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This month I turned 41! In the heart of summer, I made a few quick visits around Europe, but kept things pretty low-key for the most part.
From rural Slovakia to urban Poland to suburban England, here are the best moments of August 2025!
Destinations Visited
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Poprad and Štrbské Pleso, Slovakia
- Warsaw and Piaseczno, Poland
- St. Albans and Watford, England
Highlights
A perfect birthday getaway to the High Tatras. After the big Croatian blowout for my 40th birthday last year, this year I wanted something quiet, in nature, accessible by train, with a nice hotel. And so Charlie and I went to the High Tatras, the stunning mountainous region of Slovakia!
We stayed at the Grand Kempinski High Tatras, a hotel I’ve wanted to stay at for years, which was SUCH a good place for a splurge. The biggest highlight was the hotel spa, which we visited every day. The indoor pool actually has three chandeliers hanging above it, and a glass window so you can see outside to all the people walking the path around the lake.
And it was a perfectly low-key trip. We hiked, we strolled, we ate garlic soup topped with cheese, and it was really nice having a chill itinerary without feeling pressured to do all the things.
I was fully prepared for the area to be overrun, as we were visiting on a weekend in early August. But it really wasn’t that bad! When hiking, we were solo 1/3 of the time, with a few others 1/3 of the time, and in a big crowd 1/3 of the time. I’d aim for a slightly more off-peak time in the future, though.
I absolutely loved this trip. It was so good that we are already talking about more trips like this we can do in the future: easy nature getaways with hiking and a good hotel with a spa. And hopefully a return to Štrbské Pleso and the High Tatras soon!
From Slovakia, I hopped on a bus and a train to Warsaw to see Kendrick Lamar and SZA for the second time this summer! The concert was fantastic, and it was different experiencing it from the floor. Overall, I think the Warsaw crowd was better than the Frankfurt crowd.
This was my first visit to Warsaw in many years, and I took a LOT of long walks around the city, seeing what it had to offer. And I happened to be there on inauguration day (in addition to being in Kraków on Election Day in June), and staying in accommodation right across the street from where the swearing-in took place. Oops.
And at the end of the month, we visited England for our friend’s annual bonfire party. It was a very brief visit, but we did spend a bit of time in St. Albans, a delightful suburb with a lovely downtown that I imagine is expensive as hell to live in. It’s like the London version of Lexington, Massachusetts, or New Canaan, Connecticut.
Fun times in Prague. Dinners with friends, a visit to Letná Beer Garden, and lots and lots of walks around the city….
Challenges
I got stung by a wasp for the first time since I was a kid. Fun times. It landed on my upper arm, got crushed against my body, and stung.
And there was the time I got caught in an epic rainstorm nowhere near stores that sold umbrellas…
Not a challenge, really, but living in a place as modern and nice as Prague kind of gets you used to it. Like the fact that the vast majority of public bathrooms in Prague take credit cards — just hold up your phone and scan your way in.
And it struck me upon arriving in Slovakia and Poland, even in malls, that you not only needed cash for public bathrooms, you needed coins. Kind of annoying when you’re in each country for only a few days and you don’t want to carry around a lot of change you’ll never end up spending…
What I Watched This Month
The Thursday Murder Club is a delightful new movie on Netflix. A cozy murder mystery set in an absolutely gorgeous retirement home, with four actors you adore starring as senior residents trying to solve a mystery and save their community. I really enjoyed it.
Also. I finally watched White Chicks. Yeah. It’s not bad if you don’t think too hard about it.
Below Deck update: After a few months off, Charlie and I got back into Below Deck! This month we watched Below Deck: Down Under Season 3, which actually takes place in the Seychelles. (And has convinced me not to visit the Seychelles in February or March, after seeing how much they suffered through the heat, humidity, and storms!)
As far as seasons go, it was…fine. Not one of the best. Captain Jason is such a good leader that it’s educational just watching him — but he seemed a bit removed from everything this time around. The cast were good, there were some villains. No horrific guests. It was fine.
What I Listened To This Month
I’m listening to all 500 of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, which I am enjoying immensely. I am loving discovering new artists and listening to albums I’ve somehow missed my entire life until now!
In August, I listened to albums 284-250. I’m officially more than halfway! And to think — the ones I’ve listened to have been the WORSE half. How good is it going to get?!
Here are the highlights:
Favorite Discovery: The Hissing of Summer Lawns by Joni Mitchell. I am kicking myself for not getting into Joni Mitchell’s music at a younger age. She is TRANSCENDENT. And to think this is just the first of her several albums on the list!
I love how every song on this album is so detailed and unique, it would be enough for an entire album in its style — yet they’re all cohesive. Every song belongs on this album. And I can’t stop listening to them.
I also want to give a shoutout to Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves. I’ve never heard her music before, but I immediately became a huge fan of her pop-blended country with a liberal background. I love that this challenge has shown me country artists I really love, rather than dismissing the genre as a whole.
Other Favorite Discoveries: Tracy Chapman by Tracy Chapman, What’s the 411? by Mary J. Blige, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan, The Bends by Radiohead, Nillson Schmillson by Harry Nillson.
Favorite Revisited Album: The Diary of Alicia Keys by Alicia Keys. I listened to this album a TON in the early 2000s, and I think it’s one of the best R&B albums of its era. It is the perfect blend of strong songwriting, raw talent, and producers who understood how to shape this album to perfection. I still hum these songs to myself all the time.
Side note: revisiting this album made me look up Jermaine Paul, her backup singer on this album and her live Unplugged album, who honestly sang circles around her whenever possible (especially on the live version of “Diary” on Unplugged) and went on to win season two of The Voice. Turns out he’s now a pastor in Bridgeport, Connecticut?!
Favorite Songs: “The Rain” by Led Zeppelin, “Love is a Wild Thing” by Kacey Musgraves, “Amy” by Elton John, “21 Questions” by 50 Cent, “Edith and the Kingpin” by Joni Mitchell, “Girl from the North Country” by Bob Dylan.
Get the playlist: I’m creating a playlist of my favorite songs from the 500 albums — maximum one per album — on Spotify. You can listen to it here.
Lowlight of the Month: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! by Devo. Through this challenge I’ve learned that I do not care for new wave at all — if it’s pop- and punk-adjacent within five years of 1980, I hate it. But this album just annoyed the hell out of me, start to finish. I hated their voices, the music, the lyrics, everything.
Also, I was irked that Rolling Stone chose a four-album box set of Merle Haggard’s greatest hits for the list. Really, you can’t think of one of his regular albums that was better than the others? Putting a four-hour and forty-five-minute album on the list is taking the piss, for real.
And I had a seven-hour train ride that day, so I listened to the whole damn thing in one sitting. Kind of out of spite.
Random Music Thoughts: Both the Buzzcocks and the Pharcyde have a song called “Oh Shit.”
And all along I thought the Jackass theme song was something original created for the show. Turns out it’s the song “Corona” by Minutemen, whose album Double Nickels on the Dime was on the list this month.
What I Read This Month
I’ve felt a bit embarrassed that my reading fell off SO much in recent years. At first I said it was because I was working so hard on my New Hampshire site; from there it snowballed into “I’m doing too much.” But I’m trying to get back into it, for real for real.
Die with Zero: Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins (2020) — This book is very popular in personal finance forums, and I always seeing people refer to it, so I was glad to finally read it. The book encourages you to spend all your money while you’re still alive — and more importantly, to have the right experiences at the right time.
It’s the part about the experiences that rang so true for me, and I’ve been planning my own trips this way. I’m SO glad I did so much backpacking in my twenties when I didn’t mind hostel dorms. But as you age, you should prioritize doing more of your physical trips, because it won’t be as easy doing them later. Save cruises and safaris for when you’re older. When you’re really old, you most likely won’t want to go very far at all.
The book also makes a great point about leaving money to your kids — that they can get a LOT more out of a smaller gift at age 30 to help buy a house than their full inheritance at age 55 or 60, when their life is slowing down.
I think everyone can get a lot out of this book — namely, sketching out different eras in your own life and what goals to prioritize during each of them.
Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits — to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life by Gretchen Rubin (2015) — Gretchen Rubin is famous for The Happiness Project, researching what makes humans truly happy, and how we can put it into action. In this book, she dives into habit formation.
Now, I’ve read habit formation books before, including James Clear’s very popular book Atomic Habits. But I think this is the best habit formation book I’ve ever read. What makes it so good? I love Gretchen Rubin’s writing style. I love how she divides people into four types of different behaviors, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all framework for everyone. I love how the book is part memoir and part self-development tome. And I love how she shares stories from lots of different people in her life.
Now, Gretchen Rubin and I are very different people. She states outright that she doesn’t care for music, food, games, or fashion. She can be a bit rigid. And I think that’s behind some of the negative reviews of this book. But she’s not asking you to be her friend. She’s asking to you take a look at what she discovered. For me, this is the first time I realized why it’s so much easier for me to abstain from things than to live in moderation.
I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue (2024) — In this novel, Jolene is a depressed 20-something Persian Canadian working a boring office job and sending her coworkers insults in hidden in white text in her emails. When her messages are discovered, she’s forced to have her emails monitored — but in a tech mishap, she suddenly gets access to every inbox in the company. Jolene decides to use this to her advantage, reading everyone’s emails to get ahead in her career and improve her work relationships.
I liked this book, but felt it could have gone in some better directions. In fact, I think it would have been better not going in a romantic direction at all. I did enjoy the characters in the office and the perfect descriptions of office politics, and the work Jolene did to make her life better. There are some comparisons to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, which I think is a much better book.
The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure by Grant Cardone (2011) — You know how most business books could essentially be a blog post? This is a business book that could have been a tweet.
“Work 10x harder than anyone else. Set goals 10x higher than anyone else.” Boom. You got as much out of the book as I did.
Additionally, I hated that it was written in this awful, almost singsongy voice, and that he doesn’t include any examples of anyone in the book besides himself. Complete waste of time.
Coming Up in September 2025
Finally, it’s time for my big adventure trip of the year. I’ll be spending most of the month in Mauritius, Réunion, and Madagascar!
I’ll be traveling in Mauritius and Réunion solo, for a few days each. No, this isn’t an ideal amount of time. Originally I was just going to visit Réunion for a few days, but then Air France moved my flight back and I realized I now had JUUUUST enough time to visit both islands. And they’re only a 45-minute flight apart…
So it will be a bit of a teaser visit for both places.
I decided not to drive in Mauritius, against conventional wisdom, because I’ll be arriving after an overnight flight in economy where I almost certainly won’t have slept one wink, and I don’t think it’s safe for me to drive in that state, let alone on the left side of the road for the first time ever. I’ll be staying in Flic en Flac and Grand Baie, and I have a private tour of the southwest one day.
In Réunion, I will be driving, in part because a three-day car rental is the same price as a one-way taxi to my hotel in St. Gilles, but one day I hope to join a tour to Cilaos in the interior. Réunion has such a dramatic landscape and I can’t wait to take it all in.
And then comes the BIG part of the trip — more than two weeks in Madagascar! I’m traveling on this tour with Rock My Adventure, run by blogger Helen in Wanderlust. Helen is an Africa specialist and I’ve heard her tours are fantastic.
I booked this tour more than a year ago because the itinerary appealed to me so much, with time in the places I wanted to visit the most — the Tsingy, the Avenue of the Baobabs, and lots of time in the islands off Nosy Be. Plus there’s a two-day river camping trip and LOTS of overland driving on not-quite-roads. I’m a little bit nervous — and super excited.
