Travel has a way of waking us up and inviting us to slow down, breathe more deeply, and reconnect with what truly makes us feel alive. In this episode of Speaking of Travel, we welcome Nancy De Losa, Co-Founder of A’qto Italian Cycling Tours, whose work beautifully blends cycling, culture, community, and mindful travel across Italy.

Nancy shares how exploring Italy by bike becomes far more than a physical experience. Moving through landscapes at a human pace encourages presence, clarity, and a powerful mind-body connection, while the gentle rhythm of the journey naturally reduces stress and opens space for reflection, joy, and personal growth. Riding becomes a form of meditation and a chance to feel each moment rather than rush through it.

Beyond the ride, travelers discover the deeper wellness woven into everyday Italian life, like gathering in the piazza, sharing long meals and local wines, enjoying aperitivo, and connecting with people and place in meaningful ways. These simple rituals remind us that wellbeing is not only about activity, but about finding balance in movement and rest, nourishment and connection, adventure and presence.

This heartfelt conversation explores how slowing down, traveling with intention, and embracing the Italian way of living can transform a trip into a journey that helps us feel grounded, renewed, and more fully ourselves.

A must listen. Especially for all you Italy dreamers!

Thanks for listening to Speaking of Travel! Visit speakingoftravel.net for travel tips, travel stories, and ways you can become a more savvy traveler.

What if listening deeply could carry us across centuries?

In this Speaking of Travel episode, cellist Louise Dubin invites us into a world where travel, music, and historical discovery intertwine, reminding us that the most meaningful journeys reconnect us with voices nearly forgotten. Performing across solo, chamber, orchestral, and Broadway stages, including Radio City, Louise brings audiences beyond the concert hall, uncovering hidden musical treasures and restoring them to life with remarkable care and passion.

Her recordings, including The Franchomme Project and Passages, grew from years of research and travel, especially in France, where she followed the footsteps of 19th-century composers whose works had slipped from the repertoire. Through her work, Louise shows us that curiosity is a devotion, honoring the artists who came before us and ensuring their music continues to breathe.

“Travel teaches us to listen differently. When we step into the places where music was created, the notes begin to feel less like history and more like conversation.”

In our conversation, Louise reflects on falling in love with the cello, the responsibility of recording works never before heard, and the discoveries that shaped her journey abroad. Together, we explore how music becomes a living conversation across time, memory, and human connection.

This is a story about listening with the heart and remembering that every rediscovered note brings the past beautifully into the present.

Thanks for listening to Speaking of Travel! Visit speakingoftravel.net for travel tips, travel stories, and ways you can become a more savvy traveler.

Some people take trips. Evlyn Mondo built an entirely new life through travel.

Her journey from science labs and academic classrooms in Quebec to leading a luxury villa in Barbados is a story of reinvention guided by courage, intuition, and heart. As CEO and Managing Director of Villa Casablanca at Sandy Lane, Evlyn is redefining what luxury truly means by shifting the focus from opulence to connection, sustainability, and experiences that stay with people long after they return home.

Drawing from her perspective as both traveler and host, Evlyn curates stays that feel deeply personal and emotionally meaningful. She shares how thoughtful details, cultural immersion, private chef experiences, and eco-conscious practices come together to create space for guests to slow down, celebrate life’s milestones, and reconnect with themselves and each other.

“Luxury isn’t about excess,” Evlyn says. “It’s about presence and creating space for people to reconnect with themselves, with each other, and with the place they’re in.”

Her story goes beyond hospitality. Evlyn shares stories about identity, bravery, leadership, and the choice to design a life aligned with purpose. She reminds us that reinvention isn’t about losing who we were, but expanding into who we’re meant to become.

A must listen! Only on Speaking of Travel.

Thanks for listening to Speaking of Travel! Visit speakingoftravel.net for travel tips, travel stories, and ways you can become a more savvy traveler.

We often think of travel as moving across maps with new cities, new landscapes, new horizons. But the most profound journeys happen in ways you cannot trace on a globe. They happen through music. Through sound. Through the stories hidden in every note.

Pianist Terry Eder lives life and art emboding this idea. Her performances have taken her from Carnegie Hall to Alice Tully Hall and beyond, but she doesn’t just play music, she inhabits it. Every piece she touches carries history, culture, memory, and emotion. Her devotion to Hungarian twentieth-century composers even led her to live in Hungary behind the Iron Curtain, immersing herself in a world that shaped the very music she performs today.

“To truly play the music you must understand the people who lived it.”

In this conversation on Speaking of Travel, Terry shares what it means to select a program like a journey, how music can bridge cultures, and why a piano recital is storytelling, connection, and remembrance. We explore vulnerability, identity, memory, and how audiences often feel the depth of a piece even without knowing its history.

We also trace Terry’s beginnings in Detroit, the moment she realized music was her calling, and the ways her life practicing law and performing music intertwined to deepen her artistry.

Through teaching, curating, and founding the Key Pianists series, she continues to guide new listeners and seasoned audiences alike toward a deeper understanding of sound, culture, and human emotion.

This episode is about music as a journey, sound as story, and the way one life devoted to music can illuminate places, histories, and hearts far beyond the stage. Terry guides and shares the spaces where memory, culture, and melody meet the light between the notes.

A must listen!

Thanks for listening to Speaking of Travel! Visit speakingoftravel.net for travel tips, travel stories, and ways you can become a more savvy traveler.

The Asheville Regional Airport (AVL) is more than a place to catch a flight. This airport is a special part of our community, our economy, and our lives. Every day, neighbors, friends, and family work behind the scenes to keep the airport running smoothly, connecting Western North Carolina to the world while staying grounded in the values of the people who call this place home.

AVL knows that being part of the community is essential to its future. Innovation, intentional design, and human connection aren’t just buzzwords here. They’re how the airport ensures its neighbors, coworkers, and travelers are cared for, respected, and valued.

On this episode of Speaking of Travel, Angi Daus, Vice President of Air Service and Corporate Communications, shares how AVL builds service from the inside out:

“Every decision we make is about creating an experience that feels authentically Western North Carolina by being efficient, welcoming, and deeply human."

At AVL, passengers are never just numbers. By prioritizing people, cultivating a culture of care, and making every decision with the community in mind, AVL delivers service that stays strong under pressure, earns the trust of travelers, and stands the test of time.

This is an airport that uplifts a region. It demonstrates how purpose-driven leadership, community alignment, and operational excellence can reinforce each other to shape a future that benefits everyone.

This episode of Speaking of Travel shows that AVL is more than just an airport. For Western North Carolina, it belongs to all of us. Discover how it works, why it is one of the best airports around, and why anyone who travels through an airport should hear this story.

Only on Speaking of Travel!

Thanks for listening to Speaking of Travel! Visit speakingoftravel.net for travel tips, travel stories, and ways you can become a more savvy traveler.

Meet Karen Urosevich, founder of Well Placed Travel, where she helps people discover the places that bring them purpose, peace, and joy. After a 20+ year career leading global design and development projects, Karen followed her calling, and her own wanderlust, to help others explore the world in ways that transform, restore, and inspire.

With nearly 40 countries explored and certifications in yoga and Reiki, she blends culture, wellness, and thoughtful planning into journeys that protect your time, your investment, and your sense of wonder.

In this episode of Speaking of Travel, Karen gets real about shedding old identities, navigating grief and reinvention, and how travel became a mirror for self-discovery. She shares the birth of Well Placed Travel, the challenges and rewards of helping people find their place, and the deeper truths behind what we think we want from travel versus what we truly crave.

Whether you’re chasing restoration, adventure, or clarity, Karen’s insights will make you see travel, and yourself, in a whole new way.

Thanks for listening to Speaking of Travel! Visit speakingoftravel.net for travel tips, travel stories, and ways you can become a more savvy traveler.

Step into the world of David Belmont and you’ll find yourself somewhere between a jazz riff, a poetry line, and a road trip that definitely skipped the exit ramp. David is a lifelong musician, writer, mixed-media artist, and a certified original, the kind of counter-culture cool you don’t try to manufacture. He’s effortlessly hip, wildly curious, and just mischievous enough to make life more interesting.

On this episode of Speaking of Travel, David takes us on a joyride through a life lived off-script. From seeing America for the first time through a car window to accidentally landing in a secret Mardi Gras parade, from a double rainbow over a Scottish loch to jamming on a Trinidad beach, sharing songs with strangers in Jamaica, joining a Balinese funeral, or trading musical conversations on the Yangtze River, this is a life powered by curiosity, connection, and a refusal to stay in one lane.

The conversation is funny, soulful, and delightfully unpredictable, just like David himself. It’s about listening closely to the world, riffing with it, marching to its weird little rhythms, and trusting that the best moments usually happen when plans fall apart. This is travel as improvisation. In other words equal parts art, rebellion, and heart.

By the end, you’ll feel like you’ve wandered alongside him, laughing at the beautiful chaos of it all, catching glimpses of hidden magic, and feeling the itch to shake things up in your own life.

David quietly reminds us that the coolest way to move through the world is with curiosity, compassion, and a little funk, weaving music, kindness, and community into every space, and proving that real change starts by listening and showing up as your most authentic self.

Only on Speaking of Travel! Stay tuned!

Thanks for listening to Speaking of Travel! Visit speakingoftravel.net for travel tips, travel stories, and ways you can become a more savvy traveler.

This episode of Speaking of Travel opens the door to a new year with intention, warmth, and deep joy as we welcome the extraordinary David LaMotte, songwriter, speaker, peace builder, author, and quiet force for good in the world.

Being with David feels like stepping onto a peaceful back porch at sunrise, shoulders soften, the air feels clearer, and you’re reminded that kindness still has a strong pulse in the world. His life’s work spans five continents and more than three decades of music, storytelling, and peace building, yet he carries his experiences with humility, humor, and an easy grace that makes our conversation feel personal and alive.

David shares how early international travel shaped his sense of belonging, from church youth trips to Mexico and Haiti, to a transformative semester abroad in Paris, where busking and backpacking helped him discover who he was when everything familiar fell away.

Throughout the conversation, David reflects on what travel teaches us about ourselves, how music and silence both carry wisdom, and why peace is not a distant ideal but a daily practice rooted in listening, presence, and love. He speaks how meaningful connection, between people, cultures, and landscapes, can gently change the way we live.

This is an episode about becoming more fully human. About curiosity instead of certainty. About growing in ways that don’t demand perfection but invite awareness. David reminds us that healing can be subtle, that gentleness is powerful, and that joy often arrives quietly when we’re paying attention.

Settle in, breathe a little deeper, and allow this conversation to meet you where you are. This is Speaking of Travel at its most intimate and an invitation to listen, reflect, and step into the year ahead with an open heart.

Thanks for listening to Speaking of Travel! Visit speakingoftravel.net for travel tips, travel stories, and ways you can become a more savvy traveler.