It’s my opinion, fostered through an international family and a wonderfully travel-filled upbringing, that no year is complete without leaving my country of residence. This Washingtonian did go on a Caribbean cruise in March, which was a great trip, but that’s not something a former Floridian would classify as international travel. Anyway, to close out the year, I have three destinations planned or in progress: Southwest Florida, Stockholm, and London. Continue reading “Holiday Travel Preview: Florida, Stockholm, London”
Tag: Europe
Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to visit Estonia, or at least the Estonian embassy in the U.S., to learn more about the Baltic country’s past, present, and future.
The embassy is centrally located in Dupont Circle at the southern end of Embassy Row, and is housed in a beautiful, large townhouse. The evening featured a welcome and presentation by the ambassador, His Excellency Eerik Marmei, followed by a reception of Estonian cuisine.
As a Swede/Finn, I’ve always been curious about and interested in visiting Estonia. Ferries such as Silja Line (now Estonian-owned by Tallink) cruise regularly between Tallinn, Helsinki, and Stockholm. Estonia’s dramatic, forward-thinking development in cohesion with is historic cities makes it the top Baltic state on my list of places to visit. Continue reading “An Evening at the Embassy of Estonia”
Over the past few months, I have become a frequent DC-NYC commuter, and though I would love to cut my transit time and risk of getting stuck in traffic, I pay about a third of the cost to take a Greyhound roundtrip from Union Station to Port Authority and back than what I would need to pay to take the Northeast Regional train one way. And I can’t even consider the Acela Express.
The government-subsidized corporation Amtrak is quite frankly out of my league. Meanwhile, it costs 30 euros to hop on a Trenitalia train from Venezia St. Lucia to Milano Centrale. The distance is a bit less, but that’s still less than $40 to go from Venice to Milan. Continue reading “7 Reasons Why the United States Needs to Embrace Trains”
Midsummer is a celebration on one of the longest days of the year. While it is and has historically been celebrated through most of Northern Europe, the Swedish midsummer is, well, uniquely Swedish. Uniquely Swedish things seem to fascinate non-Swedes, inspiring things from the very popular “Swedish Midsummer for Dummies” video (an excellent multimedia supplement to this post) to an original NBC TV series premiering in the US on July 10th.
This past weekend, all of Sweden and Finland (and several other countries as well) celebrated midsummer. I had the chance to teach some of the quirks and intricacies of celebrating midsummer to some of my closest non-European friends, and it inspired me to write a travel blog post this week. Here’s a selection of things you don’t want to go to midsummer without, whether you’re celebrating in Sweden, NYC (the biggest organized midsummer celebration outside of Sweden apparently), or elsewhere: Continue reading “Midsommar: Swedish Midsummer”
anchored & adrift 