THE NOT SO BLONDE TRAVEL

I know this is a bit of an oxymoron coming from a flight attendant, but road trips are truly the best.  Don’t get me wrong. I fly for a living and love it, and being able to get on a plane for 7 hours to make it to my best friend’s 30th birthday in Paris and back to NYC 24 hours later for a friend’s engagement party is awesome and quite impossible by car. Plane hoping all over Alaska was super fun as well. And flying over 20 hours to get to Palau was worth every effort it took to get there. However nothing beats taking a car and driving around when it comes to really discovering and exploring an area.  So after all my international trips, I was itching to discover the US a little more and what better than a cross-country road from New York to California.  I had three "bucket list" items for the trip: eat crabs in Maryland eat deep dish pizza in Chicago  get married somewhere along the way Yes I know that third goal was a bit of a ...

Apparently non photogenic people don't love pictures. I must be photogenic because I love pictures. Anytime anywhere, that's my motto. I truly think I have only said no to a picture once and for the good reason that half of my face was paralyzed. It lasted about 3 months and for those 3 months I wasn't exactly in the best mood for obvious reasons.  But once my face was back to moving, I was back to my old ways. And yes occasionally, a picture of me is taken that I don't LOVE, but who cares .... It is just a picture. It is not that serious.  However a few people I will not name hate taking pics. It is literally a nightmare for them. Yet, once they see the pics, they get excited about them and ask if they can have some. That's the moment when I want, but don't, say no. If you are giving me grief every time I stop and take a picture, why should I share them with you? But I still do. Because I think memories are important and should be shared.  I...

I don't do much research when going on vacation, I like to wander ... But when I am traveling for work, I do a lot of research. How else could I pack in 24 hours what people do during a week?  When in Prague for the first time, I literally walked until my feet blistered so bad that they were bleeding the next day ... and when I flew back from my first Maui layover, I was literally applying aloe vera to my face and body every 15 minutes. Perhaps yoga on the beach, swimming, paddle boarding and snorkeling was a bit too much for my very white skin in one day :-) Needless to say, I can pack in a lot in 24 hours.  However, even I doubted my capacity to see everything I wanted to see in Venice. There was just too much, especially since not only did I want to hit the monuments, but I wanted to enjoy sunset on a rooftop a friend recommended and tour this amazing palace that my friend Eileen was raving about. Even the local Venitian I was chatting with on the bus said there wa...