It’s Peter and Monica! In May 2023, we started this journal of our traveling adventures. After the pandemic, Peter closed his successful business in NYC. During the time he owned it, he saved a lot of money (and airline points) so he could travel the world after retirement. As we both […]
Palm Springs & Coronado
Posted on:
Palm Springs and Coronado, California
In the Spring of 2023, we decided to go West! We spent several weeks in the Palm Springs area where we enjoyed the desert, food, golf and mineral springs. The high, dry heat was a gift to Peter’s golf game and Monica’s attitude. While staying at the Rancho Mirage Golf […]
Cabo San Lucas
Posted on:
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
On May 20, 2023, we traveled from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to see our friends Michael Bottari and his significant other, Madeline. The Cape Hotel Michael suggested we stay at The Cape (Thomson) Hotel, and his recommendation was spot on. The Cape isn’t a stereotypical Cabo […]
Madrid
Posted on:
Madrid, Spain
In mid-July 2023, Monica met Peter in Madrid, Spain after her Portugal volunteer service ended. We stayed three nights each Madrid, Seville and Barcelona. We chose various levels of hotels – from the most luxurious to the most local. We toured big castles and palaces, and we walked around small quaint […]
Seville
Posted on:
Seville, Spain
On July 13, 2023, we took a three-hour, high-speed train ride from Madrid to Seville. We’d never seen anything like Madrid’s new train station. There’s a huge tropical garden in its center! Hotel Casa 1800 We chose to stay at Hotel Casa 1800 because of the location and reviews. It’s […]
Uncategorized
Posted on:
Porto and Lisbon, Portugal
At the end of June 2023, Monica flew to Porto, Portugal to join friends in building apartments for Congo refugees. The Volunteer Service Our project involved converting an old warehouse in to a four-family apartment building. The project will take 2.5 years to complete as it relies primarily on assistance […]
Barcelona
Posted on:
Barcelona, Spain
And then there was Barcelona. We took a 7 hour train ride from Seville to Barcelona on ____. Planning our Barcelona stay was a conundrum. We got LOTS of advice from friends, but each person’s advice conflicted the other. So we decided to go with the flow and see what […]
Trying to Leave NYC
Posted on:
Trying to Leave NYC
The day before we left NYC for the cruise portion of our Grand European Adventure, we went to a beautiful candlelight string quartet performance of ABBA’s greatest hits, at the Church of Heavenly Rest on the upper east side. It was unique, cheerful, and put us in the mood for […]
Celebrity Cruise Overview
Posted on:
Celebrity Cruise Overview
We took a Celebrity cruise because friends told us Celebrity is one of the best big cruise lines. We’d previously cruised on Carnival, Princess and Norwegian, and we wanted something more upscale. We selected a 10-day cruise to Italy, Montenegro and Croatia because it stopped at many places we wanted […]
Florence & Pisa
Posted on:
Florence and Pisa, Italy
The first place our cruise docked was Florence, but since we’d already vacationed in Florence several years ago, we decided to take a bus ride to Pisa instead. We loved posing with the Leaning Tower and watching all the tourists pose, too! (We didn’t climb to the top.) We also […]
Sicily (Messina)
Posted on:
Sicily, Italy (Messina)
There were so many things we wanted to see in Messina, but we only had a day! Should we go to the beach, see the Godfather movie sights, see the town, take a ride to the beautiful countryside? We just couldn’t decide, so we ended up walking through the Messina’s […]
Taranto
Posted on:
Taranto, Italy
Neither of us knew much about Taranto other than it being the homeland of one of our friends in NYC. While in Taranto, we decided to do the same thing we did in Sicily – just walk around the town and see the sights. It was a long walk from […]
Montenegro
Posted on:
Kotor, Montenegro
Both of us were looking forward to Montenegro, and it didn’t disappoint. Kotor is a small coastal town built on the Adriatic coast at the base of gorgeous mountains. Pete hung out at a café, while Monica explored the 1,000-year-old Cathedral. of Sant Tryphon Before we left, we walked along the […]
Croatia
Posted on:
Split, Croatia
We’d heard so much about Croatia (especially Dubrovnik and Split) that we decided to take a private electric car tour of the city instead of walking around on our own. The tour was very, very expensive, but it took us to viewpoints we would never go to on our own, […]
Venice
Posted on:
Venice, Italy
Our cruise around Italy, Montenegro, and Croatia ended in Ravenna, Italy on Sept 4. After we said our goodbyes to the ship and its people, we started the “rail” portion of our trip by taking a two-hour train ride to Venice, Italy. While we didn’t initially plan to go to Venice, we changed our […]
Vienna
Posted on:
Vienna, Austria
After three days in Venice, we took a seven-hour train ride to Vienna, Austria. We stayed in Vienna for five days. Vienna is magical. Monica thinks if she had visited Vienna when she was in her 20s, she would have moved there. The Hollman-Beletage Hotel Our Vienna hotel was, without a doubt, […]
Budapest
Posted on:
Budapest, Hungary
After leaving Vienna, we took a 3-hour train ride to Budapest, Hungary where we stayed from Sept. 10-14, 2023. During our rail trips, each of us traveled with a big suitcase and a backpack. While we were prepared for a lot of lugging, we didn’t expect we’d have to store our big bags […]
Krakow
Posted on:
Krakow, Poland
After a 9-hour train ride from Budapest, we arrived in Krakow, Poland on Sept. 14. We were ambivalent about going to Krakow because seeing Holocaust locations would be very sad. We learned very quickly that Krakow has not forgotten its history. The Hotel Pod Roza We chose the Hotel Pod […]
Prague
Posted on:
Prague, Czech Republic
After our emotional experience in Krakow, we took a seven-hour train to Prague. Prague is beautiful. In fact, it’s been ranked as the most beautiful city in the world. The Clementin Hotel We stayed at The Clementin Hotel, the narrowest building in Prague. It got great reviews online and […]
Berlin
Posted on:
Berlin, Germany
By the time we took the six-hour train from Prague to Berlin, we had become pros at Eurrail train travel. The train rides, even the long ones, had become enjoyable. They gave us time to relax before the next country’s adventure. Berlin was our respite. We’d each spent time in […]
Amsterdam
Posted on:
Amsterdam, Netherlands
We left Berlin the morning of September 26, 2023 and planned to take a direct, 6.5-hour train ride to Amsterdam, but our train was cancelled. At the train station, we rebooked twice, and those were cancelled too. In fact, all trains from Berlin to Amsterdam were cancelled for the rest […]
Paris
Posted on:
Paris, France
Ooh la la, By the time we got to Paris on October 8, 2023, Peter was still weak, but he was no longer contagious. The City of Lights always has a healing effect on us, and Peter was ready to enjoy our favorite city in Europe! We’d been to Paris […]
Interlaken
Posted on:
Interlaken, Switzerland
We took a train from France to Switzerland on October 8, 2023, stopping at Basel before getting to our final destination of Interlaken. Neither of us had heard of Interlaken before we decided to visit. A few months earlier, we read about it on a website of bucket-list vacation destiantion […]