As the ball completed its drop on December 31st, 2019, Huong and I raised and clanked our champagne flutes to big plans in 2020.  We were excited about the prospects of exploring and documenting our planned trips to Hawaii, Italy, Switzerland, and Japan.  We were also excited about expanding the reach of our network to the benefit of our food & travel operation. With the exception of Italy, the other locations would be first-time experiences for us. 

Hawaii was first on the docket, and oh boy would it be nice to lay on the beaches of Maui in March when the New York City winter was summoning its last full court press of depression and sadness.  Wait, what’s that?  Something about a lot of people getting some unexplainable flu in China? Well, that’s pretty scary.  So…anyway……I can’t wait for our Hawaii trip!

As January turned to February, I expressed concern for what would definitely be disrupted supply chains and impending shortages.  By the third week of February, I came to grips with the levels to which this virus would upend all of our lives. I started making the difficult phone calls to other family members who might not yet realize what was coming, and instructed them to buy food and other resources that can last upwards of two months without the need for replenishment.

As for Hawaii, no way was it going to happen, even though society was still chugging right along as February turned to March.  I tried getting ahead of things by cancelling with the airlines and with our Airbnb’s, and let’s just say they were not quite where I was when it came to understanding or accepting where this was all going.  Eventually, after days of back and forth, the Airbnb’s came to their senses and canceled our reservations, penalty free.  And finally, two days before our scheduled flight to Maui, Hawaiian Airlines begrudgingly refunded us.  As for our planned trip to Italy and Switzerland in the summer and Japan over Thanksgiving, we could kiss that goodbye.

We battened down the hatches, focused on work and fitness, took up new hobbies like learning piano and Italian language, watched a lot of Netflix, and waited out the pandemic.  And waited….and waited. 

And waited.

During that time, we as well as a host of others…including you our dear readers….have spent some time reevaluating what is important in life. “Oh man. When this pandemic is over, I am going to….”.  We’ve all said it.  Maybe you declared you will meet with friends more often, or no longer take your community for granted.  Maybe you said you will invest in the emotional currency travel offers. 

Well, in only a few months, there is going to be a massive emotional release and a great deal of mobilization. To borrow from Robin Williams’ Professor Keating in Dead Poet’s Society, millions of people around the world will be hellbent on “sucking the marrow out of life” as soon as it is safe for them to do so.  For Huong and me, never do we feel more alive than when we travel. We plan to make up for a lost year. So, it’s time to get back on the horse.  It is time to start planning.

Huong creates mighty tasty charcuterie and cheese spreads for our trip planning sessions

Reading the tea leaves of the vaccination schedule and the initiation of the Defense Production Act here in the United States, there is confidence that most Americans will have access to the vaccine by late Spring and life will once again begin to have a measure of normalcy by mid-summer.  What that means for us is “hello Maui!”

A couple of weeks ago, Huong put together a great charcuterie board along with a fabulous cheese spread, and I uncorked a lovely bottle of wine. We then sat down with our laptops and began planning our trip. This is our big tradition and it felt so good to be doing it again. Even though we are still knee deep in this pandemic, for the first time in ten months we feel the promise of a post-pandemic world.  We booked our flights and our Airbnb’s, rolled over almost all of the excursions we had planned for the year before, and solidified our trip.  On May 5th we will finally venture out of our fair city and board a plane, fourteen months after we went into lockdown. Four….teen….months.

I cannot articulate enough the level of social distancing Huong and I adhered to this past year.  Besides a handful of times when we rented a car for a day trip to hike in upstate New York, we have not gone anywhere except for places where our feet or a bicycle could take us.  No travel, no overnight jaunts, no leaving our city.  We have not met with friends. We have either been home or we have been outdoors exercising.  That’s it.  I joke that we are probably in the 98th percentile of social distancers, and that the 2 percent who have remained more conservative than us are those who have not exercised and are fully committed to a veal-like existence.

Maui makes sense for us as the first trip for two reasons.  (1) It is a domestic trip, we will have been vaccinated by May, and it is therefore easier to predict that we will not be met with travel restrictions.  (2) While in Maui, we will either be laying on a beach or hiking through the rainforest. We will still not be participating in any indoor activity. Restaurant experiences will be those with outdoor seating.

In the latter half of July, we plan to visit Switzerland and northern Italy.  Once again, the focus will be on outdoor experiences.  Lakes, mountains, sailing, hiking.  Minimal indoor activity. This trip is no guarantee since there is still quite a bit of the unknown as it related to Italy’s recovery and Switzerland’s acceptance of American travelers….even those who have been vaccinated.  But we feel pretty confident.

We will finish the year with a trip to Japan. We always get on a plane on Thanksgiving Day for a foreign destination and this year will be no different. 

The one thing we have noticed during our planning is that there haven’t really been many discounts for flight and accommodation.  This is probably because airlines and property owners need to recoup a lot of lost earnings, and they know demand will be high.  So, we found it best to begin planning now, before prices go up and availability evaporates. And the biggest upside to doing it now? It is downright therapeutic.

In the fall of 2004 I proposed to Huong. After the initial glow of engagement, it soon dawned on us that our wedding logistics posed some challenges. Her family resided in Western Pennsylvania and we were living in Miami. Huong wasn’t excited for a Western PA wedding and the odds of extended family traveling such a distance as Miami was low. So during a moment of….some might call it frustration….others might call it clarity…..Huong declared “let’s just get married in Florence”. As in Florence, Italy. I had never been to Italy. She had never been to Italy. Neither of us had vacationed overseas. We didn’t even own passports! But, as has been the case during our twenty years together, I fell in line with what she wanted to do and said “ok, let’s do it”. Happy (future) wife, happy life. You know the drill.

Picture taken in 2001

Why Florence, Italy? To this day I have no idea. She must have read something or seen a travel piece on tv. But this turn of events PERFECTLY captured the nature of our relationship. Apart from and prior to the meeting, we both made relatively conservative decisions and led conservative lives. Together, the sky was and is the absolute (expletive) limit. I would do anything for her, and she for me. I would move anywhere for her (and did!) and I would go anywhere with her. So when she blurted out “Florence”, I was like “why not?” I didn’t bat an eyelash. That’s how we have been since Day 1.

Before I met her, my career was spent working for “the man”. I made a nice living but began to feel caged. Once together, she planted the seeds of entrepreneurship in my mind and set my imagination free. For the first time, I became a problem solver and inventor. I launched an education technology company. She was climbing the corporate ladder and doing so with great success. We were creating a life together. None of this included travel…..until she uttered the word “Florence” in the fall of 2004.

We were complete rubes. I traveled to practically every state in the country for business and did so regularly, but I almost never traveled for leisure and never had gone anywhere internationally. But hey, I was going to plan a wedding in Italy myself. Don’t worry, I GOT THIS! Welp, to marry in Italy, one must run a bit of a bureaucratic gauntlet. Contact the local Italian Embassy here in the U.S., visit the U.S. embassy in Florence, visit the judge at the courthouse in Florence, “post” the wedding announcement in Florence. Finito! We’re married.

I didn’t make it past Step 1. The dang Italian Embassy would never answer their phone! Days and then weeks passed. What at the time was frustrating now makes me chuckle, and has since become representative of what makes Italy so charming to us. Italians do things on their time, at their speed. We ultimately decided to hire a Tuscany-based wedding planner. Best decision ever.

Outside of the wedding, the rest of our trip was ours to plan. Two nights in Paris, three nights in Venice, seven nights in Florence including a wedding, and then three nights in Rome before flying home….as newlyweds. In theory this all sounded wonderful. In execution it….it was a little uneven.

My pose in front of the Arc de Triomphe would make morose singing legend Morrissey proud
While standing outside The Vatican, a bus with an “Over the Hedge” ad on its side began to pull away and I said “Huong! Quick! Smile like a character!”

We set out for Europe in October of 2006. In Paris, we ran and laughed in the rain. But that was because we ended up not researching dining options and wandered far from our hotel, unable to decide where to eat. In Venice, we excitedly and successfully communicated with a clerk at a vaporetto (water taxi) stand with our
newly learned Italian phrases. But this was after originally thinking we were going to land at Marco Polo Airport and take a brief walk to the water’s edge for water transportation to our hotel. Instead we landed at Treviso Airport (Venice had a second airport, who knew?) and had to take a twenty minute bus ride from our inland airport to the vaporetto stand, completely bewildered by this geographic turn of events. In Florence, we drove the narrow lanes and piazzas while the bells rang and pigeons flew away from their positions on the ground….like we were in a De Beers diamond commercial. But while this scene was taking place, we were anxiously debating whether we were even driving on a road or a pedestrian area. “We’re going to get arrested! What are the Italian prisons like??” In Rome, we ate amazing pasta dishes next to beautiful millenia-old buildings. But we had no idea that there were so many other culinary delights the city had to offer and in neighborhoods not so touristy and over priced.

Ah, but that week in Florence. It was incredibly romantic, and it impacted us in a way where we knew we would never be the same. Our view of the world and our place in it would be forever changed.

On our wedding day, prior to the ceremony, we posed for photos. This was not a normal photo shoot however. Nadia, our wedding planner, had serious connections. One was with Ferrari, and they sent their photographer to shoot us for a couple of hours posing with five Ferrari sports cars of different models and eras, one of them the personal possession of Enzo Ferrari, the company’s founder. To thank us for our time and participation, the Ferrari rep then let us pick one of the five sports cars to drive for thirty minutes through the Tuscan hillside outside of Florence. I chose Enzo Ferrari’s, the 1964 250 GT Lusso.

After our joy ride we pulled up to our wedding location, which was the garden of a villa in the south of Florence across the River Arno, down the hill from Piazzale Michelangelo. We bade a fond farewell to the classic Ferrari, and made things official. With a violinist playing in the background, the service was conducted completely in Italian, very little of it understood by our untrained ears. I THINK we’re married??

The trip triggered a new mindset for us. Upon our return home, we found ourselves routinely hearkening back to memorable moments. The recounting of events in storytelling form was an elixir from the stresses of day to day life. We wanted more.

Hence the initiation of a calendar filled with travel. The more trips we took, the more seasoned we became. The more seasoned we became, the better planners we were. What began as one trip per year became two. Then three. And the trip itself was only part of the experience. The planning became a big event for us. We began creating spreadsheets where we would establish a spine for a trip and then assign responsibilities. I choose the countries and cities, research their history, and map out our excursions. Huong researches accommodations, whether they are Airbnb’s or hotels, and she also selects the restaurants. We pour wine, dine from a charcuterie board, open our laptops, and then research and document.

Flatiron District viewed from our bedroom, NYC

Both Huong and I are highly opinionated. We evaluate our travel excursions with a critical eye. So in 2017, when I retired from education technology pursuits, I said to her “what’s next?” She pointed to our passion for travel, how we have strong beliefs and good taste, and that this might prove beneficial to others. That was all I needed. The light bulb turned on over my head. My inventor mindset kicked in. Within weeks I drafted a long term plan, a plan that ultimately includes operating a travel-oriented business in Italy. I mean, why go halfway, right? But where to start? I had no background in the food and travel industry, nor did she. The logical place was our backyard. New York City. Looking out our bedroom window we saw incredible history and architecture, as well as tons of fantastic boutique restaurants. The idea of a tour for foodies was initiated. The tour began Memorial Day weekend, 2017, and has since risen in meteoric fashion in TripAvisor’s “things to do in New York City” rankings. In 2019 we received their Certificate of Excellence and in January of 2020 we earned Top 1% status. At publication we are listed #64 of 5,180 things to do in NYC.

Food and travel is a passion unlike anything else I have done professionally. So much so that, while it may totally sound cliche, it doesn’t feel like a job. I love heading down to the starting point of my food tour, eager to meet new friends. I love when people reach out to me, as they often do, for recommendations regarding overseas travel as well as restaurants and activities in New York City. I appreciate being asked, and I go the extra mile to offer information of substance.

Boy have we learned a lot since those clumsy early days. I hope you follow us through our experiences, enjoy our writing, and find yourselves, like us, in love with the world of food and travel.

ro·mance

/rōˈmans,ˈrōˌmans/ noun

  1. a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.
  2. a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.

My name is Matt Wade and I have a theory. Travel is like a music album. On an album, there are great songs, some decent songs, and then some clunkers. Similarly, vacation is not a constant walk in the clouds. There are incredible moments, poignant moments, decent moments, and…..well…..some clunkers. This is why my wife Huong and I don’t look back and wax poetic about a trip as though it is monolithic. We look back on moments; moments of romance, of fun, and of wonder. I Ind myself multiple times a week daydreaming about these types of moments. They warm me during the cold glum winter months in New York City, and they make me smile when I think of having shared them with my beautiful, incredible wife. So, when we plan our trips our goal is to create as many opportunities as possible for “moments” to occur.

So, why this website? Well, this is Step TWO in an overarching project. Step

ONE was launching a New York City walking tour for foodies. In the tour’s two-plus years of existence, it has been awarded TripAdvisor’s certificate of Excellence, is recognized as one of the top food and drink experiences in the city, and resides in TripAdvisor’s top 1% of “all activities” in New York City, of which there are more than 5,000 listed and ranked. The tour itself represents the goals of the project as a whole: heightened attention to detail, heapings of passion and enthusiasm, an eagerness to please, and an effort to make genuine human connections. We currently tour one district but are adding a second district tour in the spring of 2020.

Step THREE will involve entrepreneurial pursuits in Italy. So, here we are now……at Step TWO.

 

We travel quite a bit and I already have a habit of recording our travels in a journal fashion on social media. My journals make an HiddeNVC attempt at humor, at education, and also act as written testimony for Huong and me to look back on. This will be more of the same, but in a longer form. I plan to aggregate external resources as well, all in an attempt to add further clarity and context to the subject matter. We will begin adding a video component, or….vlogging….to the experience.

Simply put, we are storytellers who attempt to package our experiences in an interesting, humanistic, and informative way.

Every post will be nothing more than things that bring us joy or things that we learned that have proven valuable. A great deal of it will be travel related, but we will also tap into the great resource that is our New York City backyard. And from time to time, we will sprinkle in some fashion commentary.

If you enjoy a post, a “like” would certainly be appreciated. It is good to know if people out there are reading and Inding value. If you have an opinion or something to share, please leave a comment. The more interactive this site is, the better. We hope you enjoy.