damper on the rest of my traveling plans. Oh David, whatever shall we do?

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Yesterday began the start of another adventure. After a 3 month pit stop in Monaco to refuel my travel funds, I packed up my dusty suitcase and headed back on the road towards the beautiful Tuscany region of Italy. It occurred to me somewhere between hauling my over packed suitcase, trying to decipher the train schedules and language once I crossed the border, and the exhausting 12 hours it took me to finally get to my destination, that this traveling stuff is hard work!!! And as the question often gets asked about what I do for living I realized the answer yesterday. I travel! (more…)

Is it because we’ve set too high or challenging of a goal? Or is it because we’ve failed to take the necessary (and consistent) action to make that goal a reality? (I emphasis consistency here because it’s one thing to get a gym
membership in January, but another thing to be the only one in that empty gym come February or March.)

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