Posts tagged travels
A Weekend in Paris
A Weekend in Paris

Solidifying the fact that I need more hobbies to keep my brain occupied (and that I need to site-block all my travel sites as well as my procrastination ones), I bought round-trip nonstop tickets to Paris from RDU for the weekend of my birthday. Yep, we went across the pond for two whole days because North Carolina is frustrating and I stress-plan trips (also how Iceland, Japan, and Peru were booked). We'll see what happens next year, when Brendan's restaurant opens and he won't be able to fly off with me as easily.

Because we were there for such a short period of time, our schedule was jam-packed with things we wanted to do more than things we wanted to see, including a cabaret show, a cooking class (of course), a champagne tasting, and a dinner cruise down the Seine.

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Japan
Japan

Buckle up, this is a long one. Clocking in at over 14 days total and our longest trip yet, I planned and re-planned for six whole months between booking the plane tickets and finally leaving on September 3rd. I've loved sushi since I was a kid, and most of my family's holidays end up at hibachi restaurants so I salivated over all the different foods we'd get to try over the two week trip. I didn't know until about a month before that while Brendan and I travel well together, we travel for very different reasons. I go where my stomach leads, and he's more interested in the sights and the actual places we're going. It's a nice balance.

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Italy
Italy

Ah, Italia. We booked flights in May 2018 for an October getaway, and dreams of sipping wine and fresh pasta danced around our heads for the next six months. I went in to my typical research frenzy, knowing the only constraints were starting in Milan and ending in Rome ten days later. The internet had plenty of advice, with Cinque Terre and the Amalfi Coast topping most of the must-see lists.

I really wanted to fit Venice in, since The Thief Lord was one of my favorite books as a kid (I had a thing for stories where kids lived in atypical places like abandoned theaters or boxcars) but at the same time, we wanted to spend less time on the road than we had in Ireland and try to spend two nights in every place. We also decided early on that we wouldn't rent a car this time, opting instead to take trains or buses anywhere we wanted to go…

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Meaghantravels, hiking, international, escapes, cooking, italy-2018Comment
Ireland
Ireland

"If I buy the tickets, can you get a passport before November?"

I was sure Brendan would think I was crazy, planning our first international trip in less than three months. But when I got the email from Skyscanner in late August (less than a month before I left for Iceland) that flights to Ireland had dropped to $500 each, I couldn't resist.

Over the next four hours, we worked out dates to take off work, managing to tack the seven-day trip onto the end of Thanksgiving. I settled into a research frenzy of things to do, places to go, and where to sleep. Our friend Tomer had a moving-out party that night, and we eagerly told everyone who would listen about our new plans…

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