We have visited our 2nd Baltic country – Latvia, and it was very similar to the first. Latvia and Estonia are both relatively new countries but have beautiful capital cities with amazing old town architecture and cobblestone streets. We spent our first day in Riga on our “free” walking tour being wowed by all the…
Tag: Europe
Estonia- Tallinn and Parnu
Another new country for us- Estonia. Only 1.4 million people living here including about 450,000 in the capital of Tallinn. A lot of visitors to the Balkans only visit the 3 capitals (Tallinn- Estonia, Riga-Latvia, and Vilnius-Lithuania). We found ourselves planning the easy route like everyone else, so we decided to add on the smaller…
Helsinki, Finland
Yep, we are back in Europe! It might surprise some to see that we left Seattle when the summer wasn’t over yet. We love to be in Seattle all summer, but we also like to be warm all year. Helsinki is about the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska, so we wanted to see Finland and…
Malaga, Spain
After our week in Malaga, we have now visited all 4 of the big cities in the Andalucian region of Spain. I suppose I should be expected to name my favorite of Seville, Cordoba, Granada and Malaga. But, no…. I liked them all and I just can’t seem to pick favorites. Malaga is the only…
Cordoba, Spain
This is our 4th trip to Andalusia, but our first time in Cordoba. Not sure why we waited so long to visit here. We really enjoyed our week. Cordoba was a very important city during many parts of Spain’s history and the old town still reflects that. There are so many small pedestrian streets and…
Huelva, Spain – Feria del Caballo (Horse Fair)
The train networks in Spain and Portugal are improving, but there still isn’t very good connections between the countries. In order to travel from the Portuguese Algarve region back to Spain, it would be easier to travel by bus. We don’t like long travel days so we decided to break up our trip from Portimao…
The Algarve Coast in Portimao, Portugal
The Algarve is the southern part of Portugal and is famous for its beautiful coastline. We stayed in the town of Portimao which is just East of the bigger town of Lagos. There is a stretch of condos and restaurants on top of the cliffs that are popular with Europeans as a vacation spot. The…
Lisbon, Portugal
After being shocked by the amount of tourists in Porto, we arrived in Lisbon and saw more of the same. At times it felt that the tourists outnumbered the locals. But, it is getting close to the end of the busy season so we were able to navigate the city by playing it smart and…
Overtourism in Porto, Portugal
We have heard a lot about the difficulties that popular tourist cities are having with the massive number of tourists. We have seen it in several places but it was really apparent during our stay in Porto. We were in Porto from October 8-10th in 2018 and it was a different atmosphere than our stay…
Underrated Zaragoza, Spain
We couldn’t find an easy train or bus from San Sebastian to Zaragoza so we decided to rent a car. Spain’s train network is vastly improved but still “in work”. We are still traveling with Paul and Kara and it makes a lot more sense to rent a car when traveling with 2 couples. This…
Basque Country with Paul and Kara
Yep, it isn’t just the 2 of us for a couple of weeks. We are 4 once again – Meg’s brother Paul, and his Spain-loving wife Kara, are joining us for a couple of weeks exploring the Basque Region of Northern Spain. We really like traveling with people and were excited that they wanted to…
Dublin, Ireland
We are back in Europe!! Well… at least Ireland to start. We just finished up 4 days overcoming our jetlag and seeing the sights of Dublin. This is a new country for Meg, but I had been here 35 years ago for a long weekend, during my study abroad experience in college. That was before…
Off Again!!
Our summer in Seattle has come to an end. It seems like time flew too fast but we were able to see a lot of people and do a lot of things in our 2 months here this year. We are ready to take off again. This time we are heading to Ireland, Spain and…
Corfu, Greece- Last Stop before Seattle
M likes to spend our last week before returning home at a lazy beach location. It doesn’t always work out but it was perfect for this trip. This trip through Eastern Europe did not have many beaches but the last couple of weeks has made up for that. Our week in Sarande, Albania was great…
The Albanian Riviera
I am not sure why so many countries get to have their own “Riviera”, but Albania has one too. The beaches are mostly as good as many of those that we have seen in other Rivieras. We stayed for a week on the beach in the center of the town of Saranda, Albania, and didn’t…