Dear London, where everyone is welcome. With a family hailing from your East End, you have never not been a part of my life—and my goodness, we have grown together. It’s been quite the ride so far, eh? I have played rock ‘n’ roll in your dive bars in Camden, guided hundreds of visitors through […]
love letter
A Love Letter to Breakfast in Seville
Andalusians are definitely onto something with the practice (dare I say, tradition?) of a near-daily breakfast out at a local bar or café. Coming from an American frame of mind, where breakfast is not typically lingered over unless it’s a weekend brunch, the concept of taking the time to have breakfast out any day of […]
A Love Letter to Christmas in Italy (and the Family Meal that Starts the Season)
The Christmas season in Rome is the stuff of legends. I’ve always loved the holidays back at home, but the Italians manage to take it to a whole new level, with seven giorni di festa throughout the months of December and January. Every single Catholic holiday is celebrated with enormous quantities of pasta, roasted meats, […]
The Real Reasons Why Everyone Loves Montmartre
I first fell in love with Montmartre on the big screen, thanks to its starring role in Amélie. And like my heroine’s own connection to her neighborhood, it’s the first place I started to feel at home in Paris. When I visited a shared apartment in Montmartre which came with all the basics as […]
Enchanted by Saudade: My Love Letter to Lisbon
This post is part of our Love Letter series: first-person accounts of what we love about Lisbon. Hilly streets, buildings with history and a soft sea breeze. These are my first memories of Lisbon, a city I visited for the first time in 2007. Over a decade later a lot has changed, much due to a harsh […]
A Love Letter to Rome: Its Food & People
This post is part of our Love Letter series: first-person accounts of what we love about Rome. Rome is a city that lives and breathes its food culture. When you visit, you can’t help but fall in love with espresso, handmade pasta, bitter greens… and if you stay long enough, you might even develop a […]
A Love Letter to Paris: Growing Up
Growing up, my birthday tradition differed from that of most American boys. For many of my friends, birthdays meant a chocolate cake and a trip to Chuck-E-Cheese or a laser tag game. For me, it was a tarte aux framboises with DIY birthday candles and a visit to the Paris taxidermy shop, Deyrolle. Paris entered […]
A Love Letter to Paris
This post is part of our Love Letter series: first-person accounts of what we love about Paris. An introduction from Lauren, the founder of Devour Tours: On my first visit to Paris, I was enthralled with the architecture, the food culture, the Parisians themselves… I fell head over heels and wanted to learn more. And […]
A Love Letter to Paris: Rue Paul Bert
This post is part of our Love Letter series: first-person accounts of what we love about Paris. It was a grey mid-December day, but it still seemed like I could see all of Paris. There I stood, nose to floor-to-ceiling window of a sixth floor, one-bedroom on rue Paul Bert in the 11th arrondissement, contemplating […]
A Love Letter to Paris: the Everyday Luxury of Pastry
Food-loving Paris is a playground for pastry. I may have come to Paris twelve years ago as a dedicated student of linguistics and French literature, but I quickly learned I’d need to learn another language entirely to fully immerse myself in the culture—the language of pastry. And it was by focusing my attention on all […]
