Why I left the US and decided to live out of a very small, meticulously curated suitcase

Ciao from Florence.

This is the Arno river, the Florentine Seine, if you will.

This is the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. I stumbled upon it on my way to the grocery store my first day here. The art and architecture is unbelievable and incredibly dense in Florence. It’s a small city chock full of some of the most famous sites in the world. Literally everywhere you look. I can’t wait to do a city guide.

Florence is my third stop since leaving the US, and this newsletter is about why I decided to live abroad and my unusual scheme for doing so. I started thinking about a big change a few months ago after admitting that Santa Barbara didn’t quite feel like home. For me, Santa Barbara was good on paper. It seemed like it should be a perfect fit, but the connection just wasn’t there.

And that isn’t to say that it isn’t a fabulous place or that it couldn’t be the right place for me down the line, but I knew it was time to leave. Chronologically, I’ve lived in Telluride (childhood), Park City (briefly as a teenager), Santa Barbara (high school), New York (throughout downtown Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Bushwick in my 20’s), LA (early 30’s), Aspen (the Pandemic with my family), and then back to Santa Barbara. I began brainstorming possible locations and quickly realized there wasn’t anywhere in the US that felt right.

Then an old friend suggested something brilliant and outside the box…