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After spending some time in Montreal, we tacked on a visit to Québec City to the end of our trip. While not nearly the size of Montreal, it was a great addition to our Montreal trip because it gave us a better taste of Canada. Montreal, while totally worth visiting (it feels like Europe-meets-North America), has more of an international city vibe and doesn’t give you a true Canadian experience. Québec City, although still quite touristy, was much more of a cultural experience than Montreal.
Although the city changed from French rule to British rule in 1763, only a mere 1.5% of the population is considered an Anglophone — 95% of Québec’s population [...]
While in Argentina’s wine country, we wanted to be sure to see some vineyards and see the outskirts of Mendoza… plus try some local wines. Mendoza’s wine regions account for about 70% of all the wine produced in Argentina, so visiting some wineries and tasting some Malbec is a must while staying in Mendoza.
Turns out, though, that planning a day trip to wineries is a little harder than we thought. Mendoza’s wine regions stretch out over more than 350,000 acres and there are three separate regions within Mendoza. So, with just one day set aside for this, we quickly realized we couldn’t see it all. First, we had to pick a region (we went with Maipú) [...]
Mendoza is an excellent small town for a self-guided walking tour and just about everything can be explored within a day on foot. We would, of course, recommend a few more days than that to explore the vineyards and, depending on the season, another day or two to check out the ski slopes that aren’t too far away.
Here’s a map of the route that has a lot of the highlights you’ll want to check out as well as practical info, such as the bus station, airport, grocery stores (to stock up on cheap Mendoza wine!), etc:
StayWe stayed at the Park Hyatt Mendoza and would highly recommend it. It is in the perfect location and quite luxurious. Find our [...]
On our way to Australia, we spent our first few days in Dubai. It was my first trip to the UAE and Jeffrey’s second, and it was fun to split up our trip with a stop in Dubai- especially to get a taste of non-Western culture since our final destination of Australia was about as Western-feeling as you can get!
After flying Etihad Airlines into Abu Dhabi, we decided to spend our entire time in Dubai. Originally, we planned to spend a day or two in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai, but ultimately decided to spend all 3 days in Dubai to get a better feel for the city and try to stop over in Abu Dhabi in the future. Looking back, we’re glad we made that decision as any shorter [...]
Jakarta is an enormous city and usually isn’t high on a Western traveler’s To-Do list when visiting Southeast Asia. Even though it may not have pristine beaches like other parts of the area, there are still parts of Jakarta that are rich in interesting history and worth a visit.
Just to give you an idea of the behemoth that is Jakarta, it currently ranks as the 2nd largest metro area in the world with 30+ million inhabitants:
That being said, a trip to Jakarta can be as brief as you want to make it — we stayed for 2 nights as part of a stopover from Bali to Singapore and felt that we amply covered the highlights.
1. START: We [...]
On our trip from Myanmar to Vietnam, we lucked into a 48-hour layover in Bangkok, one of our very, very favorite cities in the entire world. We first visited Bangkok in 2011 and it was our first foray into Asian culture. We loved it more than we ever thought we would and dove into Thai food and Thai culture head first – and haven’t looked back since.
Can’t get much better than a Bangkok sunset
After visiting a few other Asian cities and countries by now, Bangkok is still at the top of our list and we think it’s a great city to get your feet wet- [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
