Ryan and I have lived in various spots through the Puget Sound over the years and where we lived dictated which route we would take to visit his parents north of Wenatchee. Some years we would take Highway 2 over Steven’s Pass and some years it was I-90 to Cle Elum and over Blewett Pass. Both routes are pretty drives, Cle Elum has a good meat shop to stop at (mmm pepperoni) and a cute coffee shop, while the Highway 2 route takes you through the always scenic village of Leavenworth.…
I found myself in Edinburgh for a few short days at the end of a trip for work in London. I hopped on the train out of Kings Cross and though there were delays that disrupted my plans for that afternoon, I took it all in stride and wandered about my favorite city.…
Would you believe I’m already trying to plot my way back to the UK? Any excuse to get me over there, I’ll jump on it. My partner wants to go to Spain, I do too obviously, but I want to pop over in the UK on the way back if that happens. I absolutely love the UK. So here’s part two of my Edinburgh guide, again inspired by friend David who will be speaking at UX Scotland in June. These are my 7 places to visit in Edinburgh if you’re visiting for the first time.…
Edinburgh is one of my favorite cities I’ve ever traveled to. Just walking around, you can feel the history all around you. There’s just something about sitting in a pub that’s older than the United States by almost 200 years. When my friend David told me he would be speaking at a design conference there this summer, I decided to write a small guide. Most of my blog posts have just been overall recaps of my visits to Edinburgh. In this post I’ll dive into 5 of my favorite spots in Old Town Edinburgh, where I spent most of my time, to grab a drink and some delicious food.…
Another work trip & another photo diary. I spent a few days in San Francisco for Node Summit to promote one of my team’s open source projects that I designed. My coworker from Romania and I had some time to wander around the city. I was so enthralled by Chinatown and was really glad I had my camera with me. San Francisco reminds me of a larger version of Seattle but with more street art (which I adore.)…
As temperatures cool down and autumn rolls in, I’m left dreaming of autumn in the UK. Autumn in London was delightful and dreamy, and Scotland even more so. Autumn is my season: it’s my ‘hopelessly romantic’ season, where I want to do every cliché activity that embodies what autumn is. I want to be cozy, drink warm autumn themed drinks, and sit in front of a roaring fire. But I digress, I’m here to talk about my last two days in London this summer.…
It’s September 1! Already. Oh my goodness, and what better day to continue my UK travel posts than today in honor of Harry Potter! I adore London. It’s a city that from the moment I stepped foot there, it felt right. Finding my way around the city was easy, using the tube a breeze…having a pint in a pub, it’s all just…right. I had big plans this second time to the city, all my places marked off. The focus of the trip and whole reason my family and I were abroad was for Depeche Mode, so it was fitting in what I could around that evening. It felt like I didn’t have enough time to see all I wanted to see this trip…there’s so many places I want to visit still. London keeps calling me back. I guess I’ll have to go!…
I am lucky enough to get to travel occasionally for my job on the Microsoft Edge team. I traveled to Portland often at my last job and even had two trips to Monterey, CA for work with a client. But a part of me always wanted to travel elsewhere *coughLONDONcough* and that never happened. When I took this job I didn’t realize I would get to travel as much as I have. So 36 hours after I returned from the U.K. I hopped on a plane to NYC to man the Microsoft Edge booth at Smashing Conference. …
When I was in Scotland last, I dragged my partner on a 12 hour Scottish Highland tour. We started the day at 7:00 AM and drove from Edinburgh to Loch Ness, back down the west side of Scotland, through Stirling and back to Edinburgh. It was a very long day and while I was so happy to have marked Loch Ness off my bucket list, we only got to stop 6 or 7 times, most 15 minute stops except for the stop at Loch Ness. I decided next trip we would drive ourselves and stay in the Highlands for a night and come back down the same route the next day. This would allow us to stop and see things we hadn’t had a chance to see. This would also require renting a car and driving it in Scotland. In Edinburgh. And oh what an adventure that turned out to be. Before I lay out where we stopped, let me regale you with a tale of getting out of Edinburgh.…
If there’s one thing I could change about my and my partner’s trip to Scotland in 2015 it would be that we could have spent a few days in the Highlands, as opposed to doing a 12 hour van tour with a few short stops. But I hadn’t planned our stay very well and the tour was sort of a last minute decision I made. Mostly because I wanted to go to Loch Ness, where we got to go on a boat ride for about an hour round trip before hopping back in the van and taking off down the other side of the country. This time around, following basically the same route, I planned one night’s stay in Drumnadrochit at the Springburn B&B. That way we could continue on our way down Loch Ness and through Glen Coe through the Trossachs and back to Edinburgh. …