The National Gallery was at the top of our list of places to visit on our short trip to Dublin. Can you guess why? Yes! They have a Caravaggio! The Gallery is centrally located, right on Merrion Square just to the east of Trinity College. We trudged here in the absolutely pouring rain. Unfortunately, they did not have an operating cloak room or lockers, so we had to carry our wet jackets and umbrellas around. The National Gallery is free,…
So you can spend a ton of time here, or just a little bit of time – it is completely up to you. The first time I came to Dublin in 2012 I did a full tour of Trinity College walking around the campus and learning about different cool spots and its history. It takes about 1.5-2 hours depending on how long you linger at the Book of Kells and the Old Library. This time, though, we got tickets just…
How can I have a travel blog and not talk about my incredible Honeymoon in 2016? Well, it has been a while, but my memories from the Seychelles are probably some of my most vivid still. I had dreamed of going to the Seychelles for my Honeymoon ever since I was in High School. Sometime in the mid-1990’s the Chicago Tribune’s Travel section had a massive article about the Seychelles with a big banner photograph of the Anse Source D’Argent…
We took a relatively quick detour to see Mdina Malta on the last day of our trip. We were already a bit exhausted and suffering a bit of tourist burn-out, but Brian and I definitely wanted to see a few Game of Thrones filming sites and Mdina is a really cool and unusual fortified city that you really shouldn’t miss seeing while in Malta. We drove here after our Blue Grotto excursion which you can read about here. It took…
Visiting the Blue Grotto on the southern tip of Malta was the one experience I was looking forward to the most on this trip. Promises of crystal clear, bright blue-green waters, incredible cliffs and rock formations and views made me yearn with anticipation for this jaunt. It was everything I hoped it would be! Getting here was super easy from Valletta. It was about a 25 minute drive straight south and there were good signs. There is a free parking…
As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, I was not really super into neolithic history and temples and things before coming to Malta. Seeing the temples and caverns for myself, though, really changed my mind. We came to the Ggantija Temples during our day trip to Gozo. Check out the full itinerary for our day on Gozo Island here! These are the oldest and largest of the neolithic temples in Malta, and they really were super cool, and you could…
My brother and I were always massive fans of the Ghostbusters franchise. I remember when he was a little kid, he would run around with his proton pack with his buddies in the neighborhood busting ghosts. We watched the two original movies so many times, I’m pretty sure we have them both memorized. One summer, in 2009, we decided that we would create our own tour around New York City, checking out all the filming locations we could find from…
After doing a bunch of research and watching some YouTube videos about The Blue Lagoon, I was completely turned off by going there via big tour expedition or trying to take a smaller boat to the place from a nearby beach. The place is beautiful, but extremely small and crowded, so I started to look for other options to see the Lagoon, and came across Sailing Charters Malta on Viator in order to book a private sail to the Blue…
Gozo is Malta’s second-largest island. It’s known for a laid back “country” vibe, cool beaches, and scenery, so we decided to spend a day here while on our trip to Malta. We rented a car, so we got up super early in Valletta and drove about 45 minutes to the Ferry terminal at the northern tip of Malta. We put our car right on the ferry for the 15-20 minute ride across the channel to Gozo. The ferry itself is…
It is pretty much impossible for me at this point to go to a city, especially in Europe, and not do a food tour. As I’ve mentioned before in several articles, it’s a great way to get to know a city, try some traditional food, and find some hidden gems. This time, I booked a private tour for three of us through Offbeat Malta Food Trails. I would have done a regular tour of theirs, but at this time they…