All posts filed under: travel writing

Along The Way… Surprise! Another Castle!

HilaryStyle No matter how much time we allow in a given place we always seem to run out and it was no different when we visited the Scottish Highlands, for the second time! I hope we will find our way back someday as we barely scratched the surface.  However, places to go and things to see… Scotland’s Flower The Thistle Blair Castle – Blair Atholl 126 KM from Inverness and exactly halfway to Edinburgh Driving along in what seemed like the middle of nowhere Scotland we came across what looked like a shopping mall. It was called the House of Bruar and it turned out to be just that! This seemed like a great place to get out, stretch our legs, and have a meal. Upon further inspection we discovered a really nice self-service restaurant, food markets, flower stalls, house wares, clothing and more! As we were leaving we noticed a sign for Blair Castle View original post 225 more words

Surprise Trip to San Francisco

Originally posted on for the love of nike:
My husband surprised me with a trip to San Francisco last weekend to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. What better gift could a girl ask for?! Over the course of the weekend we ate, drank, and walked (51 miles) to our hearts’ content. We stayed at the Hotel Adagio. This little boutique feeling hotel is owned by Marriott. They were so sweet–giving us a room with a view and a bottle of wine on the house. (Note the giant tiger mural by Nychos. You’ve got a great view of it from there.) Our first stop was Lombard Street. You know, that bizarre crooked street that people actually drive down (amazingly without hitting the gaggles of tourists)? You have to love (and hate) the typography of San Francisco. It creates the most beautiful architectural reactions (and gives you hella blisters). Get a load of those giant wheels spinning cables below. That’s how the famous SF cable cars work. We hopped on (each trip costs $7) and made our way…

Iceland’s Westfjords: The Road Less Taken

Originally posted on Reverse Retrograde:
Many tourists come to Iceland with the goal of ‘doing the Ring Road.’ They want to drive around Route 1 all the way, starting and ending in Reykjavik. Unfortunately for many of them, this does not include the Westfjords. The place is remote, and even some Icelanders have not visited. The upper lefthand corner of Iceland holds its own ‘ring road,’ a network of highways, tunnels, and gravel that makes a full loop if driven from Búðardalur. We went North on the first day, ending up in Súðavík. On the we stayed there two nights, and then moved on through to Þingeyri . On the last day we drove to Bjarkarholt Guesthouse, which isn’t even on Google’s maps most of the time. We completed the loop the next day, 1300km later.  The Road Less Taken is one of my favorite poems, and one which I used this year to say ‘bye-bye’ to my Chinese students. It makes a lot of sense in terms of my life and how I choose to travel, but also in…

Destination: Manarola, Italy

Originally posted on The Finicky Cynic:
Postcard Snapshot #4: Manarola, Italy Manarola. Situated between Corniglia and Riomaggiore, the village of Manarola surprised me by offering more than I had expected, especially as the second-smallest town in the Cinque Terre. It was the last village that I visited on my trip, as I had taken the train over to Riomaggiore, then hiked over to Manarola from there with a Malaysian girl (let’s call her “Naomi”) whom I had met two nights before at a restaurant. While the two villages (Riomaggiore and Manarola) aren’t as far apart from each other as the one between Monterosso and Vernazza, the trail is more challenging. Literally, you are climbing the face of the mountain, as the steps often times required a huge leg (and hand) up! Definitely was sweating like crazy at the end of it. Hike from Riomaggiore to Manarola. Made it to Manarola and explored the village. As we were arriving, I felt a bit disappointed at the aesthetics of it, as the houses didn’t appear to be…

How I Planned a Trip Around the World

Originally posted on Run Adventurouslee:
Many of my friends and followers have asked me over the past few months how I started planning my trip around the world.  My trip started off with my decision to volunteer abroad somewhere.  I started looking up volunteer abroad programs, and came across International Volunteer Head Quarters, and decided that they seemed like the best volunteer program to go through.  IVHQ had a lot of countries and programs to apply for, and I wanted to try and do programs that were more related to what I went to school for (Environmental Science).  All of this research started in April 2015 and originally was just going to be a two week trip.  I applied for an Environmental volunteer program based out of Italy for 2 weeks, was super excited to do it and put down my registration fee to ensure my spot – only to find out that they just changed the program length to a minimum of 4 weeks.  At that time, I only planned on taking 2 weeks…

Travelling with Your Parents

I’ve been in Australia for almost two weeks now and overall it’s been amazing. I landed in Queensland to see the sights (and my grandparents) and fell in love with Brisbane. Then I went to Murwillumbah, with its beautiful misty mountains, and am heading down to Byron bay pretty soon. It’s been a lot of fun and made me seriously want to buy tie dye haram pants and backpack in youth hostels for at least a year asap, but there is one catch.