About Mary Beth...
Welcome! I'm Mary Beth and I'm a travelling nut.
How it Started…
In the summer of 2003, when Europe was experiencing a wicked heat wave, I traveled with my aunt and brother to Overasselt in the Netherlands (a town about an hour and half southeast of Amersterdam) to stay with family friends for two weeks. Being the clever people they are, the Dutch family, whose house was a converted chicken coop from the 1950's, was all ready for our arrival: Kellog's Corn Flakes on the table ("because thats what all American's eat for breakfast, right?"), two extra bikes for riding along the dikes and farmlands and an eagerness to use their impressively vast English vocabulary (a second language they started by age five).
The whole experience was like living in a Van Gogh painting: A rooster called to wake us up each morning, hay bales and windmills dotted along the gentle countryside, and people, with their fair yet rosy cheeks tinted from days out under the sun, biked around while waving and calling, "Goedemorgen" (HOO-duh-mor-gan) as they passed.
Since then I’ve been hooked on travel.
Going Back…
During university, I studied a semester abroad (<---best tip I can offer any undergrad student) in Angers, France. In the breaks of the semester, I traveled throughout France, Spain, England, Ireland and again to the Netherlands collecting memories and adventures. This collection only grew in the academic year of 2010-2011 when I was in Auxerre, France teaching English in two elementary schools. That year consisted of even more travel with returning trips to Ireland, England, and Spain, along with travel to new places in Scotland, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Italy, and even more of France. During all of these travels, I have met some amazing people, people who I had never imagined to meet and people who will never know their impact on me. For knowing them, laughing or crying with them, I am eternally thankful.
Now, I’m not going to lie and tell you that travelling around Europe is a piece of cake; it’s not. Through the good, the bad and the ugly, I lived to tell the tale of adventures that included: overcoming language barriers to catch a bus into the heart of Krakow, running through the unsalted and unpaved streets of “shut-down” Paris in a snowstorm to catch a taxi to the airport for a “supposedly cancelled” flight to Dublin (which it wasn’t), and to top off the cake, witnessing a friend realize he had misplaced his passport and communicating with Italian officials in French and limited Italian to figure out how to retrieve it. From these and many other experiences, I have learned what to do and what not to do. For example, DO NOT freak out when you miss a flight from Valencia to London and you have no accommodations for that night; DO taste every hors d'oeuvre, side dish, entrée, plat principal and dessert available when a master chef is cooking in the kitchen, even if it does mean unbuttoningthe top button to your pants.
Back to the States...
In coming home, I find the craving for travel gnawing at me. In the fall I went on a road trip to Peterborough, New Hampshire to see some friends in a play but that trip only lasted a few days. For New Years I was in the Big Apple celebrating with friends, and went back only a few weeks ago because I thought what I needed was to get away from home. I was so used to travelling all the time that sitting behind a desk just wasn’t cutting it for me. Is it weird that I missed the excitement (or sometimes lack thereof) of being in an airport?? However, I think I’ve come to realize something: there are adventures waiting to be had anywhere and everywhere if you know how to recognize them.
With the start of 2012, I’m going to do my best to discover this side of “the pond.” This is where I'll find the inspiration for my new adventures. I'm lucky enough to come from an area where culture is rich, where old traditions are still alive and where people are open to share their stories. Through these new discoveries and past adventures, I’d like to share my experiences, my advice, my recipes and my passion for culture with you. I hope my travels help you to design your own exciting journeys and leave you with a desire to create lasting memories of your own; that your appetite for travel grows and you taste all the pleasures life has to offer. The world truly is an amazing place and it’s baffling how unique yet similar we all are. There is so much to discover once you leave your doorstep and whether you decide to go left or right, the world in which you once lived will never be the same.
Cheers and enjoy,
Mary Beth
How it Started…
In the summer of 2003, when Europe was experiencing a wicked heat wave, I traveled with my aunt and brother to Overasselt in the Netherlands (a town about an hour and half southeast of Amersterdam) to stay with family friends for two weeks. Being the clever people they are, the Dutch family, whose house was a converted chicken coop from the 1950's, was all ready for our arrival: Kellog's Corn Flakes on the table ("because thats what all American's eat for breakfast, right?"), two extra bikes for riding along the dikes and farmlands and an eagerness to use their impressively vast English vocabulary (a second language they started by age five).
The whole experience was like living in a Van Gogh painting: A rooster called to wake us up each morning, hay bales and windmills dotted along the gentle countryside, and people, with their fair yet rosy cheeks tinted from days out under the sun, biked around while waving and calling, "Goedemorgen" (HOO-duh-mor-gan) as they passed.
Since then I’ve been hooked on travel.
Going Back…
During university, I studied a semester abroad (<---best tip I can offer any undergrad student) in Angers, France. In the breaks of the semester, I traveled throughout France, Spain, England, Ireland and again to the Netherlands collecting memories and adventures. This collection only grew in the academic year of 2010-2011 when I was in Auxerre, France teaching English in two elementary schools. That year consisted of even more travel with returning trips to Ireland, England, and Spain, along with travel to new places in Scotland, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Italy, and even more of France. During all of these travels, I have met some amazing people, people who I had never imagined to meet and people who will never know their impact on me. For knowing them, laughing or crying with them, I am eternally thankful.
Now, I’m not going to lie and tell you that travelling around Europe is a piece of cake; it’s not. Through the good, the bad and the ugly, I lived to tell the tale of adventures that included: overcoming language barriers to catch a bus into the heart of Krakow, running through the unsalted and unpaved streets of “shut-down” Paris in a snowstorm to catch a taxi to the airport for a “supposedly cancelled” flight to Dublin (which it wasn’t), and to top off the cake, witnessing a friend realize he had misplaced his passport and communicating with Italian officials in French and limited Italian to figure out how to retrieve it. From these and many other experiences, I have learned what to do and what not to do. For example, DO NOT freak out when you miss a flight from Valencia to London and you have no accommodations for that night; DO taste every hors d'oeuvre, side dish, entrée, plat principal and dessert available when a master chef is cooking in the kitchen, even if it does mean unbuttoningthe top button to your pants.
Back to the States...
In coming home, I find the craving for travel gnawing at me. In the fall I went on a road trip to Peterborough, New Hampshire to see some friends in a play but that trip only lasted a few days. For New Years I was in the Big Apple celebrating with friends, and went back only a few weeks ago because I thought what I needed was to get away from home. I was so used to travelling all the time that sitting behind a desk just wasn’t cutting it for me. Is it weird that I missed the excitement (or sometimes lack thereof) of being in an airport?? However, I think I’ve come to realize something: there are adventures waiting to be had anywhere and everywhere if you know how to recognize them.
With the start of 2012, I’m going to do my best to discover this side of “the pond.” This is where I'll find the inspiration for my new adventures. I'm lucky enough to come from an area where culture is rich, where old traditions are still alive and where people are open to share their stories. Through these new discoveries and past adventures, I’d like to share my experiences, my advice, my recipes and my passion for culture with you. I hope my travels help you to design your own exciting journeys and leave you with a desire to create lasting memories of your own; that your appetite for travel grows and you taste all the pleasures life has to offer. The world truly is an amazing place and it’s baffling how unique yet similar we all are. There is so much to discover once you leave your doorstep and whether you decide to go left or right, the world in which you once lived will never be the same.
Cheers and enjoy,
Mary Beth