About Mental Mosaic: Even home is a travel destination:

This blog is where I share what I find in my travels here in north Texas – and beyond. My passion is researching, photographing, and exploring the world, then sharing all the best things I find with my readers. Below are brief descriptions, with links, to popular posts I’ve written for this site.

Road trips in Texas: As I discovered in Weekend Road Trip to Paris, Texas, Paris is one of those rare American towns which resists looking like “Anytown, USA” by actively cultivating its charms, which include an Eiffel Tower replica, Victorian architecture, a statue of Jesus wearing cowboy boots, and more.

Travel Tips: I love coffee, and judging by the amount of hits 2 Ways To Brew Coffee While Traveling continues to get I am not alone!

Cultural Traditions: According to the steady stream of searches leading to Easter versus the Ku Klux Klan in Spain, I’m not the only one who wanted to know more about those peculiar pointed hoods worn by Catholic penitents in Spain during Holy Week.

Traveler’s Show & Tell: I created this bi-weekly blog carnival to showcase travel writing and photos from bloggers all over the world. Traveler’s Show & Tell: Ancient Mosques and Modern Ruins is one of these blog carnival posts that gets a lot of attention from the search engines, especially from image searches for the petrified wood ruins, which are the featured image for that post.

Food: In The Tasty Teachings of David Lebovitz, I reveal that renowned pastry chef, David Lebovitz, is as engaging in person as he is on the pages of his witty memoir, The Sweet Life in Paris, which humorously chronicles his assimilation into French culture after spending most of his adult life in San Francisco.

Fun projects: After being asked – for the gazillionth time – whether I had fried an egg on the sidewalk here in Texas, I decided to up the ante and attempt baking bread in the sun. As I explain in Easy Homemade Solar Oven: Have Fun with the Sun it’s surprisingly easy!

Must See Tourist Attractions: In Playing Around at Arizona’s Musical Instrument Museum I share details about this incredibly fun new museum.

Road trips beyond Texas: In the post, My Close Encounter with Roswell, New Mexico, I confess that since the little town of Roswell, New Mexico remains synonymous with the concept of space aliens and government cover-ups, I simply had to swing by and see how this manifested in the local culture.

Interesting People: Alix’s story: Chronic Pain and the Power of Stubbornness is the longest entry I’ve posted on here, but it got the most comments. Alix’s story describes how challenging it was for her to regain her independence after a debilitating car crash left her addicted to painkillers. Judging by the amount of search traffic her story receives, it’s an inspirational tale that bears repeating.

Who am I?

About me: My name is Tui snider. I’m a globe trotting writer currently based in north Texas. My passion is researching, photographing, and exploring the world, then sharing all the best things I find with my readers.

Travel writing: My writing and photos have appeared in BMIbaby, easyJet, Wizzit, Click, Ling, PlanetEye Traveler, iStopover and SkyEurope magazines, among others. I also wrote the shopping chapter in the “Time Out Naples: Capri, Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast 2010” edition.

Testimonials:
Don’t just take my word for it. Here are what a couple of editors had to say after working with me on professional writing projects:

“Tui was an invaluable addition to a team of journalists hand-picked to create an international guide book to Naples, Italy, in 2009. She drew on her extensive, detailed knowledge of the city, and her contributions were invariably exact as well as entertaining.”

Jeffrey Kennedy
freelance editor/author, various UK-based guidebooks
Jeffrey Kennedy’s Amazon.com profile

“With the pressure on to find informed, efficient and imaginative journalists ever increasing, I need to be able to rely on the best out there. With spot-on WIZZ editorial content and fantastic feature ideas, Tui fits the bill.”

Piers Townley
Editor, WIZZ magazine

Discovering Dallas – Fort Worth: I’m having so much fun exploring the north Texas area that I recently created a travel website called Discovering Dallas – Fort Worth which focuses on all the fun things there are to see and do in this part of the world.

Photography: All photos on this site were taken by me, unless otherwise stated. If you would like to use one, please send an email to tui [at] mentalmosaic [dot] com. I’ll probably give you a higher res photo than what is on the blog.

Background: I have worn a lot of hats in my life – literally – and am especially fond of berets. Like many freelance writers, I’ve run the gauntlet of odd jobs: everything from composing corporate background music, to running a coffeehouse/restaurant called the New Bohemian for a couple of years.

I spent five years on a tiny island with a population of seven people. It was quite an adventure, since there was no ferry service or outside utilities. During that time, I home-schooled my step-daughter, learned about self-sufficiency and spent a lot of time writing.

I have lived in Europe twice, once in Antwerp, Belgium and more recently in Naples, Italy. My latest adventure, however, began nearly three years ago, when I met a Texan online. To make a long story short, we fell in love, and…

I followed my heart from the Pacific Northwest to a little town in north Texas. Even though Texas is part of the US, I’ve experienced way more culture shock than I ever expected in the past two years – and I love it!

Contact information: To contact me directly, send an email to tuisnider [at] gmail [dot] com. I would love to hear from you!