Hi there!
Our names are Ellie and Gaby. We’re two Penn students who study Art History and Architecture. As fate would have it, we met in an Architectural Art History class. Two years later, we’ve become best travel buddies through our shared appreciation of food, photography, and getting lost in alien places.
Our philosophy of travel is simple: traveling doesn’t need to take you far across the oceans or into another continent. Traveling is simply the curious and adventurous mindset of experiencing a place in a new way, be it through its cuisine, culture, traditions, history, fashion, or otherwise.
For our Young Traveling Scholarship, we’ve chosen to travel across North America, namely: Philadelphia and New York in the United States and Quebec and Montreal in Canada. We’ve decided to title our blog “Gems and Hidden Gems,” because some of the best experiences hide out in plain sight!
Philadelphia has been our hometown for over two years, but we decided to challenge ourselves to become tourists in our own city and dig for unique experiences that regular city-hopping tourists might miss. New York, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of (thank you, Jay-Z), is absolutely bustling with life and therefore hidden gems. Finally, Quebec is the crown jewel that neither of us have been to before – a fairytale town awaiting our arrival. Stay tuned to experience these three cities through our eyes!
Signed,
Ellie & Gaby