All Posts
Let’s Chat
Follow along on my Journey!
I promise to share fun and infrequent updates
My Latest
Adventures
Well Hello
I’m Kate
For more than a decade and a half, I’ve helped people create a life by design through my lifestyle and travel blog.
I’m a mom of 3, a full-time romance author, and I’ve been to more than 40 countries and nearly all the states.
I’m happy you’re here.
Learn More >>
Shop my Favorites
5.3M
syndicated blog views per month
Latest Blog Posts
-
Why Some People Photograph Everything on Vacation and Others Put the Camera Away — What the Research Actually Says
One person spends a Roman afternoon composing shots of everything they see. Another leaves the phone in the hotel and just walks. Both come home convinced theirs was the better way to travel. Psychology researchers have been studying this for years, and the findings are more complicated than either side admits.
-
A Ski Trip Costs How Much? The Full Math Nobody Does Before They Book
The lift tickets are just the beginning. When you add up lodging, rentals, lessons, food, après-ski, and the gear you convinced yourself you needed, a long ski weekend for a family of four can cross $10,000 before anyone touches fresh powder. Here’s how the math actually works out.
-
What Americans Consistently Get Wrong About European Cities That Europeans Find Genuinely Baffling
It’s not the language barrier. It’s not the exchange rate. It’s a set of deeply held American assumptions about how cities work, what service means, and what a vacation is for — assumptions that are invisible at home and conspicuous the moment you land in Paris, Amsterdam, or Barcelona.
-
The Souvenir Economy: What That $40 Magnet Is Actually Worth, Where the Money Goes, and Why People Keep Buying
Tourists worldwide spend billions on objects they mostly end up storing in a drawer within six months. The souvenir industry is a fully developed parallel economy operating inside every tourist destination — and almost nobody buying in it knows how it actually works.
-
People Who Took Their First Completely Solo Trip Kept Discovering the Same Uncomfortable Things About Themselves
The first time you travel completely alone — no partner, no group, no friend who knows the plan — you find out things about yourself that ordinary life keeps hidden. Some of those things are good. Some of them are genuinely surprising. Almost none of them are what you expected.
-
How People Sabotage Their Own Vacations Before They Even Pack a Bag
The ruined vacation often doesn’t start in the hotel room with the broken air conditioner or at the airport during the delay. It starts weeks earlier — in the planning, the expecting, the arguing about what the trip is supposed to mean. Here’s the pattern, documented by travelers who kept doing it until they finally noticed.
