The first real vacation (other than our honeymoon) my husband and I took together was in December of 2008. Before that we were saving to buy a house and just traveled on business or with our parents. We decided to do a Vegas-based road trip the week before Christmas, flying home Christmas Eve to drive…
Author: Jaime
OLD BLOG – Rustic Playa – Cave Bar, Flintstones Breakfast and a Spectacular Vacant Ruin
As I mentioned in my intro, Chad and I are not really “beach people.” We’d rather spend our vacations exploring cool stuff than relaxing the day away with a cold drink in hand (though evenings are good for the cold drink segment). However, for Chad’s folks’ 35th wedding anniversary, they wanted to do a family…
OLD BLOG – Why New Orleans in August Isn’t That Bad
Ten years ago this August, Chad and I had our honeymoon in New Orleans. You might think New Orleans in August is unbearably hot and humid, and the reason we had such a wonderful trip was because we were young and in love. While that is partially true, I think there is a lot to…
OLD BLOG – Sleeping on the Move
My husband and I are big fans of Rick Steves’ travel guides. Steves is a big proponent of maximizing your travel time by “sleeping on the move,” meaning taking an overnight train or boat between destinations so that you spend your waking hours at the places you want to see. On our 2011 trip to…
OLD BLOG – Roman Chinese Food is Great
Or, A Funny Coincidence By the time we got to Rome we’d been in Italy for a week, and as much as I love Italian food, there’s only so much pasta I can eat. On our 3rd day in Rome, we took a train out to the ruins at Ostia Antica. A large, young American…
OLD BLOG – The Northern Lights Chase Tour Was Necessary & Worth It
We had the unexpected opportunity to go to Oslo in 2011, and decided that, since we’d be in Norway in November, we’d really like to try to see the Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights. I did a bunch of research and found a city called Tromso that is known for sightings and is large…
OLD BLOG – We Recommend the Osprey Porter 46 (and our skate fairy)
On our most recent trip to Europe in November, we decided to go the backpack route rather than traditional rolling luggage. For one thing we had a flight in the middle of our trip that we didn’t want to have to worry about checking luggage, and we knew we’d have a bit of time in…
OLD BLOG – You Know That Resort Where Dirty Dancing Takes Place?
You know that resort where Dirty Dancing takes place? We found something similar, albeit smaller, in Italy. And it was the best place we stayed on our whole trip. It is called the Cuccaro Club and is in the hills outside the Cinque Terre, about 30 minutes from Levanto. I titled my Trip Advisor Review…
OLD BLOG – My Favorite New York Tip
The tip I always like to tell people who are going to New York is skip the ferry out to Liberty and Ellis Islands and just take the free ferry to and from Staten Island. You get the same great sea-based view of the Statue of Liberty. The Ellis Island Immigration Museum just doesn’t seem…
OLD BLOG – At least Try to Speak the Local Language (except in Scandinavia; nobody expects that)
Even when your attempt at Italian comes out in Spanish, they seem to appreciate the effort. We discovered a Europe full of English speakers, as long as we never assumed that the person would speak it. Start in the native tongue, no matter how garbled (but it has to be genuine), and we found that…