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There are no words…and yet, here are 600:

If you had to choose 12 places in the world that you would want to visit in the next year and a half, where would they be? That was the question posed to us by Intrepid Travel when we began discussing plans for Season 3 of The Perennial Plate. It is insane…and I’ve been spending every moment since then trying to figure how we got so lucky.

The first order of business once you sign on for a trip like this is, obviously, to freak out… and then have a cartoon made of yourself. Daniel and I promptly did both. Special thanks to my sister Jenny Fine (the incredibly talented artist) and new friend Ramiro Olmos (the amazing animator) who spent hours of blood, sweat, tears and guts (for very little money) putting together our animated announcement video.

Next thing you do is start planning. This is not the same as researching local food in your own country. This is a whole ‘nother ballgame. You can have an idea for visiting an organic tea farmer in Sri Lanka, but finding that perfect individual in the middle of a country you (so far) know very little about, is a challenge. Luckily, we’ve got great people helping us.  Intrepid has peeps on the ground all over the world. So we’ve been working very closely with those in Japan and China (our first trip) to pinpoint the stories we want to tell and the people we plan to visit.  Last week I skyped with contacts in Sri Lanka and India, a few weeks prior we were discussing ideas with teams in South America and Africa.

So here’s where we are now: I’m still a vegetarian.  But now I’ve got a fancy new, more compact camera, complete with gadgets and a tripod (I know, we’ve gone completely crazy). We will be bringing our phones with us to tweet and send photos from the road. Videos are going to be posted every other week, instead of every week because…lets be honest, that was insane. And we are nowhere near packed or ready for the first trip. But we will be. Up until this point, Ive only visited 5 countries outside of the U.S. — In the next year and change, I will add twelve more. My sweet little passport wont know what hit him.

I’m excited and nervous and I just got 5 travel shots (and need to go back for some more). I cant wait for you to see our videos and meet the people we meet around the world, and share in the experience with us. I cannot possibly imagine what will happen after we are done with this “world tour”… honestly, I’m not sure how we can ever top this.