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…
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…
After parting ways with our friends Eric and Lishan and beautiful Dubrovnik, we spent the good part of the next day making our way north to Zadar. We decided to stay in Zadar for 3 nights to explore the city and the two nearby national parks, Krka and Plitvice Lakes. We wasted no time getting out of town to Krka in the morning to check out the waterfalls and wildlife. We had two big observations of our visit there: Spring is just about to hit….
After our night at Abel Tasman, we said goodbye to the seemingly unreal blue water and headed down the west coast. Our goal was to make it to just before Franz Josef Glacier that evening. Along the way, we stopped at the Pancake Rocks, which was interesting rock formations that “look like stacks of pancakes”, but really they just look sorta cool. The most entertaining part of this little adventure was watching this one lady dart around as a photo ninja…
After a wild night at Hobbiton, we headed over to Waitomo to see the glowworm caves. We booked a tour that was a bit less touristy and went to some different, supposedly more unique caves. We were not disappointed. The first cave had tons of glowworms! Shawn and I have seen them before, but never on this level. We first walked through the cave in total darkness, then we got on a raft and our guide paddled us very quietly…