France
Lavender fields, riverside Lyon, and the little museums we keep going back to.
curated travel, native taste
Nomad Vive
We take the guesswork out of travelling somewhere new — trips built from two decades of actually living abroad, not just visiting.
where we go
Destinations we actually know
Not a brochure list — places we've lived in, returned to, and would send our closest friends. Here's a taste of the map.
Italy
Amalfi cliffs, Turin's hidden courtyards, and Roman sunsets from the right rooftop.
Scotland
Moody highlands, dramatic coastline, and golden hour that never seems to end.
Croatia
Adriatic blue, island-hopping, and slow afternoons on the water.
Portugal
Sun-warmed tapas, coastline sunsets, and a slower pace of evening.
Belgium
Our home base — royal greenhouses, quiet mornings, and where it all started.
Hungary
Thermal baths, grand riverside views, and Budapest after dark.
Monaco
A little glamour, a lot of sea view.
Austria
Imperial museums, coffeehouse culture, and Vienna's best-kept corners.
England
London's museums, and the unexpected corners past the obvious stops.
Spain
Bold art, bolder flavors, and cities that reward wandering.
Greece
Lighthouse views and impossibly blue water.
how we help
Services
You're busy. We've spent two decades combined actually living this out. Here's what that gets you.
Custom Itineraries
Every trip built around how you actually want to travel — pace, taste, and budget included, not an afterthought.
Family-Paced Trips
Toddler-friendly logistics, realistic nap-time pacing, and 20+ years of experience planning both sides of it — before kids and with them.
Concierge Booking
Flights, stays, and reservations at the places we'd actually go ourselves — handled so you don't have to.
Small-Group & Private Trips
Guided experiences with native-level knowledge — the kind of local access you can't book from a listicle.
On-the-Ground Support
A real person to text if a train's delayed or a table needs re-booking — during your trip, not just before it.
Every itinerary is planned manually, priced to the trip — these are starting points, not a menu.
The City Focus
One home base — Paris, Rome, Lisbon — done properly instead of rushed.
From $175/week
The Regional Route
Multi-stop routes — Normandy, Brussels to Antwerp, the Tuscan countryside.
From $290/week
The Grand Tour
Multi-country, 10+ day journeys with the most moving parts.
From $480/week
how she plans
Food comes first
Ask anyone who's traveled with Jen and they'll tell you the same thing: the food was the trip. Not because the sights didn't matter — because knowing exactly where you'll sit down, rest, and eat well is what makes everything else possible. Days are built around meals, not the other way around.
The Manifesto
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01
No tourist menus. If there's a laminated photo menu out front, we keep walking.
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02
Reservations, timed. Every table is booked with the day's pace in mind, not just the day.
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03
Regional over trendy. What the region actually eats, not what photographs well.
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04
Rest before you're starving. Hunger and burnout arrive together — we plan around both.
along the way
Taste the trip
A few plates from along the way.
And then, the markets
Some of the best hours of any trip happen before ten in the morning, in a market that has nothing to do with tourists. We build those mornings in on purpose — not for the photo, but because this is genuinely how the best days start.
home base
The city I fell in love with
I moved to Brussels in 2016, following my partner's job, and got an extremely Belgian dog a year later — we named her Luna. Growing up in New York, I always knew I wanted to live in Europe someday. Belgium was never the plan, and I still won't pretend to know the whole country. But Brussels, lived in for years instead of visited for four days, is a genuinely special place. It's also, somehow, almost nobody's actual trip.
flagey · ixelles
Where it started
Our first apartment was on Rue Augustin Delporte, blocks from Place Flagey, one of those squares where everything actually happens. Academia: the university buildings are right there. Nightlife: we spent more nights than I can count at La Mère à Boire. Concerts: the Flagey jazz hall. Restaurants tucked into every corner around it. Then there's the market. Saturday leans commercial, clothes and flea-market finds, but Sunday is all food, and it's the real thing: stands like La Ferme du Peuplier selling vegetables straight from their own fields, no markup, no boutique price tag. We grew up thinking "farm to table" meant pricier and more boutique. Here it's just how people actually shop. I'd do this market every Sunday for the rest of my life.
schuman · eu quarter
More than roundabouts
Our next apartment was on Rue Franklin, just off Schuman. Everyone assumes the area is just the Commission and traffic circles. It's also the Parc du Cinquantenaire, genuinely extraordinary, and a direct train straight to Place Sainte-Catherine, where Mer du Nord is always our first stop.
châtelain
Small, sharp, reliable
From there we moved to Châtelain, a pocket neighborhood off Avenue Louise with a Wednesday night market and restaurants that rarely miss. Rue du Page, Rue Américaine, Rue du Bailli: you won't go wrong on any of them. The view down Rue du Bailli toward the church is one of my favorite views in the city.
etterbeek · place jourdan
Home now
We live in Etterbeek now, right by Place Jourdan, in a genuinely safe, quiet corner of the city. The Sunday Jourdan market is lovely, though it's probably the most "known" thing on this list since half the EU bubble lives around here too. For cheese and snacks, Pierro at Place Saint-Antoine is our regular stop. For everything else, it's Freshmed: excellent produce, a proper butcher, a traiteur, open seven days a week, so most of our shopping happens right there. We don't own a car. Just two bikes, and a Poppy or Cambio rental when the weather or the distance says otherwise.
What actually did it wasn't any one apartment. It was the people, and how much of life happens outside: free open-air concerts all summer (Fête de la Musique, Flagey's jazz weekend, Vaux-Hall), spring brocantes taking over entire streets in Etterbeek and Ixelles, jazz spilling out of doorways with a beer in hand. It's an easy city to fall into. If you're in Brussels for a posting, a conference, or just visiting someone who is, we plan for that too.
Brooklyn & Brussels
a propos
Nomad by nature, local by habit
Nomad Vive started with a simple idea: the best trips don't feel like tourism. They feel like you actually live there for a week — even if it's your first time in the country.
Hi, I'm Jen. I'm Moscow-born, New York-raised, and these days I split my time between Brooklyn and Brussels. Before my son came along, I spent a long stretch of my twenties and thirties travelling Europe — not just seeing it, but studying it: the neighborhoods, the restaurants worth the wait, the museums locals actually visit twice.
Some people worry they won't get the trip they're actually after. Others simply don't have the time — busy work, a busy family, and not the bandwidth to do the research the way I would. That's the gap Nomad Vive fills. My associate and I have over two decades combined living abroad between us, and that's what shows up in every itinerary we build.
— Jen
20+years, combined, living abroad
12+countries we send people to
1trip, planned around you
founding clients
Tell us where you're dreaming about
We're taking on a limited number of founding clients for the season ahead. Every itinerary is planned by hand — no templates, no touristy checklists — so send a few real details and we'll get back to you personally, not with an auto-generated quote.