Seeking destinations in and around Italy

Plus an update on my family, coaching pods, and travel

Jun 06, 2025

Hi friends,

After three weeks of travel, I’m PSYCHED to be back home in NYC. Though I’ve been turning down invitations to a lot of travel conferences (including speaking invitations), I very happily attended the Skift Travel conference in Manhattan a few days ago. It was my third Skift conference, and the theme was Data and AI. It was fabulous and I’m planning to go to their Global Forum in September.

At most travel conferences, I am only able to connect with publicists who are there to pitch me and other writers. Here, I was able to connect with brands that may offer me paid work. Several people I met also immediately referred me to colleagues, or even made email introduction to a brand they know who may have work for me.

Remember, folks, freelancers aren’t paid to attend conferences, and we’re not paid to discuss pitches with publicists. Conferences can be fun, but they also suck up a lot of unpaid time and rarely lead to paid work. For most freelancers, our #1 goal is usually to find paid work, so if you can help with that, you’ll be our best friend!

Cassandra

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Seeking Destinations in and Around Italy

This August, I’ll be spending five days hiking in the Dolomites in northern Italy (the trip starts and ends in Venice). I’m looking to add about a week to that trip, and I’m seeking cool, lesser-visited destinations in the region (which could include a neighboring country). I’m also open to staying at unique hotels, particularly those that have been recently renovated or upgraded.

Lesser-visited destinations

Not only am I personally interested in visiting lesser-visited destinations (particularly because Europe is PACKED with tourists in August), but several of my editors have reached out to request pitches for where to go in 2026 to help combat overtourism. I’m hoping to discover some of these places during this trip.

If you represent destinations, hotels, or tour operators in the region that may want to host me, please let me know!

Family Update

I’ve heard from so many of you how much you appreciate the transparency I offer around the real-life struggles of caring for an aging/disabled parent and balancing that with work and wellness. The pic above is of me at my mom’s nursing home last week. For the last year, my mom has been a “feeder”, which means she requires someone to feed her meals.

The picture is of me feeding my mom lunch while I also ate my own lunch and joined a work webinar (as a muted participant with the camera off, I obviously wouldn’t host a webinar like this). This is real life, and if I’m short with you and seem entirely uninterested in the hundreds of unsolicited pitches I receive each week (which are now very rarely leading to paid commissions), it’s partly because I have bigger things to worry about.

Press Trip Trends Coaching Pods

I’ve officially closed the press trip coaching pod groups that I’ve been talking about the past month. In addition to solo publicists who signed up, I’m excited to host some private pods just for a single agency.

If you’d like to be notified of when I begin scheduling more pods, just let me know!