Bolivia boasts yet another superlative, which in my opinion is not to be missed. I spent five days acclimatizing in La Paz, took a three-day trip to Lake Titicaca, returned to La Paz to meet my Global Builders team with The Fuller Center for a week, then flew from La Paz to Uyuni and back … Continue reading
Do we have the same memory from middle school? Learning that there was such a place called Ti-ti-ca-ca, a combination of words too hilarious to be uttered together? Many years later, I paid a visit to this very intriguing place with a laughable name. It feels a world away from La Paz, where I’d been … Continue reading
Once again, leading a Global Builders team with The Fuller Center for Housing, took me overseas, this time to Bolivia. I live near sea level, so landing straight away at an elevation over 13,000 feet at La Paz’s El Alto Airport was an adjustment to say the least. Bolivia is not an easy destination for … Continue reading
Having spent a couple days in Romania’s capital city at the end of my two-week tour of building houses in Cluj and around Transylvania, I’m not sure why it gets a bad rap. Sure, it’s a rather large city. But I like gritty urban environs just as much as I like glacial lakes and mountain … Continue reading
If you only had time to visit one city and use it as a homebase to explore some of Transylvania’s most popular sites, make it Brasov (bra-shov). From Brasov we also took day trips to see Viscri, Bran Castle, Rupea Fortress and Rasnov Fortress and Peles Castle on the way to Bucharest. Wander Without a … Continue reading
Despite popular belief, Transylvania is not a town or city, but one of several regions, occupying the northern center of Romania. Practically everyone’s heard of it from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula in which Jonathan Harker stays at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Subsequently he discovers the Count a vampire. You already … Continue reading
Hoping a flight from Amsterdam to Cluj-Napoca on LOT through Warsaw, I continued to make my way east, the furthest east I’d ever been on the European continent. I had no idea what to expect, only what I’d read and heard from others visiting Romania’s second largest city, the unofficial capital of the Dracula-famed Transylvania. … Continue reading
It was Spring Break for my teenage daughter and friend. She wanted to go somewhere warm. I didn’t want to deal with the continued hassle of international travel in March 2022, so I started looking south, in the good old U, S of A. Almost guaranteed sunny, or at least warmer temps, we decided on … Continue reading
After finishing another successful volunteer house build with The Fuller Center for Housing, I was fortunate to extend my stay in Peru. If you plan to visit Machu Picchu while in Peru, most likely your jumping off point will be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Western Hemisphere and the former capital … Continue reading
Lima is known for many things, perhaps best as the gastronomic capital city of South America. Given some advance warning, you can try to get reservations at some of the hottest foodie destinations anywhere. I flew into Lima just one day in advance of meeting my Global Builders team, 15 volunteers who would be building houses with me and The Fuller Center for Housing. Without a lot of time to get to know this enchanting seaside city, I could only check a few items off my list. Guess that means I’ll have to come again! Here are a few highlights that I highly recommend and the ones I would have done if I’d had more time. Continue reading
Global Staci 