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.

Travel is often pictured as excitement, new sights, and adventure. But for many, it can feel overwhelming, exhausting, or even impossible before a trip begins. For individuals navigating ADHD, anxiety, autism, or learning differences, the unfamiliar sounds, routines, and expectations of travel can make even the simplest journey feel heavy.

And yet, these truths are rarely spoken with honesty, empathy, or care. In this deeply moving episode of Speaking of Travel, we sit down with Dr. Andrew Kahn, licensed psychologist, Associate Director at Understood.org, and a national voice on mental health and neurodiversity. Dr. Kahn brings more than 25 years of professional experience, along with his own lived experience as someone with learning and thinking differences.

The result is a conversation that is both profoundly human and deeply practical, full of insight, compassion, and wisdom for travelers of all kinds. Dr. Kahn reminds us that preparation is an act of love for ourselves and for those we care about. He shares stories of patience and understanding that ripple outward, turning moments of stress into experiences of connection, growth, and joy.

This conversation is an invitation to travel differently, not faster, not farther, but more gently. It’s about creating space for empathy, for self-compassion, and for recognizing the courage it takes to step into the world when it feels unpredictable or challenging.

Only on Speaking of Travel! Tune in.

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

On this powerful episode of Speaking of Travel, we welcome Christopher Hill, founder of Hands Up Holidays and Impact Destinations, two visionary luxury travel companies transforming the way we explore the world and our place within it. This conversation goes beyond destinations and indulgence, shining a light on what’s possible when travel is rooted in purpose, connection, and responsibility.

Joining us from his home in New Zealand, Chris reflects on a single, spontaneous volunteer experience that forever changed his life. What began as an unexpected moment of service became a profound awakening, revealing how deeply human connection, cultural respect, and intentional action can reshape not only communities, but the traveler as well.

That defining experience sparked a mission to reimagine travel as a platform for positive change. Through thoughtfully designed eco-luxury volunteer journeys, Christopher’s work empowers travelers to engage meaningfully with local communities, support sustainable initiatives, and experience the world in a way that honors people, place, and planet.

These are journeys that go beyond sightseeing, inviting travelers to listen, learn, and contribute in ways that are ethical, impactful, and deeply personal.

If you believe travel should enrich lives, protect cultures, and leave a positive legacy behind, this episode will resonate deeply.

Tune in and discover how travel, when done with intention, has the power to transform the world, one journey at a time. 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.