A new beginning

finding my way back to old school storytelling...

Miss old school travel stories?

I have been longing to find a way to get back to my old school writing roots - ala - Live Journal or when I blogged just for the sole purpose of sharing travel stories and information, not for SEO. Everytime I travel I meet people who say “oh I can’t wait to read your blog and see what you are up to” and I realize that my blog no longer serves that purpose. Instead it is SEO driven, which means it is geared towards people who are searching for something specific and I provide answers to those questions. Long gone are the days when I could write about our travels through good ol’ story telling.

And while sharing on Facebook or Instagram is great, I have more and more friends not on social media and I miss not being able to share my adventures with them as well.

I thought starting a newsletter through my blog would get me back to that, but after many months of it not really materializing, I recognize that it just feels daunting so I avoid it. I feel like I must craft the newsletter just so, add in all the affiliate links to make money, to share my new blog post to get clicks, etc.

So here I am, trying out substack to see if *this* will be what brings me back to my old school ways of storytelling and sharing travel with friends and family.

Happy New Year with a Cruise

If you follow me on social media you probably know that we spent New Years on a boat in Hawaii with Uncruise. It was our first real cruise and I have to say it did not disappoint… well even though some of the activities were cancelled, which did disappoint, the overall trip was amazing.

This trip was initially planned for over Thanksgiving but was cancelled at the last minute due to mechanical issues. The only date we could reschedule for was New Years, so off we went. Cian wasn’t so enthused to be honest about missing New Years at home, even though we don’t do much these days. I think he was OK though once he was able to see fireworks from the boat and hike on a volcano for the last day of the year.

Experiencing Hawaii the Uncruise way was amazing to be honest. We didn’t have to deal with crowds, with expensive day trips or figuring out what to eat every day. Granted, the cruises aren’t cheap, however, they are well worth the expense in my opinion if you are looking for a fun way to experience Hawaii off the beaten path with no hassle. I will share more about this soon.

Frostbite & Finland in Winter

I have never lived in a place that has real winter. I have never really experienced such a place living in Texas, India and Southern California for most of my life. Spending the past 2 weeks in Finland helped me correct that. And wow, I am so blown away. I am absolutely in love with Finland and especially in winter. I was there as part of two media trips that were connected together by a travel fair.

I flew into Helsinki, but immediately hopped on an overnight train headed up towards the arctic circle. Now most people would continue one stop further to Rovaniemi, but we got off in Kemi. Here we were able to experience almost all the same things as in Rovaniemi, but without the crazy tourist crowds!

After a few days here, we headed back to Helsinki for the travel fair and a day trip to Estonia, which is my 56th country!! And then finally, I headed back on the train to the northernmost railway station in Finland - to a wonderful area called Muonio (sounds like Mourn-e-o) where I got to experience minus 35 degree celsius temperatures and even ended up with a bit of frostbite - EEK!

I’ll share more in the next email.

My Birthday Trip….

I have a real birthday coming up this year - Feb 29th and to be honest I am stressing! Typically I travel for my birthday and on my real birthday years I do something big. I had hoped to go to Patagonia and hike, but the world has not allowed that to happen. And here I sit only a month out with NO plans. I really wanted to do some hiking or backpacking for my birthday this year, but I have been having issues with plantar fasciitis which means those dreams may need to be put on hold. So instead I’ve been looking to go somewhere with water activities… Any suggestions? Looking at the Philippines for some snorkeling or maybe Indonesia to see the Komodo dragons! Can I really put together this type of trip in such a short time? I just don’t know.

Enough for now, but I look forward to connecting more…

Anyway, that is all for now, but I hope that you will stick around. I am not going to say how often I will send a post, but I do hope to be regular and use this as a space to keep people up to date with what’s happening in life behind the scenes of social media!

Stay tuned for updates from Finland & my Uncruise Hawaii trip.

---