Category: travel

  • all the magic london had to give

    London was a storybook. It was six days of pure magic. London is another city I have loved from afar, primarily through literature. For so long, London was the center of Western cultural production, and, for good and bad, the center of the Western literary canon that I devoured in my childhood. This city showed…

  • we bring ourselves wherever we go: four days in dublin

    We arrived in Dublin on a Sunday morning. A fine, flat rain punctured the surface of the Liffey, and the streets were all but empty. We passed three elderly women, each wearing raincoats the colors of jewels. They, and the doors in Merrion Square provided the only color. We’d flown overnight, a plan that seemed…

  • on the challenge of new york city: thoughts + photos from the first leg of our trip

    “In the absence of love, I found myself clinging hopelessly to the city itself: the repeating tapestry of psychics and bodegas, the bump and grind of traffic, the live lobsters on the corner of Ninth Avenue, the stream drifting up from beneath the -streets.” Olivia Liang, The Lonely City In my teenage-hood, I planned to…

  • tomorrow, new york city: pre-travel thoughts on travel (because i’m so excited)

    defaultTomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. We booked tickets from New York City to Dublin in what feels like a separate life. It was dark at 7 pm (funny, too, how that endless winter now feels so long ago), and July seemed as far away as the cities we’d were visiting. When I told my parents…

  • “you’ll miss the water + the trees”: north shore getaway (pt. 2)

    It’s summer, the fourth of July, but cool temperatures and the possibility of rain had us awake early on Wednesday. Day two of our little getaway was my to play. I wanted to drive northeast to Palisade Head, and pick our way back south, stopping as we wanted.Palisade Head rises in sheer cliffs, three hundred…

  • north shore getaway + thoughts on leaving minnesota (pt 1)

    Two days after we decided to move from Minnesota to Maryland, I texted my oldest friend and asked “what’s been the hardest part about leaving Minnesota.” He answered, “Leaving Minnesota.” On Monday, I turned 26, and on the Tuesday before, my partner surprised me with a two-day getaway to the North Shore, so I could…

  • new york city, dublin, london: tell me everything

    We are traveling this summer! We’re going to New York City! We’re going to Dublin! We’re going to London! Then we’re going back to Dublin! My boyfriend and I booked tickets a few months ago, but it’s taken the snow melting from the sidewalks (this week) for me to get we’re-going-to-be-in-Europe excited. I love guidebooks,…

  • rome + sardinia in photographs

    This past summer, I went to Italy. My mother, whose long loved the country, took me, the gift of experience. I went to Italy with my dad’s family when I was eight. We spent a full month touring the country — Sicily, where my grandmother’s family is from, Rome, Florence, Venice, Sirmione and Sorrento. My…