Some of my best travel stories don’t fit neatly into a destination guide or a planning framework. They’re the holiday memories with my mom that span borders and decades. The five travel moments from 2025 I still think about. The smaller pieces that didn’t earn a 3,000-word itinerary but earned a place on the site anyway.
This category is where those travel stories live.
If you’ve been reading Travel Kindred for a while, this is the corner of the site where I get more personal. You’ll find reflections on the trips that changed how I travel, the holidays I’ve spent in countries I didn’t grow up in, and the smaller moments — a cafe in Sicily, a sunrise over the Serengeti, a quiet morning in Kyoto — that made the bigger trips worth taking.
I write these because they’re the writing I love doing. They’re the pieces I’d send to a girlfriend who asked what travel has actually given me over the years, not the ones I’d send to someone asking how to plan a week in Italy.
If you’re new to Travel Kindred, my destination guides and travel planning posts are where to start. But if you’ve been around for a while and want to know what I actually think about traveling solo at this stage of life, traveling with my mom, or what years of travel have taught me, these travel stories are the category for that.
Want help planning a trip worth its own story? My Plan With Me page is where to start.
Happy travels, kindreds.
