Scotland made it on to our Europe itinerary mostly because my cousin was graduating from St. Andrew’s in June. We were pretty open as far as which countries to visit so we figured we would take advantage of the opportunity to spend some time with family. Dan and I arrived a week before the graduation so we’d have some time to explore Scotland on our own. We decided to start with the two major cities: Edinburgh and Glasgow. Edinburgh We…
The Algarve, Portugal’s southernmost region, is renowned for its charming towns, beautiful beaches and delicious seafood. It is a favorite vacation destination of the Portuguese and the rest of Europe so we were eager to see what all the fuss was about. Even though the weather was still cool and damp when we arrived, the Algarve did not disappoint. We had time to spend a few days each in three Algarve towns: Lagos, Tavira and Faro. Lagos Our first stop…
I’m going to be honest: Dan and I didn’t really like Bali. Partly this was our own fault. When we were planning the last part of our Asia itinerary it seemed like a great idea to finish with some relaxing beach time. In our minds Bali conjured images of sublime natural beauty and calm tropical beaches with bathtub-warm water. Unfortunately, we didn’t bother to do enough research to confirm whether that image was accurate. So imagine our disappointment when we…
One of the most popular day trips from Lisbon is to the lovely little town of Sintra. We had been planning to visit Sintra on our second to last full day in Lisbon but Dan still wasn’t feeling great. Luckily we ended up pushing it back to our last full day – it turned out there was a nation-wide train strike on the day we originally planned for. (Thank you Google Translate for revealing that ‘greve’ means strike. That would…
Coimbra After Porto we started to make our way south through Portugal. Our first stop was the medieval town of Coimbra, famous as the site of Portugal’s oldest university. School was not in session when we were there so, like many university towns in summer, Coimbra felt a little quiet. We still enjoyed exploring the winding streets and learning a little about it’s history. The Old Cathedral (exterior visible above) is a Romanesque, fortress-like building but it contains a beautiful…
First of all, my apologies for anyone who is getting confused as I do these posts out of order. I’m really trying to get all caught up on Asia so I can focus on Europe but I still have three posts to go including this one. To recap: from Singapore we flew to Jakarta and from there we took a breathtakingly beautiful train ride across Java to Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta is an awesome little city. After the chaos and grit of…
With about three weeks left on our Asia itinerary it was becoming imperative that we book a flight to Europe as soon as possible. We were looking forward to our two week break back in the States but we didn’t want to lose our travel momentum. However, we were having a really hard time deciding where we wanted to start. Our first stop in Europe would coincide with Dan’s birthday which upped the pressure to make it somewhere good. We…
The first four months of this adventure simultaneously flew by and felt like they lasted a lifetime. I still have three more posts to write about our last stops in Asia but it feels important to take a moment and reflect on what we’ve seen before our time in Southeast Asia becomes a distant memory. So how do I sum up our travels so far? Well we recently got the opportunity to go home for a couple of weeks and…
Singapore is one of the most unique and interesting places I have ever visited. I’ve been struggling to write this post because I’m not sure my words and photos can sufficiently capture what is so special about this city but I’m going to give it a shot. Our First Night We arrived in Singapore on a quick flight from Kuala Lumpur. It was pouring rain that afternoon so we hung out at our hostel for a while hoping we could…
From Penang our plan was to continue moving south, stopping in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Jakarta. That seemed like a lot of big cities in a row so before we embarked on that urban adventure we hopped over to the peaceful island of Langkawi for a few days of beach time. Langkawi doesn’t warrant its own blog post because for four days we did nothing but lie on the beach, read, swim and eat cheap Indian food. It was a…