First things first, readers. Take it from your old pal Sarah: you need a visa to get into Vietnam. And if your boyfriend tells you he’s just absolutely, 100% sure you can get it when you land, go ahead and get yourself one. If you don’t, you’ll be stranded at the airport on your 35th…
Tag: backpacking
Barcelona – Let’s Talk Tapas
From Nice we flew to Barcelona and landed smack dab in my favorite city in my favorite time of year. Spain in the summer checks all my vacation must haves: Blazing sun on boob-friendly, tourist-packed beaches? Crisp glasses of Cava for 2 euro a pop? Incredible snacks on toothpicks available all hours of the day?…
Under the table in Florence
After spending the night in Castagneto Carducci, we hopped the first morning train for Florence. During the hour ride, we sat next to some lovely Canadians, whom we chatted with about what would happen if you didn’t have a ticket and got caught – did they kick you off? Well, as luck would have it – and…
Castagneto Carducci – the Branson of Italy
After we had hiked our little hearts out, we hopped back on a train and headed to Castagneto Carducci. When I booked the hotel there, it seemed like a quaint little beach town. When we arrived in town, I realized just how little it was. We could not, for the life of us, get a…
Walking the Cinque Trail II – Food Crawl
The last day we were in Cinque Terre, we visited all five towns, by boat, foot and train. We decided to eat our way through the towns, filling ourselves with gelato and beer and pasta and wine and lots of cheese. When we got to Manarola, we found Rick Steves (!!!!)’s favorite gelato place. It…
Walking the Cinque Terre
Once we had spent a few days in Rome, hopping a train to Cinque Terre was next on our Italian To Do list. After a brief struggle of trying to figure out the train table, we made it aboard and rode through the Italian countryside, the farms passing by our windows like a Renaissance museum in fast forward, eventually…
Falling in Love at the Taj Mahal
Linzi is one of those people everyone should be lucky enough to have in their lives. Adventurous, type-A, with the kind of cackling laugh that makes you snort through your nose, Linzi is what you would call a “travel fiend,” the girl saves up all of her money so then she can promptly spend it backpacking around some…
Santa Cruz: Darwin’s Turtles
We hopped on a flight to the Galapagos Islands and took a boat to Santa Cruz, where the Darwin Research Center was located. Started in 1964, it hosts conservation projects aimed at protecting wildlife species throughout the islands, particularly their long-living friends the tortoise. The grounds of the research center were lush and beautiful, the weather…
Amazon Day Trip
I’m not sure what I was expecting out of a day trip into the amazon…visions of national geographic danced through my head I suppose. I know that if we had spent any serious amount of time there, we would have been let in on the real day to day lives and rituals of those that…
Mindo Cloud Forrest
The cloud forrest. It sounds like a level in MarioKart, doesn’t it? I left the entire planning of the trip up to my very type-A, very responsible friend Linzi. It was kind of like going on a blind date with an entire country. I didn’t know what to expect…would I like it there? Would I…
The Vagabond Stomach 