Madrid, Spain

by Reid Peryam· November 03, 2023· in Europe, Travel· 0 comments tags: madrid, spain
I have heard it said that you either like Barcelona or Madrid, never both. Each city has its own charms, culture, personality, food and history but are uniquely distinct — so distinct that if you like the style of either, it probably means you won’t be into the other. I have found this to be true of other country’s cities too; e.g., Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, Los Angeles and New York, USA, Munich and Berlin, Germany, Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia. Well I really like Madrid. Unfortunately, it’s so freaking expensive to find housing there that I can’t spend as much time as I’d like (months!). This year though I was able to find a week there before heading back to North America. I was again working too much, so my routine consisted of working from the hotel lobby where I was stationed in front of a big window where I watched passersby while pounding on my computer. The highlights of my trip were meeting with my friend Richard and his family who hosted me for a dinner in their house in the suburbs for a night. I met the family while I was living in the Maldives in 2020. Every […]
Read More

Léon, Spain

by Reid Peryam· November 01, 2023· in Europe, Travel· 0 comments tags: leon, spain
I have wanted to explore the north of Spain for a few years, since it has been one of the many places that is still a blank slate to me. I was looking for a place that was off the beaten path a bit, not so touristy and famous and hopefully a little smaller. Well I when a friend recommended I consider Léon — I took a look and liked what I saw after doing some research on accommodations and my initial impressions of the town. It’s very historic with a lot of old buildings and monuments to famous knights that gives it a romantic quality. Ancient walls and this famous cathedral sit at the heart of its city center which is so small that it’s quite charming. Only 130,000 people live in Leon and I have no idea why it isn’t a larger city. It was founded in 74 AD by the Romans – making it nearly 2,000 years old. Since that time its culture and personality have changed through each of the time periods that succeeded. Even though the city is small and historic there is an artsy feel to it, a sort of creativity that you can […]
Read More

Barcelona, Spain

by Reid Peryam· October 14, 2023· in Europe, Travel· 0 comments tags: barcelona, spain
My niece was spending a semester studying University in Barcelona, Spain and so of course I wanted to go visit her while she was there. I visited Barcelona just once before, in 2017, but just for a few days so I was excited to return again and hopefully see more and do more around that city that increasingly seems to be one of the most popular places to live in Spain, and Europe. Well unfortunately, my job didn’t accommodate my intentions as much as I had hoped. I ended up working from the hotel lobby for my entire duration in Barcelona; well most of it. I took a Thursday off since my niece had the day off from school, and I rented a car so that we could drive an hour and half east to check out the beaches around Girona, which were on her list of places to see. We collected beach glass from the sand which happened to be more fun than it had any right to be. But the most fun was spending a day with my niece, just the two of us. In the evening we met my friend, Silvia, for dinner in El Poblenou, the […]
Read More

Budapest, Hungary

by Reid Peryam· October 09, 2023· in Europe, Travel· 0 comments tags: budapest, hungary
Budapest is one of those cities that has been in my travel queue for too long. Though I spend plenty of time in Europe each year, it was never convenient to squeeze it into my itinerary. I did finally manage to make a ten day reconnaissance trip to scout it out for the first time to see if it’s the type of place I could and should stay for longer. My friend Will, who also is location independent and works remotely, was in Budapest and had encouraged me to visit while he was there. Like I’ve said previously, I rarely turn down an invitation. I took the opportunity to see that I was finally fated to visit Budapest for the first time, and embraced it. Will recommended a gym to me to use while I was visiting that was a fifteen minute walk from my Airbnb apartment. My daily routine involved going there in the morning, stopping at the grocery store on the way home, and then working all day before falling asleep, or meeting Will for dinner (if it was the weekend). Unfortunately I was working a lot during my time visiting Budapest and wasn’t able to explore the […]
Read More

Vevey, Switzerland

by Reid Peryam· September 29, 2023· in Europe, Travel· 0 comments tags: switzerland
I spent 8 days in Vevey, Switzerland which is an affluent town on the other side of the Lake from Geneva and about an hour away by train. During this time I also visited Gstaad (sort of like a Swiss Aspen), Geneva (but just for a day) and took a train to Chamonix, France. The trains to both Gstaad and Chamonix were both scenic trains with big windows and beautiful views.
Read More

Venice, Italy

by Reid Peryam· September 16, 2023· in Europe, Travel· 0 comments tags: italy, venice
After finishing the European bike trip through Austria, Italy and Slovenia, we all took a shuttle van to Venice Italy where we spent three days and two nights exploring fun and interesting things around town. I have only been to Venice once before, when I was fifteen years old, on a school trip and this time around I got a better sense of what Venice is really like thanks to Costanza who patiently explained, guided and accommodated me across the various islands. She made an appointment for us to visit the island of Murano, where famous glass art is crafted, to have a business meeting to investigate sourcing materials to her Los Angeles design company. She let me tag along and accompany her as I stood wide eyed with my hands in my pocket making a concerted effort not to break anything. Murano glass is apparently world famous — they produce chandeliers for retail locations of major Italian fashion designers and prices there I saw were over $50,000. One of the head salesmen of the company greeted us when we landed on the island from the free boat he was kind enough to send for us (well really for Costanza). […]
Read More

European Bike Trip

by Reid Peryam· September 09, 2023· in Europe, Travel· 0 comments tags: austria, italy, slovenia
When someone invites me to do something somewhere in the world, my default is yes. Well I’ve had to re-evaluate that position since meeting Costanza – a woman whose sense of adventure and desire to travel and explore new places vastly outshines my own. She was doing a bike trip through Europe (Austria, Italy and Slovenia) for 7 days that her friend had organized and invited me to join alongside five others. So I reorganized my itinerary (sorry Vancouver, some other time). A cool thing about the bike trip was since I was in the central European time zone (which was about 7 hours behind in the USA timezone I work within) I didn’t have to take any time off work. Each morning we started biking with an early start to avoid midday European summer head and then arrived at the next destination in the afternoon which allotted plenty of time to attend my remote work meetings and grind on client work. The best part though was that the project I was currently working on during the trip got canceled half way through it, so I didn’t end up working at all during the entire six days, which was great. […]
Read More
In 2004, I took my first solo, international trip to Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, to fish for sea-run brown and rainbow trout on the Rio Grande River. At the time, I was a financially constrained, post-collegiate individual. I quickly learned that fishing access in Argentina was only possible if you paid thousands of dollars to stay at large, private estancias (similar to Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming or A-A), catering to wealthy foreigners who wanted to fish. I thought that couldn’t be right. Surely, there would be local public access for ordinary people to fish, just like in every other country in the world (presumably). However, I couldn’t find any information online, and even inquiries on the TripAdvisor web forums (lol TripAdvisor) yielded no results. Nonetheless, I ventured forth to figure it out upon arrival, and what an adventure it turned out to be! It involved, among other things, an abandoned, post-apocalyptic hostel, a ghost ship named DESDEMONA, a run-in with authorities, and help from local children. Eventually, I did locate local public fishing access and caught some truly enormous trout on salmon flies. I updated my TripAdvisor question with the fact that I figured it all out: there was […]
Read More
I tend to avoid hyperbole, so when I claim that the Isle of Skye, Scotland, is the most picturesque destination I have visited, I’m not exaggerating. It was too difficult to pick just ten photos for the customary Instagram post I make for each destination, so I ended up posting a lot more. The selection I have here includes some of my favorites. Really, my two weeks on the island didn’t do the location justice, nor did my photos—I was so busy with work that most of my time there was spent behind my computer. When I did have time to venture forth and explore, it was limited; I would have taken more photos if it weren’t for that gosh darn obligatory need to earn money. Skye has its own distinct culture and history within Scotland. I was attracted to it by my lovely friend Michelle, a native of Portree, Scotland, who encouraged me to visit during the best time—summer. Initially, I wanted to come in September, but she said that would be too late as summer would be over—crazy, right? So, I carved out two whole weeks in July for the trip instead. I’m glad I allotted extra time—typically, […]
Read More
I had never visited the Netherlands. My family did have a Dutch foreign exchange student my freshman year in high school but I was never interested in visiting the country, maybe for that reason. I figured I could delay a visit to Amsterdam until I was 85 years old – presuming that it would be the easiest place in the world to travel to, and probably the safest. After all, it’s flat, full of bicycles and Europeans; no point on rushing there, I can tackle when I have entered my “boring travel” mode. But then something crazy happened — I visited Amsterdam twice in the same summer. I stopped in Amsterdam for five days on the way to Scotland, the city is a convenient stop en route to the rest of Europe too and then again traveling from the USA en route to Austria. My time visiting was so great that I plan on making it a regular entry and exist destination to and from Europe, when possible. Well, as everyone else already knows, Amsterdam is a pretty great place. It has a youthful, energetic and cosmopolitan energy to its personality and its no wonder that it attracts people all […]
Read More