Wanderlust

We booked our next tickets about 6 weeks ago. We found a steal of a deal for Minneapolis to Auckland, NZ and then pulled the trigger. We had to buy the tickets separately (one way to Auckland and one way back to Las Vegas, then a separate flight for Las Vegas to Minneapolis). It's all a little complicated but we are SO excited.  On the way there we simply have a plane to Dallas then a LONG flight to Auckland. On the way back, we have a flight to Honolulu, then a 6 hour layover, then a flight to Vegas. We're staying in Vegas overnight and flying home the next day. It's going to be wild! After buying the tickets we did our usual research about what to fit in and where exactly to go. We tried to fit in the Great Barrier but just couldn't find a way to do it without paying a lot more money and skipping some very cool stuff in New Zealand. We'll save it for another time! So... We are spending 5 days on North Island (Hobbiton, beach time, Tongariro Crossing through volcan...

 Lacey and I spend HOURS creating our itineraries for our trips. We view the pros and cons of different destinations. We make lists of the activities we most want to do. We figure out where we want to sleep. Oftentimes our "travel days" look to be the most boring days on paper. We know we need to get from point A to point B and it will take most of a day and we just bite the bullet. This looked to be one of those days but ended up being so fun.  We woke up early, ate some more of the delicious hotel breakfast, and ubered to the airport again. Uber in Bogota was great and we would highly recommend it. The airport was a little hectic. We fly budget airlines most of the time and this one seemed to have the method of "only check in people who are close to being late for their flight." A worker would call out the upcoming flight and ask if anyone was on it. Then move them to the front of the line basically. We got through with plenty of time. While waiting, we made frie...

We woke up at 7am determined to have a good day and see everything Bogota had to offer. We needed to have an action packed day because we were leaving Bogota the next day and were not coming back. We made our way down to the hotel breakfast. We stayed at the AC Hotel by Marriott and the breakfast buffet was stupendous. We had rice, prosciutto, croissants, fresh-squeezed juice, coffee, yogurt, and a bunch of other stuff. Did I mention it was good? We headed out for the day with a full backpack (well, almost full, I'll explain in a bit). Google said we just had to walk a couple blocks to catch an express bus to get down to the downtown area that we wanted to be in. As happens sometimes, Google lied. We walked to the stop and our bus was not listed. We walked further down the block we still couldn't find it. We decided to just walk down as far as we could go. Eventually, Lacey got us an Uber which worked out great.  The Uber dropped us off at a park. We decided to walk over to Mon...

Because of the room noise snafu, we didn't fall asleep until around 5am. Breakfast at the hotel is from 7am to 10am. We really wanted to get it but couldn't get ourselves out of bed or out of sleep in time. We woke up around 10:30am.  It was too bad the room noise issue happened because the bed was very comfy and the shower was great and the hotel was very secure. We didn't let that poison our whole opinion of the place of course but we wish it would have started on the right foot. The late night's sleep really messed up our plans for the day. We didn't get up and do something until around 11:30am.  We needed to eat. We hadn't eaten anything since around 7pm the night before and that was just some small pizzas in Miami. There was a chain sandwich place across the street from the hotel that we had when we went to Peru. We both got some sandwiches which were pretty good. It was kind of like getting a sandwich at Panera but a little better lol.  We walked around th...

My mom, as always, was amazing and drove us to the airport at the bright and early time of 5 am. She's our reliable, amazing airport taker. We have felt a little out of sorts packing the last week or so. This trip just happened so fast that it's been kind of a whirlwind. Normally, we bought our plane tickets up to 6 months in advance and we have lots of time to think and plan. We were lucky to have lots of Christmas celebrations the week before our trip so it just kind of snuck up on us.  That being said, we got on the freeway to the airport and I realized I forgot my contacts. So we zoomed back, grabbed some spares, and then went on our way again. Luckily, we always leave very early for our flights so it worked out. When we got to the airport I found out I forgot my silicone wedding rings so I'd have to wear my metal one the whole trip, that's fine but the silicone is nicer for warm weather.  We checked our bags easy peasy and went through security. Our friend Celia ha...

Well... We're doing another South America trip. Seems like just yesterday that we were hiking on the Inca trail (because it really wasn't that long ago). And now we're going to a close neighbor to Peru.  The Inca trail trip was a quick decision where we found really affordable tickets and when the world looked like it might be emerging safely from the pandemic. We kept the trip short because we had planned to do a longer trip to hopefully Vietnam or somewhere in Southeast Asia over the winter. That was always the dream anyway. Of course, the pandemic is still going on and Southeast Asia is completely closed. We are vaccinated and boosted up now so we feel comfortable traveling to countries that will take us. We'll also take the necessary precautions of testing before we leave, wearing masks as much as possible, and socially distancing when possible. Anywaysssss, that's enough about a pandemic that will never end until more people get vaccinated/boosted.  Basically, ...

 After a restful night's sleep, we went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. It was really good (other than the tamales that were bad). Lacey raved over the hot chocolate that was literally melted delicious chocolate. The croissants were a hit as well.  For ease of transportation sake, we stayed at the same hotel as before which was just across the street from the airport. However, all of the city's sights are a decent way away. So we packed up our backpack for a full day of being away from the hotel and ventured out in an Uber. Ubers in Peru are incredibly cheap. It was about $5 for a 35 minute trip across the city. We tipped as much as we could! We took the taxi to the main square area of Miraflores, a neighborhood of Lima. This is the main tourist part of Lima (there's a historic part of the city too but it's not visited as much).  We went to the main park to see the "cat park". There are a bunch of cats that live in the park. There was also a book f...