On May 18, 1980 at 8:32 a.m., a magnitude 5.1 earthquake triggered one of the world’s largest recorded landslides, followed by one of the most powerful volcanic blasts in the history of North America: Mount St. Helens. That morning, twenty-three square miles of the mountain blasted sideways at 650 m.p.h. The temperature reached 660 degrees…
Mt. Hood & Columbia River Gorge
In our third day in the beautiful state of Oregon, we woke up really to rent a car for the next three days. After some research, Eitan noticed that renting a car 15 minutes away from the city center was $150 cheaper than renting it at the airport. We took an Uber to pick up…
Portland Neighborhoods
We started this beautiful day by walking to Hawthorne Blvd which is the hipster area full of restaurants, coffee shops, and bars. This was the first time I took my new DSLR camera out, so bear with me as I am still learning how to use it. The houses around this area look cute like…
Portlandia
For Labor Day weekend, we took a short vacation to Oregon. Sarah has been here when she was little, so she didn’t really remember much. Eitan has never been, and with cheap flight tickets, this was the best destination to go. We flew to Portland early in the morning and the view of Mt Hood…
Obrigado Portugal and to our World Adventure!
On the way to Lisbon we stopped at the magnificent Almendres Cromlech, a megalithic complexhe largest existing group of structured menhirs in the Iberian Peninsula (and one of the largest in Europe), this archaeological site consists of several megalithic structures: cromlechs and menhir stones, that belong to the so-called “megalithic universe of Évora” These are…
Roman Evora
The young couple slept in the back, missing several scenic towns topped by castles, and arrived at our hotel in Evora at 6:00, which was right within the old town. This was a beautiful hotel, where we were greeted by a perfect English-speaking young woman, who sat us down on a couch and brought us…
Castelo De Vide
We met in the lobby where Sarah got teary as the reality hit that, of their 180-day trip, there were just two left. We departed before 9:30, stopping at a spot on the river with a view of Porto’s iron bridge where Sarah and Eitan shot one of their dancing videos. We continued on for…
Guimaraes
We headed to Guimaraes, a short drive away. It is regarded as the birth place of Portugal and this extensive history is reflected in the variety of national monuments and historic buildings found within the city. Largo Hill is to the north of the city and this area contains the most important historical monuments of Guimarães….
Bragging in Braga
We piled into the car after 9:00 and headed to Braga, the third largest city in Portugal with a very attractive old town, where we had an excellent breakfast and then walked around and soaked it in. We headed towards the city center, where the main sights were located. Braga’s upscale old center is packed…
Port Wine Tasting
After that sardines lunch, we were ready for the second part of our Porto day! We walked with an Australian couple who had taken the tour to the meeting place for the 3:00 winery tour about port wine production that was to include lots of tasting. At the meeting place, we were greeted by a…
Free Tour: Porto Edition
After a good night at our hotel in Porto, we started our sightseeing day at a nice breakfast place the guidebook recommended. Then on to a free tour of Porto!! This was a major event in the lives of Elly and Dan. They have tended to avoid tours, preferring to walk and explore on their own….
700 Year Old University
We then headed off to Coimbra, which was something more than 1½ hours away, another easy drive with ¾ of our party sleeping. Unfortunately, once the GPS got us to the “town center” of Coimbra, the place was totally nondescript with no indication where the cute part might be. Eventually, we drove to the university,…
Medieval Obidos
After the hotel’s excellent breakfast, at 8:45am, we left and headed for Obidos. As much as Eitan tried to find fault with Dan’s excellent stick-shift driving, he had no problem sleeping for long periods with Dan at the wheel, as did Eitan’s wife and mother-in-law. But, once we arrived at the parking lot, Dan failed…
Fairytale Sintra
After our strange and curious day in Lisbon during which Sarah & Eitan and Elly & Dan did their own things, we rejoined forces to go to Sintra, a fairy-tale town just 20 miles outside of Lisbon. Unfortunately, fairy-tale towns don’t have a lot of fairy-tale parking, so we struggled to find a lot, finally…
The Tower Of Belem
While we were separated from Elly and Dan for the day, we decided we needed to explore Belem, on of the “Freguesias” (civil parish) of Lisbon. Originally we wanted to take the historical tram to get there, but the insane quantity of tourists and the long wait between trams forced us to take the normal bus to…
Lisbon: The City Of Fado
After a short flight from Casablanca, Morocco to Lisbon, Portugal where Sarah got lucky enough to get all the rows for herself, we finally arrived back in the old continent. After renting a car which took around 3 hours ( for some reason everyone was renting a car!), we headed to our beautiful hotel in the…
Shukran Morocco!
In the morning we were met by a nice lady guide for a tour of Marrakesh. Koutoubia Mosque, or Mosque of the Booksellers, was begun under the Berber dynasty of the Almoravids in 1120, but was substantially rebuilt from 1162 Almohad caliph under Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, and became one of the most characteristic…
Marrakesh
It is the fourth largest city in the country, after Casablanca, Fez and Tangier. But is possibly the most important of Morocco’s four former imperial cities (cities that were built by Moroccan Berber empires). Marrakesh has some similarities to Fez in its age and sites, but there is one big difference: Motorcycles. Whereas, in Fez, the…
Morrocan Coast: Essaouira
In Morocco in July, it is possible to escape the heat by heading to the coast, and so we went to Essaouira for one of our more laid-back days to explore an exotic walled town that, relative to our other stops, had fewer must-see sights. This gave Eitan something of a break from his relentless…
African Hollywood
Back on the road again, with Sarah and Eitan providing scintillating company. We made a stop at the particularly photogenic Kasbah Taourirt. The el Glaoui clan controlled one of the major southern caravan routes to West Africa and were given extensive power by the French during colonial rule in exchange for keeping the southern tribes subdued….
Desert Fox
Dan was awake at 5:45 and had the pleasure of waking up Eitan at 6:15. Eitan is not a morning person, but he couldn’t resist taking a quick look at the sunrise. Captain Fomo was very close to almost being alive as they trudged up the dunes to experience sunrise in the Sahara. Dan was…
The Sahara
Morocco is full of surprises. From Fez, we drove up into the mountains and through a town that looked as if it could be in the Alps, and then on to a forest filled with monkeys in the Ifrane National Park. Barbary Macaques are endangered monkeys found in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Due to deforestation of their…
FEZtival of Colors
Fez’s medina is an overwhelming assault on the senses. Around every corner, there is something new to intrigue the visitor … except that the “something new” is usually something very old, in that it’s being done as it’s been done for centuries. So, join us for a pictorial reenactment of our Fez exploration. This guy…
The Jews Of Fez
We finally arrived in Fez in the early evening. There are no motorized vehicles in Fez’s enormous old city, aka Medina, so our luggage was taken in a push-cart to our hotel, aka Riad. In Morocco, a Riad is usually a centuries-old large home converted to an intimate hotel. Like all such old homes, it…
On The Road To Fez!
After touring the Hassan II Mosque, we boarded our van for the true Morocco Adventure. The fact is that, regardless of the famous movie of the same name, Casablanca is one of the less interesting places to see in this country, so we quickly headed out to explore a country that Sarah and Eitan soon…
The Moroccan White House
Sarah and Eitan arrived to Casablanca a day earlier. The hotel for the night was by far the best hotel of the whole trip, very luxurious like nothing we stayed before. Perfect for a change in pace, especially after the terrible night sleep we had in Italy the night before. Casablanca does not offer…
La Serenissima
We took a short train from Trieste to Mestre and walked to our hostel for the night. We decided to stay in Mestre as the hotels in Venice are ridiculously expensive. We both have been to Venice and we were super tired, and almost stayed back at the hostel to relax. But luckily we chose…
Bonjourno Italia
We took a bus from Piran to Trieste, it was pretty hard to find the bus we had to take and not much information was available regarding buses to Italy. Still we managed to get into the correct one and after 2 hours we were in Italy. This stop was purely strategic as we needed…
Hvala Slovenia!
After visiting the Predjama caves we drove a couple more hours to Piran, our last stop in Slovenia. Sitting pretty at the tip of a narrow peninsula is everyone’s favorite town on the Slovenian coast. Its Old Town – one of the best-preserved historical towns anywhere on the Adriatic – is a gem of Venetian Gothic…
The Cave Castle
The Predjama Castle is situated in the middle of a towering cliff, a mere 9 km from Postojna Cave. Picturesque, magnificent, defiant, mysterious and impregnable, it has been dominating the surrounding area, perched high up in the 123-metre high cliff, for more than 800 years. It is listed among the Guinness World Records as the…
The Julian Alps
While we were traveling in Slovenia everyone recommended us to visit Bohinj lake when we were in this area. This lake was supposed to be as beautiful but with no tourists, so this morning we drove to Lake Bohinj. When we got there we jumped into the cable car that was going to get us to…
Fairy-tale Bled
With its emerald-green lake, picture-postcard church on an islet, a medieval castle clinging to a rocky cliff and some of the highest peaks of the Julian Alps and the Karavanke as backdrops, Bled is Slovenia’s most popular resort, drawing everyone from honeymooners lured by the over-the-top romantic setting to backpackers who just look for a…
The Old Grapevine
We drove from Ptuj to Maribor and checked-in to our amazing hostel. This is what $25 buys you in Slovenia: a great private room with kitchen and private bathroom. Despite being the nation’s second-largest city, Maribor has only about a third of the population of Ljubljana and often feels more like an overgrown provincial town….
The Oldest Town In Slovenia
This morning Eitan went to rent the car at the bus station and drove back to the hostel to pick up Sarah. We drove a couple hours to the town of Ptuj. One of the oldest towns in Slovenia, Ptuj equals Ljubljana in terms of historical importance, but the compact medieval core, with its castle,…
Ljubljana – The City Of Love
We continued our day at the beautiful capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana. By the way, I bet you already tried to pronounce that name many times and can’t figure out how to properly say it. It is pronounced [loo-blee-ah-nuh]. Before heading for the castle, we started to walk towards the famous sausage restaurant we heard about from…
I Would Like Some Horse Meat Please
Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia has a lot to offer, so much we actually had to make 2 posts of this beautiful city, otherwise, this one would be too long. We took a train to Ljubljana from Zagreb and arrived in the evening. After leaving our bags in the hostel which unfortunately was a little far away…
Night and Day: Zagreb
After visiting the Plitvice lakes national park we finally arrived in Zagreb in the evening. Tania had read about this museum she wanted to go to, the Broken Relationship Museum, and it was going to close soon, so we headed that way. Visually, Zagreb is a mixture of straight-laced Austro-Hungarian architecture and rough-around-the-edges socialist structures, its character…
Plitvice Lakes
We continued our drive to Zagreb but first stopping for the day at the beautiful Plitvice Lakes. The Plitvice Lakes National Park is one of the oldest national parks in Southeast Europe and the largest national park in Croatia. In 1979, Plitvice Lakes National Park was added to the UNESCO World Heritage register. There are…
What The Hell Is A Sea Organ?
We continue our journey through Croatia with a really quick stop in the town of Trogir. This town was recommended by a couple of people we’ve met along the way so we had to check it out. The historic city of Trogir is situated on a small island between the Croatian mainland and the island…
Pakleni Islands And The Blue Cave
Today we took a fast boat to take us to the world famous Blue Cave! This natural wonder cave is a must see for every tourist visiting Croatia. The full day tour included many stops in several of the 1246 total islands in Croatia. But because all looked the same, there was a sense of…
WHERE IS NOODLE 