Destinations

My Wine Tasting Day at Temecula Wine Country

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With spring in the air and the weather being that perfect breeze and sun shine, what better way to spend a spring day than with wine tasting.

Back home in California there is quite a lot of vineyards to go do some wine tasting. Most know of Napa Valley to do their wine tasting, but in the city of Temecula in the southern part of California they have vineyards upon vineyards in one long row for your wine tasting time.

The Temecula Wine Country has quite a bit of vineyards to do lots wine tasting for all sorts of people.

I’ve gone wine tasting for my sister’s best friend’s bachelorette party (whew that’s a mouthful). My sister booked a wine tour/chauffeur called the Antique Pink Cadillac for the day and it paid for all our wine tasting and drove us around in this cool black London Style car.

The Pink Cadillac

The Best Chauffeur ever!

We had three tour stops and we could spend as long as we wanted at each one, well until our free wine runs out.

We all realized that our three stops fell into a certain wine category that us girls thought of during the wine tours.

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Fun on the Alpine Slide at Big Bear, California

Big Bear

Hello all my awesome friends and fellow travelers, I am still reporting here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and life has been busy and great. I finally have the blogging bug once again. But I’ve been so busy with life that it’s been hard to be consistent with this blog, but now that I have a grasp at my current adjustements of life I will finally post all the awesome places that you should all know about and see!

I will be traveling back to my hometown of San Diego to a mountain town that is an awesome getaway for everyone.

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That One Time in Amsterdam

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Oh, Amsterdam. People have all sorts of crazy stories from Amsterdam.

Now I won’t sugarcoat anything. Amsterdam was a crazy trip.

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It was also a one night trip and we weren’t truly able to experience everything that Amsterdam had to offer us. So we have every intention to go back to this wonderful canal city.

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All the stories you have heard about Amsterdam is pretty true. There are “coffee shops” in every corner and there is a red light district with girls dancing around in the window and are quite a liberal city compared to the American conservatives.

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And for those that don’t know, “Coffee Shops” are different from Cafe shops in the sense of you won’t really get coffee, but weed instead. So yes, marijuana is legal in Amsterdam and people buy and smoke it freely in Amsterdam. Granted you must stay within the confinement of the Coffee shop to enjoy your Mary Jane, but for all those wanting to legally smoke a joint, you are more than welcome to sit in a coffee shop and enjoy a puff of MaryJ to your pleasing.

Now that that’s out of the bag, on the other sense Amsterdam is truly a beautiful city. We experienced some rain while we were here so there were tons of umbrellas and gray skies. Also the city center, as soon as you got off Amsterdam Centraal is quite busy with construction. But I could still see the all the beauty that Amsterdam has to offer locals and tourist alike.

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It can get crowded and bicycles are everywhere so be careful of where you walk and when you walk. They are vicious bicyclers out there. And they are almost as scary as those driving in Europe.

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We didn’t really have a lot of time to spend in the city since our hotel was about 45 minutes away from the city town center and we were still recovering from our Paris trip and getting prepared for our next week in Italy. But from what we saw, Amsterdam is beautiful.

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St. Maarten, Philipsburg – Island #2

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To continue on with my Eastern Caribbean Cruise Getaway, our next stop is going to make you wish you were in that warm beach now.

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My next island adventure was at St. Maarten, Philipsburg. (And if you don’t remember, my last island adventure was at Puerto Rico).

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St. Maarten is a beautiful beach city. But it also has some fickle weather where it can rain one minute and have the sun shining high the next. But we were lucky to catch mostly the sun.

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Here you can see the clouds slightly forming into rain clouds.
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From our port we had to take a little boat to get to the main city. Once at the city it was shops, restaurants, and the most beautiful sandy white beach I had ever seen in my life at that point.

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We decided to walk around the city before going out by the beach. We found a little church and went inside. It was small, but dainty and had so much character to it.

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We went into shops and I ended up buying some souvenirs for my family here. One of them was a cute little green dress for my goddaughter.

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Around noon we decided to try some local food. And what’s more local than some jerk chicken and what the drink the Caribbean is known for: Rum.

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We saw this cute outside restaurant that had a grill going in both the front and the back and a bartender all right next to the beach. Safe to say, it was absolutely delicious and I ate that chicken right up. Oh how I wish I can go back and eat that chicken once again.

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After a few rounds of blended rum, it was time to hit the beach. This day we were actually able to relax by the beach and enjoy the sun and water. And of course that is exactly what I did. We rented out two chairs and an umbrella and I set out for the water.

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San Juan, Puerto Rico – My First Island Adventure

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Remember my Eastern Caribbean Diary series video? If you don’t, check it out here!

Well it’s time to start up that Getaway. Quite a few of you may be experiencing some extreme weather that has rain, snow and gloomy days, especially for those in the East Coast with your snow blizzard. I decided to bring some island fun to brighten those days!

Welcome to the first stop on my Eastern Caribbean Getaway!

Island #1: Puerto Rico.

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The first island we hit was San Juan, Puerto Rico and it is a beautiful island. And it is even more gorgeous when it’s the first piece of land you see after being on a cruise ship for 3 days straight.

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The island we were docking to was San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. We had no real agenda for this day (or any of the island days really). So with such little time in the town we opted to just explore the city near the port station, which is known as Old San Juan.

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As soon as we got off the ship we were smacked with humidity, hot sticky humidity. My undone hair got frizzy within a second. But that didn’t stop me from seeing the beauty that San Juan had to offer.

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Old San Juan had such beautiful Spanish architecture as well as narrow cobblestone streets and then it is also surrounded by massive defensive stone walls and forts. It is a sight to behold.

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Many of the fort buildings were turned into government buildings as tourism started to boom. Like the building called the La Princessa used to be a municipal jail, but it has now become Puerto Rico Tourism Company building.

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And along the walkway of where the La Princessa stands, their Spanish markets are lined up for snacks of wonderful Puerto Rican delicacies.

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Lastly, we went full tourist by visiting the restaurant Señor Frog. But with such little time in Puerto Rico, it just meant for me visit it at another time with more time to actually explore and enjoy the town and go to an actual beach.

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Paris, France – Rain, Crêpes and the Eiffel Tower

Our second day in Europe, we hopped on the Eurostar and made our way to the beautiful city of Paris.

Now Paris is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Our hotel came with a little view and even just that was breathtaking.

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Our amazing view from our top floor window.

We were a bit tired from all the trains, metros, and walking, but we couldn’t stay inside on our first night in Paris. So we settled our stuff down, took a quick breather and were out the door to explore the city.

Alex booked this hotel called Fred Hotel. It was only about a 30-40 minute walk to the Eiffel Tower. Well to save us a few bucks for the metro, we decided to just walk.

It’s truly not a far walk to the Eiffel Tower, that is, until you get lost.

With no navigation system, we had to rely on this little city maps I had of Paris to get there. Right off the bat, we had already missed a turn and ended up walking about 10 minutes in the wrong direction. So we had to turn back, and there we missed another turn somehow.

After trying a bit more walking, we were starting to get frustrated that we had no idea where we even were. No navigation system really sucks when you’re in a foreign land.

And to the best of our luck, it started to rain. And I don’t mean a small sprinkle. It started to pour. So there we were at a corner trying to look at the maps on my phone and it starts to pour that we can’t even read the map without my phone drowning from the rain.

Luckily, my good navigation systems and map reading (Alex can back me up on this, I was usually always right when it came to directions in Europe) we were finally headed in the right direction to the Eiffel Tower.

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So close, but still so much walking.

Finally after what felt like an eternity of walking, we saw the Eiffel tower and got so excited. Unfortunately, the Eiffel tower looked closer than it actually was and we still had a bit of walking to do. But even through all the rain and frustrations of being lost, we made it the beautiful Eiffel tower.

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London, England (awkward) Video

Sometimes I like to awkwardly make intro videos of places I’ve been to (Check out my Caribbean one here).

And of course with my first time in Europe, I had to make a London intro video.

Here you go, all of awkward me in London.

Cheers!

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