Some of my extended family moved to Oceanside, California, just about an hour north of San Diego and an hour south of Orange County, about 25 years ago. My folks followed about 10 years ago, so I have been hanging out in this area of California for a long time. On my most recent trip, I was looking for something to do that I’ve never done before in O’side, and stumbled across the fact that Oceanside is one of 14…
I often think about how lucky I am to live in such an amazing city with incredible restaurants, sports teams, activities and architecture. We always make it a point to become members of one or two museums at a time – as a family of six, it’s worth it because it pays itself off within one or two visits. The one membership I keep renewing forever into eternity, though, is for the Art Institute of Chicago. Often rated as one…
If there is one tour that you do near the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica, this hanging bridges tour has got to be it. It’s a several mile easy hike through primary and secondary forest, and your cross six hanging, suspension bridges along the way. We used a guide through Jacamar Tours, which was booked through our resort – Nayara Gardens, and we booked a private tour. I was super nervous about this experience because I’m not really great with…
Henry’s Bar up at the Nayara Tented Camp is a very cool and chill place to hang out any time of day. The best part about it, though, was the special Rum Tasting that we booked there. Our bartender and teacher, Joseph, was amazing. He was super nice, chatty, and very knowledgable and passionate about rums, and spirits in general. He was definitely one of our favorite staff members the whole week. The spread of different rums was intimidating, but…
So like I mentioned in my overview post here, Nayara offers about a billion different tours ranging from super adventurous to very low key. We are definitely more low key travelers, and picked a few tours that challenged us a little, but weren’t anything like zip lining or doing anything having to do with cliffs. Brian and I are extremely amateur birders, and I keep a life list in a note in my iPhone. I really keep thinking I should…
As I mentioned in my intro post here, there are three different resorts in one at the Nayara Resorts Grounds at the base of the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica. Each of those resorts has a different vibe, and there are also several pools you can choose to hang out at. There are also a group of hot springs pools between Nayara Gardens and the Tented Camp. We checked out most of the pools, and I break them all down…
I love going to Las Vegas, and you will see a lot of reviews of Vegas hotels, restaurants and activities on this site in the future. I love the weather there, I love the frenetic vibe, and I love the fact that you can just get away for a few days and forget about real life, pretty much instantaneously, once you start hearing the dinging of the slot machines. I come here to see my family who live in California,…
We visited the Detroit Institute of Arts (The “DIA”) on December 31, 2022 for one main purpose, and one secondary purpose. The main purpose was to see our last Caravaggio painting of 2022, the secondary was to see the massive “Van Gogh in America” exhibit that was about to end there. The DIA is a small, but very nice museum on the north end of Detroit’s downtown area and right next to the Wayne State campus. The second level of…
Boy, looking at my “Activities” menu, we sure did a lot of cool stuff this year. From Guatemala to Europe and all sorts of places in between, we made a lot of memories. This list was absolutely the most difficult to narrow down to just five. We met cool people, saw amazing architecture, experienced beautiful landscapes, and did a few food tours. How do you pick just five? Well, it had to be done, and below are ChiLuxe Travel’s Top…
Dublin has a rich Catholic history, but the two main Cathedrals that you can visit in Dublin are no longer Catholic. This article is going to focus on Christ Church Cathedral and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We came to St. Patrick’s Cathedral first, and it cost 8 Euro to get in for adults. There was no line when we arrived, and we didn’t get tickets in advance, but as we were leaving a bus full of tourists arrived and the line…