A guide for tragics of wanderlust - especially if your journeys bring you to San Francisco.
From some Australians living there.

Little by little, one travels far - JRR Tolkien.

Eighteen months ago I was sitting in a café on Grey St listening to the St Kilda hustle outside. The café is a minamilist little place called Miss Jacksons with white washed Victorian era walls the backdrop for great coffee and yummy brunch menu. Oh so Melbourne.

I had the perfect job. I’d worked hard to get it. I love working for nonprofits. Every achievement has epic repercussions, every tiny win serves some greater incomprehensibly important good and small amounts of money go incredibly, unexpectedly, impressively far. My feeling had begun to grow to certainty that one of the best and most exiting nonprofit ecosystems in the world was/is developing in Silicon Valley where a few intrepid samaritans utilize this historic period of wealth creation for local, national and world-wide good.

Back to the cafe. I was sitting sipping my Melbourne coffee (#miss) listening to a crazy handsome man tell me about a job he’d been offered on the other side of the world.

Six months later after an epic, sensationally elegant and gloriously unforgettable-to-the-end-of-our-days wedding featuring all of our most beloved people in the universe, we were living in San Francisco.

The adventure and challenge of living and working somewhere else in the world was one I had for years only glimpsed far away like an Alcott aspiration, there, in the sunshine.

Now the adventure is all ours!

I hope this blog can be a guide for anyone with that same brand of wanderlust – especially if your wanderlust is leading you to San Francisco.

Even if you’re only planning a short stay I hope you can find some tips and tricks that will guide your journey.

From visas - seriously, nobody seems to have ever heard of an E3D - to coffee - how to avoid resorting to Starbucks. I’ll try to cover all the questions I couldn’t find answers to and tell you about our work-arounds as Australians navigating the adventure.

Happy reading,
Happy traveling!

Liv x