Il y a des rencontres magiques. There are magical encounters. Would you go on a 1,500 mile road trip with a stranger and a small dog? Sometimes, it’s worth taking a chance, casting practicality aside, and letting your heart guide you. This story is about trusting your intuition, allowing yourself to dream, and opening up to experiencing life as an adventure. To do that, you have to be playful, and there’s nothing like creativity to bring out the child in all of us.

About the authors:

Maria Elena Sandovici is a writer, a traveler, and an artist. Unable to pick a continent, let alone a country, she divides her life, as best she can, between Texas, Romania, and Spain. She is the author of three novels: Dogs with Bagels, Stray Dogs and Lonely Beaches, and Lost Path to Solitude. Like the author, her characters are travelers, people who try to reinvent themselves in different locales, or perhaps to figure out who they are, regardless of the spaces they inhabit. As an artist, she seeks inspiration in her restless nature. She paints a watercolor each day, and shows these on her blog, Have Watercolors Will Travel, as well as in her studio at Hardy and Nance studios in Houston. She is also the proud human of a brave little dog that’s very good-natured about her absences. She’s currently working on a volume of poetry in her dog’s voice.

Born in beautiful Romania, a country she deeply loves and misses, Claudia Curici considers herself more of a citizen of the world. In search of beauty and harmony, and a place to call home, she traveled far and wide, lived on four continents, but soon realized her heart is in everything she does and experiences, and beauty is everywhere to be seen. A public relations and communication professional, Claudia is an artist at heart, a curious nature who’s had a soft spot for photography for as far as she can remember. Currently living in Dallas, Claudia loves exploring Texas and the US with her Fujifilm X Series cameras.