Stop 46: Easter Island

Posted on October 7, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

lorana from Easter Island!

Where on earth is Easter Island? It is the world’s most remote inhabited island! It is located about 2,500 miles from both Tahiti and Chile in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

We took this photo from our iPad:

The Flight
There is only one flight a week from Tahiti to Easter Island so this flight was tricky to book! Thankfully we got a ticket… and the flight was on time! We’re not sure what the airline does with you if this flight gets cancelled… maybe you wait until the next week? We’re glad we didn’t have to find out!

The interesting part is that the flight leaves at 1:55 AM! We have no clue why a flight would leave at this time, but it does!

Where to stay?
Finding a place to stay on Easter Island was an adventure! There was a place that looked great… until I saw it was $1,000-$1,500 per night. My goodness!! There were a couple of other very very expensive options… and then it dropped instantly to not nice at all. I hunted and hunted and finally found a new eco cabin. It is actually great! It won an eco design award and is complete with solar panels on the top for heating the water.

The cabin had a full kitchen, a flat screen TV, and was super clean. It was very nice for the island! We were even greeted at the airport with a flower necklace…and our own flock of wild roosters and hens!

Driving – An Adventure!
The island is about 50 km around so we definitely needed a rental to get around. While some roads are fine, lots of the roads here are an adventure to say the least!

The rentals are almost all SUVs with 4 x 4. Even with a 4 x 4, the rental car representative told us that there was a “bad” road we couldn’t go on as it could be unsafe for the car and the people. They also showed us specifically where the spare tire and toolkit were… hmmmm….

We understood the road restrictions and spare tire when we saw the “good” roads! While there are several paved roads, there are lots of roads with huge rocks, red mud, and massive ruts.

There are wild horses all around the islands so they are sometimes on the roads… as well as cows, dogs, and roosters. This little SUV was also a manual. The whole experience was an adventure!

What time is it?
Our friends at Apple certainly don’t know!

Normally the airline announces the local time when you deboard the plane, but it didn’t seem to happen on our flight in. The rental car clock was also several hours off, and the cabin has no clock. To get the current time we updated our iPhones via the local cell carrier and went on our way. In fact, all was well for our first half a day here as we started exploring the island.

On the morning of Day 2, we got up to see sunrise. We had looked up the sun time table on http://www.timeanddate.com and saw it was for 7:55 AM. When we woke up, the sun was already up!

Ryan (forever the time manager) was of course very distraught that he could be operating 1 hr off for half a day and have no clue. It took him a while to figure out what was off, but it turns out Apple hadn’t programed in new Daylight Savings Times for Easter Island! While DST begins in mid October next year, last year it was in early August. This year DST happened in September. What?!

Thankfully we figured out in time that we arrived for our main tour of the island on time!

The Crazy Statues & A Brief Overview
Why go to Easter Island? It is know for the Moai statues that are all over the island. These statues were carved by the islanders between 1000 – 1600 AD in honor of ancestors. Each statue took about a year to complete and often weighed several tons! The really crazy part is that the statues then had to be transported to their chosen resting place… which was often several kilometers away! This transporation process often took 1 – 1.5 years!

Things were ok for the islanders for several hundred years, but then they ran out of wood. Much of the island’s wood had been used for transporting statues and had left the island barren. This resulted in intertribal fighting in which tribes likely knocked down the moai of other tribes.

Eventually, the tribes started to settle disputes through what was called the “Birdman Competiton” in which the tribal leaders competed to see who would be the overall head leader for the year.

Things forever changed on the island when raiders from Peru came to the island and forcibly took many islanders as slaves. Only 15 were ever returned to the island, but these returned slaves brought back smallpox which decimated much of the remaining population. At one point the population was just 111 people.

With Chile winning a war over Peru and Bolivia, Chile took over control of the island. After a disastrous move of turning the whole island into a sheep farm for 40-50 years, things have finally turned around. Many statues were stood back up, and Chile is investing in the island. Tourism has gone from 6,000 visitors a year a decade ago to 60,000 a year today.

Don’t step on the statues!

Touring the Island
To understand these people and the statues, we took a great tour led by a New Zealander who had moved here. This allowed for an English tour and lots of kiwi humor! We had a great day visiting all over the island and getting some fun pictures!

I have been working on my long jumping skills!

While in Easter Island an exciting discovery occurred…two additional moai were found! Archeologists are coming from around the world to research.

We also saw the main quarry where the moai were carved. There were hundreds of moai in various stages of construction left there.

We also ventured out in our 4 x 4 to see the island’s main dormant volcano as well as see the remnants of the Birdman Competition huts.

On try #2 we also saw sunrise since we overrode Apple this time! 🙂

After a fun stop at Easter Island, we will spend the night in Santiago before moving on to Bolivia for a very exciting part of our trip! We will be volunteering with Samaritan’s Purse on a mission trip. We will tell you more about the mission work soon, but until then we appreciate prayer for our team and the work that will be done!

Bolivia Mission Trip

Posted on October 5, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Hola!

We wanted to take a moment before entering the last portion of the trip to update you on what we’ll be doing. One thing that we have wanted to do for several years is to serve on an international mission trip. When planning this sabbatical a mission trip was top on our list to include.

Our mission trip runs from Oct 6-12, and we will have no Internet access most of this time. We have scheduled our last blog posts from Easter Island and Chile to post over this time for your reading enjoyment. 🙂 We will blog on the Bolivia work once we have Internet again.

What is Samaritan’s Purse?
Samaritan’s Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. The organization serves many missions, including medical missions, water/hygiene improvement, disaster relief, and church constructions.

We have been blessed to be a part of Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Program for several years. As part of this program, individuals from all over the world pack shoeboxes full of small toys, school supplies, and hygiene products that are dispersed with Christian literature. This work is near and dear to my heart so I really wanted to volunteer internationally with this fantastic organization!

Bolivia Water Well Project!
We were very excited when we learned that there was a mission trip to Bolivia over a time that could work. For this particular mission, we will be helping to install a water well in the Bolivian mountains at about 15,000 feet.

This work is important because many here suffer and die from contaminated water that could be fixed with a clean drinking source. Learn more about this work here from a recent trip and a short video:

A Well of Love

http://video.samaritanspurse.org/player/?vid=k2f4w3y2&c=16&title=give-clean-water

Meeting the Team
We’re very excited to meet the rest of the mission team! We will be serving with 4 others from a church in the US. We’ve been exchanging emails and had a phone call, but meeting at the hotel in Bolivia will be our first in person introduction.

Help Needed
We certainly feel blessed to be able to serve and are excited to see what God will do over the next week. We appreciate any prayers for our work and the people with whom we will interact.

If you’d like to learn more about Samaritan’s Purse or to volunteer, check out their website at: http://www.samaritanspurse.org/

Interested in putting together a shoebox? Let me know. I absolutely love putting the boxes together and could help you still do one this year!

Stops 39-41: New Zealand: Dunedin, Milford Sound, Queenstown

Posted on September 28, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Greetings from Kiwi Land!!

We’ll start with a quick test. Which team just won America’s Cup? Any idea? Do you know what America’s Cup is?

We had no idea, but Kiwis love America’s Cup (it’s sailing/yachting for those not aware). Here’s a quote we saw in NY Times that sums it up: “The Cup is a niche attraction in the United States but it is a major event in New Zealand and has been drawing television audiences well over 1 million in a nation of 4.4 million”

At nearly every place we have stayed and at lots of restaurants people have been asking us about Team Oracle (which is Team USA). We had to read up to find out what was happening! The race has been the longest in history and has stretched out over 17 races. The intensity feels like an OSU vs. Michigan game spread out over 2 weeks! Team New Zealand orchestrated one of the biggest chokes in the history of sports by losing a best of 17 tournament when it was once up 8 points to 1!!!!

Trip Reshuffle!
Our trip to New Zealand started off with a substantial trip reshuffle. Apparently New Zealand had been pummeled with one of the worst storms of the last 25 years just before we arrived, and two Canadian tourists were killed when their van was swept off a mountain pass in a mudslide.

This resulted in the pass being shut down for +10 days. The scary part was that we were set to go over that same mountain pass after visiting glaciers on the west coast of the island. While disappointing to not see the glaciers, we were very grateful to not have been hurt or massively delayed with the road shut down.

In about 1.5 hours in the airport, we made a quick decision to cancel our glacier portion of the trip. With the help of Trip Advisor and several websites, we quickly changed our hotel, remapped out the next two days, and set off for the Southeast Coast of New Zealand. It turned out to be a fun change, and we had a great time!

Moeraki Boulders
Our first stop was to look at the Moeraki Boulders as we headed down the coast. These are unusual, large boulders that are spherical shaped. There are all over a beach and look quite strange!

Dunedin Area
Our next stop was in Dunedin, a neat Scottish heritage town spread over hills and a valley that overlooks a harbor and peninsula. We were fortunate to get the last apartment at a beautiful complex overlooking the city (whew! we much prefer having things planned out vs. last second shuffles!). It’s a college town with several Scottish buildings, beautiful views, and the world’s steepest street! Here are a few pics:

Green Pastures & Lambs
On our drives across New Zealand we saw lots of the green pastures and sheep that are signatures of the country. Since it is spring here, we also got to see lots of new lambs. My grandfather and aunt always had sheep which I loved to hold as a child. Seeing lambs running around the fields brought back lots of wonderful memories!

Nugget Point
We finished off our shuffled plans with a visit to Nugget Point. This point is on the Catlins Coast and is near the southern tip of New Zealand. The real treat of stopping here was that we saw the rare migrating albatross birds. There are only 25K of the Shy Albatross in the the world and are considered “Near Threatened” status. We happened to be at Nugget Point during their migration so we saw lots of them. These albatross weigh about 9 lbs and have up to an 8 foot wing span so they are huge. It was a great unexpected surprise!

Milford Sound & Fiordlands
From Nugget Point we headed to Milford Sound in Fiordlands National Park. Milford Sound is one of the best known destinations in New Zealand, and we happened to hit a fantastic weather day! It rains 2 out of every 3 days and is known as one of the wettest places in the world.

The week before we arrived there had been terrible weather – and the road to Milford Sound was actually shut down due to over 20 avalanches. In fact about 15 tourists were stuck at the sound for 5 days (see link for some interesting aerial photos)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9154681/Milford-cut-off-by-massive-slip

We were fortunate that road had reopened and the weather was sunny and warm for early Spring. We expected about 40-45 degrees with rain. The trip and the views were fantastic!

This is where Kiwis jump in the lake before the Michigan game

One of the 20 avalanches a week before our visit. Wow!!

And another…

We even got to see seals and the 2nd rarest penguin… although they were tricky to capture in pictures!

We also stayed in a great B&B near the park entrance. It’s often hard to find places that are nice near parks, but this B&B was great! Here is the view from our room:

We finished off our day by driving to Queenstown and eating at a gourmet burger shop. Ryan had a huge lamb burger!

We’re now off to explore more of New Zealand!

Stop 37: Western Australia & Perth

Posted on September 23, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Greetings from Western Australia!

When planning this trip we debated a lot on what areas to visit as we had more places we wanted to see than time available! Ryan had read that Perth was rated as one of the top places to live in the world. Our final tipping point for trekking to Perth is that we realized it was wildflower season in Western Australia. I love flowers so I was really excited!

Western Australia isn’t visited nearly as frequently as the east coast because it’s quite a long trek across the country. In fact, we talked to a couple of friends/classmates from Australia who said lots of people in Australia (including them!) had never been to the west coast. You can’t really drive across the country due to a lack of roads (no interstates here!), and it’s like flying from Ohio to California!

After having explored Western Australia, we are SO glad we bought an extra plane ticket to go here! We had an amazing time! Here are our top 7 reasons:

1. Averages 8 hours of sunshine a day… some say the most of anywhere in the world
2. Strongest economic growth in Australia (thanks to an explosion of the mining industry)
3. Wildflowers in the Spring – amazing!
4. Wild Australia – we ran across wild kangaroos, went miles without seeing cars… wow!
5. The seafood is awesome!
6. Gorgeous beaches
7. It takes approximately 1 minute to walk from the Perth Airport arrival area to the car rental. When you return the car, it takes about 1 minute to walk to the departure gate. 🙂

Here are a few highlights from our visit:

The Pinnacles
When you’re at The Pinnacles, it looks eery and makes you think you’re on another planet! In the middle of a desert landscape are wild rock spires surrounded by yellow sand dunes. The rocks stretch for a 10 km loop and then disappear as suddenly as they appear. Apparently the rocks are made mostly of shell and date back to when the area was beneath the sea. The really crazy part for us was that this park wasn’t discovered until the 1960s. How is this possible?! Wow!

We had a particularly wild weather day at the Pinnacles. Although rain isn’t typical in this desert, the main road into the park was closed due to flash flooding! Thankfully most of the park could still be walked so we set out hiking. In the course of 1.5 hours, we had 2 downpours, 60 mph windgusts, and 2 periods of sunshine. It was nuts! We have to give a shout out to our awesome umbrellas (soon to be mentioned in our Tips & Tricks!)! Every other person’s umbrella was flipped inside out while ours withstood the wind. The only issue was that the handle of mine actually bent in the wind and had to bent back. Crazy!

The only small issue we had was making it into another national park we planned to drive through. The park entry was down a red clay road that turned into complete mud. Our little rental Hyundai seemed to be swallowed in mud so we had to turn back. This made for an interesting time cleaning up the car before returning it to the car rental… which may have involved a rather interesting paper towel and squeegee clean at the local BP station by the airport!

Indian Ocean
To reach The Pinnacles you drive along Indian Ocean Drive. This is similar to Pacific Highway 1 and offers fantastic deep blue water views and cliff overlooks. We also saw crazy dunes of white sand located hundreds of meters from the beach and across the road. I guess the winds must be a little strong here!

We stayed right on the Indian Ocean and had a great view! This was our first time putting our hand in the Indian Ocean.

Beautiful Wildflowers
Western Australia is known to have some of the most spectacular wildflowers in the world – and we think it’s true! We managed to put almost 1100 km on our rental car while driving several hours north of Perth.

Western Australia has over 1800 varieties of wildflowers, 60% of which are native to Australia. We spent a full day stopping to hike and driving down highways filled with flowers. We didn’t see any other cars for miles and miles so it was easy to pull of the road to look at the flowers and take pictures. We kept finding new varieties even after several hours of driving! Here are some of the different varieties:

The area is also know for having flowers that literally carpet fields and red rock areas. Here are a few pictures of the fields of flowers (can you tell I like flowers?):

Even sheep and cows got to graze in fields with flowers!

Kangaroos!
I wasn’t sure if we would actually see kangaroos, but we definitely did! Our final count was 11! When driving down a small dirt road to look at flowers early in the morning, we actually came across 4 female kangaroos and their joeys. Thankfully we didn’t hit them (we saw several more that were roadkill!), and I scrambled for the camera to get a couple of shots. They are fast!

We also found that the kangaroos aren’t very exciting to local Western Australian farmers. They can be quite a nuisance!

Cottlesbeach, Perth
Once back in Perth, we took the opportunity to see Cottlesbeach, the most famous beach in Perth. This beach is know for its sunsets as you can see!

King’s Park, Perth
King’s Park is the nicest city park I have ever seen. It is set on a bluff overlooking Perth and hosts a wildflower festival every spring. We timed out our visit to be there during the festival and loved it!

Everlasting flowers are a signature of Western Australia

As are Kangaroo Paws! I loved them!

There were so many great flowers to see!

We found a cafe in the park that had awesome mango smoothies and snapper with a great view over the city.

Dining in Perth
We got to try even more fish in Perth. At one point I realized I had had different types of snapper for 4 meals in a row! We also had an amazing dessert – a warm rhubarb almond tart with passion fruit ice cream on top and a light dusting of chocolate cookie crumbs beside it. It was such a yummy combination!

We are now returning to Sydney to finish off a few activities before heading to New Zealand!

Stop 35: The Outback: Uluru & The Olgas

Posted on September 18, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

G’Day Mate!

Our next stop in Australia allowed us to utilize the beauty of the Round the World airline ticket. The ticket is fixed price and allows you to fly anywhere that a OneWorld code share flight is available. As a result you can fly into out of the way, small airports that are expensive to reach for no extra cost. This worked out really well as we wanted to go from Cairns (Great Barrier Reef area) to see Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in the Outback

Getting to the Uluru can be difficult as the most economical city to fly into is located about 5 hours away and involves a long desert drive that is only recommended for daylight hours due to lots of wildlife you can hit on the way! With our Round the World ticket, we were able to fly directly into Ayers Rock, a tiny airport with only 2 gates located about 10 minutes from Uluru. This saved us tons of time and driving!

So what is Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park?
In case you aren’t familiar, Uluru is a huge monolith in the middle of the Outback. The surrounding area is completely flat for hundreds of miles so it’s particularly spectacular to see this huge monolith in the middle of the dessert. It looks like it was just dropped into the landscape! The color of the monolith is also quite intriguing, particularly at sunrise and sunset, because the rock is red and seems to glow as the sun rises and sets.

PB&J
There were no extravagant meals here! There is only one small town area (and by small, I mean really, really small) so the food options are quite limited and not known to be very good. So…. our first stop was at the local IGA grocery store to pick up food for the next 4 meals. We enjoyed classics like PB&J, apples, and granola bars. 🙂

Kata Tjunta
Kata Tjunta, also known as “The Olgas,” is the sister monolith of Uluru. While it is lesser known, we had read that it is often more preferred than Uluru (and we now agree!).

It was unusually hot when we visited so we were worried the trail might shut down as it closes at 97 degrees. Thankfully it was *only* 95 degrees so we just made it past the cutoff! Our favorite hike was the Valley of the Winds, which is an 8 km hike that takes you up through the rocks of the Olgas and provides some great views.

We were also surprised and happy to see that there were wildflowers still blooming! It is early spring in Australia so we were treated with beautiful yellow, red, white, and purple flowers throughout the hike. It was great!!

Flies, Flies, and More Flies
The less exciting part about visiting Uluru-Kata Tjuta is that it is notorious for having horrible flies. This isn’t exactly advertised on the tourism website ;), but Ryan discovered it while reading forums about visiting. Thankfully, we read there is a perfect solution – Fly nets that you could buy at IGA! Although these nets look terrible, they were a complete lifesaver. The flies go straight for your eyes and ears so it was quite unpleasant without them. With the nets it was great!

In fact, we paused only a couple of times while hiking to take off our nets for pictures. Once we had the nets off, we took the pictures as fast as we possibly could to get the nets back on ASAP!

Sunset at The Olgas
The Olgas are known for being particularly striking at sunset so we staked out a spot and enjoyed a magnificent view!

PS from Ryan: While waiting for sunset, lots of tourists were standing on this post and jumping off to take pictures. Emily joined in this fun… and this picture makes me laugh 🙂

Here are a few pictures of the rock leading up to sunset

And then here is the rock at sunset – notice the change in color!

Monopoly Pricing 101
The hotels for Uluru-Kata Tjuta were the most maddening of the trip. Our hotel night had the dubious honors of being one of the worst rooms and most expensive rooms all in one!

It’s interesting – one resort company owns all of the properties at the park. It seems that development has been limited and the nearest towns of any real size are hours away so this one company has a complete monopoly on pricing. This results in options that range from Really Poor –> Poor –> Fair –> Average, with average being almost $1000 PER NIGHT!! In fact, the Ritz Carlton in Japan was significantly cheaper than our night in Uluru-Kata Tjuta. 😦

We sprung for the dorm style option that had its own bathroom. Unfortunately these only came in 4 bunk bed rooms… so we could have invited in several friends! Ryan wasn’t too thrilled when he realized that he was too long for the bed but the good news is that the room was decently clean (my priority). They even had a can fly/mosquito killer there for you! Not exactly a value… but hey… limited options gives maximum pricing power!

Uluru
We kicked off our morning bright and early to see sunrise at Uluru. Here are a few shots:

We spent the rest of the morning hiking around the base of the rock and looking at wildflowers. It is not recommended to hike to the top of Uluru for several reasons – It’s an aboriginal sacred ground, you have to hold a chain all the way up the steep face, and the rock becomes dangerous with wind or rain. Today access was fully blocked due to high winds. We were quite content with our base walk!

After a great morning exporing Uluru, we headed back to the Ayers Rock airport. We were limited to 200 km before a per km surcharge kicked in on the rental car (seemed to be the norm for every car rental here!). We were proud of our utilization… 196 km driven!

We’re now on the way to Sydney!

Stop 34: Cairns/Great Barrier Reef

Posted on September 15, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Greetings from the Land Down Under!

After leaving Hong Kong, we took a direct flight to Cairns, Australia, which is home to the Great Barrier Reef. We were very surprised that you could fly to Cairns from Hong Kong, but it worked out very well for us!

The “Wrong” Side of the Road
After landing in Cairns, we picked up our rental car and hit the road. Since Australians drive on the left side of the road, it was an interesting and comical experience! On the plane I had been mentally walking myself through driving on the left, which way to look when turning, etc. When we got to the lot and started the car, I felt prepared and ready to go. The one thing I had not anticipated was that the knobs for the blinker and the windshield wiper controls would be inverted! We must have looked like complete morons pulling up to stop signs with our windshield wipers going! Just when you thought you had it and got comfortable…. instincts kicked in and suddenly your windshield was getting cleaned again! 😉

The one other fun experience was driving in round-abouts. After having spent 5 weeks in Europe driving, we have become “pros” at roundabouts. However… going through roundabouts backwards was an entirely new experience!

Great Barrier Reef
We heard that a town called Port Douglas (thanks Kristen S!), located about 1 hour north of Cairns, was a bit less touristy and had great reefs nearby so we stayed there. This was great advice!

To get out to the Great Barrier Reef, we took a 2 hour boat trip. While there are sections of the reef closer to the shore, the reef near the shore isn’t nearly as pretty as the outer reefs due to environmental damage over the years.

To see the reef firsthand we spent the day snorkeling in 3 locations on the reef. It was amazing! While the water was a bit cool (it’s the equivalent of early March here), we had wetsuits. While we didn’t look too stylish, we were quite thankful for the warm suit!

We were able to float just a few inches above the reef and got to see incredible fish and the beautiful reef! We even got to see the “Finding Nemo” fish! We had an underwater camera with us so we were able to get lots of pictures. Based on lots of positive reviews, we went with the Sony TX30 camera and found that it works great! Here are a few of the pictures we took:

On our way back to port, a humpback whale and her baby were spotted. It’s whale migration season here in Australia so it was a nice surprise to see whales!

Daintree Rainforest
Just north of Port Douglas lies the Daintree Rainforest. At a point called Cape Tribulation this rainforest actually comes all the way to the ocean and touches the Great Barrier Reef.

While we saw a small bit of rainforest while in Brazil, we really haven’t been in a full rainforest so it was neat to see. We saw lots of neat plants and animals, including a huge lizard (see pic below!), and a tree only found in the Daintree.

Port Douglas
We enjoyed the town of Port Douglas a lot! On our first day we stopped at a local farmer’s market. They had fantastic fruit juices – I had fresh pineapples crushed and Ryan enjoyed fresh mango juice. We also picked up some locally grown oranges as well as macadamia nuts. I absolutely love mangoes, pineapple, and macadamia nuts so this was awesome for me!

These foods also crossed over into several dishes that we had. I had barramundi fish (so fresh and good!) for dinner every day I was here, and I loved the mango, pineapple, and tomato salsas that were used. Ryan has enjoyed the huge tiger prawns frequently served here as well as the kangaroo fillet he ate!

We also found mango sorbet, passion fruit sorbet, and macadamia nut ice cream. Wow!

Cairns
We finished off our time in the Queensland area with dinner in Cairns on the pier – barrimundi fish again!

Other Random Observations from Australia vs. Other Countries
One really interesting thing that we have noticed while quickly traveling around the world is that each culture is very unique and different (this sounds obvious, but is very apparent when you experience this first hand!). It’s been very apparent what different cultures emphasize and where different people put their focus. In particular, we’ve noticed very big differences in trends such as hotel quality, service, cleanliness focus, attention to time/detail, credit card usage, carry on luggage, airport security, and internet availability.

– Across every country the locals we have met have been so friendly to us. In particular, people have been especially nice when we’ve had one to one conversations with them. This has been so nice!

– Lots of things are sold a la carte in Australia (quite different than Europe prix fixe menus!). Here are a few examples:
> Bread isn’t usually included in meals (it’s $8-10 so I’m much less tempted by carbs :))
> Internet is often not free (charged often by min or 15 min increments!)
> Using your credit card almost always results in paying a 1.5% – 3% transaction fee (I haven’t used cash this much in years!)

– Airport regulations are interesting. By now, we’re fairly seasoned travelers. The most interesting for us has been that our flight from Hong Kong to Australia rechecked our bags at the plane and threw away all water that was bought inside airport security gates. While you can’t bring bottles of water through the normal airport security checkpoint, this is the only place in the world where we’ve seen drinks purchased inside security taken away. Our conclusion was that Australia security must be quite high… but we were surprised again. On two flights no one ever asked to see an ID (not at the check-in gate, not at security, not when boarding the plane…) Hmmm….. strange….plus it was September 11th one of the days!

We’ve also noticed carry-on luggage differences. In the US, Asia, & Europe you can generally carry on 10-15 kg plus a personal item. In Australia and New Zealand you only get 7 kg for both items!!! Yikes! Our red bags definitely had to be checked which is generally free (as long as you don’t fly Jet Star).

– We have loved the outdoor activities and scenery in Australia – definitely amazing and some of the best we’ve seen!

– The food is expensive in Australia (bread at dinner is $8-$10, salads and dessert are often about $20 each) but better than expected. The fish, salads, and fresh fruit have been fantastic! Macadamia nuts are also one of my favorites so it’s been great!

We’re now headed to Ayers Rock in the Outback! Bye for now!

Stop 33: Hong Kong

Posted on September 12, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

4 flights down, 18 to go! We didn’t really fly much on the first half of the trip, but we’ll be flying a lot now!

After landing in Hong Kong, we made our way to the hotel. The airport is located on its own island so there is a train that takes you to one of the two main islands followed by a bus that takes you to the doorstep of the major hotels. It was very efficient actually!

We spent just over 2 days in Hong Kong and had several interesting experiences. Here are a few highlights:

Hong Kong History: Neither of us knew a lot about Hong Kong’s history so we kicked off our visit with a stop the island’s history museum. For those not also not familiar with Hong Kong, the areas has two main islands – Kowloon and Hong Kong. Hong Kong Island was owned by the British for about 150 years while Kowloon Island was leased for 99 years by Britain from China.

This lease arrangement expired in 1997, and negotiations between Britain and China ultimately led to China taking back its leased property (Kowloon) as well as the island Britain owned (Hong Kong). Crazy! This whole arrangement caught our interest so we’ve been reading more about the history as well as the future plan for Hong Kong.

Although we haven’t been to Hong Kong before, we definitely noticed a loss of the glam (particularly on the Kowloon side) versus we’ve heard about in Hong Kong. This article might suggest why… it looks like Hong Kong may not stay in the spotlight long term.

https://www.google.com/search?q=china+hong+kong+shanghai&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari#hl=en&q=china+hong+kong+shanghai&tbm=nws

Peak Tower & Hiking: There are mountains that rise up behind the city portion of Hong Kong Island so there is a funicular tram that carries passengers to the top. The tram is quite steep but offers great views of the city below. We also hiked around the side of the island to get more views from above. We capped off the night with dinner overlooking the city. It was very nice!! The only sad part was that the view isn’t as pretty as it used to be…massive smog is overtaking Hong Kong (courtesy of Hong Kong’s own pollution combined with Guangzhou pollution blowing on the city).

Harbor & Hotel Room: The hotel moved us to a room with a full view of the harbor which was great! Here are a few snapshots of the view.

Shangri La Lunch: Ryan had been anxiously anticipating this lunch after reading about it a few months ago… he thinks it’s one of the nicest and largest buffets he has every seen! They had chef prepared noodle bowls, sushi, and dim sum which he loved. I, on the other hand, was spotted mostly at the table with an array of fruit and the dessert area 🙂 This was literally about all we ate that day!

Afternoon Tea: Given the British influence on the islands, afternoon teas were once popular. The original Peninsula Hotel has a tea each day so we finished off our time in Hong Kong with biscuits, tea sandwiches, and small pastries (and coffee for me since I don’t like tea! :)). It was also quite interesting to be in this hotel as was the headquarters of the Japanese Army based in Hong Kong in WWII.

– Michelin Not the Same in Asia: For the foodies out there, we agree with several articles indicating that there is not consistency in restaurant reviews between Europe and Asia. After visiting both countries and trying out restaurants, we agree with the below article indicating the standards don’t seem to be the same. We definitely agree… Europe standards are much stricter.

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/01/28/is-the-michelin-guide-relevant-in-asia/

Ryan had dim sum for lunch from Tim Ho Wan, which is known for its Michelin 1 Star rating. We also had dinner at a restaurant on the Michelin list. Having just been in France, we really think neither of these restaurants would have made the list in France. While both were good, they were more of mall fast food joints.

– Luxury Stores in Mall The IFC mall was literally packed with stores of every major designer and brand you could imagine. We’ve never seen such a major collection of stores in a mall that might be stand-alone in other markets.

– Garrett’s Popcorn: Speaking of the mall… look what we found! Why is there a Garrett’s Popcorn in Hong Kong?!

– Go Kellogg!!! A little purple pride here… look at the billboard we saw all over the airport!

We are now on to Australia after a great set of stops in Asia!

Stop 32: Beijing

Posted on September 10, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Hello!

Now that we’re back online, we can give you an update on our latest travels.

We kicked off our time in China in Beijing. Thanks to my awesome co-worker Kevin K (thank you, thank you Kevin! :)) we had a driver for our time in Beijing who was wonderful! The driver was waiting at the airport to pick us up and was with us throughout our time in Beijing. It worked out wonderfully since we speak absolutely no Chinese, and it allowed us to be dropped off at the entrance area of tourist areas and picked up at the exit which saved us tons of time. We also enjoyed the hospitality and kindness of the driver who was great!

After being picked up at the airport, we headed straight for the Great Wall. This was the place we wanted to visit the most in Beijing so we were very fortunate that there was sun and low smog when we were there! We visited an area of the wall at Mutianyu, a slightly less touristy section recommended by several friends and co-workers.

Although I knew it was steep, I was still surprised at how steep the stairs and path seemed in person. The steps felt like a ladder!

We weren’t planning this picture but a lady who spoke almost no English insisted on taking it this way 🙂 It was way easier to just pose!

We guess an upgrade to 5 As has occurred vs the original monument!

For our second day in the city, we had a private tour guide arranged by our driver who was fantastic! She had traveled to the US and several other countries as a guide, and her English and knowledge of the sites were both fantastic.

Our visit included the major UNESCO World Heritage sites from Ming and Qing Dynasties, including the Temple of Heaven (temples visited by the emperors), the Forbidden City (primarily living palace of the emperors), and Summer Palace (summer residence of the emperor which was burned by the British & French then rebuilt). We also had a chance to see Tiananmen Square. It was fascinating to be seeing these areas firsthand after seeing them in media and textbooks for years.

Locals exercising

Chairman Mao must have been a hoopster in his day

We finished off our sightseeing in Beijing with a visit to Olympic Park and saw the Bird’s Nest Aquatic Building where Michael Phelps won so many gold medals. It was interesting to see that the building, like many Olympic structures, isn’t being used much these days (proving out the research that one Kellogg GIM Team did questioning the long-term economic payout of hosting the Olympics!)

You’ll notice that it rained our second day in Beijing… but it was actually nice as it reduced the smog. Although it was sunny on our first day in Beijing, we could barely see the sun once we came out of the mountains because of the intense smog.

Here are few things we learned in China:

-Our 4g phone was always limited to 1g when using data…
-Pricing was interesting… Some things were inexpensive (a private tour guide was very affordable here, we had the cheapest taxi ride of any international city
– Beijing’s Population > Entire State of Ohio’s Population
-We saw nearly every Asian and Western model of car out on the roads, and many cars were very nice. The interesting thing is that in between brand new cars, we saw bikes and bikes that were modified with engines and trailers.

Overall, we saw a lot and learned a ton from our time here! Now onto Hong Kong!

The hotel sent its greetings as we departed 🙂 Note: The Room Key thanked us!

Stop 27: Geneva

Posted on August 31, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

As we drove into Geneva from Interlaken, we found it interesting to see the road signs change from German to French. While we knew that Geneva mainly speaks French, it was quite interesting to see the language on road signs switch while you were still within the same country!

We kicked off our time in Geneva with a fondue dinner. Fondue is a popular dish around Geneva, and it was great! What could possibly be bad about warm cheese and bread?! They also gave you small potatoes to dip in. Wow! We also had a dish that was essentially melted cheese with a few potatoes. 🙂

For dessert, we were surprised to see that the in season fruit was strawberry. Geneva’s growing season is apparently a lot later than back home where you can pick strawberries in June!

The next morning we started off our day with coffee with a friend who is working in Geneva now. It was great to catch up! We then headed off to visit St. Pierre’s Cathedral, a church which has a beautiful view overlooking the Geneva waterfront.

PS: Mike D – No graffiti this time 🙂

After lunch at a French bistro in Place du Bourg-de-Four (historic old town portion of the city), we enjoyed some Swiss chocolates from Martel. They even had a marzipan made of pistachios versus almond. It was delicious!

Is this an ancestor of the Ridgeville Corner Rohrs!?

We spent our afternoon enjoying Lake Geneva, a lake that’s over 80 km. We were able to rent a small boat that allowed us to get out of the city and enjoy the sunshine. We had great views looking back at the city and its distinctive water fountain – Jet d’Eau. There were also vineyard areas and beautiful houses as we went further out of the city. While we weren’t able to get out on a sailboat (we’ve been taking sailing lessons :)), it was just great to be out on the water!

We finished off the day with a stop at the Patek Philippe Museum. The museum had a historic watch collection that included watches from other producers dating back to the first pocket watches. They literally had hundreds of watches, and we were amazed at how ornate and detailed many were. Given the high level of security in this building, I think that those hundreds of watches must be worth a fortune!

Stops 24-25: Swiss Alps & Appenzell

Posted on August 29, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Our next stop in the Swiss Alps has been incredible! As I am typing the start of this post, we are sitting at 2,500m in the Berggasthaus Alter Santis. This is an alpine guesthouse located on one of the highest peaks in the Swiss Alps, and it is incredible! You can actually see 6 countries from the peak – Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France, and Italy.

This guesthouse has been on Mount Santis for over 150 years (but just underwent some renovations so it’s quite nice!). It is so beautiful, quiet and magnificent here. Literally, it is completely silent… no TVs, no Internet…. and just one lightbulb in our room.

We ate dinner at the guesthouse, and Ryan enjoyed traditional Swiss food! (You can also see my not so traditional Swiss dinner!)

Ryan’s view of Swiss Food

My view of Swiss Food…

I guess Swiss Hot Chocolate also comes from a packet!

We then headed out to watch for sunset and nightfall. It was only 38 degrees Fahrenheit (and to think we were over 100 degrees just a week ago!) so it was a chilly wait for the cloud cover to clear. The clouds kept floating in and out so that one minute all you could see was fog and the next minute you saw spectacular sunset and moon views.

There is a gondola down there

In fact, there was a full moon while we were here. Several locals had come up just to watch the full moon. We met one person who came up the mountain just to take photos of the moon and stars so he stayed out taking pictures all night at nearly freezing temperatures. Wow!!!

This has definitely been a very authentic experience as it sounds like not many Americans stay here! The locals were so surprised we were staying here but said that it is a true gem so we were so glad to have found it. It was such a neat experience as most guests had dinner in one large room and stayed there having tea, coffee, and hot chocolate for quite a while. We enjoyed visiting with several people before heading out to take pictures of the moon and mountains. Despite some cold fingers, it was wonderful! We were all the more thankful for a thick down comforter (in August!) since our room was about 55 degrees. 🙂

The next morning I woke up quite early to see sunrise. Our room faced east and overlooked the mountains so we couldn’t have had a more perfect vantage point. While its normally difficult to persuade Ryan to get up for sunrise, he only had to sit up in bed to see this one! 😉

Ryan loves to watch sunrise

In the bathroom we noticed that there was a box with a timer and 3 chips. Maybe this is common in Swiss hiking guesthouses or maybe something in German was written somewhere that we didn’t understand, but we had to guess at this one! We guessed it was shower related, and I got to be the guinea pig. I figured my best bet was to be really fast. It turns out you had 2 minutes and 18 seconds of water… At which point the shower completely shut off. Wow, talk about needing to move fast! It’s quite difficult to get water to the top of the mountain so it was important to conserve so we were happy to help… And I would say a 2 min, 18 sec shower will definitely conserve water!

After a breakfast of Swiss cheese, warm wheat bread, and yogurt, we hit the hiking trails again. Our morning hike was called Rotstein Pass, which has been rated as one of the top hikes in Switzerland. This hike crosses between two mountain passes on a narrow trail so you get 360 views of mountains for almost all of the hike. There are chains along about half of the hike so you can grab on to avoid falling, and we rented hiking poles as well. This is one of the most beautiful hikes I have ever been on! Here are few photos of the view:

To see more on this hike, check out: http://m.myswitzerland.com/en/hiking-the-ridge-between-mts-saentis-and-altmann.html

After heading back down the mountain, we drove into a small town called Appenzell that looks like the traditional Swiss town image you probably have in your mind. We enjoyed eating some local Swiss cheese and a hazelnut cake as well as strolling through the town.

We finished off our visit to the region with a short stop over in Lucern, a pretty city with both a lake and mountains. We dined by the water and then enjoyed walking across the waterfront and seeing the Chapel Bridge. This medieval bridge is over 800 years old and has paintings in the eaves that depict historical scenes as you walk. It also has flower boxes all along the outside. It was pretty!

Look for more updates from Switzerland soon!

Stop 20: Prague

Posted on August 25, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Wow, it’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years since I was in Prague!

I spent a summer studying in Prague in undergrad so it was a memory filled reunion for me and an intro to Prague for Ryan. Ryan and I were dating at the time I studied here so he heard lots about the country but had never seen it. He has also pestered me for 10 years for not taking many pictures of my dorm, classroom, or campus. 🙂 So… it was very fun to show him where I was in person!

There are definitely still examples of the country not being quite as developed. For example, the road from Vienna to Prague is primarily a 2 lane road… as there would have been no ability for Czechs to be able to travel outside the borders to Austria.

However, there are less and less of these examples now that two decades have passed without communism and the Czech has joined the EU. It was fascinating to see the advancement the country has made! Coming into the city, we saw new malls, housing developments, and major company buildings (particularly IT-based companies such as HP, Atos, and Microsoft). I also noticed many of the buildings had been cleaned and repainted.

We kicked off our time in Prague with a visit to the campus where I studied. We had lunch at the campus restaurant where I ate lunch each day, saw the dorm where I lived, and walked past the classroom we used. It was so fun to see it again!

This is the phone booth I called Ryan and my family over the summer!

This used to be a cinder track – they got an upgrade!

After visiting campus we headed downtown, and I took Ryan through all the typical Prague sites. We saw St. Wenceslas Square with its Horse Statue, which is a frequent meeting point and the site of Czech student Jan Palach burning himself to death in 1969 to protest Soviet occupation of his country. We then walked through the Old Town (an area filled both with lots of historical sites and tourists!), the Jewish Quarter, and an area with my favorite view of Prague Castle.

Jewish Cemetary

We also had a wonderful end to the day with one of Ryan’s friends from high school Church youth group. She is now a missionary in the Czech Republic and teaches English classes. We were able to meet up for dinner and had a wonderful time! It was so interesting to hear about the local culture, her work, and the challenges of working in a country that is <1% Christian. This was also Emily's first time meeting Stacy. Ryan had his first taste of traditional Czech food (Emily was never a big fan ;)), and we had such a wonderful time with Stacy! Thank you so much Stacy!

Our hotel had a fun program in which a hotel staff member would go for a run through the city and explain the history and culture of various areas you passed so I started off the next morning with a run. It was a lot of fun (and Ryan was happy I had another group for running so he could sleep in ;))!

We spent the rest of the morning exploring Prague Castle before heading to what is called the "Dancing House" for lunch.

The Dancing House was designed by Frank Gehry and has a beautiful view of the skyline. We had actually decided to eat lunch here because it allows you to go to a private observation deck on top of the building for free (after you pay for lunch…haha). Prague is a very beautiful city from above, with red roofs throughout the city and the historical buildings preserved. Since Prague and the rest Czechoslovakia were quickly taken by Hitler after the Sudetenland was ceded and the city avoided most of the airstrikes in WWII, architecture from multiple centuries remains intact today.

We finished off the day by visiting Vysehard, an old fort for the city that overlooks the river (thanks for the reco Stacy!), before going up Petrin Hill. Petrin Hill has an mini “Eiffel Tower” on top of a hill over the city. We went up at sunset and enjoyed a beautiful view! We finished off the night with dinner on Petrin Hill followed by a walk back to the hotel across the famous Charles Bridge, one of the most popular areas in Prague.

Stop 17: Venice

Posted on August 22, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Greetings from Venice!

Since there are no cars in central Venice, we researched how to park our car before arriving. We actually found it was best to have a reservation for parking and to prepay it. We were very glad to have a reservation as most of the garages were almost full!

After parking we took a water taxi into the main section of the city. While inexpensive the water taxis are definitely not speedy! It like riding the Chicago Red Line or non-express Purple Line to Evanston…. you feel like you’ll never get there because of stopping at every single station!

Our hotel was about a 10 min walk from the main square, and we were so happy that we had limited luggage! We saw multiple people hauling enormous suitcases on luggage carts that had to be manually unloaded at every bridge! For those of you who have been to Venice, you can imagine what a mess this can be. Venice is known for its bridges which all have a relatively steep incline to accomodate gondolas. While the bridges are very scenic, they are a mess for luggage carts!

We thought our hotel would be nice, but you are never sure until you’re there. It turned out to be wonderful! It was an apartment with a room upstairs, a kitchen, and a living room. It was in fantastic condition, was on a quiet street, and overlooked a bridge and plaza.

We spent our first afternoon walking the streets of Venice (everyone says to just enjoy “getting lost” on the streets of Venice. For those of you who know Ryan, this wasn’t exactly up his alley! He insisted on using his offline GPS maps and of course never got lost once in Venice! ;)). We then watched sunset from various points, including Punta della Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiori (on a small island looking back at Venice).

As we were researching restaurants in Venice, we found that many of the restaurants can be pricey but not very good. By looking at several foodie websites, we found two restaurants that are known to be very good. When we emailed one of them for reservations, however, we found that it was closed due to the August holiday season (for those that aren’t aware, it’s typical in several European countries for people to take 3-4 weeks of vacation in August so many businesses just close during this period). We asked the owner for other recommendations, and she gave us a list of well-known local restaurants. I started calling and found only one that was open during this week of August! It was a local pizza restaurant located on a small residential street about a 40 minute walk from our hotel.

The walk to the restaurant was well worth it! We weaved through countless narrow side streets and found the restaurant located in a beautiful plaza by a canal and bridge. You know you’ve hit a local restaurant when you only hear Italian. 🙂 The pizza was fabulous!

We’ve also noticed that we always get assigned a “special” server who speaks English, sometimes even the Maitre’d. While we are happy to try to order in Italian, I think that they figure their English is far superior to our Italian attempts and less frustrating for them. 🙂 In fact, we have trouble even practicing other languages because people instantly switch to English (often without us even speaking… apparently we don’t look French, Spanish, or Italian!!).

On our second day in Venice, we visited the Doge’s Palace that was once the seat of Venitian politics and the city’s prison. We also happened to be in Venice during the Biennial Art Exhibit, which is a world-renown art show. Over the years this art exhibition has catapulted several up and coming artists to global promience, such as Edward Hopper. Each country is able to send one artist to the show so it was interesting to look through art from around the world.

We finished up the day with with dinner overlooking St. Mark’s Square at the one other foodie restaurant we found. It was a great ending to our time in Venice!

Ciao! We’re off to Austria!

Stop 14: Tunnels, Fire (!) and a Leaning Tower

Posted on August 18, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Greetings!

As the title of this post suggests, we had an interesting start to our time in Italy! After leaving Monaco we quickly hit the border of Italy and spent the morning driving. The interstate stretch in this area is certainly exciting! It winds up the coast of Italy but traverses several mountains so you cross very high bridges overlooking seaside towns and countless tunnels.

We were headed for an area called Cinque Terre and were about 45 min away when we saw break lights and traffic stopping. Knowing the type of roads we had just been on, we thought it could be an accident. Although we don’t know any Italian, you can figure out a lot by observing!

After seeing 3 ambulances, over 10 fire trucks, and multiple police vehicles, we knew it was going to be awhile. In fact, most people shut off their cars and were walking around on the interstate. Then, the Italian police brought us water to drink…uh oh!

We eventually found a kind person who spoke English who gave us a status update. It turned out there was a huge car fire in the tunnel which caused significant damage to the tunnel and filled the entire tunnel with smoke. Thankfully (and absolutely most importantly!), everyone was fine. The only issue was the tunnel damage which shut down the road for 4 hours!

We were fortunate to have water, snacks and iPads so the time passed quickly. The only bad part was that we missed getting to go to Cinque Terre 😦

On the bright side…

– We were not in the tunnel when it happened (thankfully!!)
– We’ve now read up on how to escape tunnel fires (*details below for those interested :))
– We also have a great reason to return to Italy in the future – to see Cinque Terre!

We also thankfully made it to Pisa in time for our timed admission to go up the Leaning Tower. While you know it leans, it feels really crazy to be up at the top and feel the lean in person!

It looks like a few people have been here before 🙂

We even had a chance to get the classic Leaning Tower of Pisa photos. 🙂 Here are a few:

After leaving the Leaning Tower, we had a fast-paced drive into Rome! This time we saw 1 accident, 1 overturned semi, and 1 car fire. Wow! Today was definitely an adventure, but we had a few fun driving experiences such as:

1. The speeds for even mountainous, winding interstates are quite high at 130 km/h (~78mph)! Apparently the speed “limits” are really more of a max versus the speed you feel safe to drive!

2. Driving lanes are both narrow and optional. 😉 Drifting over into the lane beside you without warning is completely normal!

3. Fires do happen in tunnels. Here is what we learned about tunnel safety (for anyone more experienced with this, chime in with any other advice!)

– The key is to get out fast! Drive (if you can) or run (if necessary).
– Most tunnels have signs periodically throughout the tunnel saying the number of meters you are from each entrance or emergency exit so you can use these signs to know which way is the fastest exit.

– Almost every tunnel has a sign at the entrance that indicate the length of the tunnel so you can also use this to judge how far you are into the tunnel.

We are now ready to explore Rome! Look for an update soon!

Stop 13: Nice, France and Monte Carlo, Monaco

Posted on August 16, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Bonjour from Nice and Monte Carlo!

Our next stop was to beautiful Nice, France. We gave our feet a break from walking and took a bike tour to explore Nice. We had a fun time! Our tour guide was very good and took us to all the major Nice sites.

We first saw the Promenade des Anglais which runs along the ocean side of the city. The beautiful beaches here are unique as they are comprised of smooth stones versus sand. We also rode through Old Nice and saw the Opera House, a flower market, and several historical buildings in which the architects had painted false windows. Apparently when the funds ran low in building projects, faux windows were painted on!

Which windows are real and which are fake?!?

Hundreds of gelato flavors including a graham cracker variety a friend Steven suggested 🙂

We then rode up to the top of Castle Hill (Colline du Chateau) which is about 100m above sea level. From the top, we had panoramic views of the bay and beaches. Very nice (sorry, bad pun :))! We could also see homes of several famous people from here, including Elton John, Sean Connery, and the hospital where Anglina Jolie had her daughter.

Tasty Orange-Mango Soda the tour gave us. Interesting that it has no carbonation yet carbonated water is popular!

Next, we headed onto Monte Carlo, Monaco, which is located about 30 minutes from Nice. We took the scenic route into Monaco by driving the steep hills above the towns and sea.

Once in Monte Carlo, our Citroen held its own on the Grand Prix route – albeit our speeds only approached about 30 kilometers per hour. 🙂

We really enjoyed our time in Monaco! As you might imagine, we saw lots and lots of expensive cars and huge yachts docked in the harbor. I also saw the flashiest pair of Louboutins I have ever seen being worn!

Our first stop in Monte Carlo was to visit the Prince’s Palace that is set on a hill overlooking the city. We then looked through several beautiful gardens that overlook the ocean before winding our way off the hill.

We capped off our time in Monte Carlo with a really neat dinner overlooking the harbor and hills of Monaco. The view and the food were absolutely fantastic! (For those curious, we have been swinging the calories and budget of these meals by going light at least one meal… for example, if we have a nice dinner, lunch has been a piece of fruit and either yogurt or a granola bar. On average, we’re good! 🙂 Often, we have found some restaurants have a great tasting menu for lunch so it can be a great way to try nicer restaurants for less.)

Ryan’s formerly wrinkled sport coat. It didn’t seem to enjoy the compression bags so creative measures were used to make him look presentable.

Our actual rental car – that Citroen was just a joke so you didn’t get jealous

Next stop – Pisa/Rome!

Stops 9-10: Seville & Granada

Posted on August 7, 2013 by EmilyGlobeTrotter

Hello from Seville and Granada!

We continued our tour by driving to Seville located in Southwest Spain. The drive from Toledo to Seville was quite pretty, with fields filled with olive trees, red clay, and sunflowers. The area is very dry, sunny, and hot so we saw multiple solar farms along the way. We also noticed that the houses in towns are almost always white with clay roofs to reflect the sun and keep buildings cooler. We also continually saw large bull signs all over Spain!

In Seville we had a neat hotel located in the center of the old town that was a completely remodeled house from the 1800’s. The location was great as it allowed us to stop back and cool down as the temperatures were about 104 degrees. Muy caliente!

The history of Seville is fascinating because the city was one of the battleground areas of the Reconquista between the Muslim stronghold and Catholics. Additionally, Seville was the port for exploration of the New World. Christopher Columbus and many other explorers set sail from this town. This port location led the city to great prosperity as it became the single point of entry for all ships from the New World so the city taxed all these imports at 20%. Not a bad return!

Our first stop in Seville was the main Cathedral and Giralda Tower. The cathedral is very unique because it contains Muslim influences (in fact, the site was once a muslim mosque) and houses the remains of Christopher Columbus. The Giralda Tower offers pretty view of the city, including the white houses and tile roofs.

Christopher Columbus’ Grave

We then went to the Alacazar which was a palace that changed control between Muslim and Catholics so the architecture differences (Roman and Muslim influenced) in this space are also fascinating.

Our afternoon finished with a walk through Plaza de Espana, a building and plaza built for the 1929 World Expo that showcased Spain’s prominence] in arts and engineering. For those who are Star Wars buffs, you may recognize this plaza from Episodes I and II.

We had a great dinner of tapas and then walked through the streets at night. The city comes alive at night when the blazing sun cools off and the little streets light up. Our hotel had a rooftop overlooking the cathedral so we finished the night with a few pictures from there. It was beautiful! 🙂

As I am typing this post, we have just finished visiting Granada on our way to Barcelona. In our short time in Granada, we visited the most famous site in the city – The Alahambra. The Alahmbra is a large fortress overlooking the city which was the center of Muslim rule of this area of Spain in the 1200’s-1400’s. In fact, the fortress remained the last hold in the Reconquista and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The fortreess is enormous, and we spent much of the afternoon walking through the palaces as well as visiting gardens which overlooked the city.