In the digital age with an app dropping every five minutes, there's a lot to choose from in the travel market. Everyone has a few favorites, be in the app that'll pull up a city map, or order a cab and rate it, and the ever important and occasionally handy translation tool.

For a long time I resisted apps, being a bit semi-Luddite about it. I think one can get along perfectly fine in their travels without relying on them, but I have to admit...they are so handy, when you have the data and Wi-Fi to support using them, of course! It's always a good idea to check the Wi-Fi situation of your destination. 

Having now embraced apps more, here are my current favorite ones for travel.

Spring travel season approaches, and London is a great destination to consider. It's shoulder season still for one, meaning it can be a more affordable time of year to visit, and secondly, it's quite a pretty time as well with flowers and trees in bloom. I imagine Kew Gardens is lovely in springtime.

If this grand city is calling to you, you can check out my post covering my London vacation last autumn that includes a bit of an overview, where I stayed and why it was a convenient home base, getting around the city, and places worth visiting.

But let's talk about food. 

Doctor Bronner's can be used as shower gel, bath soak, washing hair and face in a pinch, as laundry soap, etc. etc. It claims to have 18 uses, but as travel goes I care about it as shower gel, face wash, and laundry soap. I have tried it on my hair, without Doctor Bronner's follow up Hair Rinse, and found I didn't like it. But then again, apparently you're supposed to use the slightly acidic hair rinse to counteract the alkali in the soap. Without it, it makes the hair feel a bit dry and off. 

It seems like an odd choice visiting Las Vegas if you don't gamble, but there's actually quite a few cool things to do in the sin city that don't require sitting at a poker table.

Ah Edinburgh. You old, green, overtly hilly town. You stole my heart utterly and thoroughly nine years ago during that mad August I spent living in you.

Sometimes the best laid plans change, and that's never more true than when it comes to traveling. The Amsterdam trip I was planning for May is now postponed tentatively for 2017. It happens, but luckily it's early enough in the year for me to cancel my Cocomama reservation. While I was looking forward to seeing the canals and tulips, I'm repurposing that travel bug energy into trying to work out a mid-June trip to Italy instead. I figure, hey, it's better than being bummed and there's still some time to see if it can happen.

New Year's always seems to bring the idea of "New Year, New You" and resolutions, and while I'll be waist-deep in this concept for work over the next few weeks (yay, content marketing for e-commerce!), instead of making "new me" as a goal for 2016, I've decided to look at it more as me, in-progress, and continue working on existing and newer goals as opposed to the idea I need to become a new person.

The holidays are upon us which means I've made my trek back east for two weeks to visit friends and family. This year, I scaled back a lot in what I normally bring for makeup, at least "scaled back" by my standards. :)

Vacation is usually synonymous with summer time, but there's something to be said about traveling in winter. It's usually the cheapest time of year for many destinations worldwide, and traveling in a shoulder season means places are less crowded. Why not spend some time next December strolling through Christmas markets in London or Germany? Or, if you're wanting to get away from the cold there's always Hawaii.

On our vacation to London, we chose to fly Virgin Atlantic Upper Class for the 10.5 hours there and 12 back because we had amassed the required 50,000 Elevate points each to redeem the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class award, through just flying a lot on Virgin America, both having Virgin Visa Credit Cards (we get 8 points per $1 base airfare using our cards to book Virgin America flights), some Amex Memberships Reward point transferring, and a good points buying sale around last winter time. Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic, despite being both Virgin, are separate brands and airlines, but they do partner together. This means if you are a Virgin Elevate member and have enough points, you can redeem them for award seats on Virgin Atlantic, also Virgin Australia, Hawaiian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and more. 

I've been, admittedly, putting this post off for a month now. Partly because I got very busy at work, and a largely in the wake of the events a few weeks ago in Paris. It felt trivial at the time to post about my brief 24 hour visit  from October right after the attacks. But life must go on, and it's important to see the bright spots after dark times.

A few days into our London trip, I had planned for the boyfriend and myself to go out to the Cotswolds for a day. Our friend Hope had gone a while back and had nothing but great to say about it. As someone who frequently reads historical fiction set in the 19th century and often in country settings much like this, how could I not visit?

Now that the after effects of jetlag are wearing off and I'm not staring at my ceiling bemoaning that it's 3:30 am, why am I awaaaaakeeeee I can finally get down to business and talk about my trip to London, which was the first proper international vacation my boyfriend and I have actually ever taken. 

Because I'm from the East Coast and currently live on the West Coast, there's a few times a year I go back and forth. And sometimes I also make jaunts down to Texas. Because of this, I've found Virgin America to be the best middle ground (for me) in terms of economical and comfort. I will fly Southwest when I have to and it makes sense, I've flown other airlines across country, but Virgin tends to me #1 choice.

MUJI has become quite the popular cult brand in the beauty community, notably for its organization products, travel-sized containers, and more recently it's simple and effective skincare lines.

I'm fortunate to have a small brick and mortar MUJI storefront in my town, and with Gen Con looming, it was the perfect time to pick up some travel supplies for my toiletry kit, which is also MUJI.

Tired of my wheeled carry on that's on it's last legs and looking for something more portable to use for weekend trips or hauls where I get away with less clothing items, I decided to get the Tortuga Air.

The regular Tortuga website's recommendations suggested I might be too short for their regular Tortuga backpack, which holds about 20% more stuff and comes with a few more bells and whistles.

So what does the Tortuga Air feature?

I spent my Memorial Day weekend in Portland, land of hipster and according to Portlandia where the young go to retire. I'm not sure how much merit there is in the last part, but I do know one of my friends seems pretty happy to live there and work at a cat cafe.

Let's get this out of the way first: I didn't go to Voodoo Donuts. Yes, it's a tourist tradition, hailed on many lists as a Must Do, blah blah blah, but...

I have Memorial Day Monday off, since my SO is away working, I decided a mini-weekend vacation is in order. Easier said than done when you're indecisive.

At first, I thought Quebec. I've never been, it has beautiful Old World charm, good food...and unfortunately no good plane itinerary from Bay Area that would work for me to get there and have actual time to do things, and it meant 6am or around there in way too early in morning flights. No. Sadly, pass for now. 

Then I thought New Orleans. I have 30k Virgin Elevates points in my account, I could use points and fly SFO to Dallas and then Southwest to New Orleans, right? Well, same problem with itineraries and the cost just wasn't where I needed it to be. 

So after mulling it over, one of my friends and elite grade travel hacker Tuan suggested Portland.