Why I Chose NOT to Do a Destination Wedding

 First off, I have absolutely nothing against destination weddings! I think they can be beautiful and magical and definitely work for some people. That said, here are the reasons we opted to not pursue a destination wedding, despite our love of travel.

Take Guests Into Account

When planning a destination wedding, you should consider your friends and family. Some family members are elderly and not inclined to travel, others may not have the finances to make the trip. If you want your wedding to just be a few very close family members, I would talk the idea over before finalizing any plans. Who knows! Some people may be dying for a pre-organized vacation and it could be a hit.

 Convenience

 Planning a wedding is a HUGE undertaking. Trying to coordinate florists, ministers, reception halls, DJ's, caterers and more. It is a LOT of work. Having your venue be within driving distance is much easier than trying to juggle time zones and international call rates. Unless you can find a reliable on-site coordinator to help you out, it may be prove to be almost impossible! And on top of arranging the usual wedding vendors, you'll also likely be asked to make international travel arrangements for loved ones.

Less Expensive

Finally, consider the costs. On top of all the usual wedding costs, you have to include international airfare which can easily climb above $1000. It all depends on how big your ceremony and reception are, but typically, weddings are expensive even when they are local. And don't forget about currency conversion! Of course, you can also off set the costs of travel by ultimately hosting a very small, intimate ceremony and reception abroad. Smaller = usually less expensive.

Ultimately, my husband and I were really happy with our choice to stay local. We found an absolutely gorgeous venue that was like an actual castle! We decided to do the event without an organizer - or should I say paid organizer. My husband and I spent hours and hours coordinating everything ourselves, and it ultimately went really well! We had an amazing time!

If you and your fiance are considering an international wedding, I would be happy to help coordinate the travel. Check out my website at MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com.

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.

Visiting the World's Oldest Bookstore

As a book lover, I'm constantly on the hunt for beautiful bookstores wherever I go. While researching our trip to Lisbon, I stumbled across the ultimate bookstore! The Chiado Livraria Bertrand is the oldest bookstore in the world! It even holds a Guinness World Record! This location opened in 1732 and has since become the largest bookstore chain in Portugal. I must say it was magical.

Here I am with the sign out front!

Tired, sweaty but excited! I had the time of my life wandering through the stacks of books and of course, came away with a few to add to my collection. The set up of the store was really neat! It had multiple rooms that stretched back kind of like a tunnel. It ended with a pretty gorgeous little cafe. As a book enthusiast, it was a pretty awesome experience. I highly recommend stopping by if you get the chance!

Stand Up Paddle Boarding in Lagos, Portugal

In addition to trying our hand at coasteering while in Lagos, Portugal, my husband and I went Stand Up Paddle Boarding for the very first time! It took a bit of getting used to, but we eventually got the hang of it. We started out on our knees and after making our way out toward the cliffs, we were able to stand up (with just a few minor wipe outs).

The cool part of doing our Stand Up Paddle Boarding in Lagos is all the beautiful caves! 

We had to go on our knees while inside the caves so we didn't hit our head along the way.

After a while, our knees started to hurt so most of us ended up just sitting down on the board.

And towards the end, I was really getting the hang of it! It was quite an adventure! We definitely had a blast and are so glad we got the chance to go on such a fun adventure. 

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Coasteering and Cliff Jumping in Portugal

We spent a few days in Lagos, Portugal to relax during our honeymoon.... but of course we had to squeeze in some adventure! I found amazing reviews for something called "coasteering." If you're anything like me, you've never heard of coasteering. I really wanted to go cliff jumping (safely) so I started doing some research, and that's when I stumbled across coasteering! It's a combination of hiking, swimming, rock climbing and cliff jumping to make your way along a coastline. It's a lot more swimming and rock climbing that hiking, but it was amazing! 

We started by hiking down from the parking lot to the water and did our first little jump! For the first 2 lower jumps we were allowed to any trick we wanted, so of course I had to do a backflip! 

The views were beyond amazing! And the weather was perfect... but we were definitely glad to have those wetsuits.

Also, thank goodness for those life vests! That swim seemed to go on forever! My husband and I definitely had to take some breaks.

This is an action shot of the group making our way along some rocks. We even had a few times where we were in a cave and had to put feet on one side and hands on the other and kind of shimmy along. It was so fun!

This was one of our bigger jumps! They told us to put our arms out to stabilize before bringing them in tight for impact. I apparently turn out to be quite majestic when I cliff jump. #FallingWithStyle

All in all, cliff jumping and coasteering were AMAZING! We had so much fun and I 10/10 would do it again. In fact, if my husband and I travel near the coast (any coast) again anytime soon we are for sure going to be on the lookout for other coasteering tours. I would recommend going with a company who knows what they are doing. Our tour was very professional and we had the proper safety equipment which was reassuring. Be careful, do your research and get out there and enjoy the adventure!

A few Days in Porto, Portugal

We just got back from our honeymoon, and we had an amazing time! We had to deal with an unfortunate flight delay which scrambled our schedule a bit, but we still made the most of it! After an impromptu day in Madrid, my husband and I started our trip in Porto (we also circled back around and ended our trip in Porto).

Livraria Lello

Our first stop was the infamous Livraria Lello! This bookstore supposedly inspired JK Rowling while she was writing Harry Potter. To be fair, it was GORGEOUS! Unfortunately, anything touched by JK Rowling becomes an instant tourist attraction. In order to visit the bookstore, you had to buy a ticket. Not my favorite thing, but if you bought a book, the price of the ticket comes off of the book price. As it turns out, I actually kind of like this system. It keeps the crowd under control (though it was still a bit too busy to casually peruse some books) and helps keep the shop from feeling like a Harry Potter merch store. They did sell the books (obviously), but pretty much all other HP merch was sold in a store next to the ticket booth. A bookstore should focus on books, so I really enjoyed that aspect.

All in all, amazing bookstore, but still too touristy and busy for a genuine experience, in my opinion.

My husband and I really wanted to get out and enjoy the city, and there's no better way than going on a self-guided walking tour! We took the recommendation of the Lonely Planet guidebook and followed the tour they laid out. It was a ton of fun! It took us through some amazing places.

Sao Bento Train Station

One of the first stops on the walking tour was the Sao Bento Train Station! It was amazingly beautiful! The Azulejo tiles are a traditional form of Portuguese art. It was so neat to see a combination of tourists admiring the art and commuters just going about their day all in the same place. It was a nice, free stop and I recommend checking it out!

Igrejo de Sao Francisco

Another highlight from the walking tour was our stop in this beautiful church! It doesn't look all that impressive from the outside, but it's not very expensive to buy a ticket to see inside, and it's definitely worth it! The church itself is stunning, but you aren't allowed to take pictures. The pictures below are from the attached museum and catacombs! There is legit a pile of bones under the church which was a bit shocking but really cool!

Ponte De Dom Luis I

Finally, our last stop was relaxing in front of the Ponte De Dom Luis I, which is an iconic bridge in Porto. It was so nice to sit by the water and just take in the atmosphere!

Porto was a beautiful city and one I would totally visit again. I had an amazing time with my husband, and I'm excited to share more from our road trip soon!

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!

Adventure Vs. Relaxing Honeymoon - Which is better?

My fiancé and I are getting married in June and we are so excited for our honeymoon! We both love to travel and adventure, but we know after the craziness of our wedding, we might want to relax on our honeymoon. That sparked the great debate: Adventure vs. Relaxing honeymoon - which is better? There are definitely pros and cons for both, so I'll walk you through our decision-making process.

Let's start with relaxing. After a crazy 6 months of wedding planning, we are already starting to feel burnt out. If we had a few days to just get away from the madness and celebrate our new marriage, we both know that it would be amazing. We both love a good beach day, but aren't sure if a resort of beach town would be the best use of our time off; we really want to make the absolute most of our special trip.

As for adventure, we just had the trip of a lifetime in South Africa this past August. We went bungee jumping, hiking, visiting with elephants and monkeys and even shark cage diving! It was insane! By the time we made it back to the US we were almost more tired than before we left. It was an absolutely amazing trip, and we definitely wouldn't trade it for the world.

We ultimately decided to compromise and do a little of each! We will be going on a road trip through Portugal! There are plenty of beaches where we can rest and relax, but there is lots to see and do as well! We will be splitting our time between slow, relaxing days and adventuring days exploring local towns and immersing ourself in the culture. We may even take a day trip over to Seville in Spain! It's going to require plenty of planning, but I'm up for the challenge. 

I'd love to help you plan your special trip! Check out MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com for more.

Where to Honeymoon?

I'm engaged!

My boyfriend of 5 years recently proposed and we can’t wait to plan our wedding and, of course, our honeymoon! There are several locations we are considering including Greece, Iceland and New Zealand.

We know we’ll want to slow things down a bit for our honeymoon since we’ll be exhausted from our wedding. That said, we are thinking somewhere warm, maybe with a beach nearby. So naturally, I immediately thought of Greece! The buildings are beautiful and the water is incredibly blue. – it truly is paradise! We are considering Athens or Mykonos (and a few other cities too!) – it’s just so hard to choose. Greece would let us still see some museums and architecture, but we have the added bonus of getting to lay out on the beach whenever we want a break.

Going in a completely different direction, we would love to visit Iceland! I’ve always wanted to climb a glacier and adventure across Iceland. I love adventure travel and Iceland has been on my bucket list for the longest time. The only thing is, adventure doesn’t lend itself to relaxation. We might decide to just come back another time.

Finally, we both want to visit New Zealand!.The only problem is it sure is a hike from the US! We are concerned that one week wouldn’t be long enough for that particular trip, and it’s looking like one week may be all we have. We would be able to still relax on some beautiful beaches, but see some amazing sights!

A lot depends on what time of year we get married. At this point we have no idea! There are so many things to consider! If you have any favorite honeymoon spots, let me know!

Don’t forget to check out my travel company at MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com.