While I usually love a good walking tour and learning about a city's history, I don't know that one has ever been recommended as a "must do" quite as much as Bill Speidel's Underground Tour in Seattle was by just about everyone I asked. It came so highly recommended that I was wary of it being a monumental let down. I also thought the $20 fee was a little steep and wondered if it'd even be worth it, but five minutes into the tour I knew not only would it be worth every penny and I'd likely give our guide [...]

When I was in grade school, we had this really amazing art teacher who taught us about famous artists and their contributions to the art world whether it be a technique or color combinations or composition or subject matter and then she would teach us ingenious ways to simulate their works of art but with our own twist. We'd create impressionist art with melting crayons and paint self portraits and draw large scale objects one section at a time and even though I would never call myself an artist in that way, I sure felt like one. So thank you, [...]

As you know, I'm presently on a little European adventure and earlier this week I was in Amsterdam. (It's a beautiful city and you should go.) While I was there, I visited Anne Frank House - where she, her family, the van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer hid from the Nazis for two years - and was completely inspired by the ambition and attitude of the 13-year-old. Having visited Auschwitz two years ago and cried an absolute river while I was touring the facility, I was prepared to feel the sadness of their situation, but I wasn't prepared to feel the joy [...]

When I was a little girl, I used to read the encyclopedia - you know, back when it was a collection of books and not crowd sourced on the internet. I'd sit in front of the bookcase and pick a random letter and just start flipping through it and see what I could find. More often than not, I found another country that I wanted to visit. I'm pretty sure it was the layers of maps that got my attention. I was fascinated by how a country could change and grow so much, yet still stay the same with it's [...]

As you may know, I'm a hockey writer. I get paid to travel all over North America and Europe and watch hockey games and write about the players. Not sure if that's your dream job, but it's definitely mine and I love having the opportunity to live it out in real life and not just the fantasyland in my head. Plus, it's super helpful when I have things like "Visit a new country" on my annual To Do List. Thanks to hockey, I've been to Finland, Sweden, Russia, Czech Republic, Austria, and Poland, but now I can also add Estonia to [...]