Our Travels
“We look for chances to see and do something new, while still making time for the spaces and experiences we’ve always loved”
–Candace & Chris
Both of us have had the chance to travel a lot, both before we met and since we’ve been together, and we are so excited to go on even more adventures with the child we hope to adopt.
Travel, for our families, has always been about learning just how big the world is and how connected we are to each other. From a young age, Chris grew up hearing stories from his parents about their childhoods spent in Taiwan, Singapore, and the Philippines, and even made a trip back to Manila with his mother and sister. Candace’s parents never lived abroad, but her mother’s family hosted a foreign exchange student from Rome when her mom was in high school. The two kept in touch through letters, then emails, so that Candace’s first international travel involved touring through Italy alongside the local “aunt” and cousins she had only just met, but already knew to be family.
It’s experiences like these that formed our early sense of adventure and possibility, as well as our belief that travel is not just about seeing the tourist sights and taking a few photos, but really about getting a deeper understanding of a place, its people, its nature, and its culture. Whether we’re visiting a brand new destination or re-visiting a home away from home, we love the kind of travel that lets us feel really immersed in a place.
Candace lived in London for a year while in college — inspired by her Italian aunt’s experience of living and learning in a foreign place — and the city still feels like a second home to her whenever we go back. We’ve celebrated Norway’s national independence day with friends living in Oslo, picnicking in their neighborhood park and eating too much ice cream while the locals paraded past in traditional attire. When we traveled to Paris with Candace’s family years ago, we split our time pretty evenly between the astounding French art on display in the museums and the astounding French food, pastries, and people-watching on offer in the city’s many cafés. When Chris was recently able to return to Paris on a work trip, he was excited to be able to bring his mom and share the city with her. In Bogotá, we hiked nature preserves and learned about the unique high-altitude ecosystem, then went out for dinner at the neighborhood restaurants our guides had recommended.
If anything, all of this far-flung adventure has taught us how to see the world with wonder and delight, whether we’re exploring a nature preserve in the mountains outside of Bogotá or just learning about the nature around us a lot closer to home. Here in the Northeast, we’ve sought out stunning riverside hikes in the Hudson Valley and made a couple of visits to Portland and Acadia National Park in Maine.
Our family roots in California and Oregon bring us back to the West Coast at least once a year, and now Chris has walked on the beaches where Candace played as a child, and Candace has wandered the woods in Oregon where Chris explored as a kid. Even here, in places we grew up, we look for chances to see and do something new, while still making time for the spaces and experiences we’ve always loved.
