East Asia
Hong Kong
A vertical city with a ferry timetable
Ten days built around the harbour, the hill trails and the ferry piers, deliberately booked for the dry, clear window at the end of the year.
November 2026Guide
Travel writing since 2020
I am Erica, and I am spending the next three years on six journeys.
This is where the planning happens in public. Every destination gets a full written guide before I go and an honest revision after I return, including the routes that did not work and the money it actually cost. No sponsored itineraries, no affiliate links, no lists of ten things you must see.
Follow along
The plan through 2028
Destinations I am planning
Six journeys, booked or researched in the order below. Each one has a full guide on this site covering what to see, how to get there, when to go and what I would tell a friend before they went.
East Asia
Macau
Portuguese stonework, Cantonese kitchens
Four days on the peninsula and the islands, aimed squarely at the old town, the food and the quiet streets behind the casinos.
November 2026Guide
Oceania
New Zealand
Two islands, one very long drive
Five weeks over both islands at the end of the southern summer, self-driving, with the route built around daylight rather than distance.
February to March 2027Guide
Southern Europe
Rome (Italy)
Everything is open early or not at all
Twelve days built around early mornings, long lunches and the neighbourhoods across the river, with the famous sites deliberately visited at the wrong hours.
May 2027Guide
Southern Europe
Madrid (Spain)
A city that starts at ten at night
Two weeks in autumn, structured around the art museums in the morning, the neighbourhoods in the afternoon and dinner at an hour that would be closing time anywhere else.
October 2027Guide
Eastern Europe
Moscow (Russia)
The furthest out and the least settled
A research entry rather than a confirmed itinerary. What I have gathered so far on the city, the seasons and the practicalities, held loosely and revisited as the date approaches.
June 2028Guide
Three ways in
How to follow along
Different channels do different jobs. Pick the one that matches how much of this you actually want in your day.
Read the long form here
Every destination gets a full written guide before I go and an honest revision after I return. Nothing on this site is behind a signup, and the archive stays free for as long as it exists.
Open the blogFollow the daily side elsewhere
Instagram carries the day-to-day, YouTube carries the finished films, and X is where fare drops and border changes go first. Pick whichever one matches how much you want in your feed.
See the channelsTake the dispatch by email
A fortnightly note covering what I booked, what it cost and what I got wrong. It is the only channel where I write about a trip while the plan is still changing.
Join the dispatch
From the blog
Featured posts
The three pieces I would hand to someone landing here for the first time.
Planning28 August 2026
Forty-Eight Hours in Hong Kong, Planned Backwards
Most short itineraries start with a list of sights and try to connect them. For a city built vertically and stitched together by ferries, that fails immediately. I built this one from the last hour of the trip backwards, and it produced a completely different route to the one I would have written forwards.
9 min readRead
Destination Guides14 August 2026
The Slow Way to Macau
There are now three ways to cross from Hong Kong, and the fastest one is the least interesting. A case for the ferry, the border formalities nobody warns you about, and why the old town is a morning destination rather than an afternoon one.
11 min readRead
Food16 July 2026
Eating Madrid at Ten at Night
Every visitor who has a disappointing time in Madrid is eating three hours too early. What the city timetable actually looks like, how long it takes to adjust to it, and why the free tapa is an introduction rather than a meal.
7 min readRead
Planning something similar
Ask me about a route before you book it
I answer every message myself. If you are working on one of the six destinations on this site, I have probably already made the mistake you are about to make.
