Dublin Castle is a nice way to spend about an hour of your time while in Dublin. It’s not as grand as The Palacio Real in Madrid (which you can read all about here!) and doesn’t even come close to the grandeur of Versailles, but it is a neat place nonetheless. We came here early on a Saturday morning, and while I did get tickets in advance, it was not necessary since there were barely any people here. You are…
We were very excited to add another Michelin Star to our list, and Glover’s Alley in Dublin was the place where we did it. While I can’t say it was the best meal we had in Dublin, it was certainly the longest and most expensive. The best part about our meal were the wines, which were all incredibly exquisite. The place itself is super cool with an ultra mid-century vibe. The upholstery is pink and velvety, or teal and leathery,…
The National Gallery was at the top of our list of places to visit on our short trip to Dublin. Can you guess why? Yes! They have a Caravaggio! The Gallery is centrally located, right on Merrion Square just to the east of Trinity College. We trudged here in the absolutely pouring rain. Unfortunately, they did not have an operating cloak room or lockers, so we had to carry our wet jackets and umbrellas around. The National Gallery is free,…
When you think about Dublin, you don’t typically think about elevated cuisine. Usually its more of the fish n’ chips and bangers n’ mash variety of food. But don’t let its cruddy reputation fool you – Dublin has some really amazing eateries and we enjoyed a wide variety of cuisine from, yes, fish n’ chips, to fancy fish we have never even heard of like “plaice”! Delahunt was easily my favorite meal of our five nights in Dublin due to…
So you can spend a ton of time here, or just a little bit of time – it is completely up to you. The first time I came to Dublin in 2012 I did a full tour of Trinity College walking around the campus and learning about different cool spots and its history. It takes about 1.5-2 hours depending on how long you linger at the Book of Kells and the Old Library. This time, though, we got tickets just…
This is going to be an article about our full 8-day Malta Itinerary, with a whole bunch of links to other articles and websites to help you plan your own amazing getaway! We went to Malta for our oldest daughter’s high school graduation trip (delayed one year due to COVID). Anna is a geography major at Augustana College, and thought that the capital of Valletta sounded cool, and didn’t want to go anywhere “basic”. I’m kind of going all out…
How can I have a travel blog and not talk about my incredible Honeymoon in 2016? Well, it has been a while, but my memories from the Seychelles are probably some of my most vivid still. I had dreamed of going to the Seychelles for my Honeymoon ever since I was in High School. Sometime in the mid-1990’s the Chicago Tribune’s Travel section had a massive article about the Seychelles with a big banner photograph of the Anse Source D’Argent…
We took a relatively quick detour to see Mdina Malta on the last day of our trip. We were already a bit exhausted and suffering a bit of tourist burn-out, but Brian and I definitely wanted to see a few Game of Thrones filming sites and Mdina is a really cool and unusual fortified city that you really shouldn’t miss seeing while in Malta. We drove here after our Blue Grotto excursion which you can read about here. It took…
Visiting the Blue Grotto on the southern tip of Malta was the one experience I was looking forward to the most on this trip. Promises of crystal clear, bright blue-green waters, incredible cliffs and rock formations and views made me yearn with anticipation for this jaunt. It was everything I hoped it would be! Getting here was super easy from Valletta. It was about a 25 minute drive straight south and there were good signs. There is a free parking…
As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, I was not really super into neolithic history and temples and things before coming to Malta. Seeing the temples and caverns for myself, though, really changed my mind. We came to the Ggantija Temples during our day trip to Gozo. Check out the full itinerary for our day on Gozo Island here! These are the oldest and largest of the neolithic temples in Malta, and they really were super cool, and you could…