Hiking the Waimea Canyon
By: Smith Schwartz |
Seriously, it is incredibly unfair how beautiful Kauai is. Hawaii’s oldest island is a treasure trove of discoveries. It’s really hard to illustrate the scale of how vast this canyon is by photos alone. You really have to go. My fear of heights was put to new tests as theses “trails” just kind of rolled off the side of the...
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Video: Well-Designed Travel at Ignite Chicago
By: Smith Schwartz |
Listen up! I’m talking about stuff that’s really important! (jk/jk/lol) A few months back I did a (only slightly embarrassing) talk at Ignite Chicago. I spoke about our lives and how we live the way we live. Ignite is a fast-paced 15 seconds-per-slide kind of talk, so I may have come close to breaking JFK’s world record trying to fit...
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Waimea: The Texas of Kauai
By: Smith Schwartz |
After a few soggy days on Kauai, we were desperately seeking sunshine. We had moved on from the industrial seaside town of Lihue to the lush, fertile hillsides of Lawai Valley. It’s a strikingly beautiful area, but since it is ‘wintertime’ on the island, it rains almost all the time. Our gracious host, Traci at the Strawberry Guava Bed and...
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From Red Mud to Roosters: Touchdown in Kauai
By: Smith Schwartz |
Aloha from Hawaii! We just finished up two weeks of honest-to-goodness vacation. It felt good to take a “screen break” and not look at things like laptops and phones and email (too much). This is the first time we’ve taken a serious chunk of time to relax since planning for and embarking on this nomadic journey. Not that anyone should...
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On Work and Travel
By: Smith Schwartz |
A few weeks back, I had an email exchange with a friend-of-a-friend who’s considering taking a break from the daily grind and moving to Ecuador for a short period of time. We’ve been having a nice back and forth about work, travel and logistics and I realize that even though we’ve been working and traveling for over a year, I...
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Ignite Chicago: Well-Designed Travel
By: Smith Schwartz |
Tonight, I’m so excited to be presenting at Ignite Chicago. I’m basically going to be speaking about how we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing for the past year. It’s gonna be a good time. If you’re free tonight and want to come out, there are still a few tickets left. If not, here’s a transcript. You’ll just have imagine...
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The International Festival in Lafayette
By: Smith Schwartz |
We rolled up to Aaaah T’Frere’s in Lafayette, Louisiana just on the heels of Twilight Time. Just as soon as our hosts could say bienvenue and offer us a crab crustard, they asked, ”y’all here for the festival?” Well, I suppose we are now! We were just looking for a fun place to stop for the evening on our drive...
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Laura: A Creole Plantation
By: Smith Schwartz |
About halfway between Lafayette and New Orleans alongside the Mississippi River lie a row of plantation homes. All of theses homes are no longer functioning as operation plantations, but they are now open as historical museums. Laura Plantation is the most modest of the homes, as it was run by a Creole family. In Creole tradition, they used the home...
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A Culinary Tour of Houston
By: Smith Schwartz |
Just imagine Erik’s eyes are open… We met lots of fun folks at SXSW, but only one invited us to spend the weekend at his house. Not only did Aziz, Sania and their littles have us down to Houston for the weekend, they really went out of their way to show us around town. We were there a mere 29...
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Deep in the Heart of Texas: Crawfish Boil
By: Smith Schwartz |
These crawfish were alive and crawling, no doubt about it. We’ve really had such a great time down in Austin so far. Lucky for us, we met some great Austinites down in Buenos Aires when we showed up to an underground dinner. They’ve become great friends, and have really been rolling out the red carpet here for us lately. We...
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