Weekend Blitz

While most of the touristy parts of Istanbul are on the European side, no trip to the ancient bi-continental city would be complete without popping over to Asia. Part of our journey was curiosity, part was for a “been there, done that” sense of accomplishment but, mostly, we went to sample a restaurant that we heard great things about, Çiya Sofrası.

Trying to figure out how to get there, we had a few options:  either a standard passenger ferry or a tourist boat. We didn’t necessarily have to take the full-on tourist-only tour of the Bosphorus and, after a bit of research, figured that our best bet was just to take the ferry that the locals take across the [...]

My sister was studying abroad in Argentina this past semester, so McCown and I planned a trip to go and visit her. We both had a decent stockpile of Delta SkyMiles and, with the impending changes to the 2015 SkyMiles program, I really wanted to burn all of the miles that we had in the event that Delta renders them all but worthless next year.

By using Delta Skymiles, we were able to take advantage of their routing rules to have 1 free stopover and 1 free open-jaw.  It looked like this:

Even though we had a full night’s layover in Frankfurt (see our adventures in Frankfurt here), Jeffrey casanova’d our way into the First Class Lounge at Frankfurt’s airport, duh. Be forewarned that we had just visited the Lufthansa First Class lounge in New York-JFK and this post will make lots of comparisons: Lufthansa First Class Lounge – New York-JFK Airport.

Frankfurt Airport is one of the three mega-hubs in Europe, with more than 52 million passengers/year, 60% of which are Lufthansa travelers (that’s about 100,000 Lufthansa travelers per day!).

Given the above stats, it’s not surprising that they’re a bit stingy with access to [...]

After a few days in France (see our walking tours of Bordeaux and Nantes, then see how we got engaged in Paris!), we headed over to Italy. Siena, Italy is home to the oldest bank in the world. But it was also home to me for a semester when I studied abroad back in 2009 and lived with a family who has become my family. So, when I got the chance to go visit them when we visited Jeffrey’s sister in Nantes, France, recently, I jumped at it. Why I chose Siena as the city to study abroad, I’m not quite sure. Probably how I make most other important life decisions: a bit on a whim. I liked the movie Under the Tuscan Sun and Siena was the only city in the region of Tuscany with a [...]

After planning our honeymoon for months, we were totally shocked when we found out that we’d be spending our 24 hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany instead of New York to begin our trip because of the snow storm hitting the North East. Luckily, we’d packed heavy coats for New York, so we were all prepared and excited to begin our honeymoon exploring a brand new town (and, bonus:  we got to check out Lufthansa’s First Class Lounge at JFK and Lufthansa First Class).

Although we were excited, every German person we met who found out we were spending a night in Frankfurt was shocked that we’d actually be staying there and not immediately taking the first [...]

Istanbul is a huge city filled with never-ending passageways to explore. No matter which part of the city you’re in, there’s an intriguing little store just around the corner filled with real-life treasures. The tricky part is just deciding what to take home with you.

If you’re in the market for a rug, good:  there’s no shortage of men trying to cat call you into their shop just to sell you a very expensive rug. Turns out, I didn’t have the #fancy budget for a rug, can you believe it? So, I focused on more attainable souvenirs – and what I could actually pack in my suitcase.

Without further ado, here are my top areas for shopping in [...]

Florence, Italy was next up on our trip and I was psyched! I studied abroad in Siena, Italy while in college and was so happy to go back to visit the family I lived with while there. But, before heading to Siena (about an hour’s train ride from Florence), we wanted to hit one or two highlights in Tuscany’s most famous city.

With appx. 1.5 million people in the metropolitan area, Florence is also the most populous city in Tuscany and a must-visit on any trip to the area. Most visitors stay in Florence and then day-trip to other Tuscan towns. Not that I would suggest that plan… but, then again, I’m biased:  Florence and Siena were equal in size and power [...]

Bereketzade Mh., Galata Kulesi, Beyoğlu, Turkey 18.5 TL (~$8.90 US) Hours: 9am to 8pm everyday

After lunch at another outdoor cafe (…because Charleston has exactly 0 fun outdoor streetside cafes), we walked over the Golden Horn to the more modern side of Istanbul. Trying to get our tourism on, we headed to a must-see site: the Galata Tower.

View of the Galata Tower from across the water

In the context of Istanbul, the Galata Tower is brand spanking new at 650+ years old. This is especially evident in the context of the Hagia Sofia, built in 537, whereas the Galata Tower was completed in [...]

Ok, so, admittedly, we looked forward to dinner all day long because it was a good excuse to get out of the freezing cold. We pulled up Urbanspoon and found that Le Hobbit Bistro was a good mix of everything we were looking for: good French food, a walkable location, a lively atmosphere, not too cheap and not super expensive. We made reservations but when we arrived we noticed that we probably didn’t need them.

We walked from our hotel to the restaurant. While very walkable, it was outside of the walled city and a decent ways up Saint-Jean. Although Urbanspoon qualifies it as “late night,” we noticed that it was only open until 10pm on the [...]