The Adventures of a Twin Mom – Page 23 – Motherhood and Travel Blog

July 12, 2015

Our Amazing Race: Russia and Estonia

The main reason we went on this cruise was because Judd has always wanted to go to Russia. Russia is the first country that we’ve traveled to that we needed a visa to enter. After much research, we found out that you can either go through the lengthy process of getting a visa or you can book a tour in which they will do the work to get a blanket Visa for you. I decided to book a tour, it was VERY expensive but it was worth not dealing with the hassle of dealing with the Russian government. The tour company we chose was T&J Travel, I was blown away at what a great job they did!

We spent 12 hours in St. Petersburg and loved it!

Our first stop was the Church of Savior on Spilled Blood. Judd and I also call this the “famous colorful ice cream church” (the top looks like soft served ice cream to us). 😉

Then we went to the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world!

Next we went to the beautiful Peteroff Palace!

The palace was breathtaking!

Walking through this fountain is supposed to bring us good luck! We got very wet, I’m hoping this makes all of our dreams come true!

Then we visited the gorgeous Catherine Palace.

The Catherine Palace is known for its Amber Room. I actually wasn’t supposed to take a picture, opps!

We finished the day by doing a little shopping. This shop was so fun!

Everyone told us we were crazy to visit Russia but we LOVED it!

The next day we visited Tallinn, Estonia.

Tallinn is a cute little city with lots of restaurants and shopping.

The Old Town is beautiful!

There were beautiful gardens everywhere!

Judd loved this little dungeon bar!

I love this guy!

This city was very pretty and reminded us a lot of Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Now on to Germany!!!

July 12, 2015

Our Amazing Race: Denmark, Cruise Embarkation, Sweden

From Iceland we flew to Copenhagen, Denmark. What a beautiful city!

We took a stroll through the GORGEOUS Nyhavn Harbor. This was absolutely breathtaking, so many colors and so much to look at.

We then continued our stroll down the main shopping district. There was always something to look at with all the shops, people, and entertainers.

One of my all-time favorite movies is The Little Mermaid. Copenhagen has a beautiful Little Mermaid Statue. I made Judd walk miles while carrying luggage to see this statue!

Beautiful government square with soldiers. This reminded me of London!

In Copenhagen we got on our cruise- Costa Favolosa . This is our second time on Costa Cruises. We’ve been pleased both times. The food is good, the ship is clean, and the staff is helpful.

My favorite things about Costa are the food and the places the cruise line goes! I LOVE how Europeans eat: Pastries and sandwiches galore for breakfast and a large cheese plate after dinner.

We want to see as much of the world as possible since we both have a crush on the world. 😉 Both times we chose this company because of the places the cruise stopped (actually that’s always why we select a cruise). The cruise itinerary is usually very busy with long days at each port, we love this!

Below was our itinerary:

However, nothing is perfect. Since this is an Italian cruise line,very few people on these cruises speak English. Our boat had 3,500 people and only 30 of these were Americans! We go on cruises for the destinations. If you love the cruise experience and love going to the shows/entertainment, this is not the cruise line for you because nothing is in English.

Our first stop on the cruise was Stockholm, Sweden. This city is expensive but GORGEOUS!

We walked through a farmers market. I love farmers market. I love the smell of the fresh fruit and veggies!

Beautiful views along the water

This is a government building that also looked like a castle

Royal Palace

We had a blast! We loved Copenhagen and Stockholm! Now on to Estonia and Russia!

July 11, 2015

Our Amazing Race, Day 1: Iceland

I really need to do a better job at keeping this updated! I’ve mentioned before that my husband and I have a passion for traveling, in just a few years we’ve been to 30+ countries. A few weeks ago we got back from a big trip; we call it “Our Amazing Race.” We visited 11 countries in 16 days! We had a blast and feel so blessed that we got to see all these places! I am going to be doing several blog posts to talk about all of the countries we visited.

The countries we visited in order were:
1. Iceland
2. Denmark
3. Sweden
4. Russia
5. Estonia
6. Germany
7. Poland
8. Spain
9. Morocco
10. Portugal
11. Netherlands

Our Favorite Four (we can’t choose one): Spain, Russia, Morocco, and the Netherlands

Our Least Favorite Four: Iceland, Estonia, Poland, and Portugal. Note: I don’t dislike these countries; these were just our least favorite places (from what we saw).

A TON of work went into planning this trip. We planned it all by ourselves: transportation (10 flights, 1 rental car, 1 cruise, 3 train rides, tons of metros and buses, a cruise, 2 ferries, and a couple taxis), hotels, excursions, and daily itineraries.

Today I’m going to share about our first stop, Iceland. We spent 24 hours in Iceland which was plenty of time for us. I’m the first to admit that I’m not a huge nature person. If you like nature, you might enjoy Iceland more than me. We rented a car and drove for hours to visit different places in the country.

Our first stop was the Blue Lagoon, a beautiful hot spring. National Geographic named it one of the wonders of the world. It was breathtaking.

We had major jet lag and sitting in a relaxing hot spring probably did not help with this. We just wanted to take a nap!

While driving through Iceland, we kept making comments about how weird the landscape was. It really looks like Mars!

Then we went to the Bridge between Two Continents. This is exactly what it’s called, a bridge between two continents (North America and Europe).

We put a lock on the bridge with our names on it

Then we went to a sulfur geyser. This was cool to see but oh boy, did it smell! It smelled like rotten eggs!

Then we went to the biggest city in Iceland, Reykjavik. It was pretty cute!

Everyone in Iceland was very nice and friendly. Every place we went it just seemed to have the small town vibe. Out of all the places we’ve been in the world, I’ve never felt safer than I did here.

Our last stop was in Keflavik, a small fishing town. We stayed the night here and then caught a flight early the next morning. One thing to note, Iceland is very basic. All the hotels I looked at were basic and simple, every single one. We stayed at a “5 star” hotel (the nicest one I could find) and there was nothing fancy about it.

Bye Iceland. Now on to Copenhagen, Denmark.

March 8, 2015

How to Experience Dubai in 2 Days

Thanks to a computer glitch with Etihad Airlines (super cheap tickets), we spent this Valentine’s Day weekend in Dubai! We had 2 days /3 nights in Dubai. I planned out every minute while we were in Dubai because I wanted to make the most of our trip and I’m so glad we did because we saw and did everything we wanted!

We drove 6 hours to Chicago and then hoped on a direct flight from Chicago to Abu Dhabi for 14 hours. I have to share how impressed I was with this airline! Each seat had a clean blanket (wrapped in plastic) and a disposable pillow that had never been used (I’m all for cleanness) as well as a goodie bag that contained a toothbrush/toothpaste, an eye mask (one side said “Wake me up for food” and the other side said “Do Not Disturb”), ear plugs, head phones, and socks! I loved this! They gave us plenty of meals and delicious snacks through the entire trip (Klondike bars during a midnight movie was perfect)! Between all the food, my personal TV, and sleeping pills I was a very happy girl!

After a 14 hour flight, we arrived in Abu Dhabi on Friday night (Dubai time). We then took a 1.5 hour shuttle to our hotel in Dubai. We went straight to bed after checking into our hotel (Ibis Hotel of Emirates).

When we travel to big cities (London, Paris, NYC, etc.) we tend to do the hop-on hop-off bus tours because it is an easy and convenient way of seeing cities. These bus tours always stop at the “main” sites. I picked the 48 hour pass with Big Bus Tours and was very satisfied. I based our schedule around the bus’s schedule and went from there. Here are the bus schedules: http://eng.bigbustours.com/dubai/route-map.html.

Here is a brief outline of what we did on Day 1 which happened to be Valentine’s Day:

We explored the Mall of Emirates as soon as we woke up which happened to be a 10 minute walk from our hotel (I picked this hotel on purpose because of its location). This is the second biggest mall in Dubai and the mall that has Ski Dubai (more to come on that later).

We took the City Bus Tour on Day 1 that left from the Mall of the Emirates. We first went to the world’s largest mall, the Dubai Mall! We could’ve spent days in this place! It was incredible.

We ate lunch at the WAFI Mall/Egyptian Mall! Can you tell UAE loves malls?

We then went to the Spice Souk and Gold Souk! This was a great cultural experience.

Did I mention how nice the metros are? The metro and the entire city are spotless! Everything looks brand new! I’ve been telling people that it reminds me of the Capital in the Hunger Games. 🙂

Next came our favorite part of Dubai. We went on a Camel Sunset Safari in the desert.

The company we used was North Tours LLC. They picked us up at our hotel and we went dune bugging for a few minutes in the desert dunes which was fun but I’m glad we chose the short route because I would’ve gotten sick.

Once we arrived to the camp we rode camels towards the sunset for 45 minutes. It was just the two of us and a guide. It was amazing!

Then we headed back to the camp.

I got a henna tattoo.

We tried on traditional clothing.

Then it was time for a traditional dinner and watching a belly dancer.

We asked the safari driver to drop us off at the Dubai Fountains. We watched the fountains with the Burj Khalifa behind it. I can’t describe this experience. I remember looking up at my husband at one point and saying “Is this real life?”

We then headed back by metro to our hotel and passed out around midnight! It was the best Valentine’s Day ever!

On Day 2 we covered a lot! First thing in the morning we had reservations to go to the top of the Burj Khalifa (world’s tallest building)! I recommend buying tickets ahead of time because they sell out fast.

Then we spent the majority of the day covering the two remaining bus tours, the Beach tour and the Marina Tour.

We saw the Burj Al Arab, also known as the sailboat hotel!

We then ate lunch and walked around the beautiful Madinat Jumeriah Souk.

Then we went to the Marina District. This street holds the records for the highest block of skyscrapers in the world! It’s breathtaking to see!

Then off to the Palms! This is the island shaped like a palm tree and at the very end is Atlantis! We walked around for a little bit. We’ve been to Atlantis at the Bahamas so we decided not to buy the pool/beach pass this time.

We finished off the day by eating dinner at the Mall of the Emirates and then Judd went skiing at Ski Dubai! He said it was amazing!

There are a lot of little things that we did and saw that I’m not mentioning. I just wanted to cover the big things!

If you are not the fastest or most experienced traveler, I’d recommend 3 days in Dubai. My husband and I are young and we are used to traveling without much sleep. This trip was very tiring and if something had gone wrong we wouldn’t have been able to do everything we did.

If you happened to do the calculations, that is 50 hours of traveling for only 56 hours in Dubai. Was it worth it? YES, it was SO worth it! This is an experience we will never forget and a city that will forever hold a big place in my heart! 🙂

January 19, 2015

Southern Caribbean Cruise

Here is Part 2/2 about our most recent vacation.
We went on a 7 night cruise through the southern Caribbean (Carnival Valor was the cruise boat). Here are the ports we visited and my opinions about the ports/our activities:
1. San Juan- Our cruise left from San Juan and returned here. We arrived a couple days early and stayed in Old San Juan. It reminded me of Europe with a Caribbean flare.

After the cruise we stayed a couple more days in San Juan at the Caribe Hilton. This resort was right on the beach. The resort was beautiful! We enjoyed this section of San Juan better than Old San Juan. This was a great way to finish our trip!

2. St. Lucia- What a beautiful island! We’ve always wanted to go here and actually looked for our honeymoon but there wasn’t enough to do for 2 weeks on this island for us. This port is actually why we selected this particular cruise. We took an island tour through James Touring so we could see all the beautiful spots on the island. We were not disappointed. If you go to St. Lucia, take an island tour because the island is large and a taxi to get to the pitons costs more than a tour.

3. Barbados-This was our favorite day! We went swimming with the turtles with a company called Calabaza Sailing Cruises. They picked us up at the cruise port and it was a five minute drive to a beautiful catamaran. There were about 8-10 people on our boat and then 3 staff members (who were incredible_.

It was 2 weeks before Christmas so the crew wore Santa hats 🙂

Then we arrived at the site to swim with turtles! A guide was always with us while we were swimming with the turtles to ensure we were safe and to take pictures. They emailed us the pictures (for free) a few days later and they turned out amazing! See below.

This was one of the coolest things we have ever done! Later in the day we went snorkeling over an old abandoned ship and then had a delicious lunch.

It was an incredibly fun and relaxing day! If you ever go to Barbados, make sure you do this excursion! It was worth every penny.

4. St. Kitts- we weren’t too excited to go here because we couldn’t find much to do on TripAdvisor. We were in for a surprise, this island was BEAUTIFUL!!!! We took a taxi to Carambola Beach Club on South Friar’s Bay. This beach club is a really nice restaurant right on the beach. They have chairs and umbrellas that you can rent for the day. This is the prettiest beach in St. Kitts and the club had the nicest amenities.

We rented two chairs and an umbrella for the day and couldn’t have had a more relaxing day on this beautiful beach!

5. St. Maarten- We did an excursion through Viator at St. Maarten. The shuttle picked us up and went to Orient Beach for a couple hours. Little did we know this was a nude beach! We didn’t participate but we were very entertained to say the least. 😉

The shuttle then took us to Maho Beach and my husband was in heaven! Judd works in the aviation career field and boy was he in his element at this beach! Maho Beach is right next to the runway at the St. Maarten Airport. You’ve probably seen this beach on TV before… it’s the beach where planes fly directly over you (looks as if the plane is going to hit you).

6. St. Thomas-This is a very pretty island. At this port we went zip lining. We had a blast and the views were beautiful!

We then went to the world’s largest ice bar. The whole bar/inside is made of ice. They give you a coat, gloves, and leg warmers. I am glad we went, it was something different but it’s not something I will do again. After about 20-30 minutes in the bar, you will be ready to leave.

We had an incredible vacation! I will be blogging about traveling quite often this year…we are going to 12 countries within 3 continents.

January 2, 2015

Learn to Love Cruising

Hey there!

I decided to write my first blog post about something I have a BIG passion for… traveling. I was lucky to grow up with a family who went on vacation every summer and usually took another one or two trips a year, I saw a lot as a child. Thanks Mom and Dad! BUT my real passion for traveling started in college when I studied abroad in Europe. I loved seeing all the different cultures, I was completely mesmerized. Here we are 5 years later and my passion hasn’t changed and luckily I married a guy who shares the same passion. We make a great team because he throws crazy ideas at me and I make them happen. He’s the spontaneous one with ideas and I’m the planner in the relationship.

Enough about that… Now let’s talk about our most recent trip. This post is going to be about cruise suggestions and tips… The next post will be about the islands we visited.
We are normally not huge cruise fans! Judd and I have been on 3 cruises together in less than 2 years (soon to be 4) although I’ve been on others without him. We often choose cruises as our vacation or as part of our vacations (1 week cruise followed by 1 week of running around Europe) because you get to see so much in a short amount of time. We are not the type of cruisers who LOVE cruising and don’t care about the ports. We choose cruises for the ports. The best part of cruising is you get to travel while you sleep and you don’t have to pack and unpack after visiting a new location! I love waking up in a new city/country. However, we REALLY REALLY REALLY hate dealing with all of the people. I mean this. We like keeping to ourselves and being left alone. We discussed this before and decided to change things up on our last cruise to see if it made a difference to our experience. I’m so glad we did because it made a HUGE difference!

Tips we learned:
1. Splurge for the balcony room, it’s worth it! We spent so much time on the balcony. It was amazing to open the curtains first thing in the morning and see the beautiful views at the new city/country. Pick a room on the left side of the ship! We just accidentally chose this, it almost always has the better views.

2. Get room service in the morning! I am not a morning person and I do not like breakfast. There is nothing worse than fighting to get a place in a buffet line for average/bland breakfast food. (Adults acting like they’ve never seen a buffet before are quite annoying). We would order room service the night before and tell them what time we wanted breakfast delivered. They would bring exactly what we wanted. We’d give them a tip and then we’d eat breakfast on our balcony in our PAJAMAS. It was perfect and so relaxing!

3. The excursions/what you do make your trip! I heard so many people say they didn’t like a port. I asked what they did and they said walked around the shops on the port or the closest beach. You cannot experience the island this way! Those are tourist traps. For each location I looked on TripAdvisor (my favorite website ever) and researched every possible thing there was to do on the island. I looked at reviews and then picked what I thought we would like the best and/or what would give us a good feel about the island.

4. Buy pop/water/snacks! You can bring 12 bottles or cans of pop onto most cruise ships. However, what they don’t tell you is this is every time you come on. We boarded the cruise at 2:00 and the ship didn’t leave until 8:00, so, we found a Walgreens a block away and made 2 trips back and forth to the room! We had enough water and pop to last us the entire week. Have the room steward clean out the fridge so you can put all of your items in it.
5. Random things to pack that can be life savers: magnets (to hold shower curtain in place as the boat moves), hand soap for your bathroom (we hate the bars of soap they provide), hand sanitizer (everyone is touching the same things at the buffet), alarm clock, and a watch (tell what the time is at ports).

6. If your cruise has this option, choose My Time Dining! Some of the cruise lines we’ve been on such as Costa doesn’t offer this. But this allows you to choose what time to go eat. This is perfect in case you had a really busy day and want to nap before dinner or if you are hungry really early. Just go to the dining room when you’re ready to eat.
7. This next tip sounds like common sense but it’s important to remember. The cruises are trying to make money in any possible way they can. There will be a lot of things on the itinerary such as free Detox clinic or massage lessons… don’t go, they are just trying to get you to buy a product or service.
8. Most cruise lines play movies on the main deck at night. GO! Something about watching movies outside under the stars in the middle of the ocean is amazing.

9. The ice cream and yogurt machines are open 24/7 and they are delicious! We always joke that we paid thousands of dollars to go on vacation for unlimited ice cream.

I also found this list that’s very handy: http://www.dcfagowees.com/usefulinfo/Cruise_tips.pdf Thanks to the D.C. Fagowee Ski and Social Club for this packet! I’m not even sure how I ended up finding this but it’s very helpful!

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need any suggestions on traveling! 🙂

Part II coming soon!

Love,

Bri

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