I recently went to Storm King Art Center an open-air museum in New York that boasts 500 acres and contains one of the most impressive sculpture collections in the country. Located in the Hudson Valley, this museum aims to bring modern sculpture art to the people of New York while preserving the natural landscape. Some standout pieces during my visit included a sailboat [...]
For this next installment of destination literature, I found inspiration in Vendela Vida’s The Lovers, a novel about loss and the passing of time. When the novel’s protagonist, Yvonne, finds herself a lonely widow, she travels to the coastal village of Datça, Turkey, where she and her husband honeymooned 28 years before. By traveling to the breathtaking beaches, ancient ruins and winding village [...]
My travel bug is here to stay and my reading list does not disappoint when it comes to travel inspiration! A recent read of Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, has placed the island of Guernsey on my radar. This novel dives into the rich history of the island during World War II and what [...]
This past spring, I studied abroad in the Netherlands, a country known for windmills, tulips and its famous capital city. To many, Amsterdam has a certain reputation, but this doesn’t fully capture all that this city offers. My experience was made up of esteemed museums, delicious food and beautiful city streets. The Netherlands has been an art hub for centuries, and I saw [...]
My first destination literature blog post took us all the way to Italy, but this time I’m going to venture a bit closer to home: glamorous New York City. NYC has always been a go-to travel destination and is the perfect spot for a long weekend. In Amor Towles’s novel The Rules of Civility, 1930s NYC is brought to life in an exquisitely [...]
If you are anything like me, picking your next travel destination can prove to be a difficult choice. Lately, however, I have been turning to some of my favorite books for travel inspiration. Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley weaves the elements of a gripping crime novel with the alluring tale of a young American exploring the beauty of Italy. The idle, [...]
I took my very first trip to England last summer to visit my longtime friend and pen pal, Alex. Since she and I have similar interests—reading, writing and pleasing aesthetics—it was only fitting that she would introduce me to the coolest bookstore I’ve ever been to: Barter Books. Located in Alnwick Station in Northumberland, Barter Books is a secondhand bookstore where over 350,000 books [...]
You’ve probably heard some of the popular US superstitions: don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back, knock on wood, don’t walk under ladders and avoid broken mirrors. But across the world, there are some very different superstitions! In South Korea, it’s believed that sleeping with a fan on can kill you! This superstition is so ubiquitous that many Korean fans [...]
In a few weeks I’ll be headed to San Diego, California. My sister is typically my travel buddy, but this will be my first trip without her. I planned this trip a few months ago with one of my friends, and booking the trip was a lot easier than I anticipated. When we booked the trip we were able to bundle our flight, [...]
Have you ever fantasized about meeting your favorite writer? How about serving her a plate of mountain trout, with a hearty helping of Sriracha sauce on the side? While working at a restaurant in Western New York last summer, not only did I get to serve dinner to the beloved poet Sandra Cisneros—I got to tell her about the time I followed her words [...]