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…
Tag: Europe
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…
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…
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…
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…
Day Trips from Arles
The first week in Europe we try to take it a bit slow because we are almost always suffering from a bit of jetlag. A small town like Arles is a great first stop, because there isn’t that many must see destinations. We thought if we were able to conquer jetlag that we would be…
Arles, France – WTF?!?!?!
We are off on another adventure! First stop- Arles in Provence. It took us a bit to get here. British Airways overbooked us on our flight from Seattle and didn’t tell us until we just about to board. We ended up spending another night in Seattle and then accepting a 12 hour layover in London…
Rome and Home
The last stop on on the Europe22 trip is 5 nights in Rome. We didn’t really plan much before we got there because we have been there before and know our way around the big attractions. But this was a little problem because many of the places required buying advance tickets a couple weeks in…
Palermo, Sicily
By this time, we have stayed in 4 different Sicilian towns and visited several others and felt like we had a great feeling for Sicily, but to really say we have seen Sicily, we need to see the capitol. So, in our farewell to Sicily planned 8 days in the heart of the big city…
Trapani, Sicily
After our fantastic evening in Agrigento at the Valley of the Temples, we still had the rental car for another day to get to the other side of Sicily. Having a car enables us to find some off the beaten path things to do and M found us a good one. We went to Il…