Third Generation Danish in Copenhagen

I arrived in Denmark the way that I imagine my grandmother arrived in New York City in 1955: eyes wide to take in a place I had never been which, somehow, would be home. Riding the immaculate train for the first time from CPH Airport to the Kongens Nytorv station there was a strange twinge of déjà vu and the feeling of coming back.

Read More
Dead Sea Day

Years and years of friends’ Birthright trips to Israel filtered through social media showed jaunts to the hyper-saline Dead Sea. Consuming the images of bright blue sky and eerily buoyant water, it hadn’t quite occurred to me that if one were to follow the Sea up and around they would encounter the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank and, eventually, run right into the environmentally diverse country of Jordan.

Read More
Wild Wild Wadi Rum

In 2011, I embarked on a two week volunteer trip to Lima, Peru during which time I read Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel. One weekend my group drove south to the massive Huacachina sand dunes, a boundless desert playground for visitors. We raced around in dune buggies and took turns sand-boarding, an activity in which one sits on a small surf board and speeds down the side of a dune the size of a Manhattan building from top to bottom.

Read More
The Capital Emirate: Abu Dhabi's Louvre, Palace and Mosque

The 1.5 hour drive between Dubai and Abu Dhabi reveals a vast desert landscape and with a sprinkling of seemingly random corporate headquarters alongside kitschy theme parks. Well, random only until one recalls the free trade zone that entices businesses to lay roots here and the persistent fabricated entertainment that is elemental to the UAE and it all starts to make sense.

Read More
Doing Dubai For The First Time

A recent Editor's Letter in Conde Nast Traveler closed with a quotation from an article within the edition: "This is why I travel: to demythologize fear of the unknown." It is also, in part, why I travel: to feel closer to people who are surface-level different from myself and to improve my cultural understanding to the point of relating to others around the world.

Read More
Off The Grid on Isla Ometepe, Nicaragua

Until a recent trip to Jordan's Wadi Rum desert in March of 2018, Isla Ometepe in Nicaragua was the most remote place I had ever been. This island formed by two volcanoes (active Concepción and nonactive Maderas) holds a certain allure.The course of natural history that created this place feels so unlikely to have occurred, two massive volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicaragua to form an island, that getting to spend time here holds a bit of unexpected magic.

Read More
Finding Serenity on Laguna de Apoyo, Nicaragua

Our plan of staying just a single night in Laguna de Apoyo would have quickly been foiled if we did not have a Treehouse Airbnb waiting with our name on it in our next stop in Nicaragua. By the time dinner rolled around on the evening we arrived, we had already cancelled a pre-planned volcano outing in favor of spending more time on this pristine, quiet lake. How excited we were to learn that we loved Apoyo is connected to, frankly, how little we initially expected from it.

Read More