Michael Blanding and Alexandra Hall met working five feet from each other as editors at Boston Magazine, where and Alexandra covered food and fashion and Michael wrote about politics and crime. Native New Englanders at heart, Michael and Alex pride themselves on having driven, hiked, canoed, or sailed every inch of the six-state region, ferreting out underrated restaurants, backwoods museums, and hidden storybook villages along the way.

Alexandra grew up on Boston’s South Shore and studied at Wheaton College and the Cordon Bleu Institute in Paris. She is now the Boston editor of Daily Candy, a Web site divulging the newest finds in food, fashion, and culture. Michael grew up west of Boston and attended Williams College. He has won several awards for his writing, including twice being named a finalist for the prestigious Livingston Awards for Young Journalists; he now teaches magazine writing at Emerson College and Tufts University. Together, Alex and Michael have written for publications including Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appetit, Elle Decor, Continental, Delta Sky, Business Traveler, Nation, New York Times, Boston Globe, and AlterNet. They now live in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain with their cat named Dog and their son Zachary Martin Hall Blanding, who has fast become the best-traveled baby in the world.