She broke up with her boyfriend and moved in with a man she’d known for 3 weeks. Here’s what happened next

15.09.2023 - 16:56 / edition.cnn.com

Liesbet Collaert was about to blow up her life.

She’d arrived in San Francisco, California just three weeks earlier, part of an overland journey across North America with her long-term boyfriend, Karl.

Now, Liesbet was about to abandon her travels (unthinkable), abandon the plan (out of character), and abandon Karl (unbelievable).

Why? Because Liesbet had fallen in love with someone else, and she couldn’t shake the thought that she was meant to be with him.

It was 2004 and Liesbet was 28. She’d met her American boyfriend Karl a couple of years earlier, on a trip to Australia. Back in her home country of Belgium, Liesbet was a trained teacher, but while she enjoyed her job, her thirst for adventure superseded everything else. Liesbet was always working out ways she could work from the road, always figuring out her next trip.

“Travel has always been number one,” Liesbet tells CNN Travel today.

When Liesbet and Karl pulled up in San Francisco, they planned to only stay for a week. They were crashing with a friend of Karl’s – a guy called Nik who owned a San Francisco townhouse he’d converted into three apartments. Nik lived in one of the studios, and he rented out the others.

That first day, after greeting Nik and dumping her bag in his apartment, Liesbet headed back downstairs to grab a CD from the campervan.

“As I come into the yard, I get greeted by two beautiful, amazing, fluffy dogs wagging their tails,” recalls Liesbet. “And of course, I was totally enamored with them, hanging out with them…”

When Liesbet looked up, she noticed a man standing in the doorway of the ground floor apartment, smiling at her.

“Hi, I’m Mark,” he said. “Mark Kilty.” He was the dogs’ owner, and one of Nik’s tenants – the occupant of the downstairs apartment.

Liesbet introduced herself, explaining she and her boyfriend were staying with Nik for a few days.

“We talked a little bit – and a little bit turned into an hour,” recalls Liesbet.

Liesbet’s first impression of Mark was that he was “a very attractive, tall, dark-haired man” (“I was attracted to his looks more than anything else,” she admits.)

But after their extended conversation, Liesbet decided Mark was also “very well-spoken and intelligent.”

Mark was 33 and recently divorced. He’d grown up on the East Coast of the US, but moved to California in the late 1990s – he was a software engineer and had arrived just in time for the dot-com boom.

Mark was pretty happy with his life – separating from his wife hadn’t been easy, but he loved his work, his dogs and his life in the Bay Area.

But when Liesbet talked about her myriad travels and her nomadic lifestyle, Mark was immediately fascinated. It was like she’d opened up a window to a life