Going to Rome was my idea. I’d never been and it felt like one of those places a person should see in their lifetime. (Dan was there in 2004, which was apparently enough for him.) Our pals Grant, Ellen and Violet from England, whom you might remember from last year’s travels in London and France,… Continue reading All Roads Lead to Rome (Is That Why It’s So Crowded?)

Fiona started our trip with two loose bottom teeth. Less than a week in, they were both outa there. The first one was so wiggly that the three adults placed bets on when it would come out. Three days later (on the day I predicted, for the record), while we were relaxing on the best… Continue reading The Tooth Fairy Comes to Italy

Into every island vacation some rain must fall. And during our Sardinia stay, it fell on day three, after a couple of days of this kind of idyllic gorgeousness: Wednesday dawned gray and windy, with a forecast of thunderstorms on and off all day. Having already gotten plenty of good, jet lag-curing beach time, we… Continue reading Stormy Weather

Time spent away from home: 5 months, 2 days Continents visited: 5 Countries visited: 14 Principalities visited: 1 (Yay, Liechtenstein!) International traffic tickets received: 1 (Damn you, Liechtenstein!) Brand new countries/principalities visited: 4 (Yup, including Liechtenstein.) New passport stamps received in real countries: 8 New passport stamps paid for at the tourist office of a… Continue reading The Johnslington’s Big Trip, by the Numbers

In looking back over the memories (and photos) from such a long trip, patterns start to emerge. Whether it was conscious or accidental (likely a little of both), certain experiences started to repeat themselves across our travels, leading to some fascinating and fun visual echos. Here are just a few of them:

No matter how carefully you plan, it’s pretty impossible to pack perfectly for a multi-month trip away from home. That said, we got pretty darn close (especially given how light we packed). And as we traveled, there were several items that, again and again, we found ourselves feeling incredibly grateful made the cut. Here’s our… Continue reading Around-the-World MVPs (a Julie/Dan collab)

While we would have preferred to travel the world largely by plane and train, there were quite a lot of places we wanted to see (and people we wanted to visit!) that required driving. And so we ended up renting a lot of cars (and one very memorable campervan). We tasked Fiona with naming them… Continue reading Car Me by Your Name

And then, both at long last and far too soon, exactly five months and one day after we left San Francisco for this crazy around-the-world adventure, we were packing up our bags and heading to Burlington airport for the final flight of our trip. We were going home. I felt a lot of feelings about… Continue reading The Home Stretch

My sister Merin moved to Vermont for grad school in 1999 and never (really) left. She meant to, but a few months shy of wrapping up her master’s at UVM and moving back to California like she planned, she met a sweet Irish guy in a bar downtown. They started dating, she graduated and moved… Continue reading The Greatest Hits of Greater Burlington, VT

After the disappointment of Plymouth, we hoped to brighten our spirits with the next destination on our New England journey: Amherst. But first! A stop for lunch at the Framingham home of Dan’s high-school-marching-band buddy Erin. We spent several thoroughly enjoyable hours there catching up with Erin, a talented author, teacher and all-around lovely person,… Continue reading A Mellow Mini-Break in Amherst