Travel Guides

Travel Guides

Where Will You Go Next?

Honest, first-person guides built from the road — no recycled tips, no guesswork. Every recommendation is earned, every photograph taken on location.

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    48 Hours in Morocco with Team USA: What Competing Abroad Actually Looks Like

    The first post in Where Team USA Handball Took Me — 48 hours in Morocco spent moving between a gym, a hotel, and the bus route in between, and what that actually looks like from the inside.

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    San Juan Between Matches: Puerto Rico with Team USA

    A short trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico for a Team USA Handball friendlies series in June 2026 — the third stop in a series about what a country looks like when you’re there to compete, not to sightsee.

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    How I Book Flights and Stays With Limited Days Off

    I approach booking the same way I approach a project deadline: the anchors get locked first, and everything else fills in around them. When you only have a fixed number of vacation days a year, a booking mistake doesn’t just cost money, it costs a piece of time you can’t get back. The anchors are…

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    Havana in 4 Days: The Real Neighborhood Itinerary

    This is a real four-day walking itinerary through Havana, built neighborhood by neighborhood instead of sight by sight. Day one stays in Habana Vieja, starting early at Plaza Vieja before the tour groups arrive, then working outward through the side streets around Calle Mercaderes and Plaza de la Catedral, where the restored colonial buildings sit…

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    The Golden Hour Trip-Prep Worksheet

    This worksheet helps you plan a trip around the light instead of around the sights, which is the single biggest difference between snapshots and photographs that actually feel like something. For any destination, it walks through figuring out sunrise and sunset times before you go, mapping which locations face which direction, and scouting two or…

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    The Road Trip Glovebox Checklist

    This checklist covers everything worth keeping in the glovebox or center console for a multi-day road trip, built from actual road trips rather than a generic packing list. It splits into four groups: documents and paperwork, roadside emergency items, comfort and snack items, and phone or navigation backups. Documents and paperwork include your license, registration,…

Why These Travel Guides Are Different

Every one of these travel guides comes from a trip Bea actually took, not a roundup pieced together from other blogs. That means the travel guides here focus on what a place really felt like: the transit that ran late, the neighborhood that was quieter than expected, the meal worth planning a whole afternoon around.

What You’ll Find in Each Guide

Most travel guides on this site include a short trip overview, a practical breakdown of costs and logistics, and honest opinions about what was worth the time and what wasn’t. When relevant, a guide will point to official resources, such as national tourism boards or government travel advisories, so you can verify entry requirements before you book anything. Photos come from the actual trip rather than stock libraries, so what you see in a guide is close to what you will encounter on the ground. Costs are given as ranges rather than exact figures, since prices shift with season and exchange rates, but they are close enough to help you budget realistically before you commit to a destination.

Browsing These Travel Guides by Region

New travel guides are added every month as trips wrap up and get written up, so this page is a living collection rather than a fixed list. Use the destination filters above, or scroll through the latest posts below, to find a guide for the region you’re planning next. Each guide is tagged by both destination and travel style, so if a specific region isn’t covered yet, you can still browse by the kind of trip you’re after, whether that’s a slow city break, a packed sports itinerary, or a photography-focused route built around sunrise and sunset light.

So far, coverage spans a mix of cities, coastlines, and countries, from a quiet week in Barcelona to training camps in Morocco and match trips through Puerto Rico. Some entries lean toward slow, immersive stays; others follow a packed itinerary built around a specific event or sport. The goal is the same either way: give you a real sense of a place before you spend money getting there. Coverage keeps expanding as new trips happen, so it’s worth checking back if your destination or preferred travel style isn’t represented here yet. Suggestions for future destinations are always welcome, and readers occasionally point Bea toward a region or itinerary style that ends up shaping where the next trip happens.

Most posts follow a similar shape: a short intro about why the trip happened, a practical section covering cost ranges and getting-around logistics, and a closing take on whether it’s worth repeating. If you’re short on time, skim the bolded practical notes; if you want the full picture, the intros usually explain what almost went wrong and what made the trip worth it anyway.

Rome, Italy — one of the destinations covered in these travel guides

One thing you won’t find here is a generic “top 10 things to do” list with no context. Each guide is written after the fact, once Bea has had time to see how the trip actually went, which means the advice reflects what worked in practice rather than what sounded good while planning.

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