Unfortunately, I have no current plans to leave Canada this year. This makes me sad, and a little antsy, especially since this blog was named for my love of travelling and exploring new places and having adventures in places where you don’t speak the same language as most of the people who live there.

I will get to leave Toronto a few times this summer – Winnipeg in June, Sackville in August, PEI in September, and hopefully a weekend in Montreal in there, too – to visit wonderful people and dance at weddings and meet brand new humans who have only existed in the world for a few months.

That’s all pretty exciting… But my travel bug catches up to me often during these times of having a steady job and living in just one city and acting like an adult (debatable). I realized that when I do go to cool new places, I often don’t end up writing about them. And that’s just silly, because I have some great photos and stories to share.

Beautiful cities, like Stockholm in this photo below, deserve so much credit for being eye-opening, perspective-shifting, and inspiring places to visit, if only for a few days:

So, this summer’s writing project is to live vicariously through past-me and tell you about some places that are definitely worth the trip, if you ever have the chance. I’ve written about some of these spots before, but they will be fun to revisit. Other places, I’ve visited and loved, and then I’ve returned to the (mundane) chaos of everyday life without giving them the proper written homage.

Off the top of my head, I can think of some spots in Berlin, Stockholm, Vienna, just outside Prague, Pompeii, northern California, and Tallinn, Estonia that deserve some visitor love from me – and you someday, if you so choose! And maybe creating this list will give me the impetus to plan my next trip for the near(ish) future.

First, we take a trip to Teufelsberg, a hill in Berlin with an abandoned and spectacularly graffitied field station…