Travel

Alaska Cruise Cunard Queen Elizabeth May 31st – June 10th, 2019 We’ll be doing full posts about our trip in the coming weeks but we wanted to give you all a preview to the photos. Below are the shots from our fun in Ketchikan. Enjoy! Ketchikan, Alaska 7 June 2019 […]

Alaska Cruise Cunard Queen Elizabeth May 31st – June 10th, 2019 We’ll be doing full posts about our trip in the coming weeks but we wanted to give you all a preview to the photos. Below are the shots from our time in Sitka. Enjoy! Sitka, Alaska 6 June 2019 […]

Alaska Cruise Cunard Queen Elizabeth May 31st – June 10th, 2019 A few shots from our shore excursions in Icy Strait Point. We’ll be doing full posts about our trip in the coming weeks but we wanted to give you all a visual preview. Enjoy! Icy Strait Point 5 June 2019 […]

Alaska Cruise Cunard Queen Elizabeth May 31st – June 10th, 2019 We’ll be doing full posts about our trip in the coming weeks but we wanted to give you all a preview to the photos. Below are the shots from our shore excursions and at the Hubbard Glacier. Enjoy! Hubbard Glacier 4 June, 2019   […]

Alaska Cruise Cunard Queen Elizabeth May 31st – June 10th, 2019 A few shots from Heli-tour to Mendenhall Glacier. We’ll be doing full posts about our trip in the coming weeks but we wanted to give you all a visual preview. Enjoy! Mendenhall Glacier Heli-tour 2 June 2019 […]

San Juan, Puerto Rico Saturday, November 24, 2018 Land ho! It’s been 8 days since we left our last port of call in Spain, at Málaga. We were to have had two more stops in The Canaries. But, due to weather, and trying to out-run an enormous storm in the North Atlantic, we were not able to visit. We may have been able to get to the islands before the storm but would have been in the worst of […]

Barcelona, Spain Saturday, November 10, 2018 La Boqueria (Mercat de la Boqueria) This is one of the big things we were looking to do in Barcelona – aside from the Sagrada Família and the Modernist architecture, of course – was La Boqueria. Located off famous La Rambla, this massive food market had something for everyone. We had been to a similar market in 2014 in Lyon, France, the […]

March 2018 I don’t often get to travel for my day job. But when I do, my company sends me to some far-reaching places. The past March was one such opportunity. In December 2017, I found out I would be going to Africa, Tanzania, specifically. I assumed that someday I’d get the chance to go to Africa but had never really thought too much about it. Now was my chance. Still, with finding […]

Barcelona November 9 – 13th, 2018   Casa Fuster Barcalona https://www.hotelcasafuster.com/en/ Hotel Casa Fuster recommended to us by Aurelio Giordano, of Ace World Travel, turned out to be the exact right fit for Steven and I. You can Google the Hotel Casa Fuster for a load of details, but what impressed us from the start was location and history. Aurelio asked us what was […]

Barcelona, Spain November 2018 Here are a few more photos of the Oceania Riviera from our trip from Barcelona, Spain to Miami, Florida. November 13-28, 2018. The Riviera has an amazing number of dining venues for a ship of its size. There’s The Grand Dining Room, Terrace Café (the buffet), and the poolside Waves Gill. All are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No reservations needed. […]

Barcelona, Spain November 2018 A House that Gaudí Built – Actually, his first   Gaudí’s First House: Casa Vicens, Carrer de les Carolines, 20-26 Barcelona, Spain…er Catalonia. Metro stop: L3 Fontana (Green line) https://casavicens.org/ After taking the Modernist Walking Tour with Rainbow Tours, I got to looking up more about the works of Gaudí in our neighborhood, the Eixample. Our […]

November 2018 Montserrat The train to Monserrat takes about an hour or so. But before you go, you need to decide which way you’re going to get to the top of the mountain. There’s a gondola-style cable car (Aeri) and a train option (Cremallera) called a funicular. The cable car, or Aeri, is the quickest way to get from the train stop at Aeri Montserrat to the top – not for those […]

13 November 2018 Oceania Cruises – M/V Riviera Embarkation Day – Here are a few photos of the ship as we started exploring this ship. Our home-away-from-home for two weeks. More details to come soon. ​   […]

la Sagrada Familia November 2018 Barcelona   Or more fully – The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família &nbsp What a perfect way to end our first walking tour. We managed to dodge the roaming showers around that day, coming out of the blue line subway stop to be stopped at the first sight of this magnificent, if on-going construction site. A bit of triva; Gaudi […]

November 2018 Barcelona Ahead of our trip we booked two walking tours through Rainbow Barcelona Tours (http://rainbowbarcelona.com/), a LGBT owned and operated company in Barcelona. Our personal guide, Manu, met us at our hotel, The Hotel Casa Fuster, located on Passeig de Gràcia, at the outer edge of the Eixample district. Manu gave a great orientation to the Catalan modernistic […]

November 2018 Barcelona Here’s our second installment of photos from our short stay in Barcelona. We also took a day-trip up to Montserrat which was really quite amazing! More to come soon. Enjoy! – and post your comments.   Tapas Walking Tour   Montserrat   […]

November 2018 Barcelona Modernist Architecture Walking Tour Check out our newest post at Barcelona Modernist Walking Tour   Sagrada Familia Find our write-up at Barcelona – Sagrada Familia   First Tapas Dinner More info coming soon.   […]

Places We’ve Stayed at in Ireland Overview Dublin, Ireland – July 14 & 15, 2017 The Merrion 21-24 Upper Merrion Street http://www.merrionhotel.com Belfast, Northern Ireland – July 16, 2017 The Merchant Hotel 16 Skipper Street https://www.themerchanthotel.com Donegal, Ireland – July 17, 2017 The Sandhouse Hotel Rossnowlagh Beach, Co. Donegal http://www.shandhouse.ie/ Cong, Ireland […]

Places We’ve Stayed at in Ireland Overview Dublin, Ireland – July 14 & 15, 2017 The Merrion 21-24 Upper Merrion Street http://www.merrionhotel.com Belfast, Northern Ireland – July 16, 2017 The Merchant Hotel 16 Skipper Street https://www.themerchanthotel.com Donegal, Ireland – July 17, 2017 The Sandhouse Hotel Rossnowlagh Beach, Co. Donegal http://www.sandhouse.ie/ Cong, Ireland – […]

My trip to Ireland, as mentioned in my posts about Virgin Atlantic, started out in London visiting friends Darren and Ian. The next leg was getting to Dublin to meet up with Kevin. I booked British Airways CityFlyer from London City airport to Dublin. Even though it was a short flight (less than 1 1/2 hours), I decided to book in Business Class as it wasn’t a huge difference in price. With […]

July 26, 2017 In my prior post about the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Experience, I talked about the trip to London from Seattle. I also want to give a little more details about our return, from London Heathrow to Seattle. We booked into Upper Class for our return home at the end of a whirlwind trip around Ireland – which we’ll write about in coming posts. But I thought now would be a […]

July 11, 2017 Another new airplane adventure! Virgin Atlantic, just this year, took over Delta’s route between Seattle and London. After years of flying exclusively British Airways on this route, I thought now was a great time to try something new for a change. Besides, I could snag an Upper Class (they’re version of Business Class and First Class rolled up into one) round-trip using […]

As we mentioned in the intro to this section, we decided to take another cruise on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2. We really looked forward to seeing all the changes in-store from her five weeks in dry dock. Cunard got us hooked on checking online to see the latest updates throughout the “Remaster.” We arrived in New York the day before the cruise and met up with our travel companions, […]

Opened in 2013, the Observer (Kim Velsey, 10-10-2013) described the Viceroy as “Soho with a killer view of Central Park, new construction with a mid-century aesthetic, masonry with a soaring glass facade.” And that pretty much captures it. The chic vibe extends from the moment you approach the doorway where you are greeted with ‘Welcome Home’ (actually sounding genuine BTW), to the compact […]

In Kevin’s article about making our Thanksgiving Cranberry Compote he mentioned our vanilla extract. This gave me the idea to write a quick note about it as well. As you may, or perhaps not, know that Kevin and I are fond of travelling to Hawaii when we can. Our favorite is the Big Island. It’s one of the more diverse and for us, the most interesting and relaxing. But having been there so many […]

The Journey Home   By Steven 25 August 2015   This day has finally come. Sadly, it’s time to head home. We’ve certainly enjoyed our travels, seeing old friends and making new, but vacation can’t go on forever.   As with all other travel days, of this trip, we start early with packing. This morning it should be so hard, you would think, it all needs to go home and we packed for air […]

Tuesday – Thursday, August 18-20 Kevin alluded in our last post about to the interesting time we had at out hotel in Elgin, Mansion House Hotel & Country Club. It was of such idiosyncrasy that it really does deserve a short post of its own. I’ll think you’ll agree with us as to why we’ve dubbed it “Scotland’s own Fawlty Towers.” I really did have […]