A Night in the Beautiful Bussaco Palace

On our road trip around Portugal, we made a pit stop at the GORGEOUS Bussaco Palace in Luso, and boy, was it beautiful! It is technically a five star hotel, but the accommodations aren't what you would typically think of as a five star hotel. It is literally a palace, which means it's old and it does show it's age a bit. Somehow, that only seems to add to the beauty of the place. 

It is honestly like a fairy tale! It's so beautiful!

You can spend literally hours hiking around the grounds. The palace was used as a hunting palace a long time ago so the grounds are expansive. There are so many fun walkways and path ways, I doubt you'd ever have time to explore them all.

You can even stay overnight in the palace - our room was darling! As I said, not a lot of fancy adornments, but it was very sweet. We thoroughly enjoyed the comfy bed, and the bathroom was very nice as well. No complaints there!

And finally, I don't have a picture, but I HIGHLY recommend enjoying a fancy dinner out on the terrace. My husband and I had a magical time. The food was amazing, the atmosphere was phenomenal! It's probably one of my favorite memories from the trip. 

Overall, the palace is a little out of the way (hard to access via public transportation), but it's worth the drive. We had a magical time and absolutely would visit again.

A Magical Day in Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon is a beautiful city, and one that we were very excited to visit on our honeymoon! We originally planned to visit some of the museums but our schedule got bumped a day due to a delayed flight, resulting in us visiting the city on a Monday. Pro tip - don't visit Lisbon on a Monday. Pretty much everything is closed. Luckily, we were able to do a bit of research in our hotel room and come up with a new plan!

First up was our visit to the World's Oldest Bookstore!!! SO COOL. I have a whole blog post about our wonderful stop by this store, but to recap: it was beautiful, go visit if you can!!

Next up we decided to hike through the Alfama district to check out Castelo de Sao Jorge. It was a bit of a hike, but we didn't need directions. We just kept our eye on the castle and explored along the way. We weren't disappointed!

We had such a fun time exploring the castle! We got to walk along the parapets and explore the different areas within the castle. There was even a nice little cafe where we sat and enjoyed the scenery. There were even stray kitties and peacocks wandering about! Right next to our table! So fun!

And of course, we got an AWESOME view of the city. It was breathtaking and possibly my favorite part of the day. It was truly memorable standing above the city with my new husband just taking it all in.

Our final stop of the day was to the Oceanarium. It was really neat! I wasn't too excited about this stop initially, but my husband insisted. And of course, he was right. It was pretty fabulous and definitely worth the visit!

 Finally, just a note about Lisbon - don't expect prompt food service. We loved the city, culture and views, but man! It took forever to place an order, get served and PAY at every restaurant we went to. We waited 45 minutes just to hand them our credit card, despite asking the waiter for it twice! So weird! 

All in all, we had a tremendous time exploring the city, even if we didn't make it to the Carriage Museum like we originally planned. If you'd like us to arrange a tour of Portugal for you and your family or group, check out MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com. 

Planning Our Road Trip Around Portugal

We are coming up on our honeymoon! We are so excited to road trip around Portugal this September and our plans are finally coming together! Ordinarily, I would have had this trip planned out long ago but we got married and moved so we've been busy! Here's our general gam plan:

Start our in Porto: We are pumped to fly into this city and spend the day exploring (especially the world famous bookstore!!!)

Move on to Lousa and visit Tomar. We are excited to explore some smaller towns on our way down to Lisbon. We are even staying in a palace!! It's going to be epic.

Spend a couple days in Lisbon living the good life! We are pretty excited to dive into the architecture and heartbeat of this city.

Next stop? The Algarve! We will be spending 3 days down in Lagos hiking, laying on the beach and enjoying ourselves. We splurged a little on the hotel and are excited to see what it offers. I'll definitely do a review once we've stayed!

Close out the trip by road tripping back up to Porto. We will be stopping a few local towns to explore along the way.

Lucky for us, Portugal is a relatively small country, so we will be able to cover quite a bit of ground! It's only 5 or 6 hours between Lagos and Porto so we are doing it up right! Hopefully, we've left enough time in our schedule for relaxing. Depending on how we feel, we may even bop over to Spain for a day! We shall see.

We are so excited for this trip,and can not wait to celebrate our new marriage and our new adventures together. Get ready for some Portugal-heavy content coming your way soon!

City Highlights - London

London is a beautiful city and one worthy of exploring! Over the past few years, I've found a few of my favorite spots:

Starting out with the classics - first up, The London Eye. This ginormous ferris wheel is absolutely worth a ride. Each capsule is fully enclosed in glass and unless you pay through the nose for a private ride, you'll be sharing the experience with at least 20 or so other people. Like most major tourist attractions, I recommend buying your ticket ahead of time online and skipping the line. The ride lasts about 30 minutes and it provides some of the most amazing views of the city. 

The London Eye

The London Eye affords a magnificent view of Big Ben, but it's definitely worth checking out up close as well. It's absolutely beautiful, especially at night! Something to note - you won't actually be able to go up inside Big Ben, so just be ready to enjoy the splendor of the clock tower from down below.

Big Ben across the water

Finally, I recommend just exploring the city and soak in the culture. Ride in a black cab, visit Harrods, take a bus tour and find yourself a telephone booth!  I made some truly amazing memories just by wandering through the streets of London with friends and family and seeing what we stumble across. We've found amazing little pubs with huge, amazing English breakfasts , unique specialty she eps and even found hole-in-the-wall museums!

A fun shot of me by the classic telephone booth! Although inside was a little gross - I'm talking needles, beer bottles and who knows what else! Be careful.

London is an amazing city with plenty of sites to see! You can't forget to make a pit stop to places like the London Tower, The Globe Theater and Buckingham palace, but the London Eye, Big Ben and general exploration are my top three must-do's while checking out London.

Table Mountain - Cape Town, South Africa

Our trip to South Africa was pretty jam packed, so we wound up only having a few hours of free time in Cape Town. We put that free time to good use by visiting Table Mountain! It was absolutely beautiful and the views were amazing.

Essentially, you can either hike or take a cable car up to the top. Then, up at the top there are some beautiful trails for you to hike!

On one side of the mountain is the ocean and on the other are some pretty spectacular views!

The Ocean Side of the mountain

My sister and I on the city side of the mountain

You can even see the world cup stadium! So cool!

Cape Town has a bit of a reputation for being dangerous, but we kept our wits about us and didn't go out after dark. We, thankfully, never felt unsafe and had no problems when traveling through this beautiful country.

Our trip was a blast! And don't forget, if you're loving these travel posts to check out my travel company at MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com.

Bloukran's Bridge Bungy Jump in South Africa

I've been lucky enough to have some pretty amazing adventures recently, but I must say one of my absolute favorite experiences was bungy (That's how they spell it in South Africa) outside of Cape Town! 

It was terrifying and absolutely exhilarating. I'm just surprised that I got the whole group to do it with me! 

First, they walked us out alone this absolutely terrifying/beautiful walkway that led out to the middle of the bridge. We were literally underneath of where cars were driving. It was pretty scary, but also awesome. Cars were just driving along while we flung ourselves off the bridge.

The whole gang before we jumped!

Before we went they weighed us and put our weight (in kilos) and our jump order and time. I weigh 63 kilos, I was Jumper 2 and our jump time was 9 a.m.

My "I'M SO NERVOUS" smile

Getting hooked up! I definitely asked them to make sure I was hooked in nice and tight. They then waddled me over to the edge and counted down, "3-2-1-BUNGY!" They didn't give me time to think AT ALL (Probably Definitely a good thing). When they said "BUNGY" I just did it! I even managed to leap and sort of swan dive off this HUGE bridge!

I DID IT! 

After you jump they lower someone down to help reel you back in. 

We are working on a YouTube channel where the full video will be posted soon! It's pretty epic.

Bungy jumping has been on my bucket list for a very long time and I am SO happy that I was able to finally cross it off! Bloukran's bridge is the world's largest bungy. How cool is that? It was my first time ever bungy jumping, so why not go big? It was such a rush! The free fall was far and away my favorite part - the dangling afterwards? Not so much. Though my sister was the exact opposite. 

Overall, I absolutely recommend doing this jump if you're ever near Cape Town. Something to note is it is a bit of a drive outside the city - like 4 or 5 hours. We broke the trip up with some fun stops along the way. You'll  learn all about those in upcoming blog posts!

Meanwhile, check out my company at MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com and sign up for an adventure of your own!

Lots of love,

Lena

Thailand Adventures (Swimming with Elephants!)

Hello!

I'm sorry for the delay in this post - it's long overdue, I know.

So as I'm gearing up for my next adventure (more on that later) I was looking back at my Thailand pictures and realized I never made a post about it!

Our trip to Thailand was probably one of my all time favorite travel experiences. We only had a few days in Bangkok, so Sky and I made the most of it. We hired a tour company, as coordinating a car and organizing certain activities would have been nearly impossible on our own.

We flew in Friday night and made it to a rather ritzy hotel - the toilet had like 20 buttons! It was incredibly cheap for the quality, but welcome to Thailand.

The next morning, after a fun asian breakfast, we were off for a day packed with adventure! Our first stop was the River Kwai.

The bridge actually has a really cool history and we enjoyed learning about it from our guide!

Next up was the floating market which was actually incredibly cool. We literally rented a boat and floated up and down buying snacks and cool knick knacks. And it was SO beautiful to boot!

The food was delicious and we both had a blast!

Then we made our way to what was surely the highlight of the trip - swimming with elephants! Now I do want to specify here, we went to an elephant sanctuary in the middle of the jungle. These elephants are well taken care of by their trainers, called mahouts. It was beautiful and we were so lucky to have been able to visit with these beautiful animals.

Schuyler, King of the Jungle (one of the Mahouts made him a crown!)

Posing for the tasty orange!

Me and my elephant!

The best water fight in the world!

Look at that jungle!

Oh and I got to backflip off an elephant... so that was amazing beyond all belief

Swimming with elephants was SO FUN but also quite the work out! We headed back to the hotel absolutely exhausted

The next day we took some time to explore some temples. These were beautiful and so fun to explore. My only negative experience was with the rather shifty street vendors (telling you certain attractions were closed so they could give you a tour instead etc.). We had a blast and even got to ride in a tuk tuk!

Overall, Thailand was phenomenal and I 1000% would love to go back!

Lots of love,

Lena

Roman Recap

My time in Rome flew by! I had no trouble navigating the trains but I had one heck of a time finding my hostel. I don't know what it is about Rome but I found it quite hard to navigate the city. I can find my way around just about anywhere but I don't know if it's because I was tired or what, but eventually I found my hostel.

The hostel was rather small and unremarkable. It had a kitchen which is always a plus in my book. I saved quite a bit of money by packing my lunch and cooking my own dinners. I basically just bought gelato food-wise.

I hit pretty much all the major attractions in Rome - The Spanish Steps, The Trevvi Fountain, The Roman Forum, The Coliseum, The Vatican City among others.

The Spanish Steps were far and away my favorite spot to visit. I loved to find a nice perch and read my book and watch the sun set over the city. I went back there three different days just because I absolutely enjoyed my time there. Reading in a new environment, especially in a fulfilling cultural space, is something that I absolutely love to do. I think its important to not just tick the boxes when you travel, but take the time to stop and appreciate the culture and the atmosphere.

The Trevvi fountain was under construction so that was very underwhelming. I'll need to go  back for sure.

The Coliseum was so cool! I had managed to go the whole trip without waiting more than 10 minutes for an attraction, but alas the Coliseum got the better of me. I had to wait a whole 30 minutes. It was packed and not very well organized outside, but once you get inside it was quite amazing. I opted for the audio guide just to try to be able to understand what I was looking at a little bit better. It definitely was worth it, though the stops weren't well marked so that got confusing sometimes. I spent the better part of the day wandering through the Coliseum and the Roman Forums. It turns out my ticket for the Coliseum also got me into the Forums! Sweet!

Another notable stop was of course The Vatican City. I toured through the museum with an audio guide (again, very useful) and had a lovely morning just exploring. I ended up coming back later to see St. Peter's Basilica. I must say it was totally worth coming back for. That is probably my favorite church I've ever been to. I had a great time just taking it all in.

Anyway, I will probably go through eventually and up date all my recent posts with pictures one of these days!

Lots of love,
Malena

Spain: The Recap

Once I landed in Barcelona it was quite a whirlwind... So much so that I hardly got a chance to sleep let alone blog. Basically the tournament went well, but as with any event, there were some hiccups.

Here are the tour highlights:

Park Guell was absolutely phenomenal. Megan, another staffer, came with me to help and it was a good thing too! We made it by like 30 seconds!  I had to run ahead but we got in. Park Guell has super strict windows of time for groups.

In the end the run was totally worth it. The sight was breathtaking. It looked out over the city and the wall itself was inspired by Gaudi. It was so beautiful. I had a great time taking pictures and helping the teams. There were little paths that went off that were fun to follow too!

FC Barcelona Stadium Tour 

I did this last year, but it was fun! It was really neat to get to go through it again. I do love soccer but what's cool is that it touched on other sports in the club as well - like hockey and futsal!

28-30 Tournament - Pretty much just worked!

30 evening - Outing to Girona

Girona was beautiful. It's a little town 45 minutes outside of Lloret de Mar which is where the tournament is. It has winding little streets and is definitely a place that I would love to get lost in for a day. The parents got to shop and the kids got some insight from an expert on futsal. I think we will probably keep this stop on the tour for next year.

31 - Today was mad busy. Training and transfer to Barcelona first thing, then we went on a beautiful bus tour that was truly phenomenal. I love to learn the history of things! Then we got to explore Las Ramblas which is always fun :) We ended the night in quite a fancy NYE party! There were 4 glasses - white wine, red wine, water, and champagne! The food was top notch for sure. It worked out very well!

1 - This was an easy shopping day - except that the soccer store wouldn't open. My goodness. Spanish time can be frustrating because they don't really pay start times much mind, but it all worked out in the end and I even wound up with 2 new pair of shoes! We capped off the trip with a stop at the Ice Bar for the parents. It was great last year and I'm glad we decided to go back! Everyone seemed to have a blast and I'm overall happy with how the trip went.

2 - NO SLEEP FOR ME. I was up late at the Ice Bar and got up to send off both teams at 4am AND 7am... needless to say I straightup slept till noon after I got back from the airport. I met up with the other staffers for one last night in Barca. We walked all over the place! I love to experience a city up close. We ate at Les Arenes which was neat - its an old bull fighting ring that was turned into a mall. The restaurants are on top of the mall on a terrace. We then explored around the Olympic Stadium before heading back to the apartment the group had rented. I managed to do my laundry and headed back for  bed - I had to catch my airport shuttle at 5 the next day... yayyy

Planning Our Backpacking Trip Through Italy

Things are starting to seem real! This December I will be going to Barcelona and likely London. After the work portion of my trip I will be backpacking through Italy with a friend. I can't wait.
We started sketching a rough outline of our Italy trip! It's shaping up to be about 8 days of taking the Euro rail from the North to the South of Italy. We think we want to fly into Milan stay there for a day, head over to Venice the next morning and hang out there. Then we might go to Florence and combine cities that day and hit up Pisa the same day. After that we are Rome bound! After a few days in Rome we want to visit Naples for a day before going back to Rome for one last Italian day before heading home.
It is quite a packed agenda and is very rough at the moment but I'm glad we have started the planning process! We originally were toying with the idea of having a friend drive us through Italy, but it looks like we may just stick to trains for this trip. We will be staying in hostels which I am all for, so that should be fun and interesting. I have really been liking hostelworld.com for research and ratings. The hostel I stayed in, in London was only OK but other than that I have been happy with the hostels I've booked off that site.
I plan international trips for a living so this is just more of the same - except I have full control (with my friend's input of course) over what cities and sites we see :) I'm so excited!
I'll keep updating my blog more as I get ready for what is shaping up to be a month- long euro trip.

Malena

The Ultimate Day Pack

I have discovered the secrets to the perfect day pack: Support, Size, and Stow-ability.

Enjoy this terrible mirror selfie (at least there is a world map in the background!)

Support - Get a pack that has a frame with hip and chest support straps. I can't emphasize this enough! For my job I have to carry quite a heavy load of things. I made the mistake in past trips of not investing in a "backpacking backpack." Instead I opted for a cute little leather backpack. While the backpack did mostly hold up, it ended up ripping slightly from the weight AND my shoulders ached horribly.

This trip I invested in a sturdy backpack and it worked like a charm. If at any point my hips got sore, I would unhook my waist latch and let more weight rest on my shoulders and visa versa.

On top of the Blankenberg Castle in Germany

Size - Figure out exactly what you need to carry, then add enough room for a jacket and hat (good rule of thumb even if you are traveling in a warmer climate! It is always good to have a little extra room). In my case I have to carry things like a med kit, iPad, camera among other documents and binders for work. As a result I prefer a larger bag. Now my pack is actually one that was on clearance so I'm not sure of the model (you won't be able to find it at any rate) but I knew it would be too big to count as my "purse-like item" for the plane. 

Stow-ability - I solved this problem by simply packing my day pack inside of my big pack for airplane trips. I unloaded some of the bulkier items into a small sling bag to stow under the seat in front of me on the plane. It was the perfect solution! I could have my big day pack for the duration of the trip but I could still carry all my luggage on the plane and thus avoid checking a bag.

Those tips are what worked for me! If you are traveling with a small enough pack, you will be able to just stow it underneath the seat in front of you for those pesky plane rides.

All the best,

Malena

Cologne Stadium Tour 4/25

Today was a long day, but I got see some awesome things!

I went early to training to do laundry but the German coaches were really nice. Who knew German laundry machines could be so complex!! I suppose American ones are too.... Add with a foreign language and you have my morning, ha.

I ran back to the hotel for a super fast lunch then we were off to Cologne for the stadium tour!! We had a seriously great guide. He took us around the whole stadium and in the locker rooms etc. I always enjoy stadium tours and this one was personally guided, in English no less!

After we got back I actually had time for a nap!!!! Oh it was a beautiful half hour.

Then we headed to Siegburg for dinner. It was a very authentic brewery and I bought two steins! They were so cheap and such a good memory. We came back to the hotel no hung in the lobby for a bit and now it is bedtime! I am so very excited.

Tomorrow we have a fairly early start - we are headed to Bonn.

Malena

Touring Cologne 4/23

This morning the kids had training like usual then we went downtown for lunch. One of he German coaches was very nice and helped us translate the menu! I (think) I had a chicken kebab- not too be confused with kebob. It was German-Turkish and was served in a pita. It was delicious!

Then we got back and hopped on a bus to Cologne! It was so beautiful!

They even had a lock bridge like they did in Paris.

Lock Bridge in Paris

Lock bridge in Cologne

We toured through the city center and went in the cathedral. It was huge!!! And so so pretty. Because we were with the kids we didn't have as much freedom to explore but I am still so glad we went. Tomorrow is the stadium tour! Woohoo! Nw I will have seen Madrid, Barcelona and Cologne's stadiums :)

                                                   

Anyway, I am very tired - long, but fun, days mean I sleep well at least! I have to get up early to arrange laundry, so goodnight!

Malena

The Best Travel App Out There

While I was in Europe the past two weeks I came across the absolute best travel app out there. I was on the hunt for an app that would provide me with an offline map of Paris. Coletta and I were going to be going all over Paris and I wanted to be able to help us find our way around without the use of the oh-so-scarce wifi. That is when I stumbled across the Ulmon Paris App.

After a little bit of research, I learned that the Ulmon app is not just for Paris, but in fact there is a separate app for just about every major city out there! I loved the app so much I got the one for Amsterdam and Barcelona as well.

By now you are probably wondering, "What makes this app so special?" Well. To start with it has a very detailed offline map with GPS capabilities. If you turn on the location tracker it will automatically show where you are and which direction you are facing when you open the app. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this app!

It offers suggestions of most popular attractions in that particular city. It also divides up the popular places by category - ratings, top places, hotels, food, nightlife, entertainment & arts, transportation, shops... the list goes on and on. Not only does it just tell you what the attraction is, but it provides a link to wikipedia (again offline) that tells you the history of the attraction. You can also just search for a street, place or area and it will pull up the spot on the map for you.

You can also choose to pin locations that you want to visit. You even have the option to color code your pins. For example, Coletta and I pinned our hotel as blue, the places we wanted to visit green - which we changed to purple after we saw them, and yellow for the places we were undecided about. You can also take a picture of the location when you're there and it gets added to your pin!

The other nice thing is that it shows the subway/ public transportation stops of the area. The app can pull up a list of attractions/ sites that are near you and it typically included a nearby subway stop. This aspect of the app was invaluable in Paris, but in Amsterdam I pretty much just walked everywhere because it is a smaller city.

Oh and did I mention that this app is free??? I believe that if you purchase more than 5 cities it may start to cost but I couldn't find details on that yet... Regardless, this app is totally worth it!

You may be wondering if there were any drawbacks to the app? The only thing I wish the app did include would be the price of attractions.

Overall, I recommend this app whole-heartedly. I couldn't believe how much I used it in both Paris and Amsterdam. This is a must have for all travelers headed to a major city!

Malena

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