We have been in Europe for almost 2 months and have not seen a familiar face since we left Seattle. We like traveling with each other but sometimes it gets a little old just talking only to your spouse. That changed in Nafplio, Greece when we had 2 sets of visitors. We love to meet…
Tag: Europe
Stoupa, Greece – Our new favorite European beach town
If you saw my post last week about Sardinia, I was complaining that we didn’t quite match with the beach town of Olbia. It wasn’t what we were looking for in a relaxing beach week. I felt a little bad for complaining so much, so now I need to write a blog post praising a…
UNESCO World Heritage Sites
We often seek out the UNESCO World Heritage Sites while we are traveling and we are rarely disappointed. If you aren’t aware, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) has a list of over 1200 sites in the world that are exceptional natural wonders or they are examples of important cultural or historic places…
Sardinia- not as planned
We have been in France for over a month, and our feet haven’t set foot in a swimming pool or on a beach. We knew would be ready for a beach week and set aside 5 days in Olbia, Sardinia for some beach relaxation time. We took a ferry from Corsica and found a bus…
Corsica, France – Bastia and Bonifacio
Yep, we are island hopping in Europe. First stop – Corsica. It is technically part of France but it really isn’t that near to France. We took an overnight ferry from Toulon (near Marseilles), from 6:30pm to 7:00am the next morning. We are not “cruisers” so this was kinda new for us. We rented a…
Strasbourg, Beaune, and Dijon
After our hikes, we really should have put in a week or two of downtime to rest up and slowly get back into our regular tourist mode. Instead we spent 3 nights in Strasbourg and then 4 nights in Beaune. In Beaune, we actually spent 1 day renting a car to look for some family…
Do we like “thru-hiking” in Europe?
We just finished our trial thru-hikes to see if are ready for doing a Camino de Santiago. I’m sure everyone is on the edge of their seat to see what we are now thinking :>) First, we need to try to define the terms. In America, I have done a lot of “backpacking” in Washington…
Hiking the Alsace Wine Route
Yep, another long hike… but this time on the other side of France in the Alsatian region. Alsace is a very German part of France because this area has been part of Germany in the past. Many people still speak German and the regional food also is a bit similar with a lot of pretzels,…
Hiking Cancale to Mont Saint Michel, Days 3 and 4
After eating enough oysters in Cancale to cure our sickness, we were ready to go and finish our hike. If you haven’t read about Day 1 and 2 of our hike you should probably do that first. We were now feeling fresh and determined to walk the rest of the way to our final destination…
Hiking Saint Malo to Cancale- Day 1 and 2
Our first step in the morning was to find a taxi to take our bags ahead to our final destination 5 days from now. We were able to negotiate a fair price with a driver who was willing to take our carry-on rolly bags to our Airbnb in Mont Saint Michel. Our Airbnb had agreed…
European Snowbirds?
We are currently in Costa Rica in an Airbnb in a condo development that is filled with North Americans. Some are only here for a week or so but most are staying the whole winter. We have seen this many times now… it is usually 25-75 units surrounding a pool which becomes the meeting place…
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…
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…
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…