• Home
  • Start Here
    • Meet Lia & Jeremy
    • Our Year-Long Honeymoon
    • Read These Posts
      • Year in Review Posts
      • Travel Stories (& Travel Fails)
    • About Practical Wanderlust
      • Our Mission Statement
      • Meet The Team
    • Lia’s Book
    • Podcast
    • Contact Us & FAQ
  • Destinations
    • Browse All
    • Asia
      • Indonesia
      • Nepal
    • Europe
      • Austria
      • Belgium
      • Czech Republic
      • Denmark
      • France
      • Germany
      • Italy
      • Norway
      • Spain
      • Switzerland
    • North America
      • Canada
      • Mexico
      • Puerto Rico
      • United States
    • Central America
      • Costa Rica
      • Mexico
      • Panama
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Chile
      • Colombia
      • Ecuador
      • Peru
      • What to Pack for South America
      • 30 Things No One Tells You About Backpacking in South America
    • United States
      • Browse All USA
      • California
      • National Parks
      • Disney
    • Virtual Travel
  • Travel Tips
    • How to Plan a Trip
    • Travel Safety Tips
    • Travel Insurance Guide
    • How to be a Responsible Tourist
    • Long Term Travel
    • Family Travel
  • Packing Guides
    • General Packing Guides
    • Packing Lists by Destination
    • Product & Gear Reviews
    • Our Travel Essentials
    • Baby Travel Essentials
    • Browse All Packing Lists
  • Gift Guides
  • Lia’s Book
  • Podcast
  • Blogging Tips
  • Work with Us
    • Partner With Us
    • Press & Media
    • Write for Us
    • Coaching & Mentoring
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Practical Wanderlust

Responsible Travel on a Budget

  • Home
  • Start
    • Meet Lia & Jeremy
    • Read These Posts
      • Our Year-Long Honeymoon
      • Browse All Personal Posts
      • Travel Stories & Fails
      • Year in Review Posts
      • 30 Things Nobody Tells You About Quitting Your Job to Travel
      • 32 Things Nobody Tells You About Long Term Travel as a Couple
      • More Things Nobody Tells You…
    • About the Blog
      • Our Mission Statement
      • Meet The Team
    • Podcast
    • Lia’s Book
    • About Blogging
      • Income Reports
      • Pinterest Tips
      • Digital Nomad Tips
      • Write for Us
    • Contact Us & FAQ
  • Destinations
    • Browse All
    • Asia
      • Indonesia
      • Nepal
    • Europe
      • Austria
      • Belgium
      • Czech Republic
      • Denmark
      • France
      • Germany
      • Italy
      • Norway
      • Spain
      • Switzerland
    • North America
      • Canada
      • Mexico
      • Puerto Rico
      • United States
    • Central America
      • Costa Rica
      • Mexico
      • Panama
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Chile
      • Colombia
      • Ecuador
      • Peru
      • What to Pack for South America
      • 30 Things No One Tells You About Backpacking in South America
    • United States
      • Browse All USA
      • California
      • National Parks
      • Disney
    • Virtual Travel
  • Travel Tips
    • How to Plan a Trip
    • Travel Safety Tips
    • Travel Insurance Guide
    • Responsible Tourism Guide
    • Family Travel
    • Long Term Travel
      • 30 Things Nobody Tells You About Quitting Your Job to Travel
      • Our Year-Long Honeymon
      • Digital Nomad Tips
      • What Not to Pack for Long Term Travel
      • How to Quit Your Job & Travel Book
      • Browse All Long Term Travel
    • Packing Guides
      • General Packing Guides
      • Destination Packing Lists
      • Product & Gear Reviews
      • Travel Essentials We Bring on Every Trip
      • Baby Travel Essentials
      • Browse All
    • Gift Guides
      • 50 Perfect Travel Gifts
      • Eco-Friendly Travel Gifts
      • Gifts for Hikers Under $25
      • Travel Gifts for Coffee Lovers
      • Funny Travel Gifts
  • Work with Us
    • Partnerships
    • Press & Media
    • Write for us
    • Coaching

Meet Lia & Jeremy

 
Jeremy gives Lia a piggyback in front of Yosemite Chapel in Yosemite Valley.

Full disclosure: before we nailed this adorable picture, I attempted to jump on Jeremy and knocked both of us straight to the ground, like a giant flying squirrel. So graceful! If you look real close, you can see ground shmutz all over my butt.

Hi there! We’re so flattered that you care enough about who we are to click on our self-absorbed page all about us. We won’t let you down: we absolutely love talking about ourselves.

By the end of this page, you’ll probably feel like you know us really well. In fact, let’s make it official and connect on social media! Then you can tweet sassy one-liners at us and laugh at us with us as we publish embarrassing failure stories about our travel adventures.

FOLLOW US!

    

Lia Garcia in Graz, Austria.

Meet Lia

Lia is originally from Louisville, Kentucky. She grew up on an actual farm, with horses and everything. Despite this, she has – for no good reason – always had a Californian accent. The working theory is too many hours spent watching Clueless at a young, impressionable age.

At any rate, after getting her degree in fashion design & apparel merchandising from Indiana University (Go Hoosiers!) and spending one incredible semester working at Walt Disney World, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. There, she spent several years hopping around various corporate merchandising roles until becoming a Business Systems Analyst, which we’re pretty sure has something to do with computers. She did a lot of important sounding things like optimizing business processes and designing business solutions and stuff that sounds kinda boring unless you happen to do it yourself in which case it’s actually quite fun.

This all took 5 very long years. And during these 5 long years, Lia was hatching a plan. For 5 years she’d been sitting behind her corporate desk dreaming of A Very Big Adventure. Weekend trips, hiking and camping weren’t cutting it – she wanted to travel even more. She wanted a once in a lifetime opportunity to say f*** it and travel. For like, a LONG time.

She was also afraid that if she didn’t do it while she still could, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.

So she saved, and she planned, and she dreamed, and she met someone who was down to come along.

And finally, 5 years later, the day had come. She quit her job to go travel.

And it was nothing like what she expected.

Drinking watermelon juice in a swing in Nusa Lembongan, Bali.
One of the perks of travel blogging: lounging around on swings in Bali drinking watermelon juice is considered “work.”

Lots of people talk about how they “find themselves” when they travel. Lia was fully prepared to find herself. She figured she’d probably find herself doing things like waking up at dawn, doing yoga on the beach, drinking acai juice and probably meditating for a while, then maybe journalling or possibly thoughtfully reading, and then going on a casual 10 mile afternoon hike or maybe some light skydiving, and then turning in at a reasonable hour.

Instead, she found the exact same person that she’d always been: clumsy, disaster-prone, very slow at hiking, terrified of most adventure sports, prone to late-night Netflix binges, and totally in love with the world despite literally always being lost in it. That’s not a metaphor: Lia could get lost in her own house. She has no idea how to read a map.

Reality didn’t hit her all at once, though. It took a year of reality slapping her on the face and yelling WAKE UP!! HOW ARE YOU STILL ASLEEP!? IT’S NOON. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?! but after a while, she finally accepted that she was exactly who she always was.

And she made her peace with it – and with all of her many, many, many, many flaws.

After her year long honeymoon ended, Lia fully expected to return to the workplace. After all, her travels hadn’t changed her into becoming a new and different person, or showed her a side of herself that she wasn’t already completely familiar with.

On the beach in Maui, Hawaii.
Turns out it IS possible to look cute on the beach! And here I thought the best I could do was to avoid getting a sunburn and accidentally eating sand.

But it had done one life-changing thing: it had given her a full year to rabidly obsess over the little blog she’d started for fun just before leaving.

And obsess she did. Since founding her first e-commerce site and blog at age 16, Lia had spent years denying her inner spreadsheet-loving, website-building geek. But to her delight, the year-long honeymoon allowed her to fully dive straight into the nerdiest parts of running a blog.

And a full year of dedicating well over 40 hours a week to her new favorite hobby had grown it from a tiny baby blog into a hefty, self-sustaining teenaged blog, with like, angst, and ennui, and … bad taste in music … OK, this metaphor is getting out of hand.

And so, when she got back, she sat down at yet another desk in yet another corporate fashion retailer … and suddenly it hit her. What if she just like, blogged for a living? Is that a thing?!

She wasn’t totally sure, but she’s giving it a try anyway.

  • 2019 Update: OK, it’s been 2 years and we can safely say that YES, blogging full-time as like, a job, is definitely a thing! In the past 2 years, Lia has grown this humble little baby blog into a multi-6-figure earning toddler blog, spoken at conferences worldwide about blogging, and completely forgotten what it’s like to wake up before 8am and have to wear pants all day (whoops). Here’s a bunch of stuff nobody told her before she started. She also runs a travel blogging resource site and Facebook Group to help you learn how to blog full time, too!
Lia eating shave ice in Maui, Hawaii.
Devouring shave ice in Maui. Psst: If you look really close in this photo you can totally see a snorkel mask outline literally burnt into my face. Like how did I manage to get a sunburn UNDERWATER?!

3 Words to Describe Lia’s Personality

  • Logical, analytical, a complete nerd, brutally and innappropriately honest, pragmatic

Lia’s Favorite Things

  • Crafting (sewing, cardmaking, scrapbooking, knitting, jewelry making, all of it)
  • Snobby coffee and overpriced artisanal boujie food
  • Making fancy lists in cute little notebooks with specific pens
  • Feminism, social responsibility, and political activism
  • Makeup, but in a feminist kind of way
  • Wearing scarves (Fact: owns a scarf in every color)
  • Spreadsheets
  • Karaoke (Faves to sing: CHVRCHES, Shakira, NSYNC, Regina Spektor, everything from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.) 
  • Lord of the Rings… & Harry Potter
Crossing the border by bus from Ecuador to Peru
Jeremy eating ice cream next to the world’s most chill rooster while crossing the border from Ecuador into Peru. 5 minutes later, the rooster would be casually sitting next to us in the van as it careened through the mountains like this was its normal everyday commute. Full story here!

Meet Jeremy

Jeremy is originally from Morro Bay, California, and thus has the same Californian Valley Girl accent as Lia… except that his actually makes sense. He grew up on the Central Coast with a high school that was literally ON the beach.

Literally. ON THE BEACH. Lia likes to describe it as the high school from The O.C.

Jeremy moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend art school. He graduated with a film degree, a passion for writing and directing, and a baller portfolio, which everyone knows is the perfect formula for making cash hand over fist and becoming instantly famous. Spoilers: it’s not.

Still, his degree came in handy when he became a high school teacher in Oakland teaching filmmaking and digital media art. He still writes in his “spare time” and Lia is fully expecting to pay off all that student loan debt with one of his scripts.

Luckily for Jeremy, it turns out that teaching is actually something he is as passionate about as sharing meaningful stories through writing and film. He has happily spent the last few years teaching at an urban high school in Oakland.

Wearing my the best men's travel pants for long flights onto an Air Panama airplane.

Anyway, in between moving to San Francisco and becoming a teacher, he met Lia. It was love at first sight, bla bla bla – more on that below – and at a creepily early point in their relationship (2nd date) Lia asked whether he’d be interested in joining her on A Very Big Adventure,. He was like, “sure, that sounds fun!”

Usually when people say that kind of thing, they aren’t dead serious. Lia was dead serious.

Before Lia, Jeremy had never even left the time zone, much less the country. But a couple of years later, he found himself on a one-way flight to Colombia, thrilled and terrified and excited and terrified.

During their year-long honeymoon, Jeremy learned to love travel, and his extreme anxiety eventually gave way into a low-level constant panic. He was responsible for navigation, including the time he navigated a BMW right into a medieval castle in France on a disastrous road trip. He made a lot of animal friends, ate a lot of ice cream, hit his giant head on a lot of stuff (bless him, he tries) and had a great time.

Unlike Lia, who skipped gleefully away from corporate life like she’d just been freed from jail, Jeremy was heartbroken to leave his job and his students. He spent an embarrassing amount of time during the trip doing lame teacher things like lesson planning and designing curriculum.

So, as soon as he returned to Oakland, he resumed teaching at the same school, where he’s been saying things like “that is so lit, fam” and making students cringe ever since.

The Bluffworks men's travel pants and suit jacket in a
This is, hands down, the most sophisticated Jeremy has ever looked in his life.

3 Words to Describe Jeremy’s Personality

  •  Sassy, anxious, gingerbeardy, a walking California stereotype, overly considerate

Jeremy’s Favorite Things

  • Irritating youths
  • Telling awful dad jokes (usually to youths)
  • Dogs. Just, all of them.
  • Being the adventurous one
  • Rock climbing
  • Snobby/douchey/boujie coffee, beer, whisky, food, etc
  • Feminism, social responsibility, and political activism
  • Karaoke (Faves to Sing: The Black Keys, Creed in an obnoxious voice, Alt J, Macklemore, Johnny Cash)
  • Writing “Make To-Do list” at the top of every To-Do list
  • Making animal friends
  • Eating ice cream
  • Reading Harry Potter …or anything by Chuck Palahniuk or Stephen King (that balances out somehow)
  • Superhero movies, comic books, and video games (NERD)
Street art in Nashville, Tennessee.

Meet Liaremy

Yes, they combined their names. Don’t you kinda hate these guys?? 

Lia and Jeremy met on an internet dating site about a year and a half before meeting in person. Not Tinder, though – this was in P.T.E, the Pre-Tinder Era. And because apps and notifications weren’t a thing, Lia kept forgetting to log in and check her messages, which meant that it took over a year to have their first conversation. Oops.

Anyway, when they did eventually meet up, it was sickening puppy love at first sight. They were inseparable from a disgustingly early point, and soon began aggressively one-upping each other in over-the-top displays of romantic affection.

Like, Lia spent far too much time than is reasonable on a scavenger hunt for Valentine’s Day … before they were even official.

Jeremy once hand-made a lamp shade that spelled out a sweet message backwards and could only be read by turning on the lamp and looking at the wall, which he presented along with a video compilation of all her friends and family wishing her Happy Birthday from all over the world.

Not to be outdone, Lia made a playlist filled with romantic songs and then created a scrapbook visually interpreting each song’s lyrics in the context of their relationship – and then hand-bound it in leather.

These are truly the most extra people ever to walk the earth.

Oddly enough, the pair said “I Love You” in the least romantic ways ever: Lia blurted it out on accident and then LITERALLY ran away, and Jeremy was drunkenly half-dressed in a Batman Onesie while camping on a mountain. Figures.

Travel blogging couple looking at a map in front of a city skyline.
Actual footage of us being horribly lost. JK, this was staged, and you can’t tell so I’m going to explain: we’re looking at a map of San Francisco, but that’s the Oakland skyline. GET IT!?!? Ahhhh we have fun, we have fun

There were a few moments in the early stages of their relationship that probably can only be described as GIANT FLASHING WARNING SIGNS.

Like when they took their very first camping trip together and Jeremy totaled Lia’s car in the mountains, 10 hours away from civilization (here’s that fun story). 

Or when Jeremy attempted to teach Lia how to surf and she nearly got murdered by a zillion jellyfish (here’s that one, too).

Or when the pair tried to go backpacking with a fully loaded pack to prepare for their year-long honeymoon, only to find themselves panic-hiking after dark (enjoy).

And yet, somehow, despite clear signals from the Universe that maybe they should just stay inside and stop trying to be so adventurous, each new catastrophe only brought them closer and closer.

By the time they got married,  it felt like they’d been together for eons, both for them and for their many unfortunate third wheels (kidding, their friends adore them and don’t hate them at all for how mushy they are. Right, guys?!? Right?!?!?).

Their wedding was in May 2016, with a ceremony in the California redwoods complete with handmade Mad Libs speeches and a karaoke reception.

A month later they sold all their stuff,  quit their jobs, started Practical Wanderlust, and took off on a year-long adventure. They’ve been obnoxiously inseparable ever since.

The famous Painted Ladies on Alamo Square in San Francisco, California.
Aww, they’re so gross!

3 Words Phrases to Describe Liaremy

  • Sickeningly cute, the kind of couple that makes you believe in true love and also throw up in your mouth a little at the same time, tall and clumsy (like a baby giraffe)

Liaremy’s Favorite Things

  • Travelling
  • Enabling each other’s sugar addictions
  • Stroopwafel (see previous point)
  • Making obnoxious observations about snobby stuff like tasting notes in fancy coffee/beer/wine/food (mmm yes, this coffee is QUITE fruit forward, I’m getting notes of birch tree and Art Deco)
  • Feminism, social justice, and political activism
  • Karaoke (Fave duets to sing: Home is Whenever I’m with You, I’ve Had the Time of My Life, I’ll Never Tell … like, from Buffy)
  • Accidentally wearing matching clothing …again
  • Powerlifting and bro-ing out at the gym (complete with grunting noises, flexing selfies, and aggressive curls)
  • Taking roughly 3x longer to complete a hike than expected
  • Travel fails. This isn’t so much a favorite as just a curse that they’ve grown to accept.
Lia and Jeremy in front of the skyline and ocean in Cartagena, Colombia

How can you get more of Lia & Jeremy in your life?!

This is a question we get asked ALL THE TIME. Just kidding! But we’re going to be optimistic and assume this is what you’re currently asking yourself, since you just spent a good 30 minutes of your valuable time reading alllllll about us. Hey, you’re rad, by the way.

Anyway, we DO have a few ideas. We’ve got about a zillion blog posts that you could read, but we recommend starting with the summary of our year-long-honeymoon; that way you can read through it semi-chronologically. Here’s a fancy, enticing button that you’re going to want to click.

The Year-Long Honeymoon

If you prefer to listen to us talk about travel (and our many travel disasters) in our own overly-Californian-accented voices, why not listen to our Podcast? At least a handful of people who aren’t related to us have told us that the podcast is entertaining, funny, and occasionally even informative, so … there you go.

New episodes are released every other Monday. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app or just listen below!

Here’s another idea: how about signing up for our newsletter? We promise to only send you content that doesn’t suck. We’ll send you some posts that we think you’ll like, and then you’ll hear from us about once a month. It’s very low-commitment, we promise. 

Here’s a fancy, enticing form that you’re going to want to fill out:

Did we make you laugh?

Or maybe just laugh AT us? (Either way, we'll take it.) Subscribe! We'll send you our most ridiculous travel stories & semi-regular monthly(ish) newsletters.

OMG, you're the best! To make sure our emails are delivered safely to your inbox, we suggest adding contact@practicalwanderlust.com to your address book.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

We'll only send you content that doesn't suck. Unsubscribe anytime. Powered by Kit

We have one last extremely exciting idea for you that will keep us in your life EVERY SINGLE DAY. Social media.

Yup, that’s right: it’s a thing, and we’re doing it. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube.

But if we had to choose just one, we’d say Instagram, because we post silly Instagram stories (almost) every day and it’s pretty much a platform for us to amuse ourselves. Sometimes other people think they’re funny, too! 

Here’s a big, adorable photo of us that will make it super easy for you to follow us on the ‘gram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxu3WnMARyP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Hopefully we’ll see you around! Until next time,

xo Lia & Jeremy signature graphic
FOLLOW US!

Primary Sidebar

Travel bloggers Lia and Jeremy in front of a colorful background with welcoming text.

In 2016 we quit our jobs, put our stuff in storage, and took off on a (disastrous) year-long honeymoon. Today, we share down-to-earth travel tips from our many (mis)adventures on our blog and podcast!

low-key stalk us here

Get a FREE Travel Planning Guide!

Need some help planning your next adventure? Sign up and we'll send you all of our travel tips, hacks, printable packing lists, and more!

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

You'll also be subscribing to our monthly newsletter. Unsubscribe anytime.

Footer

About Us...
  • Meet Lia & Jeremy
  • Browse Destinations
  • Travel Tips
  • Packing Tips
  • Contact Us & FAQ
  • Work with Us
  • Mission Statement
  • Disclosure Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
@practicalwanderlust

Get the Free Travel Planning Guide!

Need some help planning your next adventure? Subscribe and we’ll send you our FREE 22-page Travel Planning Guide. The guide includes everything from the hacks we use to save money on travel to printable packing lists. We’ll also send our favorite travel tips straight to your inbox!

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Copyright ©2025, Practical Wanderlust. Site by Pixel Me Designs
As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases
Back To Top