After spending a week in La Fortuna, we weren’t quite ready to hit the Costa Rican beaches. We needed to see the Cloud Forest. Monteverde is a cloud forest jungle that is at a fairly high elevation of 4000-5000 feet. To get there from La Fortuna, we did the so called “Jeep-Boat-Jeep” transfer that was…
I don’t want to wear pants!
Or socks for that matter. I have dreamed that our retirement would be traveling with the good weather and spend my life in shorts and sandals. I hate socks. I hate having to wear jeans to stay warm. But I wasn’t always this way. I remember when I was younger getting upset when people complained…
La Fortuna, Costa Rica
We had a good flight from Madrid through Bogota and arrived in San Jose about 4pm. Spain was getting a little chilly in November so it was great to feel the hot humid air when we left the airport. It was only 68 miles from the airport to the mountain town of La Fortuna but…
Alicante, Spain
The last stop on the European leg of our fall trip. We have spent September in France, and October in Spain, and we knew we would be a bit weary from all that European culture travel so we had planned 9 days at the Spanish beach town of Alicante. We were envisioning a quiet week…
Altea and Elche day trips
We stayed 9 days in Alicante, Spain and we anticipated doing a lot of day trips along the coast. Alicante has a light rail (tram) that goes a long ways North and hits several different beach towns. On our first day in town, we walked a few miles along the beach to Playa de Albufereta…
Traveling Guilt
I told my wife I wanted to write about my guilt of traveling so much, and she laughed and said she didn’t think I had any guilt. That is a little bit true, I handle my guilt just fine, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think about it. And honestly, its probably better described as…
Valencia, Spain
We did not do too much travel planning for Valencia. We just spend 2 weeks in 4 different Spanish cities with P & K, which were thoroughly researched and planned.. Now P & K have left, and we are again left to our own planning (or lack thereof). So… the first thing to do in…
Barcelona, Spain
We were in Barcelona in 2007 and remember being blown away by the number of tourists from all over the world. Walking down the Ramblas, you can here many different languages while trying to stay in the flow of the mob of people. It seems like there are now twice as many people and we…
Sevilla and Granada, Spain
We know how to see cities in just a few days. We have been doing in most of our lives, because we had jobs that only allowed us to travel 2 or 3 weeks a year. We learned to see as much as possible while stopping in to a city in 2 or 3 days….
Madrid, Spain
We were in Madrid just 5 years ago and enjoyed it a lot and we really wanted to come back. It has 3 fantastic art museums, excellent tapas scene and lots of squares to sit and drink while watching the hordes of people. This trip there were hordes and hordes of people. I can’t remember…
Travel Lists
The world is huge and even though we are traveling most of the time, we still have a lot to see. We often get asked about how many countries we have been to and I don’t know the answer off the top of my head. It is not something I think about much. But to…
San Sebastian, Spain
The Spanish Basque country has always been near the top of our destination list but we never got there on our previous trips to Spain. We never had enough time to get make it work because it is far from the other Spain “go to” cities. But we have enough time now :>) and Spanish…
French Basque Country
Sometimes you just need some beach time. We had been in France for 3 weeks but we didn’t have a good chance to swim in the Med. We were busy seeing the sites and beaches weren’t the priority in Arles, Montpellier and Bordeaux. We did a lot of museums and cultural stuff which is the…
Bordeaux, France
We are huge wine lovers and just had to visit of the best wine regions in the world if we are in France. That got us here but there was a ton of other things to do and Bordeaux is a beautiful city. Fantastic architecture, long pedestrian streets, and some interesting museums to see. The…
Montpellier, France
During my last few years of working when I was dreaming of retirement, I was picturing a nomadic life, staying for 2-3 months in European towns that weren’t too touristy. I wanted to live in Europe, not be a tourist. Montpellier is the type of town that I had pictured. It has 300k people but…