Mont Saint Michelle and the D-Day beaches of Normandy are really hard to reach by public transport, so renting a car was the best way to include these on the trip. I reserved the most basic, budget, manual car in Paris and they gave me a brand new SUV with automatic transmission. It felt great …
Last time I was in Paris, I fell in love with the city and I knew I would be back some day. I had a week earmarked, but accomodations were so expensive that I decided to split the time between Paris and Normandy and only give Paris two nights. We had a night and a …
Riding a camel through the Sahara Desert has been a dream of mine for at least two weeks now. I didn't think we could handle six full days in Marrakech, so I booked us a three-day tour out to the Sahara Desert near the border with Algeria. Since it is 600 km drive to get …
Africa! Wow, what an introduction to the continent. I prebooked our airport taxi through the hostel to keep our arrival logistics simple and stress free. When the taxi dropped us off on the other side of town from our hostel and a new guy started guiding us on foot, I was a bit apprehensive but …
This is a great city. I was underwhelmed by Lisbon, but Madrid has been everything I look for in a city: spacious parks, nice museums and monuments, inexpensive yet delicious coffee and pleasant streets for walking. Spain has several distinctive regions and it has been great to explore Catalonia, Andalucia and now the capital city. …
Lisbon, like Rome is the city of seven hills, and we climbed all of them. We decided to slow our pace and spend an extra few days in Lisbon. We saw the famous monuments on day one and Sintra on day two, and that left us two days to wander the neighborhoods and read in …
We just spent three days in Portugal's version of Santa Barbara—the coastline reminded me of home and the hostel reminded me of Isla Vista. Lagos is a party town that draws people from all over Australia, and I can tell you categorically that Australians are very friendly and can party hard. These eighteen-year-olds drink and …
Like Granada, Seville and Córdoba's architecture is heavily influenced by the Islamic rulers from the late 700s and then overlayed with Catholic and Gothic themes from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. Córdoba was about 100 degrees for the two days we were there and we didn't love the city. We saw the Mezquita Cathedral …
I have wanted to see the Alhambra for years and I am so excited to visit in person. While the Alhambra was the full reason for visiting this city, I really loved Granada. We are finally in a city where we can speak the language (I had one year of French Canadian and in Barcelona …
We wanted one last Mediterranean beach before enduring the inland heat of sunny Spain. Barcelona has a great sandy beach plus Antoni Gaudi's legacy of architectural wonders. We arrived just after a thunderstorm because our flight was delayed two and a half hours to wait for that thunderstorm to pass. We got to know the …
We Won't Melt 