I use that word loosely. It was more of a one-minute walk, one-minute jog situation — the kind of thing that would barely register on a fitness tracker and would absolutely not impress anyone at a dinner party. My partner joined me, which was sweet, and he also gently noted that it wasn’t exactly what most people would call a run.

He wasn’t wrong.

But here’s the thing: it was hard for me. I breathed heavy. My legs complained. It had been months since I’d asked my body to do anything like this, and it let me know. And yet — I showed up for it anyway. I wanted to see how it would feel.

The result? A little runner’s high. Some decent exercise. A moment of connection with my favorite human. And some next-day soreness that felt, honestly, kind of good.

What would we have done if we hadn’t done it? Sat on the couch and watched TV.

One hundred percent. Without question.

And that’s fine, sometimes the couch is exactly the right place to be. But what happens when the couch becomes the default? When comfort stops being a reward and starts being the only option we know how to choose?

We are losing our tolerance for discomfort. And it’s happening so gradually we’ve barely noticed.

Think about the last time you had to do something genuinely hard. Not catastrophically hard — just mildly, ordinarily uncomfortable. A phone call you could have made but texted instead. A conversation you avoided because it might get awkward. A workout you skipped because you weren’t feeling it. A birthday party whose design and planning you farmed out to AI because… that’s easier.

We have optimized our lives so thoroughly for comfort and convenience that we are slowly, quietly losing our capacity to deal with anything that isn’t smooth. And I think that’s a problem — not just personally, but collectively.

When we never practice sitting with discomfort, we lose the muscle. And like any muscle, the less you use it, the weaker it gets.
Until one day you’re in a conversation with someone you disagree with and instead of engaging, you shut down — or shut them out from your life.
Until you’re faced with a physical challenge and you give up before you’ve even given yourself a chance to surprise yourself.
Until your world gets smaller and smaller, not because anything bad happened, but because you kept choosing the path of least resistance until the path of least resistance was the only one you could see.

The happiness research backs this up. There’s a well-documented phenomenon called “type 2 fun” — experiences that are hard or uncomfortable in the moment but deeply satisfying in retrospect. The hike that wrecked your legs. The cold water swim. The conversation that scared you but needed to happen. The trip that didn’t go according to plan but became the story you tell for the rest of your life. Study after study shows that people who regularly do hard things report higher levels of wellbeing, deeper resilience, and more meaningful connection with the people around them.

Comfort, it turns out, is not the same thing as happiness. A life with no resistance is a life that never quite comes into focus. A vanilla latte kind of life — smooth, predictable, fine. But fine is not the same as alive.

Here’s where travel comes in.

Travel is one of the last remaining spaces in modern life where discomfort is just built in. You can’t optimize your way out of it. You can’t skip it. It just happens — and then you deal with it, and you have to decide how to respond. Are you going to let the thing bring you down, or are you going to breathe, tell yourself a different story, and let it roll off like the badass that you are?

Didn’t get your coffee made the way your local barista knows it? Life goes on.

Missed your train or your connection? Stressful, yes. And also, it turns out, survivable.

Couldn’t figure out how to ask for what you wanted so you fumbled through some terrible Spanish and pointed a lot and somehow still got fed? You did it.

You didn’t give up, stay home, sit on the couch, or miss out on the opportunity entirely. You showed up, figured it out, and kept going. Whoo!

That’s the thing about travel: it doesn’t ask your permission. It just presents you with reality — a different language, a different pace, a meal you can’t identify, a transportation system you don’t understand — and invites you to respond. And every time you respond instead of retreat, something gets stronger. Your confidence. Your adaptability. Your ability to be in a room with people who are different from you and find the common thread.

I’ve watched this happen on every single trip I’ve run. People who describe themselves as anxious travelers who come home a little looser. People who said they could never do a group trip who leave with friends they’re still texting two years later. People who weren’t sure they were “adventurous enough” who summit something, literally or metaphorically, and can’t stop smiling about it.

It’s not magic. It’s just what happens when you ask your nervous system to do something it didn’t know it could do.

Let me be clear: The antidote to a flat, comfortable, couch-shaped life is not misery. It’s not suffering for its own sake. It’s not booking the most extreme trip you can find and white-knuckling your way through it.

It’s just — choosing the thing that scares you a little. The run that isn’t really a run but still gets you off the couch. The trip that feels like a lot to plan until you’re actually there and you remember that you are, in fact, a capable adult who can figure things out.

It’s choosing to show up for the type 2 fun. The kind that’s hard in the moment and extraordinary in retrospect. The kind that makes a good story. The kind that, when you look back on your life, you remember — not because everything went perfectly, but because you were actually there, actually present, actually alive in a way that the couch doesn’t quite allow for.

I’m building two trips this year for exactly that kind of person.

Portugal in August. Japan in September. Small groups, real access, genuine experiences that will ask something of you, and give back far more than they take.

If that sounds like what you need right now, I’d love for you to come.

— Lizzy

Portugal: meridianboutiquetravel.com/portugal

Japan: meridianboutiquetravel.com/japan

There’s a moment from our last Portugal trip that I keep coming back to.

We were standing at the door of a family’s home on the outskirts of Lisbon. The grandfather had an apron on. He was waving his arms around like we were old friends he’d been waiting all morning to see. He didn’t speak English, but he didn’t really need to. He had a little tray of port, and he kissed every single one of us on the cheek as we walked in.

Inside, his daughter and her husband had set out a long table. Local cheeses. Bread. Wine. Three generations of a family that raises heritage pigs — Portuguese pigs, the way they’ve been raised here forever — and they’d brought our group of travelers into their living room to eat lunch.

It sounds simple when I say it like that. It is simple. I heard it over and over again. Every single person on that trip said some version of the same thing afterwards:

“That was the best part.”

I think about why that is a lot.

We live in a moment where travel has gotten really good at one thing: putting you in front of stuff. You can stand at the Eiffel Tower. You can take the picture at the Trevi Fountain. You can check the list someone else made for you.

And listen — no shade. If what you need is a beach and a book for a week, that’s a beautiful kind of trip, and I want you to have it. You probably don’t need my help getting that.

What I do — what Meridian is built around — is something I’ve started calling soul seeing instead of sightseeing.

The difference is what happens to you. Sightseeing lets you turn your brain off. Stop thinking. Stop asking questions. Stop being curious about who’s actually in front of you. Soul seeing asks the opposite. It asks you to stay awake. To notice the shop across the street from the famous monument and wonder who runs it. To bring something home that isn’t just a photo.

It’s the difference between “I went to Portugal” and “I learned something in Portugal”.

My parents taught me to travel this way. They were tour guides for most of their working lives, and what they actually showed me wasn’t where to go. It was how to show up. With humility. With respect. With your eyes open and your assumptions a little loose.

A few years ago my dad and I went to Japan together. I watched him interact with people he’d known for forty years, and even with all of that history, he still carried this quiet kind of humility into every encounter — like he understood that there would never be another moment exactly like the one we were in.

That’s the thing I’m trying to make possible for other people.

It’s why our groups are small. It’s why we pair roommates by personality. It’s why we eat in someone’s living room instead of a chain restaurant with a view. It’s why we go deep in the Alentejo, a “fly-over” region of Portugal. It’s why the people we partner with — sommeliers, families, chefs, the small lodge owners — feel like family by the end of the trip.

Portugal leaves this Summer and we have a few spots left.

I’m hosting it with DeAnna Ornelas, a sommelier I’ve known from Portland’s wine world for years. The itinerary is built around the things you only get when someone has done the long, slow work of building the relationships behind them. Sintra. The Alentejo. A catamaran day on the Algarve coast watching for dolphins and flamingos. A fado performance that’s going to crack something open in you. And yes — lunch with the family.

Enrollment closes July 1.

Full itinerary is at meridianboutiquetravel.com/portugal. If you want to talk about whether this trip is right for you, just hit reply, or send me a note.

If Japan is more your call, we have a foodie tour through Tokyo, Kanazawa, and Kyoto in September with Michelin-trained sushi chef Sam Saltos, and it is going to be equally epic in its own rite.

Either way — I hope this finds you curious.

— Lizzy

We’re closing out bookings for Portugal on July 1st, and Japan on August 1st. The goods news is, there’s still time if you’d like to join us! The bad news is, time always flies once Memorial Day hits. Don’t let these one-of-a-kind opportunities pass you by. If you’re on the fence, let’s chat.

I think a lot about what makes someone finally say yes to something like this. Not because I’m trying to be a schmoozy car salesmen, but because I genuinely believe that travel can change you for the better. And collectively, we need a big change. But change happens at the individual level, with a ripple effect, so that cycle does actually start with you. You following me?!

So when I think about what people are saying yes to, it’s rarely the itinerary. It’s rarely even the destination. It’s usually something else, something quieter: A Tuesday morning when the routine feels a little heavier than usual, or a conversation with a friend who just got back from somewhere extraordinary, or a feeling that’s been lingering in the back of your chest for months that says: I need a change. A shift. A re-orientation of what is real, what matters.

I think about the people I’ve met through this incredible work I get to call my job. The people who almost didn’t come, who talked themselves out of it three times before finally saying yes. I have never once heard someone say they regretted going. Not once. What I hear instead is: I needed that more than I knew. I didn’t expect to make real friends. I came home different.

So here’s what I want to ask you:

What if it all works out?

What if you get on the plane and Portugal hands you back something you didn’t know you’d lost?
What if you sit next to Chef Sam at a market in Tokyo and he leans over and tells you something about what you’re eating that changes how you think about food forever?
What if the strangers around the dinner table on night one are the people you’re still texting two years from now?

What if you just go?

I’ll be honest, I ask myself, and my closest friends this question A LOT. Probably an annoying amount. They’re like, “yeah, yeah, Lizzy is over here on her optimism high horse YET AGAIN”.

But seriously, if you really sit with that question, make space for it, breathe into it, what comes up for you? Isn’t that what we all want our one wild and precious life to look like? Because we know that in order to achieve that “no regrets on your deathbed” feeling, you have to actively and regularly commit to believing that it’s going to work out, and that it’s going to be beautiful no matter what. Choose the radically positive outcome, instead of the negative scary one that your reptile brain was designed to make you think in life and death situations. Is this a life or death situation? No, it’s not. But it could astronomically change your life. So, I’ll say it again:

What if it all works out?

Do you remember the Augusts of your childhood?

The salt on your skin, the total lack of a to-do list, and the way a single week felt like a lifetime of discovery. Somewhere between career milestones and the relentless demands of adulthood, we lost that version of August.

This journey is the antidote. Join Lizzy Atwood Wills and sommelier DeAnna Ornelas of Cosecha Wine Bar for nine days in Portugal that are intentionally, unapologetically slow. This isn’t a checklist tour — it’s a 216-hour incubator for friendship, beauty, and a renewed sense of joy.

From a 50-acre re-forested ranch in the Alentejo to the salt-bright cliffs of the Algarve, every moment is designed for the person who needs a deep, collective exhale — and has finally decided she deserves one.

PORTUGAL — August 14–22
4 spots remaining · $5,600 per person · meridianboutiquetravel.com/portugal

In Japan, food is not just sustenance — it is craft, ritual, and story.

On this ten day journey, you’ll travel with Michelin-trained Chef Sam Saltos of Hiyaku Sushi — one of Portland’s most respected omakase chefs — and Lizzy Atwood Wills of Meridian Boutique Travel, whose deep connections in Japan unlock experiences most travelers never find. Together, they’ve designed a trip that goes far beyond the surface.

Into fish markets at dawn. Into the hands of knife makers and rice farmers. Into tea ceremonies and dinners with Geiko. Into the places Sam dreams about returning to since he first understood what Japanese food culture really means.

This is Japan through the eyes of two people who love it at its most specific — and who want to share exactly that with thirteen people who are ready to go deep.

JAPAN — September 10–20
5 spots remaining · $6,200 per person · meridianboutiquetravel.com/japan

$1,000 holds your spot. Payment plans are intentionally built into the schedule. And if you have questions, I’m here for you! lizzy@meridianboutiquetravel.com.

— Lizzy

Could that be you?

Someone who has traveled enough to know what they don’t want. Who values depth over efficiency. Who is ready to show up somewhere completely different, eat things they can’t yet name, and come home with people in their life they didn’t have before. Someone who has been quietly thinking about one of these trips since the first email landed in their inbox, and hasn’t quite pulled the trigger yet.

If that’s you — I’m talking to you right now.

Both Portugal and Japan have a handful of spots left. Not many. And because these groups are intentionally small, every person in them shapes the experience for everyone else. I’m not looking to fill seats. I’m looking for the last few right people.

PORTUGAL — August 14–22

4 spots remaining.

I’ve been to Portugal more times than I can count and I still can’t stop literally craving going back. Nine days through Sintra, the Alentejo, and the Algarve with sommelier DeAnna Ornelas of Cosecha Wine & Mezcal, who will tell you the only reason to travel anywhere is if the food and drink are worth the airfare. In Portugal, they absolutely are.

Think: a private catamaran through the Ria Formosa with stops for swimming, dolphin-watching, and snacking on oysters shucked straight from the water into your hand. Lunch with multi-generational local families who cook the way their grandparents taught them. Wine poured by the people who grew it, on the land where it came from. Coastal hikes along the Rota Vicentina with the Atlantic on one side and wildflowers on the other. And long, slow, sun-drenched afternoons in the Alentejo where time moves differently and no one’s in a hurry.

$5,600 per person, all-inclusive (flights not included). $1,000 holds your spot.

Adult Summer Break in Portugal

JAPAN — September 10–20

7 spots remaining.

I’ve been to Japan before and I know what’s possible there, but this year is different. This year I’m going with Chef Sam Saltos, a Michelin-trained sushi chef and the force behind Hiyaku Sushi, one of Portland’s most sought-after omakase experiences. Sam has spent years learning to taste Japan in a way most people never get to, and he’s sharing every bite with you. All the BTS you could imagine about how ingredients are tested and sourced by the pickiest chef — shared with you for an up close and personal view.

Eleven days through Tokyo, Kanazawa, and Kyoto. Toyosu Fish Market at dawn. A knife shop in Kanazawa where blades are still made by three separate craftspeople. An intimate dinner with a Geiko. A vegan Buddhist temple lunch — shojin ryori — that will rearrange something in how you see food entirely.

$6,200 per person, all-inclusive (flights not included). $1,000 holds your spot.

Japan foodies: UNITE

If something has been pulling at you — that pull is worth paying attention to. Payment plans are built into the schedule. And if you’re not sure whether this is right for you, let’s talk it through. I’m here for you, always!

lizzy@meridianboutiquetravel.com

— Lizzy

Do most people come solo?

Yes — almost everyone does! And if you’re on the fence about that, here’s what I can tell you: within the first day or two, the group shifts. Strangers become people you actually want to have dinner with. By the end of the trip, some of them become people you travel with again. I know this because it’s happened to me — I have real friends from Morocco and Patagonia who started exactly this way. You’ll arrive solo, but you won’t feel that way for long.

Is this for everyone?

Honestly? No. And I mean that kindly. These trips are for people who are curious, open, and looking for something real. Not a resort, not a checklist, not a guided bus tour. If you want depth over efficiency and you’re willing to be a little surprised — you’ll fit right in. All genders, all relationship statuses, all experience levels welcome.

How active are these trips?

All three are moderate — daily walking, public transportation, and unhurried exploration. Portugal has some coastal hiking along the Rota Vicentina, rolling hills and stunning cliffs, but mostly flat and very manageable. Japan is urban walking through extraordinary cities with train travel and yes, some sitting on the floor. Mexico is relaxed city walking and vineyard exploring. And if you want to get your steps in — trust me, it happens faster than you think.

What if I have dietary restrictions?

Tell me when you book! All three trips are food-forward and I will make sure you’re taken care of at every meal. The one thing we can’t accommodate is people with Celiac in Japan — soy sauce is in everything!

What’s actually included?

Everything on the ground: in-country transportation, boutique lodging (double occupancy), most meals, and all activities and entrance fees. Flights not included. Single supplement is available at $1,500 where possible.

Is the investment worth it?

These are meaningful investments in yourself, I mean, how often do you get a totally curated tour where all you have to do is show up?!

We have incorporated a payment plan system into our schedule, so all you have to do at booking is put down a $1000 deposit. If you’re self-employed, have you considered writing it off?

And the last thing I’ll say: no one looks back on a trip of a lifetime and remembers the price. They remember the magic of the place, the people they met along the way, and the experiences they never could have found on their own.

I’m nervous about group travel. What’s the vibe?

Totally understandable — and honestly, most people who book these trips feel exactly the same way before they go. What I can tell you is that these groups are intentionally small (13 to 16 people) and the people who show up tend to be curious, interesting, and easy to be around. There are no cliques, no big bus energy, no rushed itineraries. Just a small group of people who chose depth over efficiency and ended up in the same place at the same time. By day three you’ll realize that you’ve actually found your people.

OK friends! What have I missed? What other burning questions do you have? Send them my way, let’s talk it through!!! Email me here, or at lizzy@meridianboutiquetravel.com.

-Lizzy

A quick update — and a nudge, if you’ve been on the fence. Several spots for this tour have already been booked, and we’re getting pumped!

Portugal has a way about it that is hard to explain. It’s comforting in a way that sneaks up on you. The pace, the light, the food, the people — something about it just slows your whole system down in the best possible way. And it feels like so many of us need a little bit more nervous system regulation right now, don’t you think?

In August it’s going to be beautiful and sunny and warm. And this is not a go-go-go trip — it never has been, because that’s not what Portugal is about. This is the trip that leaves room for rest, for play, for long lunches that stretch into the afternoon, for making friends and drinking wine and doing absolutely nothing, and feeling completely fine about it.

We’re at 10 spots remaining. August 14th is coming faster than it feels.

If something about this has been pulling at you, don’t lose sight of that.

$5,600 per person, all-inclusive (flights not included). $1,000 holds your spot. We’d love to have you join us.

Book your seat

But there’s something Sam brings to this trip that I can’t quite capture in my own words — because it belongs to him. His relationship with Japanese food culture isn’t something I can summarize or translate. It’s something you need to hear directly.

So today I’m stepping aside, for Sam to tell his story.

What follows is Sam’s own note about why he’s making this trip. I’m sharing it here because I think it says something about the kind of trip this is — and the kind of person you get to travel with — better than I ever could.

Hey — it’s Sam from Hiyaku.

I know I’m not usually in your inbox. But I went to Japan last fall and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, so here we are.

I was there with a small group of chefs. One night we had dinner at a multi-generational, family-run izakaya in Kobe. They grow all their own vegetables. No menu — just the family cooking what they know. House-made bitter melon sake. Fresh, simple dishes, mostly vegetables. I still think about it.

I’ve been cooking for years, and meals like that still remind me: the best food is often the simplest.

Then there were nights on the other end of the spectrum. We went to an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink dinner service — yes, they do that in Japan — and that was a very different kind of night. Six whole snow crabs and endless highballs. Completely different from the izakaya. Just as memorable.

One morning we were at Toyosu Market at 6am with my fish broker, bringing a few chef friends inside to see the tuna auction and everything happening behind the scenes. Most travelers never get anywhere near that. We were there because of who we knew and how we showed up.

That’s what made the trip special. The access. We experienced things most travelers don’t get to — not because we were tourists, but because we knew the right people and how to go deep.

Ever since, I’ve been thinking about what it would look like to go back with more intention. More time. Going deeper into the food, the craft, the culture. And then I met Lizzy — and I stopped thinking and started planning.

Imagine sitting next to someone who has spent years learning to taste Japanese food — and having them lean over at dinner and tell you exactly what you’re eating, where it came from, and why it’s extraordinary. That’s what I want to give you on this trip.

I’ll see you in Japan.

— Sam

Book your spot

Someone emailed me recently and asked, very directly: “Is this tour actually worth the money?”

I appreciate this question! It’s the right one to ask. So here’s my honest answer.

These trips are a real investment. Portugal is $5,600. Japan and Mexico are $6,200. That’s not nothing — and I don’t want to pretend it is. I also know from that price is often one of the biggest things standing between someone booking the trip of their wildest dreams and staying home.We all know times are fuckin’ weird, and you’d have to have your head buried deep in a hole if you didn’t have some (legit) fears about the economy right now. Say it louder for the people in the back! So let’s talk about it!

Let’s start with what you’ll actually get on an MBT tour:

All in-country transportation, boutique accommodation, most meals, every activity and entrance fee, expert local guiding, and the kind of access that I’ve spent years building and that you genuinely cannot replicate by booking something yourself. I’m not saying this to brag (ok just a little), but my parents genuinely spent over 40 years leading tours in Japan, and have passed those relationships on to me. So what do you think 40 years of relationships and guiding experience can get us? A whole hell of a lot is what.

The logistics are invisible because we work hard to solve them for you in advance. The doors are open because of relationships, not money.

But the deeper answer to “is it worth it” is harder to quantify.

Here’s what I actually know about travel at this level: the truth is, you won’t remember the itinerary. You may remember the major stops. But what you will absolutely remember is the people. I have real life friends from my first group trip to Morocco in 2022, and from Patagonia this year — people I met as strangers, who are now real friends in my actual life. I’ve traveled with them and to visit them after those trips. We check in, send gifts, notes, playlists, and share inside jokes even though we live far apart. I’m traveling with one of them in the Dolomites next summer! That didn’t happen because we visited the same places. It happened because we showed up for nine or ten days with curiosity and openness and shared something real together.

That’s what I’m designing for. That’s what $5,600 or $6,200 actually buys — not just the wine, oysters, and the catamaran, or the knife shop and the fancy omakase meal, but the conditions for that kind of connection to happen. The research says it takes 200 hours to turn a stranger into a real friend. These trips hit that mark, and that’s not an accident.

I can’t guarantee that for everyone. But I can tell you it happens consistently on these trips because I design for it deliberately. And because I’ve lived it myself.

"Go on a trip with Lizzy if you can. You will see and experience things that you would never even know to ask about on your own." — Steve, Japan traveler

If you’re still on the fence, I’d love to talk through your concerns. I’m a real person, I answer my own email, and I’d love to chat :)

Please reach out to: lizzy@meridianboutiquetravel.com/

— Lizzy

Ready to book? meridianboutiquetravel.com/destinations

I’ll be honest, these trips are not for everyone. I don’t mean that in an exclusive or precious way. I mean it practically, and I mean this with as much warmth and kindness as I can possibly muster. Honesty is kind, right?

Because the people who get the most out of these trips tend to share something specific, and I’d rather tell you what that is upfront than have you arrive somewhere beautiful and realize it wasn’t quite what you were looking for.

The commonality isn’t demographic. Here’s what it’s not:

• Age: We’ve had travelers ranging in age over 50 years on single tours and tbh it’s SO CUTE!!

• Gender: While we do lean towards women’s experiences in travel (hi, hello, I’m Lizzy, I bring a solo lady traveler lens to this space), however you identify your gender is just right. If you can understand that women might have good reason to think about travel differently, that means you get it. And you are in the club.

• Income: Whether you’re just breaking into your career, in a mid-life career change or living the retired life, you are welcome here!

• Relationship status: Single? You’re perfect! Coupled? You’re perfect too!

• Or how many countries someone has visited.

It’s more like a specific orientation toward the world. The people who travel with Meridian tend to want one thing above everything else:

Experiences they couldn’t find on their own.

Not because those experiences are hidden — but because finding them requires relationships, language, time, and a specific kind of knowing that takes years to build. They’ve traveled enough to understand the difference between a trip that checks boxes and a trip that actually changes something. They’re looking for the latter.

They’re also people who are comfortable — maybe even energized — by a little uncertainty. The meal that wasn’t on the itinerary. The conversation that went somewhere unexpected. The afternoon that turned into something no one planned. They don’t need every moment accounted for. They need to trust that the people around them are paying attention — and then they want to let go, be present, and feel the moment.

They value depth over efficiency. They’re not trying to collect stamps. They’re trying to feel something real.

Some of them have traveled solo for years and loved it — the freedom, the spontaneity, the way it sharpens your attention. But they’ve also felt the specific loneliness of witnessing something extraordinary and having no one to turn to and say: did you just see that? They’re ready for something different. Not a corporate tour group — something smaller, more intentional, more human.

And some of them are carrying the weight of a world that has felt heavy for a while. They’re not looking for an escape exactly, they’re looking for an infusion. New food, new faces, new air. A reminder that joy is still out there, that curiosity is still possible, that nine days in Portugal or Japan or Mexico can hand you back something you didn’t realize you’d lost.

That’s who these trips are built for.

If that sounds like you — or like someone you know — I’d love for you to come.

“Finding experiences I would not be able to find myself.” That’s what one traveler told me when I asked what they were looking for. It’s also, after years of doing this, the best description I’ve found of what Meridian actually does.

— Lizzy

All three trips open for booking: meridianboutiquetravel.com/destinations

People ask me sometimes how I choose who I co-host with.

The honest answer is: I don’t choose them so much as they reveal themselves. Both of the people co-hosting this year’s Portugal and Mexico trips came into my world through a shared love of travel — and became collaborators because of what they brought to the experience once they arrived. DeAnna came as a traveler on one of my Japan trips. I recruited Maylin to co-host Portugal after recognizing something in her that I knew our travelers needed to be around. Both of them showed up with curiosity, openness, and a depth that I couldn’t manufacture if I tried.

That’s not an accident. It’s the best possible proof of what this work can do when the right people find each other.

DeAnna Ornelas first traveled with me in Japan. Somewhere between the sake and the izakayas, she became a collaborator. She’s a Level 3 Sommelier and the founder of Cosecha Wine & Mezcal in Portland, and she has a philosophy about travel that I think about often: “the only reason to go anywhere is if the food and drink are worth the airfare”.

In Portugal, they absolutely are.

DeAnna has been to Portugal before — and she came back as my co-host. That tells you everything you need to know about what Portugal does to people. She has a gift for making wine feel like an entry point rather than a performance. When DeAnna pours you something in the Alentejo and tells you about the family that made it and the soil it came from, you don’t feel like you’re getting a lesson. You feel like you’re being let in on something.

One of the things I love about DeAnna is that she is a wildly courageous karaoke singer, and she will DIE ON THAT MIC! But we’ll save the late-night karaoke videos for another time, so here’s a sweet picture of DeAnna and some of the group on our last night in Japan.

For more info about this year’s tour to Portugal: meridianboutiquetravel.com/portugal

Maylin Chavez has been part of the Meridian family for longer than almost anyone. I originally recruited her to co-host Portugal — and she showed up with such generosity, cultural depth, and love for the experience that inviting her to Japan felt inevitable. A shared love of travel has a way of doing that. She’s the chef behind Nacar Oysters, and a native of Baja California.

But what I want you to know about Maylin isn’t her resume. It’s her story.

She grew up in Mexico, spending her childhood in her grandmother Dona Birotes’ kitchen — watching, asking questions, learning to cook before she knew that’s what she was doing. When Maylin was 19, a car accident left her paralyzed. Doctors didn’t know if she would walk again. Her grandmother rolled her wheelchair into the kitchen, handed her a knife and a big wooden spoon — one Maylin still has today — and said: let’s cook. It was the only thing that brought comfort during a very dark time. It was also the moment she fell in love with cooking for the rest of her life.

That’s who is taking you to Mexico.

Not a chef who researched Mexican culture. A chef who was shaped by it — by her grandmother’s kitchen, by her grandfather Saul walking the beaches of Baja with a little knife and hot sauce in hand, foraging for oysters and clams and eating their way through every walk. By a culture that has always understood that food is not just sustenance. It is craft, memory, and love made edible.

When Maylin talks about Mexican food culture — the ancestral techniques, the regional variations, the way a mole can hold an entire history — she’s not translating for you. She’s sharing something that belongs to her. That’s a completely different thing.

One of the things I love most about Maylin is that even though I made her do a very hard hike and she hated me momentarily, she kept a positive attitude despite it all, and always wants to show up to help.

For more info on this year’s Mexico tour: meridianboutiquetravel.com/mexico

I am genuinely proud to travel with both of these women. And I think the people who join us this year will feel that from the very first day.

meridianboutiquetravel.com/portugal

meridianboutiquetravel.com/mexico

— Lizzy

I’ve taken groups to Japan before. I know what’s possible there — the access, the depth, the way the country rewards people who are willing to slow down and pay attention. Japan has always been one of my strongest trips.

But this year is different.

This year I’m co-hosting a foodie tour through Japan with Chef Sam Saltos of Hiyaku Sushi — one of Portland’s most sought-after Michelin trained sushi chefs (PINCH ME!!!!!)

Sam’s pop-up seatings sell out within hours. His dinners run $200 and up per person. His audience follows him because they trust his palate completely, and he’s always got the freshest ingredients, direct from the Oregon coast, or straight from Japan’s fish markets.

But what Sam brings to this trip isn’t just a name or a reputation. It’s years of culinary practice rooted in Japanese tradition — and a specific, obsessive love for Japan that maps perfectly onto what I’ve always tried to do with travel.

When Sam and I started talking about what a trip to Japan together could look like, I stopped second-guessing whether I could pull this off. Imagine sitting next to someone who has spent years learning to taste Japanese food — and having him lean over at dinner and tell you exactly what you’re eating, where it came from, and why the seasonality of this exact ingredient in this exact moment makes it taste so damn good, and that is why it is extraordinary. Or should I say, chefs kiss? ;) That’s what traveling with Sam looks like.

We designed this trip the way Sam builds a menu. Around the best possible ingredients. Nothing wasted. Every experience chosen because it is the best version of that experience — not the most convenient one.

He went to Japan last fall with a small group of chefs. One night they had dinner at a multi-generational, family-run izakaya in Kobe — no menu, just the family cooking what they knew, house-made bitter melon sake, simple fresh dishes. Another night, he went to an all-you-can-drink dinner service — yes, they do that! — and that was a very different kind of night. He still thinks about both. That’s who you’re traveling with.

The tour looks like this, with guided experiences through Tokyo, Kanazawa, and Kyoto:

• Exclusive early-morning tour of Toyosu Fish Market — with Sam there to tell you what you’re actually looking at

• A traditional Japanese knife shop in Kanazawa, where blades are still made by three separate craftspeople — blacksmith, sharpener, handle maker — with time to find one of your own

• A hands-on cooking class with a Japanese chef in her private studio

• A traditional vinegar producer

• A private tea ceremony in a historic monastery

• An intimate dinner with a Geiko — one of Kyoto’s most storied and least accessible traditions. This is not something you can Google your way into.

• A vegan Buddhist temple lunch — shojin ryori — served in the same tradition for centuries, that will quietly rearrange something in you

• Carefully curated restaurant meals throughout, chosen by Sam

• A mix of traditional ryokans and western hotels — tatami floors, kaiseki meals, onsens

• Bullet train travel between cities — a Japanese experience in itself

Sam leads every food experience. I handle everything else — the logistics, the cultural context, the relationships I’ve spent years building in Japan.

“Traveling with a small group made every moment feel shared. An unforgettable and transformative experience — inspiring, memorable, and sparking a desire to return.” — DeAnna, Japan traveler

September 10–20, 2026. 13 guests maximum. $6,200 per person, all-inclusive (flights not included). $1,000 deposit holds your spot. 2 spots already claimed!

Learn more + book

meridianboutiquetravel.com/japan

There are places in the world that require a different kind of entry.

Not a better guidebook or a more curated itinerary — but a person. Someone who grew up there, who carries the place in their body, who can hand you a piece of their culture with the confidence of someone who actually owns it. Mexico is one of those places. And Chef Maylin Chavez, of Nacar Oysters is that person.

Maylin grew up in Mexico, spending her childhood in her grandmother Dona Birotes’ kitchen — watching, asking questions, learning to cook before she knew that’s what she was doing. When Maylin was 19, a car accident left her paralyzed. Doctors didn’t know if she would walk again. Her grandmother rolled her wheelchair into the kitchen, handed her a knife and a big wooden spoon — the same one Maylin still has today — and said: let’s cook. It was the only thing that brought comfort during a very dark time. It was also the moment she fell in love with cooking for the rest of her life.

That’s who you’re traveling with. Not a chef who researched Mexico. A chef who was shaped by it — by her grandmother’s kitchen, by her grandfather Saul walking the beaches of Baja with a little knife and hot sauce, foraging for oysters and clams and snacking their way through every walk. By a culture that has always understood that food is not just sustenance. It is craft, memory, and love made edible.

Maylin has co-hosted two of MBT’s previous tours — Portugal and Japan — and she is one of the most gifted cultural connectors I’ve ever worked with. She explains what the food in front of us means, where it came from, who made it first and why. She brings people into her culture with a generosity and warmth that I genuinely cannot manufacture. And when she and I started talking about going to Mexico together, there was only one answer for when: Día de los Muertos.

Here’s what most people don’t know about Día de los Muertos: it is not Mexican Halloween.

It is not spooky, or morbid, or a celebration of death in the way that phrase might suggest to American ears. It is something far older and far more beautiful than that.

Día de los Muertos has roots stretching back thousands of years, to the indigenous Aztec, Toltec, and Nahua peoples of central Mexico, who held months-long rituals throughout the year to honor the dead. When Spanish colonizers arrived in the 16th century and brought Catholicism with them, the two traditions didn’t erase each other — they fused. All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day merged with the indigenous rituals, and what emerged was something entirely its own: a two-day celebration on November 1st and 2nd that honors the dead not with grief, but with joy.

The belief at its heart is this: that once a year, the boundary between the living and the dead grows thin enough to cross. That the people you’ve lost can find their way back to you — guided by the scent of marigolds, drawn by the food and photographs and objects you’ve arranged on an ofrenda in their honor. That death is not an ending but a continuation, and that the most loving thing you can do for someone who is gone is to celebrate them so loudly they can hear you from wherever they are.

When it’s experienced with the right guide — someone who can give you the history and the heart of it — it becomes one of those travel moments that rearranges something in you.

“A beautiful landscape is the color palette, but its people and traditions are the final masterpiece.” — Maylin Chavez

We’re building the entire trip around Día de los Muertos and everything else that makes Mexico extraordinary.

• Día de los Muertos markets overflowing with marigolds, sugar skulls, and handmade ofrendas — plus guided cultural teachings on the history and meaning behind what you’re seeing

• Mexico City’s most creative neighborhoods — the murals, the architecture, the design-forward museums that remind you this city is one of the most culturally alive places on earth

• Chef-led food experiences with Maylin — from street tacos eaten standing up to ancestral moles that hold entire regional histories in a single spoonful

• The emerging wine region of Querétaro — intimate vineyard visits and unhurried conversations with winemakers who are building something new in a very old landscape

• A thoughtful balance of guided exploration and spacious time to wander, rest, and let the city surprise you

Here’s what you need to know:

October 30–November 6, 2026.

$6,200 per person, all-inclusive (flights not included).

$1,000 deposit holds your spot.

Fly in and out of Mexico City.

Full details and booking: meridianboutiquetravel.com/mexico

Summers there had a specific quality that I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing: Warm mornings that stretched into sweaty, play-filled afternoons. Swimming, movement, fresh food, creativity — all of it moving at the pace that only seems possible when you’re young and time feels infinite. Each day felt longer than it had any right to be, in the best way, and summer was my time to shine. I am a Leo, after all.

Decades later, and I can genuinely say I did not expect to find that feeling again in Portugal.

But the first time I stepped into the Alentejo — a vast, unhurried region that most travelers skip over on their way to Lisbon or the Algarve — I knew it was something special. It was calling me home.

Everyone talks about the tranquilo spirit of Portugal, easy, warm, and friendly, and it all alludes back to the way time feels like absolute molasses. The heat, the soft breeze, the cork trees and vineyards scattered across the rolling lands, the way a meal could take three hours and no one noticed, or cared to look at their phone. I felt like a child again in the best possible way. Like I had been handed back something I hadn’t realized I’d lost.

That’s the trip I built. And this August, I’m bringing you along to experience it for yourself!!

Nine days — dreaming of fairytales in Sintra amongst colorful castles, drinking crispy local white wines and snacking on fresh almonds and cheese in the Alentejo, and searching for dolphins and flamingoes before slurping fresh oysters in the Algarve. Designed specifically around that illusive feeling. Not a checklist of sights. A genuine, collective exhale. The adult summer break you forgot you needed, with the kind of spacious, unhurried days that remind you who you actually are when it’s all already planned for you, and no one needs anything from you.

I’m co-hosting with DeAnna Ornelas, a Level 3 Sommelier and the founder of Cosecha Wine & Mezcal. DeAnna first traveled with me in Japan, and somewhere between the sake and the izakayas, she became a collaborator. She’s been to Portugal before — and she’ll tell you that the only reason to travel anywhere is if the food and drink are worth the airfare. And let me tell you, they absolutely are.

To DeAnna, wine is a bridge to the land and the people who tended it. She doesn’t lead tastings. She opens conversations, and she’ll pour you something that you’ll be trying to describe to people for years.

Here’s what nine days actually looks like:

• A 50-acre re-forested ranch in the Alentejo — our home base, and the heart of the trip

• Coastal hikes along the dramatic Rota Vicentina — 4 to 8 miles at a completely unhurried pace, with the Atlantic on one side and wildflowers on the other

• Lunch with a multi-generational pig farming family — the kind of meal that has no business being as good as it is

• A private catamaran through the Ria Formosa — swimming, dolphin watching, oysters shucked straight from the water into your hand

• A fado evening, a ceramics class, and wine tastings on local vineyards with the makers themselves — with DeAnna leading every pour and conversation

• The wild cliffs of the Algarve — the windswept promontory that Portuguese explorers once called the edge of the known world

• Spacious afternoons with nowhere to be — for rest, swimming, reading, or doing absolutely nothing
  
  

  Take it from one our happy travelers:

  “Millennial Luxury Group Travel: This trip is designed for travelers that want to stay in nice accommodations, eat local/farm to table food, support local economies all while staying active and maybe drinking a little local wine and port along the way. It was great to just show up and have everything organized for us.” — Alice, Portugal traveler

Book your spot now!

Here’s what you need to know:

August 14–22, 2026.

14 guests maximum.

$5,600 per person, all-inclusive (flights not included).

$1,000 reserves your spot. Four spots are already booked, and they’re moving quick!

Full details and to book: meridianboutiquetravel.com/portugal

I can’t wait to see you there! I’m not kidding when I say I’ve been dreaming of going back to Portugal.

I’ve been sitting on these trips for a long time.

Not because they weren’t ready, but because I wanted to be sure I’d done the work to deserve sharing them. The relationships that make these itineraries possible took years to build. The moments that make them unforgettable — ones you couldn’t find on your own — came from asking a lot of questions, showing up more than once, and caring deeply about getting it right.

Every year, the tours iterate and become more unique, more themselves. This year is no different. And I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve built.

The table has been set. So what are you waiting for? Dive in!

PORTUGAL — August 14–22, 2026

A 9-day exhale through Sintra, the Alentejo, and the Algarve — slow and restorative, the summer break of your childhood. Co-hosted with DeAnna Ornelas, sommelier and founder of Cosecha Wine & Mezcal. Think: a 50-acre re-forested ranch where time moves at the beat of molasses, coastal hikes along the Rota Vicentina, oysters shucked straight from the water into your hand, and wine that tastes like the land it came from. This is the trip for the person who needs to remember what it feels like to have nowhere to be.

$5,600 per person · 14 guests maximum · 4 spots already claimed.

meridianboutiquetravel.com/portugal

JAPAN — September 10–20, 2026

An 11-day food-forward journey through Tokyo, Kanazawa, and Kyoto with Michelin-trained sushi chef Sam Saltos of Hiyaku PDX. This itinerary is specially built the way Chef Sam Saltos builds a menu, around the best possible ingredients. Sam is one of Portland’s most sought-after omakase chefs, and he’s been dreaming about this trip since the last time he left Japan. Toyosu Fish Market at dawn. A knife shop in Kanazawa where blades are still made by three separate craftspeople — blacksmith, sharpener, handle maker. An intimate dinner with a Geiko. A vegan Buddhist temple lunch that will quietly rearrange something in you. This is the trip for people who want to understand Japanese food from the inside out — and who are ready to go deep.

$6,200 per person · 13 guests maximum · 2 spots already claimed.

meridianboutiquetravel.com/japan

MEXICO — October 30–November 6, 2026

An 8-day poetic, sensory, chef-led journey through Mexico City and the wine region of Querétaro — timed for Día de los Muertos. Co-hosted with Baja Native Chef Maylin Chavez of Nacár Oysters, who grew up in Mexico and carries this celebration in her bones, not her research. Marigold-lined streets. Ofrendas stacked with photographs and favorite foods of the dead. Ancestral moles that hold entire histories in a single spoonful. And Querétaro’s emerging wine region, intimate and unhurried, where winemakers still have time to sit down with you. This is the trip that reminds you what it means to be alive — by honoring what it means to lose someone.

$6,200 per person · 16 guests maximum.

meridianboutiquetravel.com/mexico

All three trips include in-country transportation, boutique accommodation, most meals, all activities, and the kind of access that takes years to build.

Over the next few weeks I’ll take you deep into each one. But if something is already pulling at you — the website is live, and the details are there waiting for you.

— Lizzy

Not in a trendy way — in a values way. Because the more I build Meridian, the more I see what’s happening to the places and experiences that made me fall in love with travel in the first place. The hidden gem becomes the hot spot. The hot spot gets written up. The write-up brings the crowds. The crowds bring the corporations. And somewhere in that process, the last bit of charm gets quietly bulldozed.

I’ve watched it happen over and over. And it makes me more deliberate every year about what I’m building and why.

Travel is full of generic right now. Curated feeds of the same golden-hour shots, the same restaurants, the same version of every city filtered through the same American lens. And I get it — it’s comfortable. It’s familiar. But it’s not what people are actually looking for.

What I hear, over and over, from people who travel with me — and from people who haven’t yet but want to — is that they don’t want an extension of their American lives somewhere prettier. They want to go deep. They want to understand how other people live, eat, move through the world. They want their assumptions rearranged. They want to come home different.

That’s what Meridian is built for.

Every trip I run is scouted from personal experience. Not from a guidebook, not from a tourism board, not from what’s trending. From time I’ve actually spent in a place. From relationships I’ve built over years. From the moment I walked somewhere and thought: I have to bring people here.

I’m not a corporation. I don’t have liability waivers and approval chains and a committee deciding what makes the itinerary. I have real conversations with local vendors, real relationships with the families and artisans and makers who give these trips their soul — and a genuine commitment to protecting those relationships from the very forces that would eventually ruin them.

This year I’ve designed three trips around that exact instinct. Each one built for a specific kind of experience. Each one co-hosted with someone who brings a depth I couldn’t offer alone. Each one limited to a small group of people I trust to show up with curiosity, openness, and a willingness to be changed by what they find.

This week I’m sharing all three. I think one of them might be for you.

— Lizzy

Today I’m going to tell you about three life shifting moments I’ve had abroad, and how the messy middle got me to where I am today.

As the founder of a new travel company, this work isn’t always pretty, or glamourous. It’s full of indecision, uncertainty, faking confidence until I prove to myself it was there all along, and constantly putting my foot in my mouth in languages I don’t speak.

It’s not just what you see on Instagram, and neither is your life, nor should it be.

So I hope what I’m about to share offers some truth serum, and the optimism that even when you’re crying in the airport, or on a mountain, or you’re feeling an extreme level of discomfort, that you can still do the thing you’ve been reaching for. You just have to decide. And one thing about me, is that I am stubborn as a nail ;)

MOROCCO + PORTUGAL

The first time I officially decided to go on a scouting trip for Meridian — the first time I said out loud, with money and a flight confirmation behind it, I am building this thing — I got COVID two weeks before departure.

It was mild, which was the good news. The bad news was that Morocco, at the time, required PCR tests to enter, and as you may remember, PCR tests have a talent for detecting tiny remnants of the virus long after you’re no longer contagious. The nightmare scenario was vivid and specific: all this anticipation, all this hope, all these quietly enormous business dreams — cancelled before they’d had a single chance to breathe.

And then, days before I was supposed to leave, Morocco changed their policy to requiring rapid tests. I tested negative. I was going.

Except then, on the flight to Maine — where I was stopping first to see my honey and some dear friends before the big international departure — a fellow passenger overheard me on a phone call mentioning I’d just had COVID. Context: not included.

They reported me to the airline. I shit you not, the desk agents pulled me aside and required me to swab my nose right there at the gate before I’d be allowed to board.

The test came back negative. Because I was!!!!! But you bet your ass I felt deeply misunderstood in the moment.

The airline apologized profusely and upgraded me to business class. I gave dagger eyes to the nosy neighbor lady. Her name had to be Karen.

At that point I decided the universe was, in its chaotic way, trying to tell me something. Nothing is stopping you. Go go go!!!!

Maine was exactly what it needed to be — lobsters, east coast cockles, oyster tastings, bubbles, beach walks, good friends, and my honey, who rented us a hotel room the night before my departure so we didn’t have to sleep on an air mattress in our friend’s guest room. That small, sweet gesture. I still think about how cute that was.

The next morning they drove me to the airport shuttle for Boston.

I made it approximately thirty seconds before the sunglasses went on. I was in the back seat, jaw clenched, chin twitching, trying to hold it together… and then suddenly I was not holding it together at all. For the next three hours, it was full waterworks. No hiding it. Just a puffy-eyed girl in sunglasses, quietly living out her dreams, crying the entire way to the airport.

I got on the plane, which at that point was a true miracle.

Morocco was magnificent. I’d joined another company’s group tour — purely for research purposes, obviously — and came home with a group of friends I’m still in touch with today. The souks, the light, the food, the colors, the riads, all immaculate.

And then Portugal: weeks of exploring on my own, building an itinerary from scratch, falling in love with the Alentejo in the way you only can when nobody’s waiting for you, and you have nowhere to be but exactly where you are. On your own time, your own agenda, in your own presence. That might sound like some people’s worst nightmare, but I honestly love it (and I always have to get past the discomfort of it at first).

None of it — not Morocco, not Portugal, not any of what Meridian has become — would have happened if I’d stayed home when it got hard or scary.

THE JAPANESE ALPS

The first time I went to the Japanese Alps on my own to rehearse a tour I had planned for the fall, I was woefully underprepared. I had the enthusiasm, the trail snacks, the absolute conviction that I was going to summit. What I did not have — what it had not occurred to me to bring, in spring, in the mountains — were crampons.

There was, as one might expect in the mountains in spring, a considerable amount of snow on the ground.

I made it partway up before it became clear that I was not going to make it the rest of the way. Not safely. Not without proper equipment. When a Japanese man stopped me on the trail not speaking a word of English but giving me big X arms, I knew the dangers of pushing through to keep going. I was so desperate I considered trying to buy someone else’s cramp-ons on the spot. Then I realized that was extremely out of the norm for Japanese culture and I couldn’t even figure out how to ask with the little Japanese I knew to begin with. Google Translater was unfortunately not going to save me that time.

And so I turned around, and I cried my way back down the mountain — slipping a little, humbled a lot — while other hikers with cramp-ons and ice picks passed me on their way up. I groveled my way into a room I hadn’t booked that night, and thanks to my personal connection at the lodge, they said yes.

It remains one of my favorite trips I’ve ever taken.

Not because I summited. I didn’t. But because I showed up anyway, under-equipped and overconfident, and the mountain taught me something I couldn’t have learned at home. There is a specific kind of clarity that comes from being humbled by a place. From realizing that the world is not going to adjust to your level of preparation — and that this is, actually, the point.

MEXICO CITY

A few years later I found myself in a free Mexico City apartment for two months, cat-sitting for a friend (shout-out to Rachelle).

Here is the unglamorous truth about what those two months gave me: it was warm. That’s it. That was the secret. I had spent one too many Portland winters running on fumes, coffee, and gray light, and Mexico City — with its sunshine and its noise and its complete indifference to my to-do list — simply filled my cup back up.

But a full cup, it turns out, is a dangerous thing. You start thinking clearly. You start wanting things.

By the end of those two months I had made two decisions that have meaningfully reoriented my entire life since.

The first: I need to be rich enough to be a snow-bird. Sunshine doesn’t just make me happy — it makes me feel like myself, and I am no longer willing to negotiate on that.

The second: I was ready to leave Portland for something quieter. More connected — to myself, to nature, to a life that actually fit the person I was becoming.

The vision got specific fast. A house on the coast. Winters somewhere warm. A life built around the things that actually fill you up rather than the ones that just keep you busy.

I didn’t know yet that it would happen. But I knew, for the first time, that I wanted it to.

Mexico City is why I trust Mexico the way I do. It’s why I believe that sometimes the most transformative thing you can do is simply go somewhere warm in February and give yourself two months to remember who you are.

I'm not telling you this so you'll go cat-sit in Mexico City for two months or cry on an airport shuttle for three hours or slide ungracefully down a snowy mountain in the Japanese Alps, though I recommend all of it.

I’m telling you this because I think a lot of the women drawn to Meridian are standing at the edge of something — a trip they keep putting off, a version of themselves they haven’t quite given permission to show up yet — and the thing holding them back is exactly the thing that’s trying to get their attention.

The discomfort is not a warning. It’s a signal.

It’s your inner compass doing its job. Pointing toward the thing that will actually change you, if you let it.

Get on the plane. Cry if you need to. The other side is worth it — I promise.

What's your version of the airport shuttle cry , that one moment you almost talked yourself out of the thing that changed you?

The Tokusawa Lodge sits inside what is now a nationally recognized park — one of the only lodging options permitted within its boundaries. The Kamijo family has lived in these mountains for generations, first as herders, long before the land was designated for preservation. When the park came, they stayed. Their lodge was grandfathered in, which means when you arrive there, you’re not arriving at a hotel. You’re arriving at someone’s home, a home that’s been passed down and preserved four generations.

My dad passed through Tokusawa on his way into the mountains, trip after trip, year after year. Somewhere along the way, the Wills family and the Kamijo family became friends — the real kind, the kind that involves visits across oceans, holiday cards, and the particular joy of watching each other’s children grow up. All of us Wills kids made it to the lodge eventually. The Kamijos came to visit us in the States. A friendship that began on a mountain trail became something that has now outlasted decades.

I met them again as an adult in 2019 on a solo trip with my dad to Japan, where before I even knew it, I was being indoctrinated into the idea of starting my own travel business. We’ve traveled a lot as a family, but as the youngest, I received the shortest end of that stick. My oldest sister grew up skipping school going on far-off adventures with my parents in India, Nepal, Tibet, Japan, and Sri Lanka. I didn’t grow up with my dad, so I had some time to make up. A few years back, my brother and I forced him to promise us that we’d get to go on solo trips with him before things changed too much, before he got too old, honestly. I’m glad I went when I did, because that trip was very likely my dad’s last to visit the Japanese Alps.

Within minutes of arriving, I had been adopted as their daughter (they had 3 boys) and was swept off to the gift shop to be thoroughly spoiled by Mama Kamijo. Free coffees galore! Free chocolate (a rarity in Japan)! Free ice cream! Literally all of these things were given to me.

That evening we sat down to a home-cooked multi-course meal that felt like it should only be served to royalty, and probably was, in a former life. When we left for our trek the next morning, we were sent off with trail snacks and well-wishes for the family back home. When we returned, there were gifts waiting.

It was, as I wrote at the time, about as close to magic as I’ve ever been. The hospitality. The service, and the delight in sharing their slice of life with us.

The Kamijo family is now passing the management of the lodge to their adult children, which is a transition that mirrors something happening in my own family. There’s something about that parallel that I find moving and out of the ordinary in this day and age. As much as it is a tradition in Japan, it is no longer the norm for younger generations to take on the family business, causing artisan industries to die-off with their craftsmen. It’s actually a real generational problem in Japan.

But I think we can all acknowledge the things worth building are the things worth handing down.

This is where Meridian came from. Not from a gap in the market or a business plan. From fifty years of my parents showing up — on a trail, at a lodge, at someone else’s table — with enough humility and warmth that strangers became family. And from understanding, eventually, that the most valuable thing I could offer anyone who travels with me is exactly that: the feeling of already belonging somewhere before you’ve even arrived.

Japan taught my family that. The Kamijos showed us what it looks like. I’ve been given the privilege of being in a position to hold that close.

So there it is: To have it is to share it, right?

You saw the thing. You stood in front of it. You have proof. And yet somewhere on the flight home you find yourself wondering what you actually took in — what you actually felt — beyond the logistics of getting there and back.

I’ve done that kind of travel. Most of us have.

What I’ve spent the last several years building at Meridian is something different, and I want to try to name it clearly, because I think it’s the reason people come back and tell me a trip changed something in them. It’s not the destinations, exactly. It’s not the itinerary, though I labor over those. It’s something I’ve come to call place-based travel — and the heart of it is people.

Not the people you travel with, though those relationships matter, too. The people who live there.

The ranch owner in the Alentejo who was one of the founders of the trail you’re walking. The knife maker in Kyoto whose family has been at the same bench for three generations. The chef in Mexico City who grew up watching her grandmother build an ofrenda and now wants to show you what that actually means. These aren’t background characters. They’re the whole point.

When a trip is built around people like this — when your guide is someone who genuinely loves where they live, when the hotel owner pulls up a chair and tells you the history of the building over a glass of local wine, when the person cooking your lunch also caught what’s on your plate — something happens. You stop being a tourist passing through and start being something closer to a guest. And guests, as my parents taught me, show up differently. They pay attention. They receive what’s offered. They leave having actually been somewhere, in the present moment, accepting people as humans, a culture for its differences, and the personal discomfort that might have brought.

This is what I mean when I say place-based. It’s not a style or an aesthetic. It’s a philosophy about whose story you’re entering when you travel, and how much respect you bring to it.

The places I design trips around — Portugal’s Alentejo coast, the Japanese Alps, Mexico City during Día de los Muertos — aren’t chosen because they’re trending. They’re chosen because I know people who want to bring you in, and show you their side of the world. The access that creates is different from anything you can find on a booking site. It’s the difference between reading about a place and being welcomed into it.

I started Meridian because I grew up watching my parents travel this way — slowly, curiously, with genuine humility toward wherever they found themselves. I’ve never been interested in building something that felt like a highlight reel. What I want for the people who travel with me is harder to photograph and far more lasting: the feeling of having actually been somewhere, with people who were glad you came.

That’s what place-based travel is. And once you’ve experienced it, the other kind starts to feel like a lot of effort for very little return.

Is there a place you’ve traveled where you felt genuinely welcomed — not as a tourist, but as a guest? I’d love to hear about it.

I understand the pull. Both are beautiful. But there’s a stretch of Portugal’s southwest coast — unhurried, largely unknown to international travelers, running along the edge of the Alentejo — that I think about more than almost anywhere I’ve been. It’s called the Rota Vicentina, and it might be my favorite way to experience any country, anywhere.

The Rota is a 750-kilometer hiking trail that winds from just south of Lisbon down to Portugal’s southern tip. It has a more famous neighbor you’ve likely heard of — the Camino de Santiago, with its centuries of spiritual history and its steady stream of pilgrims. The Rota is quieter, newer, and less traveled. It was established just over ten years ago by a group of locals who wanted to share their part of Portugal, a place with so much substance that most tourists simply drive past on their way somewhere else.

That origin story matters. This trail exists because people who love a place wanted others to love it too.

One of those people is the owner of the ranch where we’ll be staying this August on our MBT Portugal tour.

Alfredo was among the founders of the Rota Vicentina — one of the locals who looked at this stretch of coastline and cork forest and said: people should know about this. His 50-acre property sits directly on the trail, which means when you wake up in the morning, you don’t have to travel far to get to the Rota.

One of our days takes us straight from the ranch along the trail to a local ceramics studio, where we’ll spend a few hours hand-building with a Portuguese potter — stopping along the way to pick fresh oregano growing wild at the trail’s edge. It’s the kind of leisurely day that’s impossible to manufacture — only possible because the trail connects these places, and because the people along it have spent years quietly tending those connections.

That’s what the Rota offers that almost nowhere else can: slow travel in its truest form. Not just literally slower, but more connected. When you move through a place on foot, you stop in the small towns. You find the handful of restaurants and work your way through all of them. You run into the same person who served you coffee in the morning at dinner that evening. You learn whose family caught the fish on your plate, which farm pressed the olive oil, what the locals are proud of and what was hard-won.

The trail passes through some of the most extraordinary biodiversity in Portugal — cliffsides and coastline, cork forests and wetlands, cranes nesting in the fields. It’s the kind of walking where you stop checking your phone not because you have no service, but because the view in front of you is simply more interesting.

For the Meridian Portugal journey this August, the Rota is our anchor. We’ve chosen two sections of the trail — each offering a different landscape and pace — moving slowly south from Lisbon toward the Algarve, staying in local boutique hotels along the way with people who genuinely love their home and want to share it.

This is what I mean when I talk about place-based travel. Not a highlights reel. An actual relationship with somewhere.

If you’re curious what the spirit of the Rota feels like in the words of the people who built it, this short video is worth a few minutes of your time.

And if Portugal has been on your list — this is your summer.

→ meridianboutiquetravel.com/portugal

Spring on the Oregon Coast doesn’t announce itself the way it does inland. There’s no sudden warmth, no dramatic shift. It arrives quietly — in the quality of the light, in what’s appearing along the trail margins, in what’s moving just offshore. But if you know what to look for, it’s one of the most alive times of year to be here.

Here’s what’s worth your attention right now.

The gray whales are moving.

The Pacific gray whale migration peaks through late March and into April, and the Oregon Coast is one of the finest places on earth to witness it from land. Headlands like Cape Meares, Cape Lookout, and Depoe Bay put you directly above the migration corridor. Bring binoculars and patience — and expect to be surprised by how close they come.

The trails are empty and the wildflowers are just beginning.

This is the in-between season — past the winter crowds of storm-watchers, well before summer. Trails at Oswald West, Cape Falcon, and along the Clatsop Spit are walkable, green, and largely yours to explore without the crowds (with the exception of right now, Spring Break, when they can be busy!). Trillium and wood sorrel are starting to appear in the forest clearings. Just like everything else in life, it won’t last, and it’s ever-changing! Romanticize the moment you catch, ’cause you’ll never get it back!

The beaches are themselves again.

Without summer crowds, the long flat stretches north of Seaside return to something quieter. Walk them in the morning, in the fog, before the wind picks up. This coast rewards the early riser. Spring here is brief and unhurried, and it doesn’t wait. Go while the whales are still passing and the trails are still soft!!

What I’m eyeing locally, lately…

A regular part of our routine on the coast has become saunas and warm pools, paired with cold water plunges. My go-to spots are Snowpeak Campfield in Long Beach, and Imzadi Sauna in Astoria. With Spring comes new businesses, and I’m excited to check out Laughing Rabbit Farm’s new apothecary studio space which comes along with new herbal workshops. Another new/old opening in Downtown Astoria is Syrena Astoria, formerly Hello Doe with vintage clothes and furniture, in addition to surf boards and gear. Finally, recently I’ve been getting more into 1) dancing for joy, and 2) my cultural heritage, and the Scandinavian Dance Workshop and Supper on April 19th at Little Island Creamery in Cathlamet, WA sounds like a great combo for this tender soul. Come do a jig with me if you dare…

Where are you headed on the North Coast this spring? Tell me your spots — I’m always adding to the list.