I have been wanting to visit Scotland for what feels like forever, but once I got hooked on the Outlander book series, I was exceptionally eager to go. So when we finally arrived, I was like a kid in a candy shop, though a bit worried that I had lofty expectations. Scotland didn’t let us down. Thinking back on our travels thus far, it was one of my favorite places we’ve been. The only thing I would change is to spend more…
After saying goodbye to half of the #Shamphonny crew (Steph and Johnny) in Westport, Amanda and I had 4 more nights in Ireland and Northern Ireland to explore. We first made our way to Donegal city, with a quick stop in Gortarowey Forest along the way for a hike. The hike had great views of Benbulbin mountain, as well as a centuries-old ring of rocks thought to be a family’s home. Coincidentally, our hike was on Arbor Day, which made the presence…
We woke up in Cork, checked out of our hotel, and headed to Blarney Castle to try our luck at getting the “gift of gab”. Blarney Castle is not just the Blarney Stone, but also beautiful gardens. We headed straight for the Stone because we had heard there could be really long lines, but luckily we didn’t have to wait too long. We each had a turn to kiss the Blarney Stone, which is located on the very top of…
We started our Irish journey in Dublin, arriving on a Friday afternoon. We were able to get some errands done (laundry, haircut, etc) and check out some of the sights in town. Dublin is super adorable and while it’s a larger city, still feels very Irish. I was still recovering from my migraine, so we took it easy and had a light dinner at a local Mexican restaurant called Tolteca. We had low expectations, but it was almost identical to…
After a weekend in lovely Bratislava, we bused to Budapest for 4 nights in the Hungarian capitol city. This felt like somewhat of a homecoming for me since my mom’s family immigrated from Hungary to the U.S. when things started getting bad for the Jews during WWII. And while my grandmother really comes from farther east, in a town that’s now part of Ukraine, seeing the synogogues, memorials, Hebrew signage, Jewish food, etc. really made both of us feel at…
After our time in Vienna, we took a one hour bus ride to Bratislava. We knew we would be going to Budapest, but when we looked on the map, we saw Bratislava on the way so we figured we’d swing by for a couple days to check it out. Bratislava is the capitol of Slovakia, which happens to have the 3rd largest growing economy in Europe. Not many people think about Slovakia as a happening place when you think about Europe, but…
We took the Flixbus from Zagreb to Ljubljana. It was fast (2 hours!), cheap (€18 for the two of us!), and had wifi! In all honesty, we had no idea what to expect from this town. We had no idea how to pronounce the name (it’s lee-yoob-lee-yanna) and we had not really heard much about Slovenia. I think this is probably the best way to be introduced to a place because you have no expectations. We loved it! We got…
We had been recommended to visit Puglia while in Italy, which is the region that is the “heel of the boot”. We had two nights after leaving Sicily before we needed to be in Ancona for our ferry to Croatia, so we decided we’d visit Bari. Bari is on the coast and houses the bones of Saint Nicholas. We made the long drive from Sicily (it took us about 8 hours with stops) and settled into our apartment in the…