Crisis Averted
We’ve transitioned from mountains and hiking in New Zealand to beaches and wildlife in Australia! We arrived in Gold Coast and spent some time attempting to surf before heading to Brisbane, where we enjoyed a koala sanctuary and a couple museums.
After a wonderful day in Lake Tekapo, we continued our New Zealand adventure by driving to Twizel. This is a small town a little under an hour away from Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. We had planned to spend both Wednesday and Thursday hiking at Mt. Cook, but unfortunately on Wednesday it was raining heavily. We opted to spend our rainy day taking a “foodie tour” of Twizel and condense our hiking plans into one day on Thursday.
Tommy and I spent a couple weeks back in the Midwest while we were in the process of switching continents (we are now back in Asia!), so blogging once again took a break. Whoops! But I am still dedicated to catching up on each and every place we visited this past year, so I return with some photos from one of our longest-ago trips – Paris, back in late September/early October 2018!
As Tommy can attest to, you cannot take an art history major to Paris without them going absolutely bananas. Over the course of 6 days, we went to 5 art museums and a whole bunch of chapels and other historic buildings that were either full of art or fell into the category of architecture-as-art. (I also spent a lot of time eating cheese plates, drinking cheap wine, and talking about how romantic everything was. I love France!)
It’s hard to pick highlights in South America because we visited so many unique places. But if we had to choose, Easter Island would definitely be towards the top of our list! Although our stay was short, the wild coastal landscapes and mysterious historical sites absolutely took our breath away.
One of the weirdest travel habits that Tommy and I have picked up this past year is looking for long layovers. It started on our journey from America to Europe, when WOW Airlines (now-bankrupt) had a steal of a deal from Chicago to Germany… with a 17-hour layover in Iceland. We decided to make the best of it and spent our afternoon soaking stress away in the beautiful Blue Lagoon. Ever since then, we’ve kept our eyes peeled for layovers just long enough to squeeze in a top attraction or two! On our way from Romania to Egypt in December 2018, we found another opportunity for a “free” mini-trip – this time to the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.
