Anglo Adventure

Travel with a sense of humor

Tag Archives: Christmas


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7 Travel Accessories You Can Find at the World’s Best Dollar Store

Seattle-travel-Daiso-Japanese-dollar-store

Look – you can almost see Daiso from my apartment!

Oh the dollar store. As a kid, I would walk to the one on the corner to get all my Christmas gifts: creepy porcelain cats, a woven basket with a hole in the bottom, a pencil case.

I thought my dollar days were over until my sister made me go to Daiso, a Japanese-franchised dollar store in the “ID” (Psst, International District) here in Seattle. It’s other places too, so if you see one stop in and take a look around.

First off – there’s the whole look and feel. It’s bright. Everything is arranged nicely – no plastic bins filled with broken pencils and opened packages of expired crackers. It doesn’t even smell like a dollar store, meaning it doesn’t smell like someone peed in the corner and then misted the air with bad cologne.

Not only is everything gloriously cheap, oh-so-cheap, it’s useful. There are cool cooking items, including a green onion knife that cuts green onions into ribbons. Cherry blossom stickers.  Beauty masks. Sure, the instructions and ingredients are in Japanese, but that makes it only more fun. Continue reading →

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Travel More, Write More, Exercise Sometimes

I traveled back to Chicago for the holidays. I’m currently writing a post on why you should visit the southside of the city, complete with what to wear to an over-crowded jazz club and where to find the city’s best hotpot.

Note: I didn’t say hot dog. Just walk to the nearest hot dog stand. Order everything but ketchup.

If you’re a tourist, it will be the best hot dog you’ve ever had.

What I did on my Christmas Vacation

travel writer eats chicken tenders

Pinkie out. The only way to eat chicken tenders.

  • I saved Christmas, Martha Stewart-style with a signature cocktail. You could put dishwater in a fancy glass and add a candy cane stirrer and people will like it. Picture to come.
  • Got treated to a private performance by a burgeoning pianist that nearly brought me to tears.
  • Lost in a Big Buckhunter family tournament. The game’s just too realistic for this animal lover. Also, I have a habit of shooting female bison.

While I enjoy the beginning of a new year, I don’t make typical New Year’s resolutions.

I am damn-near perfect. So what if when I don’t have coffee, I go through Trainspotting-esque withdrawals?

So what if I swear in front of eight-year olds (whoops)? So what if I don’t have a robust retirement account? It’s not like Suze Orman will be coming over for dinner tomorrow. I find resolutions too negative. Don’t do ____. Instantly, the blank becomes so much more intriguing. Something in my brain rebels and I will do whatever I can to eat bread, to watch more TV, to spend money.

Not really resolutions, resolutions

  • My first resolution is to love myself a little more. The more I appreciate my health and know who I am and what I can achieve, the more I am naturally drawn to doing good things for me. I know it sounds so trite, like something Oprah would say. But this is where to start.
  • Respect dry cleaning tags. I have a tenancy to just toss and go and lost a lot of great shirts to my over-enthusiastic dryer.
  • Not to eat more than three Lindor truffles in a sitting.
  • Write everyday, but not for work.
  • Practice French at least once a week with real people, even those awful pretentious types I keep running into.
  • And to find a way to make a living doing exactly this.