UK - From Heathrow to Devon

Earlier this year, I decided it was finally time for me to travel to the UK.  I knew I'd travel there at some point in my life, but somehow the years kept passing by.  Eventually, I felt like I couldn't consider myself a legitimate world traveler if I had not gone there yet.

I had two weeks to travel, and I came up with one ambitious itinerary.  Not knowing when I'd eventually be back, I wanted to cover as much ground as I could, from top to bottom.

Alone in the city of love

Back in summer 2000, while studying abroad in Spain, I traveled alone to Paris for a weekend.  If I had the choice, I would not have wanted to travel there by myself.  But, the classes were over for the summer and all of my schoolmates returned home.  I had never been to France before, and since I studied French in addition to Spanish in college, I really wanted to go even if it meant going alone.  Turns out, traveling alone wasn't so bad.  In fact, there were even some things that I loved about it!

Stop for Iceland

*Be forewarned, I hope you like pictures.

When traveling, a direct route to your destination isn't always the cheapest option, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Coming from Phoenix, it is difficult to find reasonably priced airfare to Europe, and unless your destination in that part of the world is London, you will HAVE to make a connection somewhere.  Where exactly though?  Making the decision to connect in Reykjavik, Iceland, turned out to best part of my 2013 "European" vacation.

Boulder & Beyond

While on trips to Colorado in the past few years for weddings and business, I had some free time to explore.  My destination of choice - Boulder and the surrounding area.  (As we've established, I'm more of a mountain girl than a city girl.)  Depending on traffic (which can be awful at times due to seemingly never ending construction), Boulder is only about a 40-minute drive outside of Denver.  Here are some of my highlights and recommendations.

Hungarian Idol

Everyone wonders what it would be like to meet one of their idols in person.  I never thought that I would get the chance to meet one of my music idols out of the blue, in a really random place, but that's exactly what happened.  Here's my story...

Tokyo Disney Mania! (part 2)

*If you have not read part 1 of this tale yet, please read that first.

Day 2 - DisneySea

Two days later, on a Wednesday, I was back at it.  After the experience I had at Tokyo Disneyland, I was kind of dreading doing it again.  This time I visited the resort's other park, DisneySea.  The resort does not offer a 2-day park hopper ticket, so I had to devote one day only to each park...but more on that later.

The morning started the same as Day 1, with me arriving at the park prior to opening time.  Since it was the middle of the week and there was rain in the forecast, I was hoping that the crowds would be smaller.  DisneySea is located farther back on the resort's property than Disneyland, so I rode the monorail to make things faster.  (Plus, I wasn't certain if it was even possible to walk to the park from the train station.)  The monorail was packed with people, mostly what appeared to be teenagers.  (Does anyone go to school here?)  Other than for the Mickey shaped windows and hand grips, there wasn't anything special about the monorail.  Oh, and you actually have to pay to ride it.

Toyko Disney Mania! (part 1)

During my recent trip to Tokyo in late Sep 2014, I spent two days at Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea.  I know some (or a lot) of people would consider this a waste of two travel days, but being a Disney lover I couldn't NOT visit the parks while in Tokyo.  I had high expectations going into the visit, even knowing that the parks get very crowded.  Overall, I enjoyed the experience but I would not want to relive it...but I'll never say never.

Day 1 - Tokyo Disneyland

I read online that people start lining up at least an hour ahead of time to enter the park.  So that was my plan.  The park opened at 8am, and I was in line by 7:30am (a little behind schedule.)  I can confirm, YES there were long lines!  Once the gates opened, it took at least 10 minutes for me to enter the park due to the length of the line.

Little Bit O' Seoul

I departed Tokyo on Thursday afternoon for a 2.5 hour flight to Seoul.  It was kind of weird flying United between two non-American cities.