Photos of Our Ireland Trip

We've made it back home to San Diego and have been recovering from the jet lag.  We both go back to work on Monday, boo!  We had almost 1500 photos to sort through and I'm finally ready to post them.  Ireland was my second favorite trip that we've taken, I loved it.  We had fun driving all over the country seeing cool things, meeting people, listening to great music and drinking lots of Guinness.  I'm surprised I haven't had withdrawal yet, wait, maybe I am as I write this post.  We were really lucky with the weather, who says it always rains in Ireland?  We had dry weather for most of our trip.  It really only rained one evening and sprinkled on us a couple of times during the day.

We bought 2 CD's in Dublin for our 2 weeks of driving, so we know almost all the words to the songs.  And, we both admitted to waking up with songs in our head this morning from one of the CD's.  You can check out the music we were listening to on Myspace:  Dublin City Workingman's Band and James Riley.

I broke up the pictures into 8 albums.  You'll get the idea real quick that there are lots of forts, castles, churches and sheep everywhere.  It's like in the movie, National Lampoon's European Vacation, when Clark gets stuck in the roundabout and he keeps saying "hey look kids, there's Big Ben and there's Parliament."  I kept saying, "look honey, another fort in someone's backyard."  They were super cool though!  (Click on each picture to go to the album).

Dublin, Ireland Mar 2011

Kilkenny, Ireland Mar 2011

Ring of Kerry, Ireland Mar 2011

Dingle, Ireland Mar 2011

Doolin & Galway, Ireland Mar 2011

Westport & Derry, Ireland Mar 2011

Antrim Coast, Ireland Mar 2011

Belfast & Trim, Ireland Mar 2011

Ireland Itinerary

We leave for Ireland next week and will be there for 2 weeks.  Our itinerary is something like what Rick Steve's has outlined below, although his is a 3 week itinerary and ours is cut to 2 weeks.  We will be flying in and out of Dublin and renting car to drive around the country.  We hope to enjoy lots of lush, green, dramatic scenery during the day and taste lots of Guinness and Irish whiskey in the pubs at night.

We will have wi-fi at most of our hotels and will be traveling with a mini laptop, so I may post a few updates during our trip.  

Photos of Our Belize Trip

We went to Belize for a friend's wedding in Hopkins and stayed at the Almond Beach Resort.  We decided to go a few days early and stay on Caye Caulker to go scuba diving on the barrier reef.  We stayed at the Seaside Cabanas there.  We really loved Caye Caulker.  

Here are some of my favorite photos of Belize.  We really, really liked it there.  It's so laid back, everyone is friendly, and even the food we had was awesome.  The rest of the photos are on our web album:  Belize April 2010.  Enjoy!!

More details of our trip will show up on our travel blog within the next couple of weeks if anyone is interested.

Fresh Fish Selection for Dinner.

Walking Along Front Street in Caye Caulker.

Beautiful Blue Caribbean Water

Lots of Breeze, Biking, Birds, Piers, and Boats

The Motto of Caye Caulker.

Our Hotel (room where the balcony is on the upper left).

Blue Hole swimming hole.

Waiting to go on our second dive on the southern barrier reef.

Relaxing on the pier.

Mike was a groomsman in our friends' wedding.

Oh, and we snorkeled with nurse sharks!

Caye Caulker, Belize

We just got back from a day of snorkeling with Raggamuffin and Mike is taking a cat nap, so I thought I'd get in a quick post to tell you how awesome it is here.  We flew into Belize City with a layover in Houston.  We grabbed a sweet stationwagon cab, that could have belonged to Huggy Bear in a past life, to get from the airport to the Caye Caulker (CC) water taxi.  Kids were just getting out of school when we got here and waiting for the same 4:30pm water taxi to CC.  The ride was about 30 to 45 minutes in a crowded water taxi filled with kids.  It's amazing that kids go back and forth like that everyday.

We checked into our awesome upstairs cabana that is right on the beach next to the water taxi pier.  Our place is pretty cool and colorful and has free wi-fi.  We walked around the island to check it out and grabbed dinner at a place recommended by our hotel receptionist.  Basically, you can just walk around at night and see what everyone is grilling out for dinner and decide what you want to eat.  I don't think you can really go wrong.  At Rose's, between the two of us, we had fish kabobs with beans and rice (a Belizean staple) and coleslaw and roasted potatoes.  Delicious!

This morning, we got up and went to eat breakfast at Glenda's, a place recommended in my guide book.  We had some eggs, ham, homemade cinnamon rolls and fresh squeezed orange juice.  It was a great meal to start our day.  We took a snorkeling cruise on a sailboat today.  It was a perfect day of sailing, snorkeling, reggae music, fish sandwiches for lunch and rum punch on the way back.  The only thing that didn't turn out so well is that I got sunburned on my bum!  The only place that didn't stay protected!  Oh well, sitting will just be a little uncomfortable the next couple of days.

We are planning on going scuba diving tomorrow, but now it's time to go find some delicious dinner and drink more rum!

Online Article About Our Australia Trip

I subscribe to a lot of travel magazines and I love to write about our trips.  I contacted Budget Travel Magazine (one of my favorites) the end of last year when they asked to hear about readers' 2010 travel plans.  The online editor contacted me shortly after we got back from Australia in January and said she was interested in hearing about our trip.  She asked me to fill out an interview questionnaire.  I filled it out and emailed it to her, but I didn't hear anything from her.  I assumed she wasn't interested after all.  Several weeks later, I got an email from her saying they wanted to put my interview online the following week.  I answered a couple of follow up questions and the interview was posted last week!  


So, go check it out:  Australia Trip Interview.


Also, if you haven't noticed our new travel blog link on the side bar, check it out:  Mike & Theresa's Travel Journal

Photos of Our Australia Trip

Some of my favorite photos:

The rest of the photos:  Melbourne, Cape Tribulation, and Sydney

Sydney, Australia

I can't believe we have 2 days left in Australia!

Since leaving Melbourne, we were up in Queensland in the Rainforest in Cape Tribulation.  It was very hot and humid there.  The B&B we stayed at was very nice and secluded.  We had a great experience there trying new exotic fruits every morning.  Our hosts really made us feel like family and we were invited to their BBQ our last night there.  A funny thing about being invited to a BBQ was that Mike and I had read a book about the culture of Australia and in the book there was a pretty big section about what do to if you get invited to a BBQ in Australia.  We were both like, we'll never get invited to a BBQ.  We had a great and unique experience and probably the best part of our trip was staying up there.  

We've been in Sydney the past few days.  We have been exploring a lot of Sydney and the area.  Sydney is a beautiful city and sort of reminds me of a cross between San Francisco and Vancouver.  We are heading on a wine tasting tour to Hunter Valley tomorrow and then we are seeing an Opera at the Sydney Opera House on Friday night before heading back to the States on Saturday. 

It's raining here in Sydney this evening (I'm writing this at 9:40pm Wed night Sydney time)... 

and lightening too, which we don't get in San Diego. 

Melbourne, Australia

We made it through our 15 hour flight to Melbourne.  We were able to sleep almost 8 hours, which was a lot better than either of us expected.  We have rented a car here in Melbourne and are having fun trying to drive on the left.  Mike is the driver and I am the navigator.  I'm also constantly reminding him to KEEP LEFT. 

We drove the car all day yesterday (12+ hours) to the Great Ocean Road.  It's a very scenic road along the ocean and goes through some really cool small towns. 

We were able to sleep in a little today as we are heading to Phillip Island to watch the penguins.  They don't come out of the water until sunset and sunset here is about 730-8pm.  It's their summer here, so the days are longer. 

The weather isn't as warm as we were expecting, a little cool (like San Diego weather is now) and some rain on our first day.  It's nice and sunny today so far.  It'll get warmer once we leave here tomorrow and head up to the Great Barrier Reef. 

We are doing well and having fun!

Australia Itinerary

We are on our way to Australia tomorrow night, New Years Eve.  We will leave LA in the evening of the 31st and get into Melbourne the morning of Jan 2, so we are skipping New Years Day this year.  We will spend 3 nights in Melbourne at the Hotel Tolarno in the beach-y area of the city.  We are renting a car and plan on driving the Great Ocean Road.  We also will drive to Phillip Island to watch fairy penguins come out of the water and treck back to their burrows.

We will then head to the Great Barrier Reef for 5 nights and stay at a Fruit Farm about 2 and 1/2 hours north of Cairns.  This B&B consists of just 2 cottages perched in the trees and uses solar power.  For breakfast, we will be eating exotic fruit grown on the farm.  We are super excited about this place.  We will be hopefully diving on the reef and doing some hiking in the Daintree Rainforest.

We will end our trip in Sydney and stay 6 nights with one of Mike's friends, Jon Reyes.  We plan on going to an Opera at the Sydney Opera House, visiting Hunter Valley (wine area), visiting the Blue Mountains, and just exploring Sydney.

We look forward to sharing our photos when we get back!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Venice, a sinking city

Our longest day of travel was when we went from Cinque Terre to Venice. The trip required 2 train changes and took about 6 hours. It was raining when we arrived in Venice and that made me a little nervous. It floods in Venice, normally in November and March, so I was hoping we wouldn't be there for any flooding. It had been raining in Venice the previous 5 days, but luckily for us, it only rained the day we arrived.

We opted to use our Hilton points for our stay in Venice, might as well save some money. We had been staying in small hotels and family-run B&Bs throughout our trip, but we enjoyed the comfort of the hotel. We had a nice, large, flat screen TV to watch the election results, we arrived in Venice on Nov 4. It was also our anniversary and the hotel had a bottle of Bellini and a card waiting for us in our room. After getting used to having a cappuccino and a croissant for breakfast, we had a nice buffet that included eggs, potatoes, waffles and the most delicious ham. Staying in the Hilton was a nice way to end our trip and celebrate our anniversary.

Gondolas with the Rialto in the background.

Venice has some great architecture and lots of canals and bridges everywhere. The gondolas everywhere were beautiful. We got lost in Venice a lot! There are no major streets and none of the streets go straight and once you hit a piazza, the streets go off in different directions. We had the most trouble looking for restaurants that were in our Rick Steves book. By the time we found a place, I was starving! There were signs along certain paths that pointed you in the direction of the major sites, like St. Mark's Square, the Rialto, even the train station, but it was hard to stay on the right path. All the sudden there weren't anymore signs. It was neat though seeing the backstreets of Venice, not knowing where you were. You couldn't get too lost, since you were on an island!

Canal in Murano

The food in Venice was my least favorite. There were a lot of fish on the menus. We like fish, Mike more than me, but options for non-fish dishes were very limited. I was brave, however, and tried cuttlefish in ink while we were there. It was a popular dish in Venice, so I wanted to try it. I didn't like it much, but ate what I could. We went to a hole in the wall joint for lunch one day and I had spaghetti with clams and Mike had fish lasagna, both were pretty good. Our last night, we went to a restaurant that proudly served no fish. It was one of our favorite restaurants from our trip.

St. Mark's Square

We flew home from Venice last Friday. We've been home a week now and have just got back in rhythm with our time zone. We adjusted to the time difference pretty quickly when we got to Italy, but it took some time once we were back home. All I know is that we can't wait to go back to Italy some day!

All Venice pictures are at this link.

Cinque Terre: sun, sea, wine, and culture (and pesto)

From Florence, we visited the Cinque Terre, an area of 5 little towns connected by trails. This area was Mike's favorite from a previous visit, so I was pretty excited to get there. After we arrived and checked into our hotel, we decided to grab some lunch at a little outdoor restaurant by the breakwater in Vernazza. While we were eating, we met a couple from Australia. They'd just come off one of the trails and started telling us about the storm that came through the night before. This storm caused a mudslide on one of the trails and it was closed. We were hoping by the next day, the trail would be back open. Swimming and hiking are the popular things to do when visiting this area, but swimming wasn't really an option.

After lunch, we decided to walk the trail between Vernazza and Monterosso. It was supposed to be the hardest and one of the longest. We took a lot of pictures while we were on the trails, because it was so pretty. The next day, we walked the trails between the remaining 3 towns. The trail that was closed from the mudslide the day before was still closed, but there were lots of people climbing over the gates...so we did too. We were lucky to have 2 perfect days, weather-wise, to walk the trails as it rained our final day in Vernazza. Having a rainy day allowed us to do some laundry, check our email, and sort of experience being a local in town.

During our trip, I tried several things for the first time...things like espresso, mussels, anchovies, cuttlefish, and spaghetti with clams. One of the specialties of Cinque Terre is anchovies. I always remembered anchovies as being smelly and that turned me off instantly. At dinner one night, we had the pasta and entree courses. Mike ordered pasta with mussels and I really liked it. We, both, also ordered the white fish entree. The dish ended up being fresh anchovies, potatoes, and marinara sauce. I was surprised that I liked them, Mike liked them too.

Cinque Terre also produces pesto and a dessert wine, called Sciacchetra. We didn't try any Sciacchetra while we were there, but we brought some home with us. We went to lunch one day and I was criticized by the server for not ordering a pesto dish!

All Cinque Terre pictures are at this link.

Florence, home of the Renaissance (and David)

After our 3 nights in Sorrento, we headed north for Florence. The second snag in our train travel experience came when we arrived in Naples from Sorrento. We got off at the wrong station this time, but were quickly guided to the correct station as soon as we asked for help at the information counter. We weren't that far off. The train from Naples to Florence was a Eurostar, the best of the passenger trains in Europe. It is smooth, fast, and quiet. However, don't order cappuccino in the cafe car. It's cold and weak!

View of Duomo and Baptistery from our room.

As I mentioned in a previous post, all our hotel selections (besides Venice) were from Rick Steves' book. He chose places that weren't too expensive and were a reasonable distance from the train station. Our hotel in Florence had a spectacular view. It was also the hotel that brought our breakfast to our room every morning. About 8am, the host would bring a tray to our room with pastries, hard boiled eggs, juice, and coffee. It was a treat to have spice muffins both mornings.

"Gates of Paradise" on Baptistery

When choosing restaurants, we also referred to Rick Steves' book. A lot of times we were at restaurants filled with mostly Rick Steves' readers. It made for great conversation starters when we had our book laying on the table. One restaurant gave us free limoncello for having the book.

One of our favorite restaurants on our trip was in Florence. We chose a place that was off the tourist path. We asked for a table for two by holding up 2 fingers and saying due (doo-eh) and were sat at one end of a long table with a couple and their daughter at the other. We ordered a mezzo liter of wine and some water, no gas. Italians drink mineral water, so the easy way to order non-carbonated water is to ask for it with no gas. You can also say natural or still, which we learned later.

The menu was in Italian, but our server ended up speaking English, as well as French we heard when he was at the table next to us. It seemed the thing to do was to have the full course meal at this place, so that's what we did. We ordered pasta, an entree, and dessert. We ordered one course at a time, the server came back in between courses and asked what we wanted next. The portions weren't that big here, so it worked out great. The food, we thought, was fabulous. We liked it so much that we ripped out the page in our Rick Steves' book and gave it to another couple we visited with in Vernazza.

Ponte Vecchio

We did see Michelangelo's David statue while in Florence, but they don't let you take pictures of him.

All Florence pictures are at this link

Sorrento, home of lemon and olive groves

Our first experience on a passenger train was when we left Rome and headed for Sorrento. We left early in the morning and were in Naples in 2 hours. We got off there and explored Naples for half the day before heading on to Sorrento. Naples is the home of organized crime as well as pizza. It was a Monday and the main street of Naples was crowded with people. Naples ended up being a crowded, noisy city (3rd largest in Italy), but we rewarded our survival by having pizza at the end of our walk. Some of the restaurants we went to had the menu in Italian and English, some places were just in Italian. This pizza place, supposedly one of the best in town, had the menu in Italian, so we didn't really know what to order. We knew ham (prosciutto) and mushrooms (funghi), so that's what we ordered. It was pretty good, but I didn't think it was the best.

Sorrento

One of the hardest parts of our train travel was getting from Naples to Sorrento. There is a separate train that runs between these cities. Once we got back to the main station, we followed signs to the separate train station, bought tickets from a window, and made our way to the tracks. The tracks didn't seem to be marked as well as they were in Rome, so we ended up jumping on the wrong train. Luckily, we discovered our mistake and jumped off a few stations down and waited for the correct train to come. Mike always says things will work out, but I was a little stressed. I think the train stations caused most of my stressing out moments, but it all worked out!

Amalfi Coast

Sorrento is a nice little town that sort of reminded me of La Jolla, CA. There are lots of little boutique clothing stores and limoncello everywhere (it's made in this area). A lot of visitors to the town are from England, so a lot of people spoke English.

We spent a day taking a bus from Sorrento down the Amalfi Coast. It was gorgeous. We got off in Amalfi and walked around and had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants from our trip. Meals in Italy usually consist of bread, wine, primi (pasta), and secondi (entree of meat or fish). Of course, there are appetizers and dessert as well. Most of the time, we ordered pasta, but a few times, we had the full on meal with entree and dessert. We always had wine. You could order by liter or mezzo liter (half liter). After meals, most Italians have espresso, which we got into the habit of doing as well. And, we had gelato, usually in between meals.

Chruch in Amalfi

Breakfast in Italy is different as well. The usual breakfast consists of espresso or cappuccino and a croissant. Most Italians drink their coffee standing at a bar. It costs extra in some places if you want to sit down, or in train stations, you can stand at a table. Most of our hotels included breakfast, but each place did it different. Our hotel in Rome had a spread of pastries, cereal and some yogurt. Our hotel in Sorrento gave us coupons to take to a bar for cappuccino and a croissant. Our hotel in Cinque Terre did not have breakfast. Our hotel in Florence brought breakfast to our room (more on that later). Our hotel in Venice was the most extravagant, because it was a Hilton (more on that later too).

Pompeii

Another day, we went to Pompeii. It is a town that was destroyed by a volcano and the ruins are still standing. It's a very touristy place to visit, but it is worth the visit. We opted for an Audioguide to explain some of the things we were looking at. The place is huge, we spent about 2 and 1/2 hours there only to explore 1/3 of the place. You could probably see more if you weren't listening to the Audioguide though.

The weather these 3 days of our trip were mixed. It rained at night while we were at dinner once and a little when we were coming back from Amalfi on the bus. Our warmest day was in Pompeii and I was wearing long sleeves.

All Sorrento pictures are at this link.