We Want to See the Whole World

Our room was not ready so we dropped our bags and headed out to enjoy the day. Our plan was to stay up until night in order to adjust to the time difference. With all of our Excitement we did not sleep on the plane so we ended up being awake something like 36 hours when it was all said and done. Prior to the cruise I also downloaded the Rick Steves app and an app called Visit A City. Both worked out to be great! I downloaded the guides on RS app for the things we were interested in most of the ports...not for the audio guide but to be able to quickly refer to the text of it for info on what we were seeing. Visit a City allows you to map out your day to make it the most efficient and worked well for us too. We left our bags at the front desk and with map in hand headed out to explore. At this point we were both overheated and dehydrated so decided to make our way back towards the hotel. We ended up stopping for lunch too. my first experience with buffalo ...

Nate and I recently returned from a 10 day Greek isles cruise onboard the Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas.We booked this cruise last October and got an amazing deal way too good to pass up. Balcony cabin at $1600 each with $225 total onboard credit for a 9 night cruise. I was a bit worried about flight costs but I figured we could just make it happen somehow. I ended up getting our tickets to Rome with my Delta Amex points! I used Royal’s Air2Sea program for our return on Lufthansa for $440 each! I couldn’t believe it. I was nervous to use the program but figured with that price it was worth a shot. We flew out 9/16/18 from Denver to Detroit to FCO. We made a short video and posted it to Instagram letting our friends and family know that we were taking them along on our trip and we’d let them know where when we landed. Our layover in Detroit was the perfect amount of time: only 2 hours...long enough to grab a snack and find our gate which happened to be only 4 gates down...

We spent the next couple of days with quality family time with my grandma, aunt, uncle, cousins, and my aunt & uncle from Oklahoma who actually happened to be in town at the same time.  My cousin had her first baby in January 2017 so this was also an opportunity to meet her and get lots of baby snuggles. My cousin's fiance's dad owns a boat and we took it out for a leisurely couple hours on the water. The last night we spent walking down to the water to take in the sunset. It was incredible. We headed back to Orlando and stayed at a hole in the wall hotel by the airport for the final night because we had a very early flight the next morning...all i can say is you get what you pay for when it comes to hotels in Orlando...next time I'm in Orlando I will definitely not be looking at hotels in that low price range.

I'm going to give this blogging thing a go again. I find that it's a good creative outlet for me and a place for me to memorialize my travels and experiences. My last post was April 2017 and since then I've been on a few more trips: Vegas June 2017 Caribbean September 2017 Florida and Caribbean January 2018 Up Next: Greek Isles September 2018 **** September 2019 (shhh it's a surprise for someone's 40th Birthday) I will try to finish up my posts from April 2017 before I move on to the next trips, but honestly I'm so excited to put into words all of the planning that I've done for our greek isles trip in a few months.  94 days to go to be exact! Let's see...I ended with Day 2 of our trip in Orlando. Day 3 we spent at Animal Kingdom & Hollywood Studios which were amazing. The safari ride and Lion King show at Animal Kingdom were all of our favorites.  At Hollywood Studios Jess of course loved Tower of Terror which Hayley took her on. We...

I think I was running on excitement because when my alarm went off that morning at 6:30 I jumped out of bed and started getting ready. Today was Universal Studios! My youngest sister, Hayley, works for Disney AND Universal and offered to get us passes for the day.  I can't tell you what a huge savings that is! Once we got to the park and saw the prices at the gate I was mystified.  How do people afford to pay for these parks?!  And then add on food and all the extras? Just wow. Our hotel offered "continental breakfast" with the room fee. We quickly found out that that meant waffles, fruit, and yogurt....not a completely filling breakfast and very low protein. Luckily I had brought along protein powder, precooked meat and turkey jerky from home. Our hotel room had a nice view of the Four Points Hotel (which my sister later told me she had stayed in and it's not as great as it looks). La Quinta offered a free shuttle to the theme parks so we waited outside for it t...

Wow! It has been quite a while since I have posted here. The vacations I've been on since Ireland have all been cruises and I have documented them on Cruise Critic instead of this blog.  I just returned back from a week in Florida visiting family in both Orlando and Tampa and wanted to document my trip for my own memory's sake.   The week after my Ireland trip in 2014 I moved to Colorado to live with my boyfriend.  We then immediately followed that with a cruise to the Caribbean. 2015 was another cruise to a different part of the Caribbean and 2016 was a cruise to Mexico. Later this fall we will cruise to yet another part of the Caribbean! This spring break trip 2017 I was joined by my boyfriend's daughter and his mother. Our flight out of Colorado Springs departed at 5pm MST so we arrived at the airport, parked my car in long term parking, and headed inside to check the bags. I had pre-purchased everything on Frontier as it saves quite a few dollars. We got ...

This European holiday is drawing to a close...Devastating.  The week here has been better than anything I ever imagined or planned. It's made for some amazing memories...memories that I will take with me forever.  I decided for my own memory sake to list my top 5 highlights and then lowpoints.  I've considered this blog to be my travel journal and I gotta get it down while it's still fresh or it'll be gone tomorrow...seems to be the way my brain works these days. Top 5 High Points: 1) The people of Ireland in general, many offered directions without us having to ask, most have been gracious and welcoming, curious about us and always greeted with a kind attitude. 2) The proposal we witnessed at the Cliffs.  I just can't get past that. I'm such a romantic and that just made the already spectacular day even more incredible. 3) The Avis rental car agent.  Her attitude and excitement were so positive and she was just a really genuine person 4) The Marless Hous...