Monthly Archives: August 2012

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We’re Off!

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We are finally leaving for our much-anticipated trip to Portugal and Spain! Our trip begins with four nights in Denver for a wedding and some family time, and then we’ll be enjoying two wonderful weeks on the Iberian peninsula. 

We are all packed and we have some activities planned out, but we will be relying on guidebooks and suggestions from locals while we are there to fill up our days and nights.  We have booked our day visit to the Alhambra, and I plan on booking a night visit once we get to Denver.  We have plans for day trips from Lisbon and Granada, and a list of potential activities at each place.  We haven’t spent much time researching specific restaurants, but we’re confident that finding great food will not be an issue.

We can’t wait to come back and share pictures, information, and more!

Drinking with a View

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Whether we’re abroad or in our own city of Bakersfield, Ryan and I love to sip drinks and eat snacks while taking in a view.  I received an email this morning from Fodor’s with a link to an article about the 10 best hotel bars with a view in Europe.  It’s great timing because we’ll be visiting three of the cities this fall!

In Lisbon, the article recommends the BA Terrace at the Bairro Alto Hotel.  This was already on my radar after reading about it in a Trip Advisor forum post.  Since our Lisbon itinerary is fairly relaxed (we plan to do a lot of exploring in the different neighborhoods), there will hopefully be time for us to visit this bar and enjoy the fantastic view!

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Alhambra: Morning, Afternoon, and Night!

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We are less than one month away from leaving for our Portugal and Spain vacation.  These last few months have gone by so quickly – and here we are, feeling unprepared (but excited!) for our trip.  We aren’t the type to plan out every single little detail, but we do love researching things to do, places to eat, and sites to see so we don’t waste time when we are there.  However, there are some sites that are so popular that we have to actually plan a bit ahead of time.  One of these is the Alhambra in Granada, and the more we research, the more we can’t wait for the experience. If you want to venture there one day, you may first have to research details like is sharelife vacations legit.

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Portugal and Spain: How we are spending our time

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The Westin Palace hotel, Madrid, Spain

The Westin Palace, Madrid – our hotel for two nights.

For our upcoming trip to Portugal and Spain, we will be gone for a total of 13 nights.  While I originally wanted to stick to three or four cities, it was so hard to limit the options.  I want to share the itinerary for our two week vacation, since we’ve been sharing bits and pieces of the travel-planning process:

Lisbon, Portugal – 3 nights

  • Arriving: around 8:30am at the Lisbon Airport
  • What to Do: explore the neighboorhoods, enjoy the food and wine (and hopefully experience Fado!), visit Belém, visit Sintra (as a day trip)
  • Leaving: around 9:30 from the Lisbon Airport

Barcelona, Spain – 3 nights

  • Arriving: around 12:30 at the Barcelona airport
  • What to Do: nothing is set in stone, but we plan on visiting some of the popular sights like Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell, hanging out at the beach, exploring La Rambla, enjoying tapas
  • Leaving: around 9:30am – this ticket is already booked! Check out Ryan’s post here on direct online booking to potentially save a lot of money on train tickets. 

Sevilla, Spain – 2 nights

  • Arriving: around 2:00pm at the Sevilla train station
  • What to Do: Alcazar, Flamenco, food!
  • Leaving: We aren’t sure yet.  There are a few train options we’re looking at – one leaving around 7am, one that would leave around 9:30am and one that would leave around 12pm.

Granada, Spain – 3 nights

  • Arriving: Depends on the train we decide to take from Sevilla, but we would get in around 10:30am, 1:30pm, or 3pm at the Granada train station.
  • What to Do: the Alhambra, a possible day trip to Nerja
  • Leaving: around 9:00am from the Granada train station.  This ticket has also already been booked. 

Madrid, Spain – 2 nights

  • Arriving: around 1:30pm at the Madrid train station
  • What to Do: tapas, tapas, tapas! Ok, and the Royal Palace, Prado, and 
  • Staying: At The Westin Palace, Madrid.  This is the only hotel we haven’t written a post on, so I wanted to share the information now.  Long story short:  Starwood had a “points and cash” option for the nights we will be staying (pay partially with starpoints, partially with “cash” in USD – this is usually an awesome deal) and we couldn’t pass it up.  The location is great, so honestly, we didn’t even look at other options. 
  • Leaving: around 11:30am from the Madrid airport.

We’ll continue to do research on activities, places to eat, and things to see, but we look forward to changing our plans according to what we want to do while we’re there!