The first time I really understood cheese as a place, and not just a thing in a fridge, I was backpacking solo across Europe with a very small budget and a very large appetite. I’d buy a wedge of something local, a hunk of bread, and sit on a curb like it was a five-star…
The best seafood meal of my life did not happen in a fancy restaurant. It happened at a rough wooden table on a European coast, with a paper napkin, a cold drink, and a pile of shellfish I could barely name. I was traveling solo, a little unsure of myself, and I almost walked past…
The first time I ever swirled a glass of wine on purpose, I did it wrong. I sniffed too hard, tipped the glass at a weird angle, and quietly panicked when the person next to me started saying words like “tannic” and “long finish.” I had no idea what I was doing. And you know…
Let me tell you where a lot of my best travel memories actually live. Not on top of a famous monument. Not in a museum. They live at small tables, early in the morning, with a warm pastry in one hand and a coffee cooling next to me while I watched a city wake up….
The first time I ate alone at a food market abroad, I stood frozen near the entrance for a solid five minutes, pretending to read a menu I couldn’t understand. This was during my solo backpacking trip across Europe, back when I still worked flexible jobs between trips to save up every euro. I was…
Let me tell you the meal I still think about years later. It wasn’t in Paris or Rome. It was a plate of something simple, handed to me by someone who had made it a thousand times, in a place I’d never heard of before I got there. That’s the thing about food travel. The…
The first time I ate alone in a country where I didn’t speak the language, my hands were a little shaky. I was backpacking through Europe on my own, sitting at a counter with a plate of food I couldn’t fully pronounce, watching everyone around me laugh and share and belong. I felt like the…
I think there is a specific kind of daydream that colorful towns create. You are scrolling on your phone, half-tired, and suddenly there is a row of houses painted in pink, mint green, buttercup yellow, and deep sea blue, all reflected in a canal. Something in your chest goes “I want to be there.” Then,…
The first time I went out at night alone in a foreign city, I stood outside the bar for a full ten minutes before I went in. I remember it clearly from my backpacking days across Europe. Everyone inside seemed to already know each other. The music was in a language I didn’t speak. And…