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]
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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]
Spain Food Sherpas’ Tapas Cooking Class + Spinach Porrilla Pasta
Happy 2018 friends! I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season. Between traveling to Florida for my father-in-law's wedding, then flying up to the northeast for Christmas with family, then heading home to the west coast for New Year's, I had an awesome, whirlwind Christmastime. More on that later, but today we are rewinding a bit to recap another part of my recent trip to Spain: learning about the local gastronomy in the southern city of Malaga via a cooking class with Spain Food Sherpas. For awhile, I had participating in an international cooking class on my bucket list, so the day that I took a tapas cooking class with Spain Food Sherpas was a special one. I was extra excited because I adore tapas, and I woke up that morning looking forward to learning more about Spanish food ... [Read More]
The Ultimate Malaga History & Food Experience {Spain Travel Review}
Hi friends! Today I'm back with my second recap from my vacation last month. After getting a taste of Stockholm, my husband and I flew to Malaga, Spain, where we'd stay for a week and get to experience Southern Spanish culture. My first full day of vacation in Malaga, I wanted to explore the city and get a lay of the land. We started the day by taking the train in from where we were staying a bit south in Mijas Costas, then we sat down at a cafe outside for some tea and croissants. As we sat, sipped, and noshed, we did a lot of people watching. My first lesson of the culture in Malaga came from seeing the older man at the table next to us pour olive oil on his toast with a very heavy hand. People here love their olive oil (and of course their strong coffee too - this is Europe after ... [Read More]
Exploring Stockholm for a Day
“The world is a book, and those who don’t travel only read a page.” A couple days ago I got home from a long vacation in Europe with my husband, and I have so much to share with you! This vacation was the kind of travel that’s tiring and adventurous - a trip that as usual, made my pangs of wanderlust stronger, particularly as I sat in my thoughts during a long 11-hour flight from London to LA. We covered 4 cities in 3 new countries on this trip, the first of which was Stockholm. A stop in Sweden was an add-on to our plans to see Spain. Once I started looking at flights and saw that there was a long layover available in Stockholm, I was intrigued. It wasn’t even a much cheaper flight option, but I had never been to any of the Nordic countries and have wanted to see Stockholm, so ... [Read More]