LA-based travelers that are passionate about helping you create memories around the world, so you can turn those stressful travel days into fun memories you cherish forever.
Hi, we're Sam & Ryan!
about us
We’d much rather spend our days abroad grabbing smoothie bowls from a trendy cafe, hopping on scooters, finding hidden beaches to relax on, taking photos of the most epic views, and ending the day with the best gelato we’ve ever tasted. Because those are the memories we still talk about three years later.
Especially when it feels like there are 10,000 websites out there telling you what you should do on your trip. I mean, the first thing we do after we book a flight is Google “Best Things to do in [insert fun, new destination here],” too. But as great as those top 10 lists on TripAdvisor are, we don’t really want to spend our precious vacation days on a tour with 700 other people hopping on and off a bus as a tour guide is holding up a little yellow flag and shouting through a speaker to get those last four people to stop taking a picture of a flower, so the group can head to the next iconic spot and push through 1246129 other tourists for a photo.
We get it. Planning a trip can be stressful.
We’ve spent the last four years traveling to over 35 countries and finding the most delicious places to eat brunch, the most epic photo spots, and the best hotels to come “home” to after your feet are exhausted from a long day of exploring. And we've found all of that, so you don’t have to. Whether you’re planning your honeymoon, yearly vacation, weekend getaway, or bucket list trip, we’ve created curated travel guides that will help you find the prettiest beaches, most Instagrammable photo spots, and dreamiest hotels to stay in (so you don’t have to spend hours reading reviews and lots of $$$ just to have a comfortable place to sleep while you’re on vacation).
Our Travel Passport started as a place where we could save our memories and experiences and share tips and things we’d learned along the way. And that’s still exactly why we create and share here four years later.
We want you to have those memories you talk about for years to come too.
5 years ago, and two weeks after we got married (obviously went on our honeymoon first, because...priorities), we moved to Washington, D.C. for the summer where Ryan had an internship. We spent the weekends biking around the Capital and taking road trips to NYC, Boston, and Connecticut. We slept in our car and ordered one appetizer (to split) at restaurants, because that’s all we could afford. We took pictures as we went and started a blog as a place to write down and share our memories. And so those photos would have a place to “live” off of our memory card.
Then Ryan went back to school and we knew we wanted to keep traveling whenever we could, so we planned a trip to India during one of his breaks. It was our first international trip together, and we were both so excited about it, but also a little afraid of “overgramming” for our friends, so we started a separate Instagram account — @ourtravelpassport.
Milos, Greece
Sam
Serengeti, Tanzania
Ryan
Favorite Place You've Ever Been:
Stay up Late
Sam
Wake up Early
Ryan
Stay up Late or Wake up Early?
Veronica Mars or Gilmore Girls or Brooklyn 99 or Friends (Okay sorry, I really love TV)
Sam
24 or Brooklyn 99 (Really it's between Jack Bauer and Jake Peralta)
Ryan
Favorite TV Show of All Time:
Maldives
Sam
Tonga to swim with the Humpback Whales
Ryan
#1 Bucket List Destination:
Smoothie Bowls or Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sam
In-N-Out
Ryan
If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life:
get to know us a little better
Want to take better photos?
Planning a trip?
The memories that mean the most to us. The days spent in the sun with the salt of the ocean stuck to my skin and the sand dried in between our toes. The days where we laugh and giggle like teenagers having a sleepover and decide to go to get donuts at 1 am. The days where we fight and then make up and then fight again and then laugh about it the next day. The days when we want to pinch ourselves, because we flew halfway across the world and sat on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. The days when we make brownies at home and binge watch TV together. The days when we lay on the beach outside our tiny apartment that we’ll look back on and laugh at how young and in love and naive we were about what was to come.
We want to document the happy moments.
We met the very first night of freshman year at college. We were immediately interested in each other, but we were 18 and didn't want anything "too serious." We went our separate ways and eventually Ryan left to live in Uruguay for 2 years. A year after he left, I moved to Portugal for a year and a half. After I moved back home to Georgia, Ryan flew out to see me for the first time in 3 years on August 14, 2014. I was literally so nervous I thought I was going to die. For those three years, we’d only talked via letters and emails, so we honestly had no idea what to expect. Ryan came up the escalator (with sunflowers he kept alive in a plastic cup after sleeping in the Denver airport), and I’m pretty sure all I got out was a high-pitched, breathless, “hi” before he kissed me. And in that moment in the middle of the Atlanta airport, it was like everything was right again.
Two days later (when I thought he had drifted off to sleep), I told him I loved him. To which his eyes immediately opened up. And, luckily, he said it back. The next night, we were on the ferris wheel in downtown Atlanta when he told me he definitely could see us getting married one day. So naturally, I immediately started coming up with where we were going to live and the names for our unborn children. We dated for the next five months, and then Ryan surprised me with a trip to San Francisco for my birthday. The day we arrived, he took me to the Golden Gate Bridge and proposed. We were engaged for 3 months and then got married on May 2, 2015.
We met the very first night of freshman year at college
how we met and fell in love
