Dear Friends,

As Valentine’s Day approaches, I am filled with the spirit of the holiday, as well as roughly 2 pounds of those chalky little conversations hearts. Consequently, I feel the need to share with you a secret: maybe I don’t hate Rick Steves all that much. In fact, maybe I love him just a little bit, and my feigned hatred just masks my true feelings. Because Rick Steves and I have so darn much in common. Behold, the top ten reasons why Rick Steves and I are soulmates: Read the rest of this entry »

I hate to phone it in with a “wrap-up the week” post, but since absolutely everyone else does it, and I’m leaving for Great Britain next week, I figure you’ll forgive me.

Besides, this week was kind of nifty.

First off, Congrats to my hubby’s colleagues at Distilled, for the opening of their new U.S.-based satellite. They’ll also be taking over the consulting portion of SEOmoz, which everyone is crazy excited about, and of which I have a rudimentary understanding. But I’ll drink to anything.

And congrats to the lovely Lucy Langdon (formerly of Distilled) whose article just appeared on Londonist.com this week. I’m going to assume this means I know famous people from across the pond.

Oh, and the Chinese political activist who’d been sleeping in a Tokyo airport finally gets to go home and take a bath, which is nice. One can only hope he receives a warm welcome.

And speaking of warm – or not so warm – welcomes, thousands gathered in freezing weather to see whether or not that fuzzy little bastard could see his shadow (and, no, I’m not talking about Wolf Blitzer). According to Puxatawney Phil, we have 6 more weeks of winter.

Oh, and in the travel blogosphere:

Candice Walsh covers cathedrals with her usual potty-mouth. It’s fantastic.

The Oyster blog shares the 5 ways tourists get swindled in NYC. They forget to include the d-bags who act like they’re giving you directions, then hit you up for money.

JoAnna over at KaleidoscopicWandering.com gives 7 tips for people taking their very first cruise. Helpful stuff, but she omits information about avoiding the Bermuda triangle, pirates, and old people who like to swing (and I don’t mean dance). I assume she’s got a follow-up article in the works.

Plus, I think Alaska Airlines might be messing with me. How else can you explain this?

And, perhaps my favorite happening of the week (and proof that, as I said, you should be nice to everyone because you never know who you might bump into), our friend Cindy Krum caught a cab on the Isle of Man … that was driven by our friend Will’s dad. Don’t say life isn’t amazing.

Because it totally is.

That’s all for this week, folks. I’ll be blogging sporadically from the U.K. for the next couple of weeks, while struggling to keep warm and dry.

The other day we were hanging out with some friends – some American, some not, and we realized that none of us were really sure what countries are included in the phrase “United Kingdom”. Nor did we know what’s a part of “Great Britain.” England, we pretty much figured out (they’re those wussy guys who tried to tax us, right?).

The point is, along with which colors indicates positive and negative charges on a pair of jumper cables, these are things that we all should probably know, but don’t (For the record, red is positive and black is negative). I figured it was best to set the record straight (for myself and others) before we actually head out Glasgow and London next week. So while our British reader (Hi, Will!) sits back and cringes, the rest of you should pay attention, because we might all learn something. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, Rand and I were talking about our upcoming trip to Scotland, and we had the following exchange:

Rand: What do you want to do in Glasgow?

Me: Catch a leprechaun.

Rand: (sighs heavily) Honey …

Me: What?

Rand: Where are leprechauns from?

Me: … it’s funny that you decided to go with the “Leprechauns are from Ireland, not Scotland” argument, instead of the more obvious, “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS LEPRECHAUNS.”

Rand: With you, I’ve learned to pick my battles.

Me: That’s probably for the best.

(Note: I had hoped to have a more robust post up today, but the one I’m working on is killing me, so this is all you get, while I continue to pull my hair out, trying to keep Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland straight. And yes, they are very, very different).

Maiden name: Lotsa

- Read the rest of this entry »

Originally an east-coaster, my husband maintains that Seattle is a pretty easy town in which to make a good impression. We tell each other snobbish little jokes on the topic all the time …

Me: If you want to be the best-dressed person in a Seattle bar, what should you wear?

Rand: What?

Me: Your clean jeans!

or …

Rand: How do you get a standing ovation from a Seattle audience?

Me: How?

Rand: Finish the show.

Ba-da-dum!

The fact is, for how snobbish and elitist us Northwesterners supposedly are, we can be very, very easily impressed. Plays, music shows, and, most importantly, restaurants, are often over-hyped. That’s not to say that we have a shortage of awesome places to eat in Seattle – quite the contrary. We have plenty of great spots to grab a bite. But often, they’re not the places that get the most attention. In an effort to balance out the playing field, I’ve compiled a list of some of the most over-hyped restaurants/eateries in all of Seattle, along with a few alternatives that will hopefully spare you some time, money, and grief. Read the rest of this entry »

So, my hubby described my post yesterday as “provocative.” I disagreed, and there might have been some jumping up and down to emphasize my point. But while my intention had been to give shout-outs to the awesome bloggers, I think there was too much focus on my part on the negative side of of things (hell, it was a Dick Move! post, after all). I got a lot of emails and messages from people apologizing, thinking that they had offended me (note: don’t start unfollowing people on the same day you said you unfollowed someone who pissed you off. It’s a recipe for disaster. Including some notes from a few people who said, “What the heck? I’m not even a travel blogger. Why are you mad at me?”). So, in short, I want to say that I love you all, and stop worrying: it wasn’t about you. It really wasn’t.

And just to be on the safe side, I’ve decided to make it clear who I’m talking about in this post. It’s about me. Most specifically, about the stupid things I’ve done while jet-lagged or half-asleep. And I promise, all of these stories are true and unembellished. Looking through them, I realize that it sounds like I might be a little off, but keep in mind that my sleep deprivation in each of these cases was pretty damn extensive.

Wait ... where's my hotel again? And what's that thing sticking out of my head?

1. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m am licking some wounds.

Not literally, of course. Though I sometimes bite the sides of my fingers.

But my feelings have been hurt. I’ve been slighted by a few people in the “travel blogging industry.” I suppose it’s not a big deal, and I suppose it shouldn’t matter. Perhaps the funniest thing of all is that I didn’t really reach out to them. I was just kind of minding my own business and our paths crossed, and they made it clear: “You sit over there, little girl, while the big kids play over here.”

One woman was introduced to me by a mutual friend. The friend thought we’d have much to talk about, but her friend in turn said, in so many words: I am too busy to bother meeting with novices.

Another blogger got snippy with me. She made one of those dismissive comments that I usually get about my age – but now that I’m getting older, it was about something else – something so ridiculously personal, I don’t know what possessed her to write it. And it hurt me so profoundly that I’m still trying to figure out what to do about it. Besides unfollow her on Twitter, which I did immediately. Read the rest of this entry »

A few months ago, we went to London so Rand could get some work done, and I could roam around the city and do fuck-all.

My life is good.

Our lovely friend Ben was with us, as he works with Rand, and their London colleagues needed him to reach things on the top shelf. No, wait. That wasn’t it. No. They needed Ben to provide the sort of unique and brilliant insight only he can offer. Besides that, he is very tall. Behold:

The title of this photo is "Tiny Everywhereist, Tall Ben"

Okay, fine, so maybe, just maybe, I’m crouching in the above photo for dramatic effect. Ben isn’t quite that tall, but when you see the real photo of me standing next to him, it isn’t that dramatically different:

I like how he's looking down at me, somewhat bemused. "HOW'S THE WEATHER DOWN THERE? HA HA HA HA."

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m still kicking the last of my cold, and while I’m completely exhausted, I’ve discovered that even 2 nights of taking NyQuil is enough to create dependency. As such, I couldn’t sleep last night, trying to figure out if one could become a meth-addict just by taking too much Sudafed. While I have no definitive proof of it, I’m pretty sure the answer is “yes.”

Still, I’m grateful that this cold hit me now, while we’re at home, rather than sometime in the next few weeks, when Rand and I will visit London, Glasgow, New Orleans, San Diego, and a few places in between. Because while being sick sucks, it’s far better to have it happen at home than one the road. When Pinguina and I last went to Italy, we both got crazy sick  (Pinguina was actually on antibiotics for whatever decided to take up residence in her throat) and lugging our huge suitcases across the country was not fun (p.s. to Italian men: if you are going to be sexist assholes, at least have the decency to be chivalrous, and help us with our bags).

Don't let the adorability of this photo fool you: Pinguina and I almost passed out on this trail roughly 20 minutes later.

Read the rest of this entry »