Some months ago, my friend Jen asked me if I wanted to come to Hawaii with her for her 30th birthday. Considering the fact that my birthday just happens to be the day after hers that meant that I too would then be spending my...
I'm starting to think that there are no actual beaches in Hawaii. Because we certainly didn't find any. Well, we found beaches, but not the kind you want to sit at and tan while reading Eat, Pray, Love and drinking a Mai Tai. I'm starting...
Aloha from Big Island, Hawaii! I'm spending a week traveling around the Big Island and have been pretty much non-stop touristing since arriving last Wednesday. I've never been to Hawaii before, and it sure is nice to be away from the freezing cold Chicago winter. And...
Many of my friends and I found ourselves in the Champaign-Urbana area on what happened to be homecoming weekend. But we weren't there for the game. We were there for a wedding. And so, while most visitors were in town watching football, Heather and Julie...
The weather last week was glorious. Warm, sunny, out of season for late October days in Chicago. Heather had the week off from school and so we spent an afternoon at Lincoln Park Zoo...
"We have to take Valry on adventures or else she's going to leave again." Heather Since I came home from traveling around the world, Heather has decided that we need to take adventures,to keep me excited, so I won't leave again to travel. Of course, I already...
I am not on vacation. It's something that is both easy to grasp and hard to understand. If I were on vacation I would need to fill all of my precious time with something new and exciting. Going to New York would mean Central Park...
Going to Coney Island on the Fourth of July is a miserable experience. Inevitably I am standing next to a drunk guy who dances to everything and bumps into me and steps on my toes every other second. Inevitably I am next to a group...
When I arrived in New York on Sunday, after an hour-delayed-due-to-thunder-in-New-York flight, I had to make my first important decision: do I take a cab like I normally would do or pay much less but take an hour longer with a bus and two trains....
Joey Chestnut chomps through his hot dogs with such ferocity that particles of wet bun hang in the air like dust in front of a sunny crack of window. That is what I most crave to capture. Over the years I've honed my own method for competitive...