This week's Field Notes is brought to you by Holafly.

We're spending the day practicing a talk that we're giving at Chick-fil-A headquarters in Atlanta, and it still doesn't feel real typing that sentence.

Sara and I have been running through our slides all weekend, tweaking stories, second-guessing every transition, doing that thing where you convince yourself the whole thing needs to be rewritten an hour before you're supposed to be done. The whole thing started because someone on this email list works at Chick-fil-A and reached out.

That's it.

One of you reading this right now is the reason we're pacing around our living room rehearsing a talk for one of the most recognized brands in the world.

The talk is about something we think about a lot, which is how the moments people remember most aren't the ones you plan, they're the ones you almost miss. Sara has this memory from growing up of a woman at her local Chick-fil-A who always stood next to the cow mascot and said hello. Every kid in the building wanted to see the cow, but Sara didn't care about the cow. She wanted to see the lady. Not a manager, not someone running a campaign, just a person who made a small moment feel like a big deal. Sara didn't go back for the food or the costume. She went back for her.

That's the thread running through the whole thing. A comment from someone who watched one of our videos from a hospital bed. A stranger who invited us to donuts in Albany and ended up becoming a real friend. An old man in Korea who handed us money for Kramer and taught us more about welcome than we could've learned in a year.

We're not keynote people. We're two people who make travel videos and write you emails on Mondays. But if Chick-fil-A wants to hear about why the small stuff matters, we've got plenty of stories to pull from.

How has someone made your day with a small moment recently? Hit reply. We're over here collecting courage before we walk in there.

🎥 ICYMI

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Asheville has always done its own thing. Drum circles, incredible food, creative energy you can feel just walking down the street. When Hurricane Helene hit in September 2024, the damage was devastating. Nearly 30 inches of rain, catastrophic flooding, over 100 lives lost, and a tourism economy that took a massive hit overnight.

We drove over from Chattanooga to find out what it looks and feels like right now. The short answer: Asheville is open, and the people here want you to come. We spent 24 hours eating, exploring, and meeting business owners who've been through it. First new video in a while, and it felt like the right one to come back with.

This video is sponsored by Holafly.

​WATCH HERE​

👀 What Caught Our Eye

Ten months from now, we'll be walking through Christmas markets in Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna with a group of people we've never met. And if the Iceland trip taught us anything, that's exactly how the best travel stories start.

We ran our first group trip in 2023, a week in Iceland with strangers who became friends. People still message us about it. It was one of those things where everything just clicked, the people, the place, the pace of it.

So we're doing it again. This time: Christmas markets in three countries. Glühwein. Twinkly lights. Salzburg looking like it was designed specifically for December.

We have 6 spots filled already, and we're keeping the group small on purpose. Ten months sounds like a lot until you remember you still haven't booked that thing from last year.

​See the full trip details and grab a spot →​

✈️ Flights We’d Text to Friends

Here are a few that caught our eye this week:

• ​Atlanta → Auckland, New Zealand for $811 — 46% off (normally $1,525+). Clean routing through LAX on Delta. New Zealand for under a grand is the kind of deal you book first and plan later.
• ​Denver → Calgary, Canada for $589 in Business Class — 41% off (normally $1,000+). Business class to Canada for less than most people pay for economy to Europe. Reclining seats, real food, and all the poutine scouting you can handle on the other end.
• ​Dallas → Da Nang, Vietnam for $763 — 36% off (normally $1,200+). EVA Air through Taipei. Vietnam is one of those places where your dollar goes absurdly far once you land. Street food, beaches, and motorbike chaos in the best way.
• ​Nashville → Seattle for $197 — 49% off (normally $390+). Under $200 roundtrip. Pike Place, coffee shops on every corner, and if you time it right, wildflower season in the Cascades.
• ​Nashville → Bergen, Norway for $543 — 48% off (normally $1,050+). Icelandair through Reykjavik. Fjords, colorful harbor houses, and a layover in Iceland if you want to stretch it into two trips for the price of one.
• ​Birmingham → Helsinki, Finland for $527 — 41% off (normally $900+). Finnair through Dallas. Saunas, design, and if you go late enough in the year, a shot at the Northern Lights. Helsinki is one of those cities that surprises you.

Is there a city you wish we would feature for flights? Email us back and we'll put it in the next email.

We find all of these through Going. It is worth setting up alerts for your home airport. Most of these deals won't last long, so if one catches your eye, don't sit on it.

📍Worth Sharing

A few things we bookmarked this week:

• ​Global Entry suspended during government shutdown — TSA PreCheck is still running, but Global Entry got shut down as part of the DHS partial shutdown. If you're flying back into the US internationally, budget extra time at customs. First time the program has been suspended like this.
• ​Frontier is cutting almost all flights out of JFK — High airport costs and not enough demand. By end of April the only JFK route left will be to Atlanta. Less than two years after they launched there.
• ​Delta's new A321neo will have 44 first-class seats — Forty-four. First class stretching from the nose to the wings. The premium arms race between airlines is getting wild.
• ​Middle East airspace closures causing global flight disruptions — Eight countries closed their airspace late last week, and airlines worldwide are canceling or rerouting flights. If you have international travel coming up, especially through the Middle East or connecting through hubs like Dubai or Doha, check your flights.
• ​Yosemite, Arches, and Glacier are all dropping reservations this summer — No more timed-entry for 2026. Sounds great until you remember 2023 when Yosemite had three-hour entrance lines and people were pulling over on the side of the road to use the bathroom. Go early or go on a weekday. Or both.
• ​An influencer washed her underwear in a hotel coffee maker and the internet lost its mind — She says a flight attendant told her to do it. Flight attendants say absolutely not. Hotels are now putting notes on coffee makers. We will never look at hotel room coffee the same way again.

Thanks for reading Field Notes. We’re trying to make this a space worth saving, full of things we’d actually send to a friend.

If you ever want to pass it along, here’s the link to subscribe: chrisandsara.kit.com/chrisandsara​

And if something in here made you laugh, think, or book a flight… we’d love to hear about it. Just hit reply or tag us @chrisandsara_ on Instagram.

More soon,

Chris & Sara