Travel
Whirlwind trip part 2
Picking up where my last post left off - terrified of heavy winds, we decided to head out and take it easy by just taking trams. After a few false starts, I do "think" we kinda figured it out. We didn't get on the…
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NOLA - Food and culture heaven
Hello everyone. I'M BACK!!! So we have scaled back on a lot of travel with Phoenix growing older (he just turned 16!) and needing us around a lot more. But the travel itch remains. So Harneet and me now travel…
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Prague wrap
On my flight back right now. Our last day in Prague yesterday was relatively chill. We spent a couple of hours in the Jewish district walking through before grabbing a quick lunch (and bubble tea) and spending some…
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Exploring Praha
Refreshed after a chill night, we set out yesterday to take a stroll around old town. After visiting St. Nicholas's old church, this fantastic guide allows us to understand the historical buildings in the old town…
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Last day in Budapest and first in Prague
On Monday, we began our day in Budapest by visiting the memorial on the river Danube called "Shoes on the Danube". Built by a film director, it commemorates holocaust victims who were asked to take off their nice shoes…
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Budapest
So, I have actually done a similar itinerary to this around 10 years ago with Harneet but wasn’t blogging at the time. For that trip, we started in Vienna, headed to Innsbruk before going over to Budapest and Prague.…
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Hallstatt
On our final day in Salzburg, we ended up booking a guided tour to Hallstatt - a small picturesque village in the Alps. After a quick stop at a red bull factory (yep, red bull is from Austria), we spent some time…
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The hills are alive - with the sound of music
For those of you who know me well, you know me and my family are obsessed with the sound of music. So a trip to Austria with this group could not be complete without a visit to Salzburg. Here's a quick account of how we…
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Vienna (Wien) part 2
So since my last post, the bugs spread from dad to mom but we still managed to selectively explore the city of Vienna for the next two days. And don't worry - they are both doing much better today. More on some cool…
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Birthday fun with family - Vienna
So my Dad just turned 75 and what better way to celebrate than bringing the family together for a vacation. His wish was to go somewhere outside to celebrate and since they travel a bunch, my folks focused on places…
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It’s that time again
We enjoyed our last fun day in Madrid and now are just boarding our last flight home to Seattle. So this was a more chill day. We started by getting coffee Pan y Peppilino’s cafe and then grabbing some delicious baked…
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Madrid exploring (oh and Toledo)
So I left off my last post on just getting to Madrid. We are fortunate enough to have a family friends daughter here on a study abroad program and so we had tons of local recommendations and a good first night tour…
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Pompeii, more Naples and Ciao Italia
After enjoying Sorrento, it was time for us to make our way back to Naples via Pompeii. We hopped on our train - fortunately with no rain and got off at the Pompeii Scavi station. Just across the station, was the…
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Some Naples, some Amalfi and a whole lot more
Now that we left Florence, our next destination was Naples. We caught a train that brought us to Naples and made it to our cute Airbnb close to the Plebiscito plaza. In a quaint area, we climbed four floors to get to a…
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Florence revisited
After 12 and a half years, I found myself back in Florence this week for a workshop. I was last here in 2013 for my honeymoon and was eager to see how much has changed. While a lot has, unlike other places, a lot was…
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Ston, scenic drives, Plitvice, Rovinj, and a wrap in Split
I left off my last post with us starting our drive from Dubrovnik. After bidding farewell to the beautiful city (and to Harneet's constant humming of the game of thrones theme in my ear), our first stop on our drive…
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Dubrovnik
Spent the last two days exploring Dubrovnik - yes the GoT Dubrovnik 🙄. This was the first place in Croatia that was actually filled with tourists. We managed to score an Airbnb right in Old Town. While we walked plenty…
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Hvar and Korcula
We somehow got lucky and our ferry ended up leaving from Split as scheduled. We arrived in Hvar in the morning and checked into our nice Airbnb right in the center of Hvar Town. It is definitely off season over here.…
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Croatia with a layover
This trip was interesting. Due to work travel, we had to postpone our yearly anniversary trip and were prepped to battle the boatload of folks who would have been traveling for spring break this year. However, with the…
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Ho Chi Minh - our last Vietnam destination
I write this post a little sad saying bye to my family as I wait for my flight to Joburg (work thingy). We had an amazing week together and our last Vietnam destination was Ho Chi Minh. We got here early yesterday…
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Da Nang and Hoi An
After a good night's rest in a hotel not on a cruise 😉, we started our day bright and early with our limo driver picking us up to take us to Marble Mountain. This mountain has three peaks and an elevator available if…
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2 days 1 night on Bai Tu Long bay
Before leaving Hanoi, we were told we had to do a cruise on Halong Bay. Instead of the busy areas, we booked a 2 day 1 night cruise on Bai Tu Long bay with Paloma Cruises. Vietnam loves their limos. We were picked up at…
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Adventures in Hanoi
I made it! 14 hours later than I wanted but I made it to Hanoi. I rushed to meet up with my parents, sisters and bil who were patiently waiting for me at the hotel (the Airbnb we had booked was disastrous and they…
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Back home
I'm sitting at the airport ready to head back home and wanted to provide our itinerary for anyone planning a trip to Turkey. There is so much here that we still did not do it all but we are leaving satisfied that we saw…
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The other side of Istanbul
We are now rounding out our trip and managed to sneak in another day in Istanbul at the end. This time, instead of staying in the busy Sultanehment area, we instead chose a hotel in Sisli. It was a quiet morning - we…
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Epheseus
After breakfast this morning, we bid farewell to Fethiye. One thing I didn't mention was that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's pictures were everywhere in Fethiye. He was a founding father of the Republic of Turkey and it's…
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Fethiye continued
After walking along the Fethiye Harbor last night, we woke up ready to explore the rest of Fethiye. But before that a little bit about our hotel. It's quite lovely and they have some hip fashion displayed in the…
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Lost in Xanthos
Like literally lost in Xanthos. This is quite the thriller but it's closer to the end of the story, so hang tight. We started out this morning on our longish drive from beautiful Antalya to Fethiye - the scenic route.…
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From Cappadocia to Antalya
Hot air balloons top down view - yesterday. Hot air balloons bottoms up view - today. We woke up early in the morning to go to the roof of our hotel and see the balloons fill up the sky. It was pretty awesome. We even…
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The Wizard of Oz
Until today, that was what I connected hot air balloons with. Cappadocia is known for its hot air balloon rides. We had to feed into the hype and so made a booking to do a sunrise hot air balloon ride. We were picked up…
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Did I see all of Rose Valley?
We made it to Cappadocia at around 11am, rented a car and headed over to Goreme to grab a meal. I slept only 3 hours last night - partly jetlag, partly overdoing it yesterday. So I was a little grumpy, tired and hungry.…
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How much can you pack into a day?
The title says it all. We woke up way too early today (Thank you jetlag) and decided to make the most of it. 40,000 steps later, I'm writing this post lying in bed ready to collapse. But what a day!!! On a fantastic…
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Time for a vacation - Turkiye
It's that time of the year again. I'm on vacation in Turkiye - a country that has been on my list for a long time. Stay tuned to read more about my adventures. I'm already sure that a week will be too short. Appreciate…
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Time to go home
Today was a fairly chill day. We had planned to do the Sandia Peak tramway but it was horribly cloudy so we skipped that. The next plan was to visit the Rinconada Canyon but then Harneet informed me that it had a lot of…
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Caverns and dunes and astronomy Oh My
It's been a fun two days. We began yesterday by heading over to Carlsbad Caverns to check out some of the biggest underground caves in the world. 800 feet underground, we were blown away by the beauty here. This is a…
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Immerse in Indigenous history
Santa Fe did not disappoint. Other than delicious food and a rustic downtown with tons of art galleries and small stores, it was an opportunity for us to learn so much about Indigenous history. Today's post will be…
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Brrrrrr but worth it?
We made it to Taos late last night after a quick stop in Santa Fe for some New Mexican fare at Tomasita's. Pillowy sopapillas and chili rellenos. We were so hungry that I forgot to take a pic! First thing on our list in…
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Work travel snapshots and New Mexico
Its been a while, hasn't it. I've been traveling a lot this year, though mostly for work - went to beautiful Kenya and South Africa - twice for the latter. Kenya was truly lovely and in between crazy workdays, I managed…
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The end to a lovely vacation
My last post was before our flight to Barcelona. I am posting this as we sit on our flight back to Seattle from Amsterdam. Barcelona is familiar to both me and Harneet since we traveled here separately. If you are…
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Magnificent Granada
We got to Granada by train late afternoon yesterday. This trip wasn't a fully planned one, we booked a lot of the trip by looking at what was cheapest since it was last minute. And so we picked a hostel to stay in…
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Seville strolls
We got to Seville yesterday. We have both been here before so this was mostly just a stopover to relax for a night before heading over to Granada to see the Alhambra. We spent the evening yesterday and the day today…
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Whirlwind trip through the Algarve coast
Our train arrived at Faro later than expected. We quickly rented a car and made our way to Lagos where had an apartment booked. We made it at around 8:30PM. Now I'm going to preface this next part by saying that we are…
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Anniversary vacay
For those of you who have known me and Harneet for a while, you know that we try to travel somewhere every anniversary. And it is that time of year again for a very special anniversary - our Tiniversary. This time we…
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Switzerland continued!
My last post of this vacation series!!! I ended my previous post with us arriving in Zermatt. Zermatt is a ski resort town in Switzerland that is famous for the Matterhorn mountain. It had plenty of great hikes but…
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The unplanned destination
So before I left, if any of you asked me where I was going - I was like - Stockholm, Greece and 4 days someplace we haven’t decided yet. We finished Stockholm, got to Rhodes, and the day after my birthday, we decided…
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Rhodos Greece Part 1
Greece isn't new to us since we have gone there to vacation before. But it's also a large country with plenty to offer. Our past excursions have taken us to Athens, Milos, Naxos, Santorini and Crete. This time we were…
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Rhodos Part 3: Eastern Rhodes and birthday fun
This is my last post on Rhodes so I’m going to consolidate three days in here. It helps that we kept the last day pretty chill. We had rented the car for three days and so had two more days left on it. Our goal for this…
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Rhodos Part 2 - Western Rhodes
A few more jam packed days so I'm going to see if I can get through the rest of our Greece trip in this post. Yesterday's post was about old town. This is just a small part of what Rhodes had to offer. Day 3 started off…
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Fika
The in progress vacation I wrote about in my last post begins in Stockholm. We had never been to a Scandivanian country before and were excited to check out a new place. Among our options, Sweden won! We spent two days…
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Past vacation recap
I'm not going to even try to explain why I haven't posted in a while,coz really, there isn't a good reason. The last two years have been pretty bare on vacations but here is a quick recap post before I dive into the…
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Home sweet home and a short retrospective
I got back late night on the 16th and it's a little hard to describe the feeling. Seeing Harneet and Phoenix and coming home brought a great sense of comfort to me. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time traveling but…
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