I like Bali. The part I like most is the part that is less traversed. It seems like everyone has been to the southern part of the island. And more individuals have discovered Ubud since Elizabeth Gilbert put it on the map in Eat Pray Love. But a majority of visitors to this island paradise…
I never do anything the easy way. If I did, then I would have been content with seeing a live Komodo dragon living a mere three miles from my house, safely enclosed, at the Fort Worth Zoo. But no. I have to do things the hard way. And thus one of the major draws of…
I shared earlier this year that watching The Bachelor is my guilty pleasure when I’m stuck in hotel rooms. I still think that it’s an unrealistic show that mirrors the troubles of vacation romances (with the added intensity of a compressed timeframe, extra alcohol, and lots of bystander crew members. But this season has been particularly…
I’m irrationally afraid of a few things. Included on that list – horses, heights, and sudden geologic activity. So when we were planning what to do in the port of Probolinggo on a recent Indonesian cruise, why not just throw all three of those into one activity? The sleepy port of Probolinggo is a great…
When we last left off on the Indonesian adventure, my friend Rachel and I had left our comfortable suite onboard Seabourn Odyssey for a two-night adventure to visit Prambanan and Jogjakarta and experience a sunrise atop the 9th century Buddhist temple of Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage…
I’m the kind of girl who likes climbing around temples. I like it enough that I actually dedicate space in my Tinder profile to mention that I like climbing around temples in Asia – and that’s valuable real estate, so it must be true! So when the Indonesia adventure was being planned, it was MUST…
Yesterday I shared details of our self-guided city tour for Surabaya using Blue Bird Taxi. Today I’d like to share more about the new Surabaya cruise port terminal itself. We were told that Seabourn Odyssey was the first ship to call at the newly finished cruise terminal in Surabaya. Because we were in a hurry to…
On my recent twelve-night Indonesian cruise aboard Seabourn Odyssey, only one port proved troublesome for advance planning (something I don’t like that much) – Surabaya. Surabaya was a mystery. Plan A was to come up with a tour or other planned activity for the day. The ship’s tours did not sound at all interesting (and were…
Our first port of call on Seabourn Odyssey was Jakarta. I’ve only briefly visited the city previously and had no time to tour so I’d only seen one of their high-end shopping malls. We researched the tours available through the ship and while all were appealing, each had elements of interest. In the end, my…
Sometimes it becomes necessary to go far from my typical hotel path. A unique visit to Borobudur was one of those occasions. Yogyakarta is the nearest city to the 8th century Buddhist temple site and over an hour away. One of the unique experiences for this UNESCO World Heritage site is to climb up pre-dawn…
I don’t know about you, but I hate having to dig for things on the internet. While the Googley people love nothing more than to dig for treasure, I prefer to spend my screen time reading. I have a large trip coming up and want to be able to write about it without having to…
I leave on vacation in nine days. That means in about eight days, I will start packing. I don’t do much in advance which means I will invariably be tearing the house up looking for something less than ten minutes before I’m being picked up for the airport. What I have done in advance however…