by THE WORLD IS FULL OF WONDER.
Every experience is unique to the beholder. Use my experiences as a traveler to forge your own adventures. Beyond the tourist highlights featured in a guidebook is a traveler who wants to be among the locals, eat the food, try to speak in a foreign tongue—really experience the culture.
Each story is a pebble in my journey. What does yours look like? Each pebble finds its place among the mosaic—each unique, yet with common elements. Similarly, we often find among our vast and varied lives and cultures more commonalities than differences. Where will you go?
Find your mosaic of pebbles. Discover and appreciate the wonder of our shared planet.
Traveling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.
Ibn Battuta
Catalan Summer Solstice Festival Is Fire
Each year throughout Spain, particularly in Catalonia’s Girona Pyrenees, as the sun reaches its zenith, summer begins with a celebratory bang: the Fire Festival of Sant Joan’s Eve, claiming to eliminate evil spirits, cure disease, and cleanse souls. Rhythmic drums beat. Horns blared down the street. From our apartment’s shallow Juliet balcony in old Girona,…
The Eiffel Tower: French Icon, Once Disputed, Now Cherished
Daybreak cast a hazy pastel backdrop beyond the trellised silhouette. Once viewed by Parisians as a blemish upon the skyline, this wrought-iron structure now proudly stands as France’s most celebrated icon. Our body clocks, not yet adjusted from Pacific Standard Time, woke us in the early morning darkness on the first day of our first…
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3 Southern US States, 3 Universities, 3 Styles
Join our adventure in the story links below. Discover how three college towns gave us three completely different experiences. Each campus showed us an array of southern charm and character, each with distinct qualities. The pastel-colored University of South Carolina was warm and welcoming with a personalized approach. The classically inspired University of Georgia was…
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A Whirlwind (literally) of Grandeur in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama
Our first visit to the state of Alabama started out with a bang—of lightning, that is. The whipping wind in Birmingham warned us of the brewing storm. Then, upon our arrival, Tuscaloosa greeted us with a tornado warning. That morning was relatively warm. We had just driven from the University of Georgia in Athens to…
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Finding a Haven at the University of Georgia
Jubilant students on TV rushed to ring a chapel bell as Georgia beat Alabama in the college football national championship game. A few weeks later, we find ourselves standing at that same bell hanging from within a white trussed tower. A student marches eagerly up to ring the bell with vigor, a tradition first recorded…
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Guided by Warm Charm at the University of South Carolina
Just a couple blocks from the South Carolina State House, we enter through one of two openings in the brick “Horseshoe Wall” that once protected the campus from burning during the Civil War. The cozy atmosphere invites us in. A brick path leads us into a tree-lined park setting where two centuries of pastel-colored history…
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The Space Needle’s New Vibe
Mostly improved, but missing one thing—the restaurant The centerpiece of the 1962 World’s Fair, the futuristic Space Needle got a $100 million renovation—mostly for the better—using 176 tons of glass to achieve a lighter and brighter feel. Although, now something’s missing—actually, replaced. This time around we opted to enjoy the Space Needle from on the…
Streamlining Our Life: Less Things Means More Experiences
A Personal Journey—How downsizing upgraded our lives and revealed what’s really important to us, in this moment. It may seem counterintuitive, particularly for an architectural designer amid a pandemic, to sell our house and move into an apartment. But that’s exactly what we did. We let go of the “American dream.” As homeowners for the…
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