Europe

Our Amazing Race: Portugal and the Netherlands

Our last two stops were Lisbon, Portugal and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Let me first say how excited I was to travel to Portugal! The pictures looked beautiful. We had a great time in Portugal, but it wasn’t as pretty as I was expecting and I didn’t realize how far you had to travel from Lisbon to get to the beach.

Here is an old fort/castle right on the water. It reminded me of building sandcastles as a child! 😉

We ate lunch along this street one day. This is the main shopping/restaurant area in Lisbon.

Our second day in Portugal was relaxing. We spent the entire day at the beach!

Now on to Amsterdam!!!

This city is beautiful! It reminds me so much of Venice with all the canals but without the Mediterranean feel.

Just being tourists and exploring!

Such a pretty city!

Here Judd was trying to find some Nutella gelato for his wife! 😉 He was successful!

Red Light District. It wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting.

We visited the Anne Frank House.

At the Rijksmuseum to see the iAMsterdam sign.

Being a child at heart, Judd had to climb on top!

Aren’t these cakes amazing?

We loved Amsterdam!

Our Amazing Race (11 countries in 16 days) is over but we will never forget this incredible adventure!

Our Amazing Race: Morocco

We got to visit a continent that we’ve never been to (Africa) and a new country (Morocco)!

We actually stayed in Malaga, Spain and traveled to Tangier, Morocco by ferry. While planning this trip, I wasn’t impressed by the hotels in Tangier, so we decided to spend the nights in Malaga.

Morocco is such a great country to visit with an unique culture.

I love traveling the world and being married to this man!

Just walking around town!

Saying hi to a local camel. We went on a camel safari in Dubai so we decided not to ride them in Tangier!

We had a traditional Moroccan lunch with music!

We really enjoyed this and the food was actually delicious.

The decor at the restaurant was gorgeous!

We went to a carpet store. We didn’t buy anything because its not really my style but they were beautiful.

More shopping. I love shopping in unique places like this! We rarely go in to the standard souvenir shops where you can buy t-shirts and teddy bears, you can do that anywhere!

Aren’t these buildings so cool?

Now on to Portugal and then finally the Netherlands!

Our Amazing Race: Spain

The next country on our list was Spain! I’ve wanted to come here for years! We flew into Barcelona and stayed here for two nights. I could not have been more in love with this city! Below are pictures from Barcelona.

Behind me is Casa Mila. A guy by the name of Antoni Gaudi designed several of the most famous tourist attractions in Barcelona. We visited several of the places he designed. This was one of the places, notice there was not one straight edge.

La Sagrada Familia Church also known as the “sandcastle church”. This was also designed by Gaudi.

Isn’t it beautiful?

This picture is from Tibidabo Hill. This hill has a beautiful amusement park and church with gorgeous views of the entire city.

The amusement park and church

Casa Batllo- Another one of Gaudi’s masterpieces. I loved all the tiles!

We spent an afternoon at Barceloneta Beach. This wasn’t the prettiest beach I’ve been to but it was fun!

In my last post I mentioned that Barcelona won the UEFA Finals. While we were in Barcelona the entire city was celebrating.

There was a parade with the players’ one of the days. It was so much fun to watch! I thought Americans were crazy about sports but they don’t even compare to Europeans and soccer!

My favorite place in Barcelona was the Park Guell. This is another one of Gaudi’s masterpieces. It was originally going to be a neighborhood with houses but a lot happened and now it is just a BEAUTIFUL park! Judd and I got a little picture crazy here, below are more pictures!

Now on to Malaga, Spain and Africa!

Our Amazing Race: Germany and Poland

Our final cruise destination was Warnemunde, Germany. We actually left the cruise a day early because we didn’t want to go to the last stop, which was back to Copenhagen.

From Warnemunde, we took a train to the cute little town Rostock. This is exactly how I pictured Germany!

After exploring Rostock, we took a train to Sachsenhausen. This was a concentration camp during WWII. It was a very emotional couple of hours. Below are pictures from the camp.

From there we took a train to Berlin.

I had to get a pretzel since we were in Germany!

The Berlin Wall was very cool to see!

Checkpoint Charlie

Brandenburg Gate

The entire time we were in Berlin it was crazy! The European Soccer Finals, UEFA was going on while we were there and the entire city was in party mode!

On my birthday we went to Slubice, Poland for a couple of hours. It was an adorable little town.

Barcelona ended up wining the UEFA and that just happens to be our next stop!!!

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!!!

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!

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