Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Rich spent 20 years bringing up the loony idea of luggage-free travel , but it was Clara Bensen who finally convinced me to try it. She and her not-yet-officially-a-boyfriend Jeff explored the parameters of their unconventional relationship during three weeks of Couchsurfing around Europe with nothing but the clothes on their backs and, in Clara’s…

“Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve,” wrote columnist Bill Vaughan . “Middle age is when you’re forced to!” It’s easy to get blasé about ringing in yet another January. By now we’ve all learned that few, if any, New Year’s celebrations live up to our Hollywood-fed expectations for…

When I was a little girl, I used to save up my allowance for family excursions to San Francisco’s Chinatown, where I proceeded to purchase such dazzling exotica as hand-painted fans, little plaster statues of animals, and shiny bits of jewelry. Little did I know that all these years later, my skill for finding gimcrack…

My globetrotting friend Liz recently showed up on my doorstep bearing a packet of Weasel Coffee as a hostess gift. “They say Vietnamese weasels eat the coffee beans,” she shouted to me over the hubbub of arriving guests clustering around the front door. “And then the beans pass through the animals’ digestive tracts, which adds…

​One of the things I love about Spain is that nobody can agree on anything — and everyone seems fine with that. Take tapas, for instance, those delicious small plates of food that are so popular here in Seville (and just about everywhere these days). The word comes from tapar , “to cover,” but does…

“Why not write about how you handle money?” a reader suggests. “Credit cards? Rail pass? Cash and what kind of cash?” “Uh, oh,” I said to Rich. “I think you’d better take this one.” ​After 29 years of marriage, we’ve worked out a division of labor. I’m the wordsmith who acquires travel phrases in every…

With Black Friday now extending from Halloween to New Year’s, the holiday season has become, if possible, even more overwhelming. In a rare demand for sanity, American consumers pressured some huge retail chains into closing on Thanksgiving Day , like they did way back when (two or three years ago). Well done, American consumers! But…

There’s nothing quite like basking in the afternoon sun, sipping sangria, and knowing that back home your family and friends are trudging through knee-deep snow, stinging sleet, and/or the bitter winds of serious winter. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t enjoy the idea of my loved ones suffering. It’s just that after 20 years in…

​“How do you deal with fights with your husband while you’re traveling?” It was the first question asked by a member of a book club I was Skyping with last week, discussing my latest memoir, Adventures of a Railway Nomad , about our three-month train odyssey. “You don’t write about any arguments in your book,…

My husband — as he’ll be the first to admit —has a serious luggage fetish. Over the years, our closets and attics have become jammed with suitcases, backpacks, daypacks, duffle bags, satchels, stuff sacks, and zippered pouches of every configuration. In times of stress, I can always divert Rich’s thoughts to a more cheerful direction…