-
New place! Nice, FR and the French Riviera plus Monaco
We are way behind on actually posting pictures and thoughts on the various cities we’ve been visiting, but I’m at least trying to catch-up on the overall itinerary and then we’ll feel in the blanks as we have some more down time. Lots of moving around lately. After Cinque Terra, we were done with Italy…
-
Visiting Cinque Terre
Cinque Terre is a collection of 5 villages on the coast of Italy that historically could only be accessed by boat or footpaths (I read that they were originally goat paths) between the villages. They are basically famous for being really, really pretty, and lots of people go to hike along the paths connecting the…
-
New place! Cinque Terre, Italy 4/25 (by way of Lucca)
2 nights was enough of Bologna for us. Our next destination was Cinque Terre and we initially thought it would be cool to rent a car and stop by Modena and Parma on the way. We were looking into parmesan cheese factory tours outside Parma and realized that most everything was closed on the Thursday…
-
New place! Bologna, 4/23
We’ve heard good things about Bologna. Apparently it’s the “food capital” of Italy and home to Bolognese sauce as well as very close to Modena where Balsamic Vinegar comes from and Parma where parmigian cheese and prosciutto come from (among other foods). It’s a ~3 hour train from Rome. We’re excited to check it out…
-
Rome
Rome is spectacular. 2 years ago we took a family trip to Italy and had one day in Rome right before returning home. We hustled through the city, but had a fantastic time. Coming back we were excited to spend more time there (though also a little nervous that it might not live up to…
-
New place! Rome 4/19
We decided we could use a break from Spain, so hopped an Iberia Air flight to Rome. We had spent only a single day in Rome on a prior family vacation and loved it, but barely scratched the surface on the many things to do there. So, great Italian food plus some amazing sites seemed…
-
Thoughts on Madrid
Awesome, except for the hostility… Initially we were super impressed by Madrid. It’s one of the 5 largest cities in Europe (~5M people) and the capital of a country that once controlled ~13% of the world’s landmass, so it makes sense that it is a great city. We were surprised at how modern and cosmopolitan…
-
New place! Madrid
Rick Steves was maybe a bit extreme, but we did not love the Costa del Sol and decided to shorten our stay by a night and catch one of the ~15 daily trains north to Madrid. I’m sitting on the ~3 hour train as I write this and will say that it is the most…
-
Nerja and the Costa Azul (the Southern Coast of Spain)
Apparently the southern coast of Spain is famous for sun – and very popular with British tourists looking to get away from the perpetual grey weather (we know something about that). We wanted to see where our new British neighbors would be vacationing, so we drove down to the Costa Azul after our time in…
-
New place! Nerja, Spain (by way of Marbella and Malaga)
Done with the white hill towns, we headed south to the coast. Rick Steves does not like the coast… the direct quote from him is “Much of Spain’s south coast is so bad, it’s interesting. Anything resembling a quaint fishing village has been bikini-strangled and Nivea-creamed. Oblivious to the concrete, pollution, ridiculous prices, and traffic…
Where everything is Fuller