About the Blog

Practical Wanderlust is a travel blog written by Lia & Jeremy, aka Liaremy. We got married in May of 2016, and then we quit our jobs, sold our stuff, and left for a year-long honeymoon. Read more about us here!

So now you know a little bit about us. What about our travel philosophy? What kind of foolish job-quitting part-time nomads are we, anyway?!

Our Travel Philosophy

“Practical Wanderlust,” the term, can be broken into two parts.

prac·ti·cal (adjective): sensible and realistic in the approach to a situation or problem.
wan·der·lust (noun): a strong desire to travel.

I, Lia, am a person afflicted with permanent wanderlust. I think it’s actually genetic. My 90 year old grandmother has been in a semi permanent state of travelling for as long as I can remember. I was privileged to grow up in a household that could afford and enjoyed travel. I am also a highly practical person. Logical. Reasonable. Sensible. I am the type of person who has a physical pocket calendar and a series of never ending to-do lists (oh my god, I’ve turned into my mother). I am the type of person who, when confronted with an anxiety-causing problem, maps out several possible worst-case scenarios and brainstorms every possible way to avert crisis, which are then added to my on-going to-do list in order to ease my anxiety (oh my god, I’ve turned into my sister, too).

“Practical Wanderlust” describes me perfectly: I want to travel, all the time. But I know that I CAN’T travel all the time, because life isn’t a magical fantasy word filled with rainbows and money and privilege where I can just do whatever I want and ~travel~ and post fabulous pictures on instagram instead of have a steady job and a retirement plan. I know people out there do, in fact, post fabulous pictures on instagram and travel as their job, but I have no idea how they do that and frankly I’m nowhere near attractive enough to garner that many followers (by the way, please follow me on Instagram. It makes me feel good when people “like” my photos.)

Watch this video on YouTube

We’re not like this.

I approach the problem of my wanderlust practically: I travel where I can, when I can, as much as I can, in a way that is sustainable and feasible.

But you took a year-long honeymoon, that doesn’t seem practical.

That’s true, it’s super not practical. But it’s something I’ve always wanted to try. For the past 4 years I’ve lived in the Bay Area and worked a steady, reliable 8-5 office job. I created a budget for myself that included “travel” as my second largest expense after rent, funded with cash scooped off the top of other budget categories. I viewed every weekend as a chance to take a trip, and spent many Friday nights driving a rental car to some nearby destination (the San Francisco Bay Area has so many amazing opportunities for nearby weekend trips! These are my favorites) to stay at a cheap campsite or AirBnB, and many Sunday nights driving back. I put my PTO to good use for week long trips whenever I could. If I had to travel for work, I pretended that was a fun vacation too -- or at the very least, an opportunity for miles & points for future travels.

But although these methods served well to tide me over for a few years, I yearned of a Big Trip. A journey. An adventure. More than a week at a time, somewhere totally different than what I was used to. So after college, when I started working, I set a date many years in the future, and decided “I’m going to just go freaking do it!!!!! In several years, when I’m financially ready and in a good place with my career. YOLO!” And just like that, I created a budget and started saving up. (I’m trying to make this sound dramatic, but honestly, I went about this in the least spontaneous way possible.)

I wasn’t sure if I’d be doing the trip solo or not, and although I was open to the idea, it was a little scary. Luckily, I met Jeremy. I knew he was my soulmate at an inappropriately early point in time and, as is customary for people who have been dating for like 2 weeks and are already pretty sure they’re going to get married, I told him about my Big Trip on one of our first dates. It went like this: “hey, I know we barely know each other, but in about 2 years I’m going to be leaving and going on a Big Trip, so like if you want to come or whatever I guess you could or whatever I guess. Or whatever.” 2 years later, here we are, married, and the Big Trip is kind of like our super long awesome honeymoon.

For the past 4 years, I’d been saving up…. and finally, it was time for my Big Trip! We left for South America in July 2016. Here’s what happened on our year-long honeymoon.

The trip taught us many things about ourselves: namely, that long term travel isn’t our preferred method of travel (we’re really weekend travelers at heart)! But it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and we made the most of it!

We returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in July of 2017, exactly a year after we left. We settled back down, got an apartment, went back to our jobs …. and then Lia quit. Again. I decided I wanted to give full-time travel blogging ago. Which is again, SO NOT PRACTICAL. But #yolo! This is my next BIG adventure, and I’m just as terrified and excited as I was before our year-long honeymoon. So I’m not quite sure what the future holds, but I’m so excited to find out!