My husband and I both teach high school. This means two main things for us: our salary is pretty depressing, and we have around 4 months off a year. So, we have the time to travel but not necessarily the income. Since travel is one of our top priorities, we take the steps needed to make a teaching salary go as far as we can. Here’s some things we’ve learned over the years so we can put the most miles behind us while minimizing expenses.
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There’s a reason that locals hate tourists. We can honestly be SO obnoxious and guilty of existing in our own little world. I’ve done it accidently and I’ve seen hundreds of people do the same. I was raised in a tourist town and travel often so I’ve been on both sides of this. My hope with this is to create a kinder group of travelers and in turn, a little kinder world. I hope that tourists can be less of a burden to a community and become the source of economic prosperity it’s supposed to be. If we’re considerate from the start, locals will be more understanding when we make the small mistakes we’re all bound to make while travelling.
When Miki and I were planning our honeymoon, I had one big request for her. Overall, it didn’t matter to me all that much where we went, as long as we spent a significant amount of time somewhere where I could speak some real Spanish. Originally we had been planning on Mexico and Peru for our honeymoon (snorkeling and Machu Picchu). We had long since crossed Europe off of our list, because we had thought it’d be too expensive. But when we priced both the Latin American adventure and three weeks in Europe, they were pretty comparable in price. Going on a Europe trip was Miki’s idea, and it really doesn’t take much work to convince me to travel in Spain. I lived in Spain for four months in college. It’s a really neat place, as is most of Europe. When I left, I was pretty eager to get home- to my routine, to my family and friends, but mostly to my then-girlfriend, now wife. I think my loneliness while I was there kind of spoiled my excitement at times, and looking back, I tend to feel as though I wasted precious time when I could have seen more of the country. So that’s why Miki offered up Spain as part of our trip. I decided that Barcelona would be a good place to go, as it’s one of the most interesting parts of Spain, and has a really good transit system for getting around the city. It’s the capital of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia (Autonomous Communities are kind of analogous to US states), which is one of the richest and most powerful Communities in Spain. It's kind of like their California; while a lot of Spain relies on tourism and hospitality, Catalonia manufactures chemicals, cars, pharmaceuticals; the industrial sector makes up a good chunk of its economy. I think this is why the city feels more modern to me than the other parts of Spain I’d been to. Barcelona is not my personal favorite place I’ve been in Spain (Peñíscola, Cuenca, Segovia, Grenada and Toledo all have more interesting monuments in my opinion), but it is a comfortable place to be if you are planning to be there for a longer period of time. We budgeted five total days for our Spain trip, so, for me, Barcelona was the natural choice. Day 1 We didn’t have super specific plans for our time in Barcelona, and because of that, my biggest recommendation to anyone visiting the city is to make plans. Make sure you know exactly what you are doing each day- it makes it a lot more fun. Our first full day in Barcelona was used to explore Parc Montjuïc and Castle Montjuïc. These places were cool, but not the coolest castle I’ve seen in Spain, and I preferred the botanical garden in Valencia to the one in Barcelona. If you are in that region and want to see a castle, I think you are better off renting a car and driving to Peñíscola. The view of the city from the castle was actually really good, and I think we didn’t like it all that much is because we had a better view from our AirBNB. But if you don’t have a convenient place to see the Barcelona skyline (which is quite beautiful), I think Montjuïc actually would be worth it. Day 2 Our second day in Spain was spent at Montserrat, a mountaintop monastery outside Barcelona. We'll make a separate post on that later. But it was awesome and we highly recommend it. Barcelona is wonderful but our two day trips (Montserrat and Girona) gave us entirely different views of Spain. They're both easy to get to and each unique. We'd highly recommend picking some of the awesome day trips from Barcelona. Day 3 Day 3 was our day for the Sagrada Familia and Parc Güell. We started off the day bright and early at Parc Güell. In the past two years, I’ve been to the park twice, and I can honestly say I don’t think I’d recommend it. It was better the first time I went, because we got there as early as possible and there was almost nobody there. It was peaceful, and has a decent view of the Barcelona skyline. The buildings designed by Antonin Gaudí (Catalonia’s most famous architect) are stunning, but you can actually see two of them from outside the park, and there are other places you can go in the city to see Gaudí’s unique style. While we were there, it was crowded and busy, it was impossible to get good pictures of anything, and it just felt like it wasn’t worth the expense and getting up early. If you really feel like you want to see Parc Güell, get up early and beat the crowd.
The other item on our itinerary for day 3 was to go to the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. This is the most recognizable piece of Gaudí architecture in the city, and absolutely worth a visit. If you are doing Parc Güell and then the Sagrada Familia, do yourself a favor and take a cab from one to the other. It takes less than 10 minutes in a cab and costs less than 10 euros, versus a 30 minute walk (that felt more like 45 minutes to us). Also, buy your tickets for the Basilica online ahead of time (and buy them from the official vender, so that if something goes wrong and you need a refund, you’ll get one automatically). It’s also important to show up at the entrance time listed on your ticket; we showed up four minutes early and they still made us wait. Our Sagrada Familia day was really good overall, but there was one part that was, in the moment, horrible. Now, it’s extremely funny to us. It was a rainstorm. Not like an “oh shoot I forgot my umbrella” kind of rainstorm. It was more like, “OH GOD I CAN’T SEE I FEEL LIKE I’M SWIMMING IT’S THE END OF TIMES,” kind of rain. When we pulled up in our cab, I asked the driver to get us closer to the church entrance. He told us no, so we got out and ran around for a few minutes looking trying to decide what to do. Someone gave me a poncho, which I gave to Miki to protect her camera. Miki actually walked out of the rainstorm somewhat dry, but I looked like I jumped into a swimming pool. We passed some time at a candy store near the Sagrada Familia, where they let us wait out the storm a little bit, gave us some paper towels to dry off, and chatted with us. When the rain subdued a little bit, we got in line to tour the church. Sagrada Familia is beautiful. The facades on the exterior are breathtaking, each in their own way. The interior is the kind of beauty that makes you feel small and insignificant; gigantic, ornate stained-glass windows, support columns designed in both size and shape to look like massive tree trunks, altars and chapels unlike those of any other cathedral or basilica that I’ve ever entered. If you have even a passing interest in architecture, you should go see la Sagrada Familia. The first time I went, we got audio guides. I think they are worth it, because we definitely did not spend as much time in the church without them. Day 4 This was the day we spent in Girona. We're also going to do an individual post on this. It was one of the favorites of the trip for both of us. Day 5 This was our last day in Spain before moving on to Italy. Most of the day kind of happened by accident. This is why we don't have any photos of it. We were supposed to just go to the beach and Miki didn't want to leave her camera unattended on the beach. We started off looking for souvenirs for my dad and brother. I planned to get them something from an FC Barcelona store (Soccer team, if you aren’t familiar with sports. It’s like picking up a Yankees hat on a trip to New York), as their favorite souvenirs from their trip to Spain were FC Valencia gear. We didn’t realize it when we turned on our Google maps navigation, but the store we picked was in Barcelona’s Gothic quarter. It ended up being my favorite part of the city, and Miki’s as well. A big part of the reason I love Europe is architecture: older European cultures tended to build buildings as pieces of art. And the Gothic quarter of Barcelona has some of my favorite architecture I’ve seen, from its Cathedral (which we didn’t have time to tour, since it was a Sunday and church was in service) to old walls, and the Palau de Música Catalana. The Gothic quarter was also where we found our favorite meal in Spain, at Dionisis in George Orwell Plaza. They serve Greek inspired food there, and it is delicious. Among other things, we got tzatziki sauce with pita bread, chicken gyros, and chicken Exohiko. It was all excellent. The price wasn’t too bad either; we both ate a full meal for around 32 euros total. Nearby was a different Greek restaurant run by the same company, called the Quick Greek, which serves what Americans tend to think of as a gyro. Europe, gyros is kind of like the meat that would go on an American gyro. If you are looking for a pita-tzatziki-meat sandwich, ask for a gyros sandwich. After the Gothic quarter, we went to the beach. Which was a terrible idea. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go to the beach on vacation. But unless you are a beach lover who traveled to Spain for its beaches, don’t go. It’s not worth it, especially not on a hot day in July. I took two dips in the water, then we left. And we went back to the Gothic quarter to have gelato at Gelaati! Di Marco (we kind of ended up on a gelato tour through Spain and Italy, and we have no regrets about it). It was very highly reviewed, and with very good reason. I always get chocolate ice cream, and theirs was really good- more bitter, more like dark chocolate than I was expecting, which was awesome. Miki loved their watermelon sorbet; she also got cheesecake flavor, but she said that was just okay. After all that, we went home. We cleaned up our place, and we spent some time on our rooftop overlooking the city. I said my goodbyes to Barcelona, to Spain. As always, I miss that country. But we had a lot of trip left. Next Stop: Roma I’ve been a photographer for a decade now. It all started with birds. I wanted to whale watch, but I lived in a landlocked state. My dad had a DSLR camera with a telephoto lens and I had birds all over the yard. Birds filled the animal void that whales couldn’t fill in Idaho. Since then, I’ve spent the last decade learning the ropes of photography. I did everything from learning from books to taking literally thousands of awful photos. Here’s the best stuff I’ve come up with over the last decade:
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Miki & BobWe're an adventurous couple that travel internationally and travel nationally in our RV. We have a corgi named Sophie that comes along on our adventures. Our goal is to encourage others to travel and show genuine travel over Instagrammable travel. CategoriesArchives
April 2020
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