Then I married into a family that has a vacation home in Vacationland, not in Portland but on an island nearby. That may sound glamorous, but it doesn’t feel that way when you’re closing the house for the year — on hands and knees scrubbing mouse droppings out of the 100-year-old floors. Every fabric item — towels, couches, bedsheets, mattresses — needs to be stored in airtight containers (plastic bins, double bagged Heftys, a duct tape-sealed tarp) so they won’t be destroyed by rodents over the winter.

But it’s now one of my favorite places on the planet.

We always start and end our trips in Portland, and over my dozen-odd visits since 2021, I’ve had the privilege of seeing firsthand that this place is one of the country’s best food cities, full stop. And not just for seafood. (It’s not just Portland-proper that’s special, either.)

I’ve been compiling a list of my go-to restaurants, bakeries, shoppy shops and markets to share with fellow visitors (you can find them in my Google Map list here). Let the record show I did not “discover” any of these places. They were all recommended to me by locals and regulars with taste, like my late mother-in-law who always made sure we had a box of sticky Morning Buns from Standard Baking Co. for our first morning in town.

They’re also pretty concentrated in the “touristy” parts of Portland. That makes sense, as I am technically a tourist and am not pretending to be anything else.

And with that hedging, here are some highlights:

Restaurants & bakeries

• Terlingua - Mexican food meets Texas-style BBQ. The smoked brisket tacos are the stuff of legend, but the fried fish tacos take advantage of the local haddock.

• Standard Baking Co. - A place for rustic and gorgeous baked goods: baguettes, morning buns, scones, granola, brownies, financiers. Every lovely morsel is wonderful. One of my proudest possessions is a tote bag from Standard Baking Co.

• Crispy Gai - FUN and DELICIOUS Thai food. Great bar.

• Bread and Friends - A joy of a restaurant. It feels young and exciting, from the design to the staff to what they serve. There’s expert coffee, wonderful pastries and artful dishes like a roasted mushroom omelet with *checks notes* shaved Burgundy truffles??? THEY MILL MOST OF THEIR OWN FLOUR. We went yesterday and had truly mind-boggling soaked French Toast with crème fraîche and maple syrup (from Maine, naturally).

  

• Street & Co. - Your “I’m in Portland, I should go to a seafood restaurant” restaurant. Get a beautiful plate of fish and a glass of chenin blanc.

• Sichuan Kitchen - Recommended ONLY IF YOU LIKE SPICY FOOD. VERY SPICY FOOD. If that’s you, then you will find yourself in face-numbing, mouth-firing paradise here.

• Oun Lido’s - Excellent Cambodian food down a quiet street away from Commercial Street commotion. Relaxed and casual; you order at the counter and find a table.

Specialty grocers

• ISF Trading Company - A seafood processor in a warehouse on the wharf famous for its uni and other oceanic delights. Order at the counter and take your lunch upstairs to eat in the cafeteria, where they stock accoutrements like soy sauce, wasabi, free coffee and tea, plus microwaves to cook instant rice (for purchase downstairs). On our visit, we got a $15 plate of assorted sashimi (salmon, tuna, scallop, squid, and salmon roe) plus a packet of seaweed, a tray of rice, and a container of pickled ginger. Perfection. The Tamaki family also sells fresh eggs from their farm, the product of free-range chickens fed with their seafood scraps and organic corn. Here’s a lovely Food & Wine story to read more about this treasured establishment.

• Browne Trading Market - A premier supplier of fine delicacies for the gourmand, from Isigny French butter to artisanal soy sauce and fresh seafood. Also one of the best places in town to buy wine, even if you’re looking on a budget (okay not Trader Joe’s wine budget, but <$30 a bottle). Extremely friendly and approachable staff, a surprise (and deeply appreciated) touch given the fancy inventory. We stopped here yesterday to pick up a few bottles of fun Slovenian whites.

• Micucci Grocery Co. - An old school Italian market and deli. Classic.

  

• Portland Food Co-op - Your chance to pick up organic, locally made/grown/foraged [insert any food item here: yogurt, bacon, gelato, honey, jam, produce]. Do not leave without a pint of Dear Dairy ice cream, made with milk from a family-owned dairy in Windham, Maine called Baker Brook Farm. The texture is like magma, but frozen.

• Harbor Fish Market - If you plan on cooking during your stay, don’t miss Harbor Fish Market in the heart of the Old Port. We always get a big bag of clams (littleneck if they’re in stock) to make Linguine alle Vongole, or you can splurge on live lobsters and fresh crab meat for crab cakes. Tip: on request, the staff will give you a bag of ice to keep your catch chilled in transit.

  

Misc. Shopping

• Blanche & Mimi - The owners of this wonderous store describe it as a place where you can “find a bundle of ever changing new and vintage treasures.” I’d describe it as extremely Nancy Meyers. It’s overflowing with home goods, baby clothes, elegant toiletries. It’s a store that is very much beyond my means, but I go on every visit, even if just to bathe in its essence.

Honorable mentions

• Lucky Catch Cruises - The quintessential lobster boat tour. Shuttle around Casco Bay and learn about the state’s famed sea creatures, from their anatomy and lifespans to how they’re caught for your dining pleasure. (Adults $60; Children 2-12, $45; infants free.)

• Fogg’s Water Taxi & Charter - When we need a boat ride that can’t be serviced by the ferries, we call Fogg. But the company also hosts public cruises, like this 2-hour Beer, Wine & Oysters Cruise ($95 pp) that includes freshly shucked local oysters and adult beverages served during a scenic ride.

  

• McLoons Lobster Shack - If you find yourself up the coast near Spruce Head Island — as Dan and I did during our bike adventure a few years back — don’t miss this family-owned operation.

• John Hodgman’s book “Vacationland” - Not a place but a book. A hilarious one that captures some of the essence of visiting this great state. Highly recommend the audiobook version read by the author/actor/comedian.

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If you have a favorite Portland establishment, I’d love to hear your recommendations in the comments. Thanks for stopping by.

I’m two weeks out from my third trimester. It’s a milestone that feels exciting and terrifying. In less than 100 days (if all goes well) a baby will be here. Our baby! Everything is about to change, but how?

I paddled back to the edge of the pool. Another hotel guest walked by to an open chaise lounger. “Doesn’t get any better than this,” he said.

The Tampa sprint required three flights, a 5 a.m. call time, hours of interviewing and filming, plus more hours to prepare. It felt fantastic — less nausea and more energy than my other travels of late. As promised by the many women who have done this journey before me, my second trimester has gone profoundly better than the first.

I went from feeling like a heaving slug bursting with acid — sleeping with a stock pot next to the bed in case I couldn’t run to the bathroom in time, and panic eating dry Wasa Crispbread around the clock to keep nausea at bay — to beaming! with aliveness! again. I can finally choke down prenatal vitamins.

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Capitalizing on the newfound zest, I signed up for barre classes to start exercising regularly again, first once a week and now two-to-three. They’re expensive ($33 per session), but each class feels like an investment to keep me mobile and strong. I credit them for still being able to haul my duffel bag on flights and comfortably walk to work on temperate days.

But no matter how many squats I do at barre, my body has gone full Lorax. The 6-month belly situation has graduated from petite bump to Santa-in-training and I’ve found it increasingly awkward to get dressed. Now, my daily uniform has whittled down to a few items:

• A Pea in the Pod Crop Maternity Pants, a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law that work great for the office, so I got a second pair on Poshmark.2

• All In Motion bike shorts, another hand-me-down that feel sturdy and well-made (even though I think they’re a Target brand??)

• A very old pair of Everlane shorts (like these).

• A gauzy button down I bought pre-maternity in Mallorca last October.

• This wrap tie sweater I was influenced to buy after seeing a cool-looking mom on TikTok wear it. The texture is 3x more luxurious than it cost.

• A cotton poplin button down from the same brand as the sweater that gets much more wrinkled than preferable but I love it anyway.

• My husband’s Marine Layer t-shirts. They’re so soft.

• A pair of Poeve sandals I splurged on in Rome that might be one of my favorite shoe purchases of all time. They feel like they’re made by people who know what a foot needs. I’ve worn them comfortably on my 5-mile (round trip) walk to work. (Now I’m contemplating a slingback commitment but worried that my feet could go up a size in this last stretch of pregnancy.)

Some updates from the TMI front, in case it’s helpful for other moms-to-be (or maybe just a weird read for everybody else):

• To combat the pregnancy digestive slowdown, I started taking Metamucil during my first trimester but found the whole routine deeply unsexy. The ugly plastic canister, the stirring of the powder-to-goo concoction, the chugging it down like a frat pledge. Over time, I needed more and more, and always felt bloated after every dose. So I was ecstatic when my also-pregnant sister recommended something called Oxy-Powder, a “natural colon cleanse.” I’ll spare you the details but it’s a godsend in pill form and much more effective than the ‘Muc’.

• Less of a godsend: motion sickness has still been a problem. I thought the worst of it was behind me. Then I found myself on my knees in a Frontier Airlines lavatory throwing up my breakfast. I think the problem is heightened when I have acidic foods or drinks too close to motion opportunities (car rides, flights). But even a routine Uber ride on an empty stomach makes me queasy. So whenever I can, I walk or e-bike to avoid this problem.

• A friend of mine (profiled here on Platonic Love!) was recently on a podcast and recommended “To Have and to Hold” as an “incredible book that every mother needs to read.” I bought it instantly. The book is a “clinical psychologist’s exploration of the modern dilemmas women face in the wake of new motherhood.” It gets into the more challenging aspects of becoming a parent (guilt, gender roles, etc.), and how they can impact your relationship with your spouse. One of my biggest fears of having a baby is what it could do to me and Dan; the sweet partnership we’ve built feels like the most tender, wonderful gift in the world. I’m hoping that if we both read this book, we can better prepare for some of the landmines that boobytrap the path ahead of us. TBD!

  • Other books that have been helpful lately: Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott; Expecting Better by Emily Oster; and Second Life by Amanda Hess.

    

• I’m knee-deep in nesting mode. Conservatively, I have 29 tabs open on my laptop of “apartment sound proofing tips” to shield our neighbors from baby cries. That doesn’t count the many minimized windows of search results for “small nursery ideas,” “newborn vaccination schedule,” and “Alison Roman’s baby registry.” Then there are the Facebook Marketplace finds, some I click on because how could you not? And others that have real potential. (My algorithm is a mess).

• Deep, deep TMI mode, for real ones only: on my reporting trip to Paris, I had to cut a short jog even shorter because I started experiencing the most insane nipple pain of my life — like I was being electrocuted from them. It became a regular issue, so severe it turned into a major barrier to wearing a sports bra (or any bra sometimes) and with that, exercising. The best fix? These silver nipple shields people use to soothe the ails of breast feeding. They work like the glass dome of a cake stand, protecting me from painful pressure.

  

We have a few more fun trips on the calendar before I’m supposed to stop flying so I don’t give birth on a plane or whatever and have to name the baby American Airlines. I’m trying not to spend these next 3 months in fear — like ‘oh no, this is the LAST MORNING WE’RE EVER GOING TO SLEEP IN FOR THE NEXT EIGHTEEN YEARS!’ or ‘WHAT WERE WE THINKING WE HAD A GREAT LIFE, NOW WE HAVE TO BUDGET FOR DAY CARE AND MATH TUTORS!’

Instead, I’m trying to cherish the special, unique moments, like people coming out of the woodwork to give us thoughtful advice and meaningful gifts and words of encouragement. Because that guy in Tampa was right. It doesn’t get any better than this.

An attempt to club in Berlin

Like many travelers, I love to find opportunities to get to know a place through a local custom. Berlin’s club scene felt like an important slice of life to investigate. It was humbling.

Our favorite hotel of the trip

A rundown on Kmetija Štekar, a natural winery and farmstay in the western region of Brda, Slovenia near the Italian border.

Plus: a vlog recap of our week in Slovenia.

Rental car and camper van thoughts

Five tips for renting a car in Europe (and driving in Albania)

How (not) to take a camper van through the Balkans

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An amazing spa in Berlin, and Croatia day trip

In Berlin, we caught up with some Very Cool Friends of ours who live there, and over dinner they told us that we had to go to a spa called Vabali, described on its website as a “Balinese wellness oasis in the middle of Berlin.” They were right, it was heaven. So was a day trip we took to Hvar, Croatia a few weeks later. This post gets into both delights.

An 8-hour train through the heart of Croatia

When given a choice between car versus train, I’ll always pick the latter. So when we saw that we could take a train from Zagreb to Split, where we had to pick up the camper van, we were sold. Sure, it was double the time it would take to bus or drive a rental car, but it was cheap and sounded romantic. Here’s what it was really like.

A weird spa in Prague

Beer spas are a brewing wellness trend. Dermatologists are skeptical. I tried one in Prague and had a good time. (Video evidence.)

An Albania deep dive

Does Albania live up to its social media hype?

Albania on film

If you’re in York, England, swim in this pond

My friend Hannah took me to her favorite wild swimming spot in York, a collection of ponds where you can swim under willow trees and sweat in saunas. Huge fan.

Also relevant

How to renew your passport online

What it’s like to fly Norse Atlantic Airlines

Comparing 3 ultra-budget airlines in Europe

What it’s like to film an episode of “Rick Steves Europe”

I eventually learned that’s a myth.

This post is for new writers, struggling writers, and career pivoters. It’s not a blueprint for becoming a travel journalist, but it’s the tangled path that worked for me. (Knocks on wood.) It took restaurant shifts, hostel bunks, and waking up in a Thai hospital to get me here.

But I got here — now seven years into a staff job at a major newspaper, and 11 years of being paid to write. No journalism degree required.

Maybe you’ll find something useful in the journey.

Chapter one: School & internships

The instinct to write was always there. Growing up, I made travel journals, and wrote “newspapers” and short stories for classmates. I told my family I wanted to be Rick Steves. In junior high and high school, I joined school newspapers and covered anything thrown at me: sports, trend reports, spicy student issues.

I hoped this could eventually become a real job. But when it came time to go to college, I thought being a lawyer sounded safer.

In 2009, I went to the University of the Pacific with a small scholarship to join their “Pacific Legal Scholars” program, which put members on a fast track to their law school. We did LSAT prep and took field trips to meet law professionals — everyone from trial lawyers to a Supreme Court Justice — to give students an idea of what you could do with a JD. Not even a semester in, I realized law was not for me. The reading was dense, the writing was cold, and I wasn’t ready to give up on media.

So I switched to a communications major, taking the few journalism classes the school offered, plus “intro to TV writing,” and public relations courses. I worked for the student newspaper, wrote a blog for the college admissions office, and got unpaid internships1 over the summers. I could only do this because my parents took out loans — a privilege that let me focus on school alone — and my brother and his wife putting me up rent-free in their apartment while I interned in San Francisco.

And still, I had a minor breakdown my sophomore year. I left UOP convinced that I’d be happier somewhere else, and besides, if I was really serious about pursuing media, I should go to a school that specialized in it.

But after spending a semester at home — going to community college, touring some other schools and interning at my hometown’s local magazine — I found out that transferring anywhere new would add at least an extra year to my college experience. I decided to go back to UOP instead.

After I graduated2, I moved back to San Francisco to start my “real life.”

Chapter two: Not not journalism

My first paying job in San Francisco was at a French restaurant called Cafe Des Amis. I loved it — the adrenaline rush of a busy shift, learning about food and wine.

It paid my rent, $1,000 a month for an SRO, or “Single Room Occupancy“ apartment, a term that meant the place was tiny and shared a bathroom with the hall. But it had a mini fridge and a bay window that overlooked Market Street. I was in heaven.

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The restaurant job also got me through my unpaid internship at a hospitality PR firm. They represented Bay Area restaurants, hotels, chefs, food festivals, and tourism boards. I wrote press releases and made spreadsheets. The firm hired me a few months later to be a full-time entry-level “account coordinator” (annual salary: $40,000).

It was a perfect first adult job. I had to show up at an office in business casual. They taught me about event planning and pitching new business. I learned how to find contact information for reporters and editors, and pitch them story ideas. Even better, I got to wine and dine them in the city’s best restaurants on the company’s dime.

And then I got restless. A friend was moving to Thailand for a nonprofit job, and asked if I wanted to travel around Southeast Asia before she started.

Of course I did, but I couldn’t get the time off — not that I could afford the trip anyway. I stewed. If I couldn’t go backpacking, I’d just … move to Bangkok instead?

I bought a one-way ticket leaving four months later, and started trying to find a job. If I couldn’t get something in my field, I figured I could teach English.

In a newsletter for expat entrepreneurs, I came across a profile of a Bangkok-based hotel booking startup and fired them an email. One of the founders replied a month later and asked to set up an interview. Come September, I’d saved a few thousand dollars by living frugally3, had a job offer and a start date (monthly salary: 40k Thai Baht, or $1,235).

I was 23 years old and out of my depth, now a “Communication & PR Manager” in a country where I didn’t speak the local language (although I could get by in a taxi). I wrote founder bios, and copyedited our website and app. I went on dates and kept a blog for friends and family back home.

And then I almost killed myself. By accident.

Three months into the job, we went on a company retreat. There was some drinking — a little on the bus ride there, some more when we gathered around the hotel pool for dinner. Amidst the merriment, a friend of mine got thrown into the pool. I dove in after her. The pool turned out to be shallow, maybe 5 feet deep.

Two hospitals and 60 stitches later, I was lucky to be alive — even luckier to have avoided paralysis.

That night in the hospital — groggy from the accident and unsure whether I was going to be my "normal” self again — I had one huge regret: I’d never really tried to be a writer. Not in any significant way at least. My life was journalism-adjacent, but I was nowhere close to being a journalist. I vowed to try harder when I recovered.

Chapter three: Side hustle to staff writer

Out of the neck brace and back at my startup job, I picked up my side hustle. I introduced myself to local editors and cold-pitched every website, magazine and newspaper email address I could find. Some early wins were just seeing my name published, often without pay. A few months later I was making $60 to write and photograph food and drink pieces for Coconuts Bangkok, and getting regular work for a site called Lifestyle Asia.

My biggest break came when I pitched a generic email address for Vice Magazine’s food section, Munchies. They said no to my cat cafe story idea4, but encouraged me to send more. So I did.

They took my pitch for a thousand-word piece on the hospital food I ate after my big accident, and another on a sous vide cocktail trend I’d noticed. I got paid $150 for each, which felt staggering. It kickstarted a 5-year freelancing relationship with Vice, with my rate eventually increasing to $250 an article.

In January 2015, I got an email from the editor-in-chief of a local luxury magazine. He’d seen my work and asked if I wanted to apply for a staff writer position. A month later, I quit the startup and was officially a full-time writer (monthly salary: 40k Thai Baht, or $1,235. I asked them to match my startup pay).

The job was surreal. The EIC was very “Devil Wears Prada,” always off somewhere fabulous entertaining advertisers. He taught me to enjoy a Stroopwafel steamed over a cup of tea in our skyscraper office, and caught me up with who was who in Thai high society. He sent me to press conferences, and to review spas and restaurants at five-star hotels. I interviewed socialites and went on my very first press trip to a fancy hotel in Phuket where I felt like a sloppy, sweaty foreigner in a group of the most elegant members of the Thai press.

The restlessness struck again.

My mom came to visit me, and we spent a week in Bali. Like any white western woman, I was taken by the island immediately and felt desperate to spend more time there. I couldn’t go to an office anymore.

When I returned to Bangkok that Monday, a mere three months into the job, I put in my notice. I will never forget what the editor said when I quit: “You can’t just go away for a weekend of fun in the sun and come back and let everyone down.”

He was right. They’d spent hours and hours (not to mention money) to get me a Thai work permit, and now I was throwing it in their faces. I’ll always regret acting so unprofessionally5. But the world was calling.

Chapter four: The feral freelance years

I got rid of my Bangkok apartment, packed some clothes, my laptop and DSLR6 camera into a backpack and left town to freelance wherever interest took me. First I went to Northern Thailand, Cambodia, made it back to Indonesia, then India. I filed stories from cafes, hostels, airports, and bus terminals.

As I met more editors and writers, I found out about the holy grail of freelancing: copywriting gigs.

These paid far better than lifestyle journalism. A good gig was getting $500 to write a batch of social media posts and advertorial copy for a Thai beer brand. A fantastic one was landing a massive $6,000 project to write brand guidelines and website copy for a hotel opening in the Maldives.

With this windfall, I bought a flight to Japan and stayed in a shared Airbnb where my “bed” was the slice of linoleum underneath a bunk bed (the actual bunk cost more). I took the Shinkansen to the coast and tried to surf. Some days were exhilarating, others were extremely lonely.

The trip marked my one year anniversary in Asia. Shortly after, a family member died and I didn’t want to be so far away anymore.

I flew back to California, moving in with my sister and her (now) husband in Silver Lake, and got a job at Pok Pok, a trendy Thai restaurant. I kept freelancing for Vice, and picked up work at LA Weekly ($100 a story), LA Magazine ($100 a story), in-flight magazines ($400 for an LA guide for Singapore Airlines, $180 a story for Philippines Airlines). Working with Food Network felt like winning the jackpot. They paid ~$1,000 for stories (with photos) like the 27 best burgers in LA, and the most iconic foods in California.

As my bylines proliferated, I started getting invitations for press trips. In exchange for all-expense-paid travel hosted by alcohol companies, tourism boards, hotel brands, etcetera, you agreed to write about the client footing the bill.

It’s an ethically questionable undertaking.

On the one hand, you assume you can use your judgement to write a fair and balanced story. On the other, you’re experiencing the [hotel, distillery, destination] from a VIP point of view, often with a publicist chirping in your ear. And after a brand spends $10,000 on your hosted experience, you may feel obligated to cover them favorably.

As a fledgling writer, I wanted to take every opportunity to travel and learn from experts around the world. I also wanted readers to be able to trust me. So how do you say yes to a tequila brand’s invitation to Guadalajara without just publishing a story that said “everyone should buy this tequila!” I found a helpful workaround.

Instead of writing a puff piece about the brand itself, on many press trips, I’d interview the owner, or concierge, or manager — some kind of spokesperson from the brand — and feature them as an expert in the resulting story7.

Usually, I’d get an invitation from a brand, then pitch an idea from the trip to an editor without mentioning it’d been hosted. Most editors knew this kind of thing happened, but treated it as a don’t-ask-don’t-tell arrangement.

There was one big exception: newspapers8. Many have policies to avoid any “pay for play” articles. Also, if an editor from any outlet said they were uncomfortable with press trips, I would honor that stance and pitch them something that didn’t involve a comp.

But making $100-$250 for most of my articles, I would have never been able to afford the extensive travel that press trips gave me. They helped me climb Mount Kilimanjaro, cruise to Antarctica, sauna in Finland, and trek to Everest Basecamp. Whenever I could, I’d tack on additional days to the trip so I had more time to find more story ideas and maximize the opportunity.

Chapter five: Career crisis

By 2019, I’d been to every continent, had a contract with GQ to write a few food and travel stories per month ($250-300 per article), and gotten assignments with a handful of dream outlets: Bon Appétit ($300 for ~600 words), Wired ($1,500 for a deeply fact-checked feature) the Los Angeles Times ($750 for 750 words, plus photos). I got to interview Anthony Bourdain.

Since I’d started freelancing in 2015, my income had been going up each year, as evidenced by what I reported in my tax filings:

• 2015 income: $24,130

• 2016: $33,062

• 2017: $40,266

• 2018: $42,769

Even though it took a few years, I was finally making as much as I did as an entry-level publicist in San Francisco. Sure, I didn’t have any benefits (I had basic health insurance through California’s public program), but I was a working writer.

As 2019 continued, my trajectory took a downward turn.

My longtime editors at Vice and Playboy left, and assignments were getting harder to come by. GQ shut down its travel and food section, voiding my contract. I was a finalist for the New York Times 52 Places reporter job (and blew a grand flying from Japan to Manhattan last-minute for the interview).

Traveling nearly full-time, I’d gotten rid of my apartment in LA to live with my sister and her husband, but they were having a baby so I moved from their guest room into their garage.

At 28, my writing opportunities dwindling, living in a garage took a toll on my psyche. Maybe the life I’d built was unsustainable.

I’d met plenty of writers who had better paying day jobs or spouses to keep them afloat. I started looking for PR and comms openings, as journalism ones seemed nonexistent. I thought about moving to a cheaper city (Las Vegas?) where I wouldn’t have to be a freeloader relying on my family members.

Then I got an email that would change my life.

An editor from a major newspaper reached out about a job opening in their new travel section. She’d seen my work in GQ and thought I’d be a good fit, did I want to apply? It sounded too good to be true.

But a few months later, I was on a flight to Washington D.C. for a day of in-person interviews. They put me up in a hotel a block away from the office, and I spent the evening jogging around the National Mall. I watched young adults play rec soccer with the Washington Monument towering in the background. The appeal of a stable life began to take shape.

Soon after, the paper offered me the job, but I turned it down. I was worried I was a flight risk, that I’d quit in six months — unable to handle a desk job — and disappoint them like I’d done to the luxury magazine. I explained my concerns and they asked me to reconsider.

After a few convincing phone calls from incredulous family and friends, I changed my mind. In April 2019, I moved to Washington to be a staff travel reporter (salary: $70,0009).

Chapter six: The big newspaper

Thank. Christ. I. Said. Yes.

My job at the newspaper has been transformative.

It gave me the chance to work with best-in-class editors. It forced me to write more, and faster, without sacrificing quality (I used to take an eternity to finish a story as a freelancer, and treated every assignment with a preciousness that cost me time and money — maybe it was also procrastination). I’ve been pushed to write breaking news, challenging accountability stories and profiles, and get sent on wild adventures to cover the “world’s biggest pizza convention” and the Paris baguette competition. I learned how to produce my own videos, and now think about a story as much in terms of how I’ll write it as how I’ll film it.

Life looks completely different now than it did as a freelancer.

Joining the paper meant an immediate stop to press trips and freebies (see also: newspaper ethics, which I now appreciate as a gift to our readers). The end of my heavy travel routine was also jarring.

Instead of starting the day where and when I please, I’m supposed to swipe my badge at the corporate office and report to an editor with a progress report every morning. I pitch ideas every day, many are turned down. I make mistakes that require official corrections, and write any story assigned to me whether I love the idea or not. Some days feel like I’m doing a pure dream job, other days feel like it’s a job job.

If I didn’t take this 9 to 5, I wouldn’t have slowed down enough to meet my husband, or won the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation’s top award two years running (I wouldn’t have even known to apply! It pays $1,500. You can submit your own work here).

Chapter seven: Now what?

Our paper recently went through brutal layoffs that obliterated the jobs of nearly half the reporting staff. As we waited to find out who was cut, I thought about the prospect of going freelance again — not as an untethered youth, but a pregnant 35-year-old.

Today, my annual salary is $113,586. It would take an extreme amount of luck and effort to make that working the way I used to in my 20s. Moreover, writers now compete with AI platforms that can do copywriting work for next-to-nothing, and fewer “prestige” outlets that pay decent rates than ever before.

When new writers ask if it’s possible to follow my path, I say I’m not sure.

But there are glimmers of hope. There are more platforms than ever before to publish your own work and get paid for it. There’s money in social media and short-form video production. I know people who have gotten lucrative book deals, and have friends that freelance full-time, and are thriving in the process.

If I was laid off tomorrow, I would give freelancing a try and keep an eye out for those rare staff positions.

Until the axe falls, I’ll keep writing and keep learning as long as I can. It’s been an honor to chase my calling.

If you made it this far, wow!! If you have other specific questions about the media industry, I’m happy to answer what I can. Feel free to leave your question in the comments, or shoot me a DM 💌 Thanks for reading!

Moments ago in a little market, I asked the young cashier, “parlez-vous anglais?” She said she spoke a little, and I told her, “je voudrais un sandwich,” then pointed to my stomach, “mais, je suis … pregnant?” (Note to self: look up how to say pregnant in French.)

We looked at the deli case. It was a thing of beauty: runny cheeses, cured meats, pâtés. About 99% of it was off limits to me now, at least in the eyes of conventional medical wisdom.

The cashier said she could make a baguette sandwich with butter and Comté, a hard cow’s milk cheese. I’d take it.

Back in my room, I unsheathed the sandwich and discovered the ham. Jambon de Paris, specifically. Given my disclaimer, did that mean it was safe to eat? The cashier looked 20, tops. I didn’t know about listeria when I was 20. I didn’t know about it three months ago.

What to do about this — allegedly cooked? But also cold? Did that matter? — meat.

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This is my tenth trip to Paris as an “adult,” but the first with dietary guardrails. Normally my move is to land and follow every craving: Wine. Charcuterie. Cigarettes. Oysters. Cocktails. Pastries in the morning, pastis to end the night.

It was on my last gluttonous trip that I had my first flicker of interest in motherhood. Dan and I had come to Paris right after our wedding, and I remember noticing how French parents navigated the city. They carried strollers up and down metro stairwells. They ate in cafés. And they looked happy. It was inspiring. Could we start a family while keeping our cosmopolitan lifestyle?

I didn’t know, but two years later, we’re giving it a try.

When my flight landed at Charles de Gaulle this morning, I went ahead with my usual red-eye routine. I found the nearest coffee shop, refueled with a flat white, a bottle of water, and a snack. The app Timeshifter told me that if I wanted to manage my jet lag better, I could only have caffeine for another half hour, so I ordered another shot of espresso. And then I vomited violently in the nearest bathroom.

Lately, every day has been a toss-up of whether I’m feeling normalish or flattened by the clichés of the first trimester. Then last week, the acid reflux portion of my pregnancy kicked into high gear. I have to tread lightly with foods that are most likely to trigger heartburn — foods that once made up the core of my diet — plus avoid the ones that could poison me in Paris.

But you know what I can eat: baguettes.

I may have never dreamed of becoming a mother, but I have dreamt of covering the Paris baguette competition since I wrote about the winner in 2023.

For the last three decades, the city of Paris has held a Grand Prix to determine the “best” traditional baguette by way of blind tasting. The winning baker gets €4,000 and the honor of supplying bread to the president’s residence for a year — not to mention a boost in business from the publicity.

This week, I’m going behind the scenes at this year’s competition and reporting on the magic in person. If you’d like to see the published story and video, it’ll end up here!

I’ll also be chasing a few other Paris stories, avoiding eye contact with the saucisson sec dangling from every butcher shop, and savoring this strange limbo time. I know it’s a gift, nausea and all.

Sandwich heads: I’ll leave you with the Google Maps list I’m building of favorite Paris sandwiches. If you have a shop I should add, I’d love to hear your suggestions. In the meantime, I’m going to roll the dice and eat the one I have here.

But I am here to tell you that winter in Japan is magic.

There are fewer tourists. It’s maximum cozy. Picture narrow ramen shops, where brothy steam warms your face. And ending the day in a hot spring bath (onsen) to simmer your bones. You are the ramen now.

You should start (and end) your trip in Tokyo. In-between, get on some trains and see snowier landscapes and quieter towns. This post is a collection of places to do just that.

It is not a guide to the best places in Japan. I’ve been to Japan seven times, which is not enough to be an authority on THE BEST of anything. It’s merely what I — a white foreigner who does not speak Japanese — have done and loved, and think you’d enjoy, too.

It won’t get into Tokyo, either. (In the meantime, I’d point you to author and chef Yukari Sakamoto on Instagram for inspiration — or, even better, hire her as your guide; and bookmark David Coggins’s Tokyo tip sheet.)

FULL DISCLOSURE: In 2018, when I was still a freelancer, I went on a solo trip hosted by the Japan tourism board to see the Tohoku region of the country, which was hit by a catastrophic tsunami in 2011. This is something I am not allowed to do now as a newspaper reporter. Per our ethics policy, I cannot accept any “gifts,” which means no comped trips or hotel stays for the last 6+ years.

If you’re thinking: “wait, you went on a trip sponsored by the Japanese government? Are you in the pocket of Big Japan???” The truth is I do have a bias: I think Japan is one of the greatest places on earth. I drank that Kool-Aid the first time I went, which was on my own dime in 2015. I drank it again when I went again to see matcha farms for Vice in 2017, and got a third helping on a trip to see Japanese whiskey distilleries for GQ in 2018. By the time the tourism board called, I was a card-carrying member of the Japan fan club.

The tourism board did not tell me what to write. But they did fly me out, put me up, and give me a guide/translator. They took me to places I wanted to go (like the world’s ramen capital, and a 100-year-old sake distillery, and aboard a train that had “foot spa” on board). It rocked, but I wouldn’t recommend every stop1 from that tour.

There’s only one spot on this list from that press trip, and I will note it below for further transparency. The rest of the recommendations are mostly from my honeymoon to Nagano Prefecture last winter.

Of all the places a travel writer could pick for a honeymoon, I chose Japan. Specifically in winter2. I love it that much.

A place to ski and soak

📍Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture

When we locked in honeymoon dates, our priorities were to ski a little, onsen a lot, drink well, and eat spectacularly. Hokkaido would’ve been the obvious choice, but the “Japanese Alps” in Nagano, about 4 hours from Tokyo by train, were better fit for our schedule. We booked a hotel in Hakuba, a hub for snow sports, where we could walk to a chairlift or get on a bus that shuttled between 10 interconnected ski resorts.

Highlights:

• Skiing in Japan. Our one-day lift tickets were about $55. The mountain food was actually good (curry! ramen!). Dan skied the trees while I went on easy, sloping runs. There were onsens at the base; you could peel off your gear and slip into a piping hot bath for $5 (for example, at Kirikubo Onsen next to the Iwatake ski area, and the spa inside the Hotel Green Plaza Hakuba, where there’s an open-air tub with a view of the chair lift).

• Dinner at Yukinotei, where we had one of the most memorable meals of our trip. Locally sourced perfection from a chef born and raised in Hakuba. Get a set meal.

A perfect midsized city

📍 Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture

With our Tokyo and Hakuba plans set, I turned to the aforementioned author, guide, and chef Yukari Sakamoto for her advice on another destination to add to the honeymoon agenda. Her pick: Matsumoto. “Castle, museum for [Yayoi] Kusama, walkable city … There is also a ukiyoe museum for woodblock prints,” she told me. It’s also known for its fried chicken. Sold.

We took the train from Nagano (the biggest city in the prefecture) to Matsumoto (the second biggest, population roughly 230,000). It felt like a perfect midsized city, where we could walk and jog to the charming historic core from our budget-friendly downtown hotel (about $100 per night). Our room was spartan but it had a washing machine and access to a top floor onsen with indoor and outdoor baths.

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Highlights:

• Pastries and coffee at Cafe Larch.

• Kinmokusei for shabu shabu.

• Cocktails at 酔惚zoccon. We came by mistake in an attempt to find a different cocktail bar. It’s run by two women bartenders, something I’ve never seen before in Japan. Get a fresh fruit cocktail.

• Shopping at C-Countly.

• Menya Tsubaki, where we went for ramen but were more impressed by the oyako-don (chicken and egg bowl).

• Peg, a wine and snack bar and coffee shop during the day. I loved Peg so much that I told Dan within 10 minutes of sitting down that: “this is one of my favorite establishments in the world.” More on why here.

A tip: many restaurants in Japan (including Kinmokusei) require a reservation in advance. They don’t always offer them online. Ask your hotel concierge for help making one by phone and don’t be late!!

Where to see snow monkeys

📍Jigokudani Monkey Park, Yamanouchi, Nagano Prefecture

Dan’s family loves an animal encounter. His parents have trekked to see gorillas in Rwanda, ferried to the wilds of Canada to see puffins. So when we revealed our honeymoon destination, his mom made the case for us to go see the Japan’s famous snow monkeys. Jigokudani Monkey Park is the most famous place to do just that.

Jigokudani is not a zoo. It’s part of a larger national park. You pay an entrance fee to hike in and observe Japanese macaques in their habitat. There’s a cap on how many people can enter at once, and the staff is vigilant about making sure people don’t feed or interact with the monkeys, so the primates largely ignore visitors (unlike many other monkey locales).

We got there just after the park opened at 9 a.m. on the Friday after Christmas. There was no line to enter, but by the time we walked the 2-kilometer path to the main attraction — a steaming lagoon full of lounging monkeys — was swarmed with visitors and their cameras. It didn’t detract from the surreal novelty of it all. As we watched the puff ball monkeys enjoy the water, others would run right between us, almost stepping on your feet.

A tip: When we left around 11 a.m., the line to enter was enormous, which is to say: go as early as possible to beat the tour groups. Here are more tips for visiting.

A whimsical hot spring town

📍Shibu Onsen, Nagano Prefecture

Japan is full of little towns built around natural hot springs. They’re worth dedicating a few days to best enjoy their slow pace and healing waters.

For our honeymoon, we booked two nights in Shibu Onsen, a historic village 10 minutes from the monkey park. It has nine tiny public bathhouses (plus more in the hotels) which are accessible to locals and overnight visitors via a master key. When you check into a participating hotel, they give you a key and a commemorative towel to stamp at each bath house you visit (wearing traditional garb, also provided by your hotel). Whimsy alert!

We booked our honeymoon two months out. This is not the move for Japan if you want your pick of hotels and ryokans (small inns). Most of the places3 I wanted to reserve were sold out, not a surprise when many only have a few rooms.

With few vacancies left in town, I felt lucky to swing two nights at Shibu Hotel (the most expensive room of our trip at $420 per night, which included ornate breakfast and dinner daily). It was fine, but more importantly, it gave us access to the nine onsens.

Highlights:

• Wakabaya, a coffee shop we went to five times in three days. They have a little hot spring trough with a bench near the entrance, so you can soak your feet while sipping a wonderful beverage (the local milk is divine, maybe the best milk of my life. We bought some bottles to drink in our hotel).

• Bathhouse hopping. The public onsen are rustic and worn in, nothing fancy. The water is HOT. Sometimes we had them to ourselves, sometimes we shared them with other foreigners or locals. If you need a primer for Japanese bath etiquette, start here.

Another whimsical hot spring town

📍Ginzan Onsen, Obanazawa City, Yamagata Prefecture

The crown jewel of my 2018 press trip to Tohoku was a night in Ginzan Onsen, a hot spring town said to have inspired the Studio Ghibli movie “Spirited Away.” It is famous and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, and has implemented new restrictions for day-trippers to manage congestion. But when I went mid-week in the off-season, it was empty.

They put me up in Ginzan Fujiya Ryokan, an immaculate 13-room hotel for design heads (rates start at $250). It’s 100-years-old, but was renovated in 2005 by the famed architect Kengo Kuma, who built Japan National Stadium for the 2020 Olympics. The bed was exquisite. So was dinner, which was served in my room. But what stuck with me was the hotel baths. Behold, the cedar “Hiba bath”:

One night was not enough. I dream of going back. I always dream of going back.

Where are your favorite places in Japan, for the winter and otherwise? I am always bookmarking spots for future trips.

I don’t need to ask a doctor why I always feel like an ailing mass of garbage over the holidays. But last year, I did interview a bunch of doctors for a story on how to avoid getting sick when you travel. The TL;DR is obvious: drink a ton of water; wash or sanitize your hands regularly; wear a face mask in crowded places; prioritize sleep; eat healthfully.

But every November, I tend to do the opposite. I plunge into a routine of heavy travel, heavy drinking, heavy eating (hold the sleeping) until January. It’s a recipe for turning into the sickest, most anxious version of myself. There are tears in train stations, hangovers on planes, restless nights and early mornings in guest bedrooms throughout the Northeast Corridor.

This year, I’m trying to avoid that. Here’s how, in case you could use some ideas for holiday travel self-care, too:

Witchy supplements

I’m skeptical1 of supplements, but just in case they work, I recently started taking a mixture of vitamin C gel packets, liquid echinacea, and liquid zinc. I feel witchy making this daily2 potion, and maybe the elixir (or placebo) will ward off illness.

“Snack jogs”

I’ve been in a longstanding exercise “flop era” for a lot of reasons I won’t get into in this little ✨Holiday Post☃️, but I know that I feel better — mentally and physically — when I move regularly.

So in the last month, I’ve been easing back3 into a sustainable exercise routine by way of the “snack jog.”

The snack jog is a goal of running one single mile every(ish) day4, doesn’t have to be fast. If I run longer, great. But only having the expectation to do one mile makes me much more likely to get up and do it — even in the dark, even in the cold, before or after work. I always feel effervescent once I’m done.

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An alcohol pause

The most difficult item on the list for me. I love drinking. I love the ritual of making a drink. I love an airport bar. I love asking someone if they want to go get a drink.

But I overdo it, particularly over the holidays. The results are always rough5, and I end up full of regret the next day. So I’m trying to go teetotal until Christmas, when the bulk of holiday parties have come and gone, and drinking a glass of spiked eggnog will feel more like a special treat (instead of something to do with my hands while I’m fumbling through small talk). So far so good; early reports show far fewer emotional tornadoes in the forecast.

Tea rituals

To take the edge off my temporary sobriety, I’ve been leaning into tea — herbal, fruit, caffeinated, you name it. I zhuzh it up by adding mint, or fresh ginger, and/or fun citrus6 from my favorite specialty markets. The simple act of slicing produce and pouring steaming water into a nice mug offers a kind of spiritual umami that feels surprisingly close to mixing a cocktail.

Heavy on trains

We’re traveling for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a New Year’s Eve wedding, and we’re doing it all by train — skipping nerve-grinding traffic and TSA lines. (Unfortunately not an option for most Americans!!)

Cozy music

My soundtrack for those train rides: Brubeck; Toshiko Akiyoshi; Erroll Garner; Vince Guaraldi.

This orange blossom roll-on

I bought this orange blossom, jojoba oil CBD roll-on at Blanche and Mimi in Portland, Maine, not because it had CBD in it, but because it smells like a being in a heavenly garden. I’ve developed a habit of using it throughout the day for a sensorial jolt. The glass bottle gives it a much more expensive feel than the $20 price tag. Unclear whether you can buy it online, but this looks similar.

Dressing up

My thought process for getting dressed around the holidays is: “Who cares? It’s just family!” Unless there’s an event, I’m Slob Mode: disgusting sweats, big t-shirts, dirty hair. I need to snap out of this, because how you look impacts how you feel. The minute I put on real clothes and a little makeup, I am transformed emotionally from bridge troll to functioning member of society.

Notes of gratitude

Practicing gratitude is science-backed good for you. I’m working through old postcards and nice stationery I bought throughout the year to say thank you to loved ones and friends. It’s also a break from screens or a good excuse to go buy a beautiful greeting card (or 5!).

💌 What other wholesome activities would you add to this list? Would love to hear more routines and rituals in the comments. Thanks for stopping by, and safe travels this holiday season.

I’m flying home to DC after another nostalgia tour of San Francisco1. I try to go back to the city once a year to retrace the steps of a former life. I lived in SF the year after I finished college, plus a few summers while I was still in school doing unpaid internships2.

Every time I visit, it feels painful — how could I have left this magical place?

San Francisco, of course, has its problems — huge ones. And it’s very easy to romanticize the city as a parachute tourist.

But as soon as I land and get a whiff of eucalyptus in the mist, I go full Pepé Le Pew. I love MUNI. I love the pastels of Daly City. I love Ocean Beach whether it’s shrouded in fog or gleaming in the sun. My heart implodes. Then I work through a collection of precious places from my past, squeeze in a few new stops, and leave again.

I thought I’d share that collection should you be heading there anytime soon.

Is this a power ranking of every establishment in San Francisco? Absolutely not. Can you find more thorough and timely recommendations on Eater or SFGate? Definitely.

This is a list3 informed by the extremely niche experience of someone who worked in San Francisco hospitality PR for one year before moving away, quitting PR, becoming a travel journalist, and spending the next decade visiting sporadically. It’s biased and incomplete — just a roundup of my recently vetted4 favorite haunts (many people’s favorite haunts, in fact! They’re no secret).

I am no San Francisco expert, but merely a San Francisco enthusiast. And here is my list. (And here it is on Google Maps.)

Eating

A16: Back when I was a PR underling, I was assigned to help on the A16 account. This was very intimidating for me, a 23-year-old — as was having any kind of responsibility at that age.

But the restaurant was not a hard sell; they served fantastic seasonal Italian food (made in a certified legit wood-fired oven); everyone loved its co-founder and wine director, Shelly Lindgren; it earned Michelin Bib Gourmand status.

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I thought A16 was special at the time, but on my return visits as a civilian years later, I have become a superfan. The pizza is excellent (best enjoyed with Calabrian chili oil). The service is welcoming. The James Beard Award-winning wine list is an education — a fun one. 2355 Chestnut St. (They’ve also opened a few more locations across the Bay Area.)

Beit Rima: Described on its Instagram as “Arabic comfort food,” Beit Rima now has two locations. I went to the one in Cole Valley and had an incredible mezze sampler lunch. It’s the kind of food you could eat every day for every meal. 138 Church St.

• Mister Jiu’s: San Francisco’s Chinatown is a treasure. I used to walk through it weekly on my way to work, even though it required a detour. Mister Jiu’s — a Michelin-starred Chinese-American restaurant and bar — is tucked on a quiet side street in the heart of the neighborhood. Every time I go I think “WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS AMAZING” because the food and the drinks and the atmosphere are electric. 28 Waverly Place.

• Zuni Café: Zuni was a few blocks from my apartment and out of my price range, and thus became my white whale restaurant for years. I finally went in 2024 and was deeply charmed. It feels like a restaurant in a Nancy Meyers movie: classic, elegant, a little out of date by now, and better for it. No QR codes, just white tablecloths and attentive servers. Yes, the chicken is worth it. But one favorite dish from a second visit was a persimmon and goat cheese salad. 1658 Market St.

• Swan Oyster Depot: Seafood and wine at the bar, hello!! Cash-only and very famous, but worthy of the hype, even at over 100 years old(!). 1517 Polk St.

• King of Noodles: A staple near my friend Mo’s apartment. THE BEEF NOODLE SOUP! THE GREEN BEANS. THE PERFECT GREEN BEANS. ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT’S ALL WONDERFUL. 1639 Irving St.

Doing

• Ocean Beach: A perfect place to go on a walk or jog or, if you surf, surf. On a foggy day, you’ll feel like you’re at the end of the earth. Sloat Blvd and Great Hwy.

• PARKS! Golden Gate! Dolores! Alamo Square! Bernal! Bike through them! Picnic!

• Dolphin Swimming & Boating Club: My friend Mo suggested we hit the Dolphin after I mentioned wanting to swim. I love “wild swimming” and we were working with perfect sunny fall weather. So we packed our suits and towels, drove to Fisherman’s Wharf, paid $12 for access to lockers, showers, and, crucially, a sauna. The sauna is heavenly after your dip in the bay, which is just steps from the club.

  Was the water cold? Yes. But not Maine cold. After a few scream-fueled strokes, we got used to the temperature, even without wetsuits. We swam for a half hour, laughing and spotting various birds and fish, and emerged exhilarated.

  If you didn’t want to spend $12, you could still swim at this spot without going through the club. But going in was part of the fun. It’s not like an upscale health club, or a we-want-to-live-forever biohacking lab. It’s a well-worn community artifact. I hope it lasts forever. 502 Jefferson St.

• The Mint Karaoke Lounge: A karaoke bar on Market Street down the block from my old apartment. Lots of regulars. It’s good form (and better for your positioning in the often long queue) to tip the DJ a few bucks when you drop your song request in the bucket. 1942 Market St.

Drinking

• Trick Dog: Award-winning cocktails in a very cool building in the Mission. Impeccable ice. 3010 20th St.

• Li Po Cocktail Lounge: A trippy Chinatown dive that dates back to the ‘30s. It’s famous for its mai tai but I usually go for a bottle of beer and the vibe. 916 Grant Ave.

• The Snug: My childhood friend Jacob co-owns The Snug and built, by hand, all of the wood fixtures you see inside this Pacific Heights bar (and outside, too. He built the parklets!!). Beyond the expert carpentry, the bar also has expert cocktails. If you go in the fall/winter, you must get the seasonal Brown Buttered Coffee, which is: Bourbon fat-washed with brown butter, house made chestnut liqueur, freshly brewed Verve coffee, molasses, winter spices, and “a cloud of our amaro cream, topped with toasted chestnut & sea salt.” It’s insane. 2301 Fillmore St.

Etc.

• I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen a “Tommy’s Margarita“ on a bar menu outside of San Francisco (even abroad!) paying homage to the original at Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant in the Richmond, but it’s more than I would have guessed when I lived around the corner from the place as an intern. (For the full lore, here’s a PUNCH deep dive.) 5929 Geary Blvd.

  

• Oysters at little shucker (also co-owned by Jacob). 2016 Fillmore St.

• Delightful stationery and gift shopping at post.script. 2413 California St.

• If you pass by the Batter Bakery kiosk in the Financial District, make a pit stop. I worked there in college and the treats are seriously good. 555 California St.

• If you are near the airport, Taqueria San Bruno is burrito nirvana. 1045 San Mateo Avenue, San Bruno.

And now, it’s time to land. I’d love to hear your San Francisco favorites in the comments.

They had a weird meal, which didn’t surprise me. How did they end up there? They said when they got to town, they poked around Google Maps, saw this restaurant had a gazillion reviews and 4.4 stars, and so they went. (A formula I also follow traveling.)

Even though the food critic has said the place has improved since that review, it would not(!!!!) be on my list of places to send a visitor — a visitor to one of the most stacked food cities in America.

Where would I send them? I decided to make a list from my perspective as a DC resident of 6+ years and travel writer forever in search of places that feel special. Not only restaurants, but bars and fun shops, too.

I made this to keep handy for visitors, and also to shout out some small businesses that work so hard to delight their customers and communities. It’s a hard time to be in hospitality.

FULL DISCLOSURE: This is not an exhaustive directory of every good spot in DC. It’s missing a lot!!! But it is also NOT SPONSORED. It’s a highly subjective, very biased list of places I love personally, and most of them in or near my neighborhood (Mount Pleasant). But we moved to Mount Pleasant because of the proximity to great small businesses. That is to say: I’m not listing a place because it’s close to me, I’m recommending it because I love it and want to shower them in public praise. But take the whole endeavor with a grain of salt.

Okay enough hedging, here’s the list (plus a Google Maps list for saving, too):

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Breakfast

• La Tejana: They sum it up perfectly on their Instagram: “🌶️ Breakfast Taco Shop By Day🍸 Casual Cocktail Bar By Night🏆 Bib Gourmand.” If you go on a weekday, you can catch it with no line. As Dan is from Texas and I like delicious things, these tacos are a staple meal in our household. The owners and staff could not be more lovely. 3211 Mount Pleasant St NW.

• The Wonderland Ballroom: A dive bar with a glorious plate of huevos rancheros, available only on weekends, starting at 11 a.m. (so this is more of a hangover brunch). 1101 Kenyon St NW.

Date night

• Bar Del Monte: A perfect restaurant. The food is seasonal and delicate, the wine list is dreamy, the space is airy and romantic. They do not take reservations so go early in case you need to put your name on the waitlist. 3054 Mt Pleasant St NW.

• Thip Khao: Laotian paradise. The crispy rice salad?????????? The laap?? Excellent. All of it. (Chef Seng Luangrath’s other restaurant, Baan Mae, is also listable.) 3462 14th St NW.

• Izakaya Seki: A Japanese masterclass. The closest I’ve felt to eating in Tokyo while being in DC. Flawless sashimi and grilled meats, bonkers vegetable dishes, and a thoughtful wine/beverage situation. 1117 V St NW.

• Martha Dear: Greek pizzeria! You cannot go wrong with whatever seasonal pizza they’re offering, but if you’re lucky, you’re there when they have my favorite of all time: a concord grape and sausage combination that haunts me (in a good way). 3110 Mt Pleasant St NW.

• Lutèce: Dan and I go here maybe once a year for a beautiful burger and wine at the bar and pretend we’re in Paris. 1522 Wisconsin Ave NW.

• Daru: Insanely good contemporary Indian cooking. Another “why don’t we live closer to this!!!!” kind of restaurant. 1451 Maryland Avenue NE.

• My Little Chamomile: A Turkish-ish small plates spot I’ve only been to once that charmed me deeply. It’s in Georgetown — a neighborhood squarely on the beaten path — and yet is very complicated to find, which makes you feel like being in on a secret. 3210 Grace Street NW, “Entrance from little Cherry Hill alley.”

• Reveler’s Hour: Magical pasta and wine in Adams Morgan. A place we’d go for a big birthday or an anniversary (because, not cheap, but worth every penny). 1775 Columbia Road NW.

All-day dining

• Manifest Bread: A former pop-up with a cult following finally has a brick-and-mortar in Riverdale (just outside of DC but you can still get there easily). They do expert baked goods (the bialys!), gorgeous baguette sandwiches, coffee, etc. They just started doing dinner (pizza, roast chicken, very cozy). 6208 Rhode Island Ave, Riverdale, MD.

  

• Cielo Rojo: A Mexican restaurant that never misses. Technically not DC-proper either, but so wonderful it must be mentioned. Go for lunch! Drinks! Breakfast! Dessert! Just go! 7211 Carroll Ave, Takoma Park, MD.

• Menya Hosaki: Eccentric hours, but if you can catch them, you’re rewarded with the best bowl of ramen in DC. 845 Upshur St NW.

• Chercher Ethiopian Restaurant & Mart: Quintessentially DC. Delicious Ethiopian food in a row house. The food is so vibrant and warm. 1334 9th St NW.

For friends with dietary restrictions

• Cielo Rojo: (see previous entry.)

• Ama: Northern Italian in Navy Yard. Everything is made with the most care, and very attentive to dietary restrictions of all sorts. 885 New Jersey Ave SE.

• Lapis: Per their Instagram, it’s “An Afgan bistro.” Per my experience: you walk in and feel like you’ve found the place. Low-lit, grown-up, always exceeds expectations when the expectations are already high. 1847 Columbia Rd NW.

Bars

• Haydee’s Restaurant: Where we had our wedding reception!! VERY STRONG MARGARITAS. Pupusas! Karaoke nights! Live jazz Sundays! The nicest family staff! 3102 Mt Pleasant St NW.

• The Raven Grill: Your classic dive. Cash only. Dan gathers people here to play Euchre regularly. 3125 Mt Pleasant St NW.

  

• Suns Cinema: An indie movie theater slash eccentric bar (you don’t need to be seeing a film to grab a drink here). Cocktails, wine, popcorn, and a patio primed for people watching. 3107 Mt Pleasant St NW.

• Marx: A low-key pub vibe, and a hub for events (like cumbia night!) 3203 Mt Pleasant St NW.

• OKPB: A not-cheesy speakeasy with perfect cocktails. May encounter a wait to get in. 3165 Mt Pleasant St NW.

  

Shops & Markets

• Nido Wine Shop & Market: A women-owned natural wine paradise with a glorious selection of snacks to make a gourmand’s tapas spread at home. They have a buzzy wine tasting on Fridays! 3155 Mt Pleasant St NW.

• Rice Market: When a flight to Thailand isn’t in your budget, there’s Rice Market. It’s a restaurant upstairs, and in the basement, you’ll find a trove of Asian pantry ingredients, plus whimsical ceramics, hosting accessories, fun wine, imported beer, cookbooks, and other trinkets. 1608 14th St NW, lower level.

• Each Peach: The best neighborhood “shoppy shop” that’s also a solid grocery store. After I’ve grabbed most of my produce down the street at El Progreso (you will not find a better avocado in America; they’re behind the register, so ask the cashier for one), I swing by Each Peach for the little luxuries: artisanal cheeses, pasta, natural wine, flowers from local farms, birthday cards, etc. They also make great sandwiches. 3068 Mt Pleasant St NW.

• Bold Fork Books: Next to Each Peach, a bookstore devoted to the culinary world. Cookbooks, memoirs by food people, zines, some cookware. A 10/10 just-go-to-browse kind of store. They’ve built a vibrant community through their great events. 3064 Mt Pleasant St NW.

• Gemini × Happy Ice Cream: Per their website: “In France they’d call us a cave à manger.” You’ll find natural wine, a staff who makes natural wine fun and approachable, outrageous ice cream, pizza, pasta, a tiny patio. Another elite people watching spot. 1509 17th Street NW.

• Domestique Wine: The first GREAT wine store I ever visited. The stuff of legend. Going feels like entering a grand wine library with towering shelves and endless possibilities. Yet somehow zero pretension — just a staff who’s passionate about what they do and want to bring you along for the ride. 10 Florida Ave NW.

Honorable mentions

• Virginia’s Banana Pudding at Ben’s Chili Bowl. (Fun fact: Virginia herself came through when I was eating it once!!!!) 1213 U St NW.

• Ube soft serve at Joia Burger. (Warning, it will stain your teeth purple momentarily). 3213 Mt. Pleasant St NW.

• Dim Sum at Hong Kong Pearl Seafood Restaurant. 6286 Arlington Blvd, Falls Church, VA 22044

Did I miss your favorite? Would love to hear your recommendations in the comments.

Income levels have varied, but I’ve now honored my dream for more than a decade.

It’s a fickle industry. Layoffs and budget cuts and technological advancements lurk around every corner, threatening the path forward. But for now, I get to keep doing what I’m doing. (Insert Howard Dean scream here.)

When other aspiring writers ask how I got here, I usually stress that you don’t need to go to journalism school or get a degree in creative writing to start. You don’t have to jump in hole hog either. I didn’t initially quit my corporate job(s); I started with side gigs and later worked in restaurants to subsidize my writing ambitions.

I also wail: READ!!!! YOU HAVE TO READ!!!!! Reading will make you a better writer.

You can benefit from reading just about anything, but the below is an incomplete list of the books and articles that have been impactful in my own journey. Some I keep on my nightstand or in the bottom of my luggage for easiest access; others I’ve listened to (and re-listen to regularly) when commuting, cleaning, traveling, etcetera.

Maybe they can help you too 🙇‍♀️

The 9 books that shaped my life writing

A writing 101 that’s also a gripping memoir: ”On Writing” by Stephen King is a gift. You’ll find basic instructions for becoming a better writer, plus a raw account of his road to success and sobriety. 10/10.

A more straightforward writing 101, recommended by King: “Several short sentences about writing” by Verlyn Klinkenborg is full of clear, practical writing advice, like don’t settle on a first draft. (An excerpt: “Your job as a writer is making sentences. Your other job includes fixing sentences, killing sentences, and rearranging sentences.”)

A masterclass on the craft: “Draft No. 4” by John McPhee (a 4x finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) gets into the nuts and bolts of writing from the perspective of a professor, author, and New Yorker contributor. The behind-the-scenes of the magazine’s fact-checking process is incredible (and a comforting reminder that we all make mistakes).

An antidote for writer’s block: “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield is a real “break glass in case of emergency” kind of book that will get you writing again when you’re stuck. I will always be grateful to the friend who recommended it when we were both living in L.A., trying to make it as writers, actually supporting ourselves by working at a trendy Thai restaurant. (You can buy his book here!)

An epic work of historical nonfiction: “The Cooking Gene” by Michael W. Twitty sets the bar so, so high with this beautifully written, deeply thorough piece of history and personal narrative.

A sacred text to build resilience: “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz is simple yet profound. The “Toltec Wisdom Book,” breaks down four agreements you should make with yourself to live a happier life, which include:

• “Be impeccable with your word”

• “Do not take anything personally”

• “Do not make assumptions”

• “Always do your best”

Each one of the lessons have been motivating on a personal and professional level.

A compelling gonzo journalism way to tell a sports story: “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall feels like going on an adventure. It’s fantastic storytelling, blending sports, science, travel, and history. It’ll also make you want to put down the book and start running, whether or not you’re into running.

A humbling lesson on our natural biases and flimsy memories: “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)” by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson will shake your faith in the human brain. Multi-hyphenate Jon Ronson (more on him below) recommended this book during a Zoom workshop of his I took years ago, and TL;DR: we’re prone to misremembering, so writers, take heed. You better take notes, record your interviews, and ask more questions.

A cliché that’s also helpful in fostering your creativity: “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron is another jumper-cable-of-a-book when you need to restart. It’s not the magic pill some people on the internet swear it is, and to this day I’ve never finished it. Instead, I pick it up a few times a year for a reminder that: a) journaling is a helpful practice for writers and non-writers alike; b) creativity is a muscle you can build; c) we should be going to museums more.

Journalists/authors/humorists you should read whenever they publish anything:

• Caity Weaver: Every Caity Weaver article is a little treat from the heavens. The Atlantic sent her on a trip to Paris and the article is so good it made me want to quit writing. (Also, her reposts are one of the reasons it’s hard to give up Twitter.)

• Gary Shteyngart: Another multi-hyphenate, devastatingly funny legend. “Absurdistan” and “Super Sad True Love Story” are my favorite of his books but I’ve been loving his recent bout of wild tales in The Atlantic. (He’s also on Substack!)

• Jon Ronson: Another of the GOATS. “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” should be required reading for every high schooler and “The Psychopath Test” is an all-time first-person journalism page-turner. Don’t miss his BBC podcast series “Things Fell Apart” either.

• David Sedaris: His writing is proof that anything can be funny. I have listened to “Me Talk Pretty One Day” over and over and over and over again, mostly because it is a delight, but also for the lesson that the path to becoming a writer can be nonlinear. His recent article on meeting the Pope was encroyable.

• Jia Tolentino: A culture writer batting a thousand. This was maybe my first introduction to her work and I’ve been hooked since.

Honorable mentions, article edition:

• Best absurdism: “5 Times The Animatronic Fox On Splash Mountain Addressed Me By Name And Told Me He Was Going To Marry My Dad” from Clickhole (I’ve never figured out who actually wrote it).

• Best pandemic relic (and unintentionally more Disney): “I Went to Disney World” by Graeme Wood.

• Best longform: “The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage” by Doug Bock Clark.

• Another best longform: “Retirement the Margaritaville Way” by Nick Paumgarten.

Honorable mentions, inspiring Substacks edition:

John Paul Brammer; Rachel Tashjian; Hunter Harris; David Coggins.

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And now, back to you: What writers inspire you? What book changed your life or writing? Would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations in the comments 📚

Happy reading!

It was time to leave our Montenegrin campsite, and Dan was backing up the van. With the help of my arm waiving, he’d have to wrangle a three-point turn — avoiding stone walls, plastic barriers, and a few trees — then coast down a bumpy, narrow hill, get the van in gear, and pull onto a busy two-lane highway along the Bay of Kotor. We’d pass the restaurant where a server told us: “In Montenegro, you can have 3 beers [and drive] and it’s fine with police.” Then, allegedly, we’d make it to Albania.

The van was a monster.

The customized 2016 stick shift VW seemed perfect for our Balkan road trip when I found it online, and I fully believed I could drive it. I’d use the trip to finally learn to drive a manual, and even got an international drivers license. But once we saw its hulking size in person — more Mack Truck than minivan — that dream was dead in the water. My role became co-pilot, spotter, “passenger princess.”

Dan would do the heavy lifting, I’d do things like stay in his mirror.

The van was supposed to give us freedom.

We could see Europe off-the-beaten-path. We’d save money by not needing a hotel every night. If we loved a place, we could stay longer. If we didn’t, we could pack up and leave, try somewhere else.

Continental Breakfast

A Europe recap

Last summer, Dan and I embarked on a monthlong trip to Europe — part work assignment, part vacation. Here is a collection of stories, blog posts, social media musings and more recapping the adventure…

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3 months ago · 13 likes · 2 comments · Natalie Compton

The plan was great on paper, if you looked at the paper quickly. There were some obvious red flags. Like: Dan hadn’t driven stick in years; I couldn’t drive one at all; we’d never been to this corner of the Balkans; and we were on a tight timeline but had nothing formally planned. We had 8 days to get from Croatia to Albania, and I needed to spend the bulk of them in Albania for a story (which is out now!).

The reality of the situation began overtaking the romanticized version as we descended into the underground parking lot of an Aldi supermarket to pick up our van from its owner in Split, Croatia.

I’d found Balkan Campers online just as I was ready to give up on attempting any kind of road trip across Europe. Prices were staggering to drop off a car (even a tiny manual compact) in one country and return it in another. But on Balkan Campers — a sort of Airbnb for vans in the region — rates seemed more reasonable1.

The van owner lived in Montenegro, and had driven the VW to meet us in Croatia. He brought both of his parents along, and they stood by while he showed us the ins and outs of the rig — how to fold out the double bed, how to re-fill the outdoor shower and use the stove (although we didn’t plan on touching it; a huge joy of traveling is trying other peoples’ cooking). I circled the van, recording a video to capture any existing dings and scratches so we wouldn’t get charged for them later.

I considered asking the owner to pull the van out the parking spot — a tight one next to a concrete column, and the garage was busy. But I also didn’t want him to think we couldn’t handle it ourselves. What if he waited around to watch us drive away? What if we stalled out?? What if he refused to rent it to us after all???????

So instead, we shook hands, waved to the parents, watched the family leave and got behind the wheel.

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Two minutes later, we scraped the everlovingshit out of the side of the van on the concrete column. It sounded like the Titanic scraping her iceberg. A man started shouting to us in Croatian, presumably something like, “holy fuck, you hit the column!” I jumped out to see the damage, while garage traffic continued its impatient business. I took this photo:

Was this rock bottom? We weren’t sure. We took a couple laps around the garage to get our footing. There was some stalling. There were some close calls with more concrete barriers. But Dan learned the old girl’s tricks and we made it up the spiral ramp — whose ticket machine was menacingly positioned halfway up, so you had to pause on a slant to pay to leave. Then we got on the freeway, because why the hell not.

The van remained an x-factor for the remainder of the trip.

Yes, it could get us to remote campgrounds where we could swim in glorious water. We enjoyed Camping Moskato, which I featured in my Albania article, where “only a parking lot separated us from the beach. We paid $35 to park our van under an olive tree, and we could walk to the ocean in under three minutes. It had clean showers, a laundry unit, and a restaurant where you could get coffee in the morning and draft beer in a frozen mug at night.”

But the van was too big and unwieldy for the many roads, bridges and hairpin turns better suited for Mini Coopers. Dan had to scrutinize all of the directions Google Maps created to assess whether it was sending us into tiny town danger. Other drivers rode our tail within an inch, and passed us on harrowing mountain roads. Parking the absolutely ginormous vehicle was almost always hazardous.

The van was tall. So tall that we couldn’t see down into the mirrored kiosk at the Croatia-Montenegro border and thought no one was inside. Maybe we didn’t have to stop? We rolled through, then stopped once we heard men hollering at us to come back. Dan whipped the VW into reverse. Instead of arresting us, the border guard had a sense of humor and let us off easy; another pair of idiot Americans had arrived.

We stayed in campgrounds, a hotel, a pretty shitty guesthouse I found for cheap on Airbnb. By the time we got to Moskato, we were many days into the adventure, and had finally, maybe, gotten the hang of the beast of a car. We could finally relax. We drank special wine we’d brought from Slovenia and ate underwhelming pizza for dinner at a restaurant nearby.

The next morning, we drove nearly four hours to a farm-to-table restaurant where we parked alongside other camper vans staying the night; after our lovely meal, we could see diners on the terrace while we changed for bed, trying not to bonk our heads on the VW ceiling.

I have now rented a camper van twice. The first was for a story back in 2021, and only for a few nights. I planned that jaunt poorly, too. Maybe we will try vanning again someday. It’s more comfortable than camping, but also more pricey. (Especially on this trip!!! The insurance we bought wasn’t enough to cover the cement post damage, which ended up costing us about a grand to fix.) I’m not sure Dan will go for it.

Tonight I asked him if he remembered one particularly excruciating Van Moment on Croatia’s Peljesac peninsula, when I directed us down a steep one-lane road that could take you right into the sea if you, say, were only on your first day of renting a big huge van and were still figuring out the gears.

Dan said he remembered the moment, but he didn’t need to. He closed his eyes.

“But we made it out — it can’t hurt us anymore,” he said.

The stress of the experience shredded every nerve in our systems, but we still had fun because we had each other. Unless you have a Dan, or don’t mind a wild goose chase, I’m not sure I’d recommend trying to repeat our van experiment.

If we had a redo, I’d still camp across Europe again but take a small car with a rooftop tent. We’d stop for border guards and skip the pizza. I’d have learned how to drive a stick before we landed on the continent, or at least do a better job of staying in Dan’s mirror.

BTW: here’s my Google Map from the trip, populated with recommendations and places we stayed, ate and swam. Reference with caution, we didn’t go to all of them!

Today was not that morning.

Instead, I slept in, put on a robe and ate leftover summer stone fruit tart for breakfast with Dan, and thought about our favorite hotel from the Big Trip.

The award for “Hotel that was so great we stayed longer” goes to: Kmetija Štekar

We weren’t supposed to spend much time in Slovenia (embarrassing to admit, in hindsight). After our friend’s wedding, our plan was to hike around Austria, maybe spend a couple days in Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital, then train down to Croatia to pick up a camper van bound for Albania.

But bad weather interrupted our Alpine ambitions, leaving us with a blank slate. Slovenia beckoned. So we bought train tickets, found a guesthouse on Airbnb and began noodling.

Social media may be a toxic hellscape, but it’s also been a deep well of good fortune for travel. It’s how I stay in touch with people I meet on the road, a way to connect with friends of friends, a source of local knowledge and invaluable tips.

I was trawling for such tips when I posted a photo of our Slovenia map to my Instagram stories with the caption “scheming.” Alex Gable answered the call: Kmetija Štekar, a “winemaker agriturismo,” he wrote me, was definitely worth a visit.

Gable is the co-founder of the natural wine importer and distributor Natty Wine, who we called on to source our wedding wine1. When you follow him on Instagram, you are treated to delicious scenes of Europe, where he lives, and I trusted his recommendation wholeheartedly.

We looked up Kmetija Štekar (“Kmetija" means farm in Slovenian); it was advertised as a natural winery and farmstay in the western region of Brda near the Italian border. Booking.com said our dates miraculously aligned, as the place, which only has a few rooms, was “Not usually available – you're in luck!” I booked for two nights ($222, total), Dan rented us a car and we left for Brda the next day.

In a few hours, we were in the most beautiful wine region I’d never heard of. There were terraced vineyards, picturesque villages with farmers passing through on tractors. Spectacular.

We followed signs for Štekar and found a lovely house covered in neon bougainvillea. A friendly blonde woman came out from the kitchen. She could not find our reservation. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

I was not. It turns out Štekar is a Slovenian surname, and there were two Štekar properties in the same town.

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We got back in the car and drove two minutes down the road to the real Kmetija Štekar. It also had a lovely house, plus signs of being a winery (namely the steel tank parked near a cave-like garage). Instead of bougainvillea, it was teeming with lavender and globe thistle, big fat bees, and leafy greenery snaking up railings.

Tamara, who owns the property with her husband (and winemaker) Janko, welcomed us, and we chatted about our mutual connection, Alex. She showed us to our room — an upgrade to a suite with a balcony, which we could not refuse. It opened up to the property’s natural pool, which uses a pond filtration system instead of chemicals. I took so many photos of this pool, and the frogs who also enjoyed it.

I could go on for 3,000 words about Kmetija Štekar. But instead, I’ll break down some what-you-need-to-knows if you’re considering a stay.

Pros of the hotel:

• The setting. We were awestricken by the view. You are at the crest of a hill of vineyards overlooking even more vineyards. The flowers. The bees. The chorus of cicadas.

• The wine. Immaculate. Vibrant. A perfect introduction to Slovenian orange wine. You can arrange a tasting and then amble back to the pool for a dip. We also rented e-bikes and toured other amazing natural wineries in the area, like Radikon. (Reservations required in advance.)

• The breakfast. A typical and excellent little European buffet with fresh produce, meats and cheese. And the staff (sometimes the owners or their adult kids if they’re in town, as was our case) offers to cook some golden-yolked eggs however you’d like.

• The aesthetic. Rustic, chic, cozy, low-key. The blue painted wood furniture? Perfect.

Cons of the hotel:

• Not-so-walkable. This place isn’t as walker-friendly as you might expect from a European vacation. Walking to one (great) dinner was a 40-minute adventure on a road with very speedy cars; otherwise, we drove to fantastic places Tamara recommended.

• Beds. Americans often find European hotel beds too hard and short. At 6’2”, Dan was too tall for our bed here, so we slept at a diagonal which was pretty weird.

In the easiest decision of the trip, we decided to extend our stay at Kmetija Štekar through the rest of the week. I would have stayed another. And another.

Snežatno 31a, 5211 Kojsko, Slovenia, +386 40 221 413, reservations here.

The trip. Is over. I’m long off the European time zone, blowing my chances at being a morning person, yet again.

People ask how it went, and I panic. Where do I start? The highlights or the lowlights? Wild swimming in England felt like 12 years ago. Allegedly we went to Albania. Each place deserves a better story.

A full recap is too daunting, so I’m tearing the trip into bite-sized chunks. Those chunks will be divided into superlatives. For whimsy.

Most surprising delight: Vabali, Berlin

Berlin is what people say it is. Artistic, cold, clean, full of bicycles and trains. We spent about a week there, in part so I could learn about its storied nightlife for an article.

We also had time to see some Very Cool Friends who live there, and over dinner they told us that we had to go to a spa called Vabali, described on its website as a “Balinese wellness oasis in the middle of Berlin.”

I was skeptical. Didn’t we have to catch up on “German” things during our stay? A Southeast Asian spa felt like cheating. But these were, objectively, the coolest people we’ve ever met. We had to investigate.

Reader, it was glorious. Like if Miyazaki designed a Japanese/Indonesian onsen with a deeply elegant and cozy library. Day passes start at $57 on weekdays, and includes access to the 10 different saunas, 3 steam baths, 4 pools, nap lounges, a very good restaurant, among other amenities. Phones and photos are not allowed inside.

We sweat and swam and ate and lounged in robes ($6 each to rent) on velvet chaise longues. In the “wet” areas, swimsuits and other clothing are forbidden, and it’s not divided by gender. Very German! It felt like a challenge: can a self-conscious American, born into a culture that teaches women to hate their bodies, forget her insecurities long enough to go full buck in a sea of svelte Europeans? In a co-ed locker room I found out that yes, I could. It felt healing to let go. Plus, the setting was divine.

We only meant to spend two hours there, but 6 later, it was painful to leave.

Other Berlin meal highlights:

• Material wine bar (where I loved the carafe above)

• Al Faisal Grills und Restaurant, a late-night savior

• Trio contemporary German bistro

Best wedding: Cam & Mich’s

Okay, maybe it was the only wedding we attended on the trip. But it was so fun and sweet and special, it’s worth a mention. Congratulations again to the beautiful couple!!!!!!!! The inspiration for this entire trip.

Most idyllic fever dream: a day trip to Hvar

Split, Croatia is an oft-bucket-listed city on the Dalmatian Coast that does, truly, have some incredible architecture and history. But its old town has been Tulumified and Las Vegas’d to the point that I would never recommend it. In the summer at least, its jaw-droppingly magical stone passageways are clogged with swarms of group tours, and sloppy bachelor and bachelorette parties, singing drunk at the top of their lungs, bopping between mediocre bars and restaurants.

When the crowds disperse and you find a moment of calm, you can appreciate the beauty. Then you turn a corner and run into a rubber duck chain store (a phenomenon that has been popping up in tourist cities — the new fish pedicure spas, I guess).

I was crestfallen when we walked from the train station to our hotel. This — this! — was how I was introducing Dan to Croatia. This waterfront tragedy that smelled like rotting garbage.

There was a silver lining: Split is a fantastic ferry hub. The next morning, we walked to the ferry terminal and bought two tickets ($50, total) for the nearby island of Hvar. It’s an hour and a half ride, and wasn’t too choppy on our sunny day of passage.

When we stepped off the ferry, my dopamine skyrocketed.

Hvar is not off the beaten path. It’s a well-known island, but it has no “Game of Thrones” filming location fame and is just far enough to keep many potential visitors away. It’s the Croatia you envision when you dream of a Croatian summer — the Croatia I remembered from my trip more than a decade ago. Windex clear water, so clear it looks like the boats are floating in air. A picturesque clock tower sits behind a rocky beach near the marina. This was it.

We rented a scooter with a tiny engine for $60, the day rate, which felt steep considering we only needed it for a half-day. But we had no time to haggle. Our ferry back to Split was around 8 pm and it was already after noon.

The rental staff warned us against going to a restaurant I’d found on Google Maps; the road was too steep for a 50cc hog carrying two milk-fed adults. So we pivoted, and I clung to Dan from the back of the bike and directed him to a beach, like a helpful marsupial. Koala Magellan.

The first beach wasn’t quite right, so we kept going until we found signs for Zarace, another option our scooter rental guy recommended. It looked like a short but dramatic hike downward to the beach and restaurant, so we parked at the top of the cliff, knowing full well there was no way the scooter could haul us back up.

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And then we were there. Paradise. Not “White Lotus” paradise, with butlers and silk-white sand. Paradise as in a little beach with a few people, a few sailboats bobbing in the protected cove where we could swim in salty water.

We set up our towels on the pebbles in the only fraction of shade we could find, and tip toed into heaven. I wanted to soak the moment into my cells and keep it forever.

Better yet, there was Gego Restaurant, a mom and pop overlooking the beach. We splurged on an $85 lunch of Aperol spritzes, mussels, seafood pasta, house white wine served with ice cubes, espressos, tiramisu to share. I bummed a Parliament from the table next to us. And then we went back to swim and nap.

As a storm cloud formed over the beach, we packed up and went back to the scooter, back to the ferry, back to Split.

We ate a cheap, easy ćevapi dinner (loosely, a Slavic take on a gyro or pita, with little sausages stuffed into bread) outside of Split old town, which felt better than fueling one of the tourist traps. And even with the Split bookends, it was a perfect day.

Friends who know Croatia better than me say you can have an even better time on nearby islands like Vis, Korcula and Mljet. I hope to investigate those claims someday.

Stay tuned for the next Big Trip™ installations, including: Saddest meal; Most essential purchase; Hotel that was so great we stayed longer; Other hotel that was so great we stayed longer; Most obvious best activity; Worst return on [effort] investment; Most stressful moment of the trip; Best use of free will.

I could be spiraling, but instead I’m focused on a GLORIOUS GIFT in my horizon: a month in Europe. It’ll be 3/4 business, 1/4 leisure (a friend’s wedding in Austria was the catalyst for parlaying a vacation into a 3-week reporting trip).

Here’s the rough draft:

The trip will start in the U.K., with stops in London (a repeat) and York (new-to-me!), before continuing in Berlin where I’ll catch up with Dan.

The last time I went to Berlin was in 2017 on a Jägermeister press trip (back when I was a freelancer and could go on press trips — they are forbidden in my current job per ethics guidelines, which I appreciate). We got there after quick overnights in Vienna and Prague, maybe took a tour of the city to see the Berlin Wall (I think?) and drank a lot of Jäger. I’d planned on staying longer and booked a hostel for a week, then got a terrible flu (from all the Jäger??) and stayed in bed nearly the entire time.

Which is all to say, I don’t know anything about Berlin and would appreciate your tips. In the meantime, I subscribed to Yolo Journal so I could enjoy their very thorough Berlin Black Book.

After Berlin, it’s off to Prague for a few days before training down to Austria where I’ll be off the clock. This whole trip was centered around the wedding celebration and some hiking in the southeast.

Then I’ll jump back into work mode, and we’ll resume our southward route to Slovenia for a few days in Ljubljana before taking another train to Croatia — a country I haven’t been back to since a family vacation in 2010.

On this visit, Dan and I will go on an allegedly beautiful train journey from Zagreb to Split then rent a camper van to drive down to Albania. We’ll take our time, stopping along the way to explore beaches, rural villages, see a bit of Montenegro before doing a deeper dive on Albania. The camper van is a manual, which I do not know how to drive but Dan does. I will try to catch up and see if I can take some shifts behind the wheel. No promises.

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The adventure ends with a flight out of Lisbon, Portugal — another blast from the past from my former freelance life. I spent time in the city in 2017 and wrote about it for GQ. What didn’t make the article was the fact that I’d booked a room on Airbnb that had NO WINDOWS. I spent many spooky twilight hours fighting jet lag, going nuts in that little room. A particularly low point was doing a delirious phone interview with Night + Market chef Kris Yenbamroong from bed in the middle of the night because I’d done the math on the time difference wrong.

But a high point from the trip was meeting food researcher/consultant/food world legend Miguel Andrade for an interview over a drink. He taught me things like: to the Portuguese, foreigners are notoriously underdressed; and dinner in Lisbon starts around 9 P.M. “unless you’re some sort of monster” I later wrote in the article.

It will be a pleasure to return to Portugal, if only for a day and a half.

The whole trip will be a fact-finding, road-testing, content-capturing whirlwind. An introduction to new countries and cultures, a nostalgic return to others. It will be exhausting and chaotic and challenging, and hopefully also enriching and uplifting in the middle of a painful year.

While my company is covering most of the work portion of the trip, we’re doing it all on a budget; we’re splurging on one hotel for the wedding ($227 per night to stay at a 12th century Austrian castle???????) and can maybe swing a few nice meals, but we’ll also stay at a hostel and modest guesthouses, plus camping. I’m hoping to bring back approachable tips, not show off an aspirational jaunt.

If you’d like to follow along, I’ll be posting updates on planning, packing and day-to-day dispatches from TikTok, a new ✨medium✨ I’ve been exploring per my newish job shift, and sharing videos to Instagram, plus filing stories for the paper.

And please comment your best recommendations for any of the destinations mentioned above!!!!!!!!! I’m still cobbling this beast together, and leave next week.

Until then, danke / faleminderit / hvala / obrigado / děkuju / thank you for reading 💌

Of course, I fantasize about leaving all the time. (Not Dan, I’d bring him with me.) We could run from country to country, no ID badge lanyard dangling from my neck, no $14 Sweetgreen salad lunches. The only problem is he loves his job teaching kids at a high school, and I still love mine and the people I work with. And a couple weeks ago, my job got more exciting.

As you may have heard, the newspaper business is in crisis. We’re competing for subscription dollars with everything from other media outlets, to Netflix, YouTube Premium, Substack, egg prices. So in an effort to meet people where they’re at (social media), our company has launched the “Creator Hub,” a division to more effectively translate our journalism into “content.”

I applied to be part of the first cohort of reporters in the Creator Hub and was accepted(!) along with fashion critic Rachel Tashjian; sports reporter Ava Wallace; tech experts Geoff Fowler and Chris Velazco, and contributing columnist Dr. Trisha Pasricha.

That means for the next six months, I’ll be making more videos to tell stories and report the news, and writing less (filing one article a week instead of two).

Monica Rodman, my bff/video producer, will edit at least half of the videos and I’ll do some editing too (like this!). Plus we have a team of people who will approve our ideas, pitch us assignments, weigh in on edits.

The best part: they want us to travel more!!!!!!! They want us to make videos in the field, and get out more than I do now. Next week, I’ll meet Mo in NYC for a day of filming. I’m putting together a sweeping Europe tour spanning at least five countries.

We’ll be testing stuff (travel pillows, trains) to help people demystify online reviews, much like this investigation of the biggest buffet in Las Vegas. We’ll report on fascinating people, places and phenomena (think my dispatch from the world’s longest-running water competition). And I’ll keep interviewing beloved tastemakers in my fledgling series.

We’re smoking this thing to the filter.

When I first started experimenting with videos last year I was nervous and uneasy. Namely: is this cringe? Now I am absolutely chuffed.

It’s been a meaningful and frustrating pleasure to learn Adobe Premiere Pro from scratch this year. I’d forgotten about my teenage years, spending hours behind the computer editing “movies” I made from filming my friends, or the group video projects I made pretending to be a newscaster. When I’m editing now, I get into a flow state that’s hypnotic and joyful.

There is a little “The Substance” / cautionary tale to the whole thing. I’m using my “old” way of doing journalism to make something 🔥sexy and new🔥. One generates the other! The balance must be respected! But if I quit doing the meaningful journalism part of the Matrix, the only thing left is the shallow influencer. Not my dream. I’m hearing Dan now: “I think that metaphor got away from you.”

So now what? I’d love any tips for video ideas/trips/things to test. Please drop any ideas in the comments. Are there places in the world you’re curious to see? Travel gear you’d like to buy but aren’t sure if it’s worth the hype? Weird festivals or competitions or people I should know about? Legends I should interview? The lines are open.

And as always, thanks for stopping by.

A few miles from José Andrés’s house, I noticed my shoe. Sticky and wet. I looked down and saw a streak of red. Not ideal.

The chef was hosting a lunch to announce his new partnership with a Spanish rice company, and invited some reporters over to eat paella. Not my usual beat, but who would say no? It'd be a great networking opportunity — José isn’t just a food icon; he’s a travel authority, too. And paella!

It could have been a cut-and-dried bike commute to his Maryland home, but of course it wasn’t.

Somewhere between getting on my bike and taking the metro, my sharp-ass bike pedal had nipped my heel, and the outpour from the small cut was bleeding above its pay grade.

The afternoon was supposed to be my José Andrés redemption story. I did not want to make a weird impression on the world’s most famous chef/humanitarian.

Not for a second time.

Chapter one: Las Vegas, 2016.

José Andrés was bounding through his restaurant Bazaar Meat inside the SLS hotel (now the Sahara), and I was chasing him.

A few weeks earlier, I’d gotten an email from a publicist that started: “Any interest in coming to Las Vegas to watch Chef Jose Andres butcher an ox?!”

The answer was Big Time yes, so I pitched a story — in my own (cringe) words — “covering this whole shebang” to my editor at Vice. Then I flew to Nevada.

The butchering was part of a “whole-ox feast,” an event for the Las Vegas Food and Wine Festival. It began with the breakdown of a 2,200-pound Black Angus named Little Dogie, and moved on to a 12-course tasting dinner.

A spontaneous tour of the restaurant followed. The sprawling dim-lit Vegas steakhouse was surrealist glitz meets … meat. Antler chandeliers. Glass cases of massive dry aging steaks. Croquetas served in glass shoes. Open kitchens with a “fire stage,” a.k.a. huge wood-burning grills.

Cameras flashed as José weaved through tables of other diners. We weaved behind him, like dazzled children following the Pied Piper.

The magnetic chef eventually settled into a booth, ready to hold court with the press and VIPs.

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José’s team had promised a short window to run through interview questions. I’d be lucky to make it through five. As previously mentioned, twenty-five-year-old me was doing my best to “fake it till I make it” in my first year of freelance writing. I was running on equal parts enthusiasm and heart-bursting anxiety.

Soon it was showtime.

Some people scooched out of the booth, I scooched in. We were surrounded by the evening’s other talent, a bunch of men in the meat biz. I have no idea how the conversation started but at some point José said, almost mercifully, “don’t be nervous, girl.”

I waited to be yanked away by a Vaudeville hook.

Then my fifteen minutes stretched into two hours in the booth with the meat men.

It wasn’t my interview skills that kept me there so long. It was more of a grab-the-ox-by-the-horns-and-hold-on situation.

José is a charismatic quote machine; the dream dinner guest or source for a story. I’d ask a question, he’d regale the group with a rollicking answer, and the meat quorum would end up in a broader conversation. I smiled and took notes.

The night did not end with me becoming best friends with José Andrés, or even imprinting onto his memory. But I was happy with how the story turned out and that was a win.

Chapter two: jamón and a second chance.

Last week, I got the second most intriguing José Andrés-related email invitation of my life. The lunch, the paella.

I rolled up to José’s house in Maryland and stashed my bike behind some firewood, then ducked into a downstairs bathroom, worried about tracking blood around the chic modern home. Away from the group of local DC media, more chefs, and J.A.’s many employees, I dressed my wound, attended to my helmet hair and sweat-run makeup. I would be a normal person at this event, god damn it.

The lunch revolved around a beautiful outdoor kitchen, complete with a Grillworks wood-burning “Infierno,” reminiscent of the Bazaar Meat “fire stage.”

José came out barefoot, waxed poetic about the perfect paella. Cooks ran back and forth, tending to fat steaks and heaving paella pans. There was a cortador, or "jamon carver,” because of course there was. Well-dressed servers circled with morsels: oysters with caviar, pan con tomate with paper-thin jamón, heavenly flan.

I wasn’t covering the rice news for work, but I did want to see if José would sit for an impromptu interview. Not a two hour dialogue on all things meat, rather a casual brain picking about his travel preferences to make a video for social media.

In my ongoing quest to stay relevant in journalism, I’ve been experimenting more with TikToks and Reels and YouTube Shorts. The day before the paella lunch, a long-time source came by our office for coffee and agreed to play along with my haphazard, last-minute idea to record a pseudo talk show/TV interview, the first I’d ever done.

It felt like the format had potential, and wanted to try more. So I asked if I could “make a video for TikTok” with the Daytime Emmy award-winning television star who’s been the subject of a documentary directed by Ron Howard, who has his own ginormous following on TikTok.

Even so, José was game.

Once most of the party had left, we sat down in front of my iPhone. He adjusted the camera angle to eliminate the empty overhead space. To drive the amateur hour theme home, I’d forgotten my “good microphone” at the office; I’d be recording sound with my iPhone headphones (not Earbuds. The ones with a cord) as the mic. We started rolling.

“Are you in the camera or no?” he said, pointing out that I was indeed not in the frame. But I’d already started rambling. He delicately nudged the phone to get more of my face.

I started with the Vegas memory.

"We met six years ago,” I started, “and one of the things that you said that helped me a lot was, when we sat down to talk you said, ‘relax girl,’ and it did help because I was so nervous.”

I’d botched both the timeline and the exact phrasing, but close enough. José covered his face.

"I think, if you ask my three daughters, they will tell you that’s what I tell them too,” he said.

We moved on and talked travel snacks, favorite food cities, hotels versus Airbnbs. He was a delight.

Was it a redemption story? No. I didn’t need one, either. I just needed to forgive myself for being an anxious 25-year-old, and for still being an accident-prone 33-year-old. If the end result is getting to keep crossing paths José Andrés, I must be doing something right.

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At the beginning of the year, I pitched my bosses a big profile on Rick Steves. Not just a regular interview like I’d done in the past. But a rich, sweeping deep dive on the travel guru, TV personality, and guidebook writer extraordinaire.

Anytime we mention, cover, or publish Rick, our audience goes wild. They love Rick! We love Rick! Plus I grew up on Rick Steves guidebooks. Family lore has it that long ago, teenage me proclaimed I wanted to be Rick Steves one day.

My bosses were in, we just had to get the OK from the Big Guy. I emailed his team, asking to come shadow Rick in his hometown, Edmonds, Wash., for two days and see how he “trains for the off season” — that is, what’s Rick like when he’s not in Europe?

It was a tall order. Steves is very busy. His tour company Rick Steves’ Europe takes ~30,000 travelers abroad every year. Plus he shoots his TV show, writes and updates guidebooks, goes on radio shows and podcasts. Not to mention a proper profile requires a lot of time and vulnerability from the profilee.

But he said yes, so we got to work.

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I bought seven of Rick’s books to reference, read his “Travel as a Political Act” cover to cover (and recommend you do the same), combed through old articles, listened to old interviews, scrolled through his blog, watched his show.

We had lots of meetings about the story. We’d be sending my frolleague (friend/colleague) Mo Rodman to shoot/produce accompanying video, and later send a photographer (Daniel Berman) to do portraits.

During one planning Zoom, my boss goes, “what if Natalie dressed up like Rick to meet him?” Everyone laughed. The thing is, every Halloween, lots of people dress up like Rick Steves.

As Zoom laughter rang on, I knew my boss was right. It was a funny idea. But just the thought of executing it made me blush. What if he thought we were making fun of him?? Or that we weren’t serious about this story that we were definitely very serious about? Would he think I was an idiot?

On the morning of my trip out west, I went on a mission to Target to become Rick Steves.

Upon further review, Rick does not really dress like his most popular costume anymore. Lately he wears dark jeans, not the signature khakis. The rest is about the same. I shopped for both looks just in case, went with the dark jeans, and got on a plane to Edmonds.

Mo and I stayed in a quaint Airbnb that shared a parking lot with the Rick Steves’ Europe headquarters. We crammed episodes of Rick’s show and devised a plan for my outfit reveal. I’d meet him as my normal self on day one, and sometime during day two I’d surprise him with my Rick cosplay.

Then it was game time. On Sunday we had lunch with Rick’s comms person who gave us a rundown of the schedule. She made us feel relaxed and welcome; there was no warning that we’d be dealing with a total diva; she confirmed that Rick was a nice, normal guy — a workaholic, yes, but not an egomaniac celebrity. Then she took us to him.

Here’s the thing about interviewing someone who’s a media legend themselves. Rick knows showbiz, what the audience wants. He teed up a nice little TV-friendly scene for our meeting at a nearby pétanque court (the French version of bocce. Their answer to cornhole, if you will).

It had everything: European vibes, eclectic friends, lots of laughing, fierce competition. They pulled me into a game immediately and taught me to play. It was a delight.

After a few rounds, I peeled off with Rick, his girlfriend Shelley and her dog Jackson and went on a walk to the beach (Edmonds sits on Puget Sound). Mo recorded all the while, often walking backwards or sideways through town to get the shot.

It felt comfortable, easy — a far cry from the time I interviewed my other hero, Anthony Bourdain, a lifetime ago. It’s worth a detour to tell you about it.

In 2016 I was in the fledgling days of my writing career, still getting my footing in Los Angeles after living in Bangkok. A PR person emailed me an invitation to the premiere of a new season of Bourdain’s miniseries he did with an alcohol brand. I could meet him if I covered the event, was I interested? I said fucking absolutely and proceeded to become a bigger chaotic wreck than I’d ever been before.

2016 me could barely go on a date without self-sabotaging into a panic attack. How was I going to sit across from my idol? And be normal? And ask him interview questions???

The week before the premier, I was on an assignment for Vice in Las Vegas. At an afterparty, I confided to a well-known butcher about my Bourdain dilemma. He told me he took Beta Blockers — medicine that lowers blood pressure — before his on-stage demos to calm his nerves and asked if I wanted a few for the road.

Sure! I would love some of your unmarked pills, stranger I just met in Las Vegas! So he gave me a Kleenex full of blue pharmaceuticals. At that point I’d try anything to pull off the interview (and if we’re being honest, 2016 Natalie would try anything, period).

The morning of the Bourdain interview, I went on a power sprint around the Silver Lake reservoir, could barely eat. Around 5ish, I got to the press corral at the premiere feeling completely nauseous. Even better for sweaty me, the interview would be taking place outside the theater under a terrace canopy in the balmy September heat. They gave me a dram of whiskey while I waited.

When it was my turn, they motioned to a black leather couch next to Bourdain, who was the most thoroughly tanned man I’d ever seen. I’d worn a sort-of-short dress, and my legs were so sweaty between the heat and anxiety, I was afraid I was going to fall off my seat. I glided around that thing like a slip and slide.

My interview slot was 15 minutes, but I was so frazzled I barreled through my questions in seven, so green I never really asked a follow up. The story turned out mediocre, but I made Anthony Bourdain laugh once and I’ll always have that.

Anyway, Rick Steves.

As we walked and talked, conversation flowed easily. There were so many ways the interview could go. Rick would say one fascinating morsel and ricochet to another, presenting a challenge: do I follow up on that first thing, or let him keep going with this new train of thought? As I listened to my recordings later, I’d kick myself for not pressing him on some compelling nugget. But it had been difficult to make the call at the time.

The resulting profile was long, and so is this post!! So I can’t recap every magic moment. But I do want to share a few fun tidbits that didn’t make the story.

Like when Rick first started giving tours in Europe in the 80s, he said he wanted to give his customers a lesson in empathy for unhoused people so he wouldn’t reserve their hotel rooms until the last minute. He’d let their anxiety build up all day over where they were going to sleep, then eventually give in and find them a hotel.

Or that he was never a dog person until recently. He said he never respected people who had dogs, that they took up too much time and prevented you from being free to travel or work to the fullest. Then he started dating his girlfriend Shelley who had wonderful labradoodles and it changed his world. He feels bad about his old opinion.

We were walking along a coastal path as he told that story. Rick pointed to the water and shared that when he was a kid, his dad — Dick Steves — had accidentally run over the family dog. The family came down to this very waterfront to give “Pookie” a sort of viking funeral. They wrapped the dog in a sack with a brick, threw it into the water on a dark stormy night, cried together and left. “That was the last time I ever loved a dog,” Rick said, then burst into a giant laugh.

Rick! Our entire time together was like that. He’d share some crazy story, laugh, then launch into something else equally interesting.

Our walk ended at his house up on a hill overlooking Edmonds. It looked like the nice home of an orthodontist, not a gaudy McMansion of a business mogul (seriously. He’s the sole owner of a private company that generates $100+ million annually).

There was a sporty charcoal Audi in the driveway. Rick famously drove a clunker for decades. In a fantastic 2019 profile of Steves in the New York Times, reporter Sam Anderson noted: “When I visited [Rick], the back seat of his car was covered with a greenish slime, practically disintegrating, because of a mysterious leak.” Word on the street is his son finally convinced him to upgrade from slime-mobile to a decent ride.

Inside, the house was decorated with travel nicknacks and memorabilia, much of which were gifts. Like I mention in the profile, Rick doesn’t do souvenirs anymore unless it’s taxidermy. He’d have even more stuffed creatures around, apparently, but “the women in my life have forbid it,” he told me.

Rick still has the post cards he sent to his family in his early days of traveling. They are meticulously detailed. Of course this guy would grow up to become a guidebook authority! He has been innately keen on documenting what he saw around him well before he was paid to do so.

He played us some piano, some trumpet, and then it was time for dinner. Shelley heated up leftover chili she’d made the night before. Rick made garlic bread (more on that here) and poured us glasses of wine from a bottle he’d been given at a speaking event.

Then we gabbed, unwinding after a very full day of being “on.” I brought up the Halloween costumes. What does he think when people dress up like him? Rick laughed, said he thought it was funny. Boom. There was my golden ticket.

Rick drove us home. We felt like like his kids, Mo in the backseat. I said how much I liked Shelley and he said in a low, silly voice like a cowboy in a Spaghetti Western: “I’m a lucky man.” You could tell he meant it.

At the Airbnb, Mo and I conspired. We were going to meet Rick out for lunch the next day then go to his office to shadow him at work. In between those settings, I’d change and surprise Rick at headquarters.

Part one went off without a hitch. Lunch (at the senior center he donated $4 million to help build) was very endearing. Then Rick dashed off ahead of us, Mo followed to his office, I went to wardrobe.

We told Rick to just start working without me, no need to wait. Mo was supposed to set up so they could capture the moment of surprise.

But as I was changing, Rick kept asking where I was, even calling me to get to the bottom of it. He didn’t want to begin until I got there, now I was holding everybody up.

By this point, I was fully dressed and ready to go, waiting for Mo to give me the green light. I paced around the Airbnb in full Rick regalia wondering if this is the worst move of all time. Then I heard something. It was … my name? Being called by someone? By … Rick Steves?

From the Airbnb I could see a scene reminiscent of Juliet beckoning for Romeo — except it was Rick Steves leaning out of his office window yelling for me to hurry up.

Mo mercifully text me the all-clear. I exploded out of my front door, very Kramer-like. But with Rick still by the window, could he see me? I didn’t want to ruin the surprise so I tried to stay as close as I could to the wall, speed-slinking around to the office. Think Mission Impossible meets Dumb and Dumber.

Another issue: the prop Rick glasses Mo found me were not prop at all. They had MEGA prescription lenses that warped the world into a dizzying blur. I was near-blind in my scramble through the parking lot and could not see a cascade of concrete steps. My foot came down hard expecting sidewalk where no sidewalk existed. I went flying forward, Rick Steves guidebook still in hand.

My life flashed before my deformed eyes. Somehow I didn’t crash down and hit the asphalt with my teeth. Instead I caught my balance and kept running, adrenaline peaking.

I knocked on the office door; an employee answered. I struck a pose like “voila!” and said “it’s Rick!” Get it? She did not seem amused and a wave of doom washed over me. There was no backing out now!!! She whisked me through the office maze to the second floor radio studio where Rick was sitting with another employee, Mo recording.

Everyone turned to see me — the late reporter holding up the show. I had not rehearsed what would say. What came out was: “hey Rick, it’s … Rick!” I smiled and waited.

It took a few devastatingly-long seconds for Rick to process the situation. Then he laughed JUST A LITTLE and got back to the work he’d been waiting to do. All I could do was sit down and overanalyze how bad the joke seemed to go. Did it land at all???? Am I a hack clown?????

For the next few hours we watched him work, did some more interviews. On our way out of the building, I spotted a life-sized Rick cardboard cutout and asked Mo to get my photo standing next to it. The real Rick was tickled by the gesture and got in the shot too. We took a selfie with his phone of the “three” of us — his idea.

My costume and embarrassment were validated. It was worth it. IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!!!!!

Some other things people have asked me about Rick:

Did we smoke weed together? (Rick is a vocal champion for decriminalizing marijuana.) No, but he did tell me he only smokes and does not like edibles.

Has he ever been in a near-death travel experience? Also no, not that he could remember. But he was in a sandstorm with Shelley in Morocco that blew the windows out of their car.

But mostly, people came out of the woodwork to tell me how much Rick Steves meant to them. It’s safe to say he’s had a profound impact on millions of lives, from those he’s inspired to travel to the business owners across Europe and beyond. To spend so much time with him at his house, in his hometown, was not only a career highlight, but a life one. If you haven’t read the story yet, I hope you will soon.

And like Rick says: keep travelin’!

The mini-moon is over.

I’m calling it “mini” because yes, a 6 day trip is a solid vacation, but it doesn’t feel monumental enough to celebrate a huge life milestone like getting married. I need two weeks (or three months!!) of adventuring with Dan to really send it.

The day after our wedding, we boarded a red eye with a layover, no frills. By Monday morning we were in Paris on the train to our Airbnb.

Then I blinked and like the wedding, the trip had streaked past me. It’s over! Somehow we’re back at Charles De Gaulle. This always happens. One minute you’re sipping a pastis on a bustling terrace with all the time in the world, the next you’e in the thick of your end-of-vacation routine, which goes like this:

1. One to two days before the trip is actually over, a wave of woe crushes me like a flash flood. The stages of grief hit — anger, denial, depression, bargaining, etc. It can’t be over! How is it over! Make it stop!!

   Usually there’s some crying, if not big weeping than at least a few fleeting teardrops. Dan consoles me, reminding me this is classic goblin behavior.

2. Knock it off and enjoy the last fleeting moments of this precious gift.

   In the case of our little Moon, we ended the trip at one of our favorite restaurants, Les Arlots, then walked around until midnight. Then we had a nightcap, then found another snack, hobbled home, checked in for our flights, set the alarm for 8:30 am, crashed.

3. Wake up mournful but focused. This is business mode.

   Gather all items that have sprawled across the Airbnb over the course of our stay. Dump out purse and start fresh. Keep paper mementos for my travel journal, toss non-essentials. Triple check for passports. Clean. Leave.

4. Find one last meal/snack/coffee before going to the airport. This morning, we wanted something en route to the big train station which meant avoiding more charming neighborhood options. MISTAKE!

   As I calculated and recalculated what time we needed to be at CDG, I got more anxious about how long we should spend on breakfast. That meant stopping at a truly whatever place, hoping for the best. Being a block from the train, it was, naturally, a tourist trap.

   Bad coffee, bad bread with plastic packet jam, bad orange juice — all for double what we paid for better, higher quality breakfasts this week. My mood darkened; this couldn’t be how we ended the trip. Our MOON!

   Some furious Googling later, I left Dan at the trap and hopped on a e-bike and made a mad dash to Tranché, a boulangerie that promised it made baguettes the right way.

   The moment I walked through the front door I felt saved; it was bread heaven. I ordered two jambon sandwiches for the plane, a pain au chocolat, a pain suisse, and a slice of flan, then raced back to my spouse. I was happy; I could rest easy that we were leaving Paris on a high note.

5. Transit to the airport. Pass through security, stop at Duty Free. Buying stuff is optional but I always get a spritz of Dior Hypnotic Poison (lol) perfume, a fragrance that is too much sauce for my daily life but I like to wear on travel days. It helps to freshen up the outfit I’m wearing, which is the outfit I wore on the way over, plus a new jacket I bought at Arket a few days ago.

   I’m still figuring out my travel style; this trip I’m experimenting with an old favorite thick white t-shirt from COS, “new” black pants from Ann Mashburn I bought second hand on Poshmark by recommendation of Yolanda Edwards, plus comfortable Birdies I was influenced to buy from Emilie Hawtin’s instagram (see also @ehawtin — I can’t link to anything writing this on my phone; 10/10 would not recommend Substacking this way) and lastly, some compression socks and a scarf I bought in Thailand. I will be comfortable and warm, the dream achieved.

6. Reminisce. How lucky we get to travel! How lucky I was to be in Paris again! To be here with Dan! This fucks! Now all we have to do is get home, where we can continue reminiscing about this very trip for the rest of our lives.

8. Rinse and repeat.

   Okay, our delayed flight has finally caught up to schedule — time to stop stacking and board. This post was brought to you by my newfound devotion to Tranché.

   

   À bientôt!!!

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My Tokyo night started at an izakaya with my friend Miral and a friend of his. We ate bacon-wrapped kimchi, scrambled eggs with green onions, a bok choy dish that was served frozen. We smoked cigarettes inside and drank lemon sours (shochu, lemon juice, soda water).

We parted ways and I went to a whiskey bar recommended by someone on Instagram. The staff asked if I wanted to play a “tasting game.” I didn’t know what that meant but said yes anyway and had a ball laughing, drinking and ultimately losing with the staff. (The game was a blind tasting of different — not cheap — whiskies and guessing which one came from which bottle). They didn’t charge me for my humiliation, thank god.

Onto the next spot: Golden Gai, a maze of a neighborhood of tiny, old bars. I turned a corner and a man was standing in the middle of the narrow street. He struck up a conversation in English, and went from stranger to romantic interest (everyone was a potential partner when I was a single freelancer). We went to second dinner, drank more.

The night went on like that until it wasn’t night anymore. The next afternoon, I peeled myself out of my Airbnb bed and went hunting for hangover cures. That was the story. It wasn’t my only all-nighter of the trip, either. Exhibit B a week and a half earlier:

My assignments and how I tackle them look completely different now. The change happened over time.

First, I got a job at a newspaper, one that does not encourage breaking the law for the sake of content. My bosses have no interest in sending me to far flung locales to eat and drink whatever’s most shocking. Instead, I cover travel mostly like a grown up. I do still get thrown into shenanigans that remind me of my rip-roaring gonzo days. Like my truck stop story, or pulling a near-all-nighter to write about the World’s Biggest Pizza Convention. I also turned 30. Then 31, and 32.

The way I travel is unrecognizable to my freelance days. Going to the airport used to mean stopping at a bar near my gate for a beer or bloody mary. On the plane, I’d get a gin and tonic, and when I landed, I’d throw my stuff down and find a place to get a drink and talk to locals. Drinking and debauchery made me feel like a real journalist. I stayed out late, said yes to everything, and still found time to do my job and maybe hit the hotel gym.

In between the reporting and writing, I was constantly on the lookout for my soulmate. I was rarely in one place for long, but I convinced myself I’d meet someone on the road. So I took the midnight dinner invitation in Golden Gai, went on the second date in Guadalajara, logged onto Tinder in New Delhi and Taipei and Paris. I never found the elusive “one,” but met plenty of nice almosts (and exponentially more definitely nots).

The partying and the dating and the late nights took a toll. I got sick all the time, felt terrible.

One of my last trips done “the old way” was covering the Mardi Gras before covid. I was newly single (and so sad about it) and hell-bent on reconnecting with my former self. I stayed out late reporting and even later dancing only to get up a few hours later to report on parades. The story turned out great, but I was wrecked by the time I got home.

Compare that to my most recent assignment. A few weeks ago, I was sent to Washington state to write a profile on a very nice, very famous man (stay tuned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). On my way to Seattle, I chugged water, drank Vitamin C goo and liquid zinc, wore a mask and worked on the plane. When I landed, I went straight to the Airbnb and got to sleep early.

Before we met our star, I took my frolleague (friend/colleague) Mo to yoga; the morning after that we went to a barre class. We did not party. We did not stay up until 4 am. There was as much dedication to the assignment as there was to wellness. It was amazing.

Maybe it wouldn’t have gone that way if I hadn’t met Dan. So much of flinging myself into wild situations was driven by the pursuit of ~love~. Now that I’ve found it, I don’t have the same instinct to chase extremes. The occasional night out works. The one-off wild goose chases do it for me. Staying healthy is intoxicating.

Or I could be wrong; maybe we’ll get really into raves and I’ll pivot to nightclub journalism. Who knows!!!!!!! If we’re lucky, we get the chance to have many life phases and keep growing and changing.

In the meantime, I’ll be hitting the goo packets.

I was there to cover a 2-night Margaritaville cruise departing from the port of West Palm Beach, and Dan was along for the ride. He doesn’t usually get to come on my work trips, but the cruise wouldn’t let me book a solo passage, so Dan got to join.

It was a win-win. Dan’s the best travel companion, plus his not-a-travel-writer/normal-person perspective is helpful to my reporting. (Like his illuminating description of a meal we had as “watered down Stouffer’s.”)

Here’s how the story turned out. And here’s what didn’t make the cut:

Some cathartic crying on an AstroTurf deck

As I’ve mentioned before, I cry on most reporting trips, usually out of some combination of self-doubt, stress, or bad sleep. Those weren’t the culprits this time.

It was “Moves like Jagger.” At least that’s what was playing when the crying happened.

On our first night aboard the Margaritaville at Sea Paradise, Dan and I were standing on an AstroTurf deck taking in the scene. People below danced in front of a live band playing Top 40 covers. Some passengers dangled their feet in the tiny pool, others stood along the ship’s railing watching the Florida coast shrink in the sunset.

Cue the tears. Part of it was the wholesome sweetness of seeing people having fun. Part of it was the realization that we were on a not-very-good ship.

Boarding had felt like waiting in line at SeaWorld on a spring break weekend. The ship was old — not in a charming vintage way, just sort of dingy. Its cafeteria buffet where most of our meals were served smelled deeply off-putting, like some hybrid of musky funk and cleaning chemicals; I insisted we eat outside as often as possible. Even the drinks were mid.

So the cry was a cathartic “what is even going on right now” and “I surrender to this situation” kind of thing. Dan was confused.

The Hot Tub Compromise

The challenge of these kinds of assignments is trying to get a fly-on-the-wall perspective without disturbing the natural scene while also being a reporter. The last thing I want is people (staff or guests) acting differently because there’s a journalist on the loose. Going full anthropologist mode with my camera and notepad can be a giveaway.

For this cruise, I spent the first day and night mostly observing. I saved approaching people for interviews for night and morning two, that way people would’ve had time to soak in the experience. And they wouldn’t spend most of the sailing wondering if a reporter was stalking them.

I interviewed some folks around dinner time, and some who were leaving the painful comedy show. (It was so unfunny that Dan left the theater to read a book in the hallway.) But I really wanted to interview people in the hot tub. Going alone seemed too creepy.

“I do not want to go in the hot tub,” Dan protested.

Fair. The hot tub (or tubs, there were two) situation was bleak because:

1. They were only big enough for four people.
2. There were already couples in each. a
3. It was kind of raining.

I pressed Dan; “we love hot tubs!” He compromised. Full of sad food from our sad cruise dinner, we changed into our swimsuits (and robes from our room! A bright spot!) and hit the tub deck.

The water was lukewarm at best. Worse, the couple got out as we approached. Now we had no one to talk to for my story, and we were kind of cold in a tepid bacteria cauldron.

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A silver lining scooter

If you’re thinking, “wow what a shitty time!” you’d be wrong. We had so much fun — even with the bad food and the Maroon 5 breakdown — particularly when the ship docked in Grand Bahama and we got to explore the island.

The night before, we’d looked up local scooter rentals and called up a place on Google Maps with good reviews called Bulls Eye Car Rental. The owner Raymond was a pro; he told us it’d be $50 to get a moped for the day, and he’d pick us up at 9 a.m. sharp. All we had to do was get off the ship, turn right at the coconut stand and we’d find him. Easy.

It went according to plan, and within a half hour we were scooting in the sunshine.

Great: feeling the wind in our hair; eating tasty banana bread we bought in the parking lot of the beach slash caves slash mangrove place Raymond told us to visit.

Less great: the caves were cool but underwhelming compared to other caves; the beach a wind vortex; the sea was a choppy death trap.

No problem. We scooted on to another beach where Raymond said we’d find cheap and delicious lobster at Bernie’s Tiki Hut. The name was appropriate; it’s just a wooden hut on the beach where you can get tropical drinks and seafood.

Raymond was not exaggerating. For $35, we had a fresh-caught, girthy lobster fried à la minute with plantains and some salad, along with two Bahama Mama cocktails made by Bernie herself (her husband Antuan did the frying).

We ate it on the beach with our hands, mostly because the plastic fork snapped in half trying to rip into the meat but also because we were starving and it was glorious.

Then we swam in the ocean despite the chop.

Raymond’s second food tip was to hit Terry’s Conch Salad Stand. It was unreal. Terry made us a salad himself, explaining the whole process along the way. I had no idea what was in those conch shells before we went.

Did I feel bad seeing the little guy wrestled out of his home and chopped to pieces? Yes. Was I grateful to try the local specialty nonetheless? Also yes, for I am a monster.

So I will think of our cruise trip fondly.

To be clear: that does not mean I think anyone should spend their own money to take the cruise.

But I do think you can find your Raymonds and your Bernies and Terrys anywhere you travel if you look hard enough, and turn a Margaritaville at Sea into an afternoon of magic.