“Paso Robles is the wild west of California wine.” A couple of weekends ago, my hubby and I went on a long weekend getaway up to Paso Robles to relax, drink some wine, eat some good food, hike a bit, and enjoy central California wine country. I find that it's hard for people who haven't spent a lot of time around California to understand how massive it is. I remember when I moved up to the San Jose area from San Diego (and later, vice versa), family members of mine thought it would be a short drive away and were shocked when I told them it was almost a 10-hour drive! But that's one of the many things that I think is so cool about California. We've gone on countless road trips while never even leaving the state. For a Jersey girl, that was a pretty wild phenomena that took ... [Read More]
featured adventure post
Vegetarian Eating in Barcelona
Hey friends! Today I'm back with another recap from my trip to Spain a few months ago. A few weeks ago I talked about some of my favorite sightseeing in Barcelona, and today I want to share where I ate vegetarian in the city. In addition to my favorite Barcelona eats, you'll also find some suggestions of other veg-friendly places that I had scoped out but didn't have a chance to dine at. Even though I was only in Barcelona for a couple of days, I did a lot of research beforehand to take note of some restaurants that I definitely wanted to try. I had heard that there were a good amount of options to eat meat-free in Barcelona - yippee! - so I had high expectations for food there. After all, the food is a big part of a trip for me. I know that all of you fellow foodies can ... [Read More]
7 California Trails I Hiked in The Beginning of 2018
Can you believe that March is upon us? I feel like 2018 has been flying by so far! I was starting to put together a fitness recap post for January & February when I realized that I have been busy kicking butt with a lot of great sweat sessions. Yea! I also realized that my hiking workouts have really picked up in recent weeks. In the summer the weather had been so hot inland that I wasn't hiking much. Then we had a lot of super dry weather, SoCal fires, & fire danger keeping parks closed, so I stayed off the trails for most of the fall. Then, I did a ton of traveling towards the end of the year that kept my workouts simple & mostly indoors.... but in January & February, my hiking workouts have been on fire! So instead of talking about all of my recent ... [Read More]
A Day Trip from Southern Spain to Morocco
While planning my recent vacation to Spain, I found out that it was doable to do a day trip to Morocco from the southern Spanish area of Malaga. Getting a taste of Africa almost didn't happen due to my cell phone breaking the first day we were in Spain. The idea of going nearly 2 weeks without a phone wasn't appealing to me, and we wound up spending an entire day of our vacation journeying to an Apple store to get it fixed. Since we missed out on a day of adventuring and had some things already planned, we had to make a choice between a really cool hike I wanted to do, and a trip to Morocco. I really went back and forth on what to do, but I couldn't pass up the rare opportunity for us to hop over to another continent and see Tangier, Morocco. So, we had the most unconventional ... [Read More]
New York City Magic: Views from One World Observatory, 9/11 Memorial, Wicked on Broadway & Eataly
Growing up, one of my favorite kinds of special family days was heading into New York City to see a Broadway show, then having dinner at an Italian restaurant afterwards. My grandma was a big Broadway lover, and she turned her girls and grandkids into show fans as well. In fact, her car constantly had Broadway show tunes blaring on repeat, & a few of her favorite soundtracks were Chicago and Annie. I hadn't seen a Broadway show in about a decade when my parents gave my hubby and I tickets to see Wicked over Christmas. The four of us drove the hour from my Jersey hometown into the city for a fun-filled day - a very wintery one at that. I think the temperature was 11 degrees, and it was face-numbing cold! First up, we wanted to visit the 9/11 Memorial since my hubby and I ... [Read More]
A Dreamy Wine Country Day in Ronda, Spain
"The sun, with... planets revolving around it... can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do." - Galileo One of my favorite days on my recent vacation to Spain was when I went on a trip to the country's southern wine country area of Ronda with Tannin Trail. I absolutely love visiting wine country whenever we can, wherever we are, so it was a no-brainer part of our vacation to venture out of the city to Ronda. Tasting different wines, discovering more about the winemaking process, and learning about wines of the world is so much fun, and I've never met a wine region whose beauty I'm not enamored with. On the morning of our wine tour, Tannin Trail's co-owner Kelly picked us up right on time at our hotel. It was convenient to have ... [Read More]
