Co-founder & Head of Routes and Restaurants
Kevin
The planning behind the guides. Hospitality strategist, route builder, and the reason we always know where to eat.
How I got here
I grew up in the Midwest, the first in my family to make it overseas. That first trip was a semester studying abroad in Madrid, and it planted something that never went away. I came back wanting more of the world, more places, more of the feeling of being somewhere that worked nothing like home. The travel bug, basically, in its most incurable form.
I spent my career in hospitality, where I developed the overarching company strategy for one of the largest family-owned restaurant groups in the country. The work came down to two things that turned out to matter everywhere: the experience of the customer and the experience of the people serving them. I learned how a good experience is actually built, and that is the lens I bring to a two-week itinerary.
Blueprint Travelers is what Melina and I left steady careers to build, and I handle the part of it you do not see on the page. The routing that keeps a trip from doubling back on itself. The logistics that turn a wish list into a plan that actually works. And the food, which I research with more seriousness than is probably reasonable, because a great meal in the right place is half of why people travel at all.
What I bring to the work
Melina writes the guides. I build the trips that make them possible.
She is the one who has stood in every place we cover and can tell you what it felt like. I am the one figuring out how you get there, in what order, where you sleep, and where you eat when you do. Routing, logistics, timing, and restaurant research: the structure underneath the storytelling. If a guide on this site flows in a way that just makes sense, that is the part I obsess over.
Where I have been
Fourty-five countries... and counting
First-hand is the standard we hold each other to. These are the places I have traveled, a fair amount of Europe among them, each one feeding into how I think about building a trip.
How to read it
The countries in green are the ones I write about on Blueprint Travelers. The rest are where I have been. Hover any name to find it on the map. The ones I cover link straight to the guides.
Notes from the road
A few dispatches from the trips behind the guides.
From the Field
The best compliment a trip can get is that it felt easy. Easy takes a lot of work.
Kevin
The Archive
Everything I have written, newest first.
