Welcome! Happy to have you here!
Hi! Welcome to my space on the web! I am Megan Starr, a travel blogger from the USA who has lived abroad in Europe for the last 15 years.
This travel blog was started in 2010 when I moved to Norway and was looking to share my European travels and expat life with friends and family back home. The blog really focused on traveling in Norway and Eastern Europe in its early days but has evolved to include additional destinations over the years.
I like to think of this blog as a compilation of travels from home (the USA) and travels from my adopted home (Europe). I have lived in Norway, Finland, Armenia, and Germany, with some short living stints in Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Croatia, and Romania.
As a result, you will find a big emphasis on travel in Scandinavia, the United States, and Western Europe.
Throughout the years, I have written for or been featured in several publications across the web, including National Geographic, Forbes, BBC, The New York Times, Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, Roads & Kingdoms, The Guardian, Rough Guides, RFERL, iNews (UK), Reader’s Digest, Buzzfeed, The Independent, Food & Wine Magazine, and more.
I also co-authored Fodor’s ‘Essential Norway’ where I wrote all of the chapters about Arctic Norway, one of my favorite destinations!
Over the years, I have also run a few other sites, including an Armenia travel blog where I focused on the tourism development of the country with USAID, the EU, the Smithsonian Institute, the UN, and more. I have since passed the torch on that site, but you can still see a lot of my work there.
What You Can Expect on My Blog
My goal is to help you plan your trip, from inspiring you on the best places to visit in a destination all the way down to the best food tours to take in the city.
I want your trip from the airport to the city center to go as seamlessly as possible and for you to come back from your trip ready to plan another (hopefully with me)!
This blog started as a hobby in 2010 and stayed as one for nearly 8 years before deciding that it would be fun to turn a hobby into a business (honestly, the best decision ever).
I very rarely work with tourism boards or hotels these days and pay for most of my travels from my own pocket, giving me the full experience of planning the trip and empowering me to showcase what I think is worth (and NOT worth) your money on a trip.
While I plan most of my travels independently these days, I have collaborated in the past with several tourism boards and brands. You can catch a glimpse of some of them below:
I are not overly active on social media, but you can like my Facebook page to see occasional updates from new articles or our pictures from the road!
This blog has helped over 10,000,000 readers in the last year across the site and my others, and I hope to help millions more to come in the future.
About Megan
Born in Ohio and raised in Virginia, I started this travel blog in 2010 and kept it as a hobby for nearly 8 years before turning my passion into a business.
As a kid, I traveled a lot for sports but found solace away from the chaos in my local library, where I would sit in the corner and read travel guidebooks about Norway and Iceland. I started her MBA in International Business and began working my way up the US corporate ladder when I decided to cash it all in for a fresh start in Bergen, Norway.
After a year in Bergen and 3 years in Oslo, I uprooted my life (and my cute dog, Jax) to move to Frankfurt, Germany. After some time there and short stints living in Kazakhstan, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria, I eventually moved to Armenia.
Fast forward a few years (and a pandemic) later, and I realized that my heart is 100% in the Nordics, so I bought a house in Rovaniemi, Finland, giving me a base to explore the Arctic with ease.
On this blog, I focus mostly on travel in Scandinavia and the Nordics, Western Europe (so I have a not-so-secret love affair with Italy!), and the USA, where I have visited 45/50 US states and several national parks.
Today, I am based part-time in Finland and part-time in Germany, with long trips to the USA in between. I am obsessed with fragrance (and has a huge perfume collection), dogs (and all animals), miso ramen, snowshoeing, photography, birch forests, cold weather, and early mornings.