Dan and I spent a quick 48 hours in Kuala Lumpur on our honeymoon earlier this year. It was our first trip to Kuala Lumpur and we both LOVED the city! It was easy enough to navigate, it had a distinct culture to experience, and it was relatively inexpensive!
Kuala Lumpur decked out for Chinese New Year.
Kuala Lumpur has no shortage of lodging for visitors. In fact, Kuala Lumpur is packed with multi-story chain hotels (from the West and the East), small hotels, hostels, apartments, AirBnB, you name it! As such, Dan and I were somewhat at a loss when picking our hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
Kuala Lumpur!
We ended up staying at the Sheraton Imperial Kuala Lumpur because we had points with SPG, and the Sheraton Imperial Kuala Lumpur did not see any better or worse than any other hotel in Kuala Lumpur. For our stay, we used 3,500 SPG points/night and accessed the the Club Lounge via this blog’s very own SPG card!
Sheraton Club Lounge!
Funny enough, for all of my returning readers, the company “Wines of Portugal” originally interested Dan and me in visiting Portugal several years ago – Wines of Portugal did a wine dinner in Princeton, New Jersey and we attended! Little did we know that we would be returning in 2017 to get married in Portugal! Thanks Wines of Portugal!
Map of the wine regions of Portugal.
Casa do Alentejo is a gorgeous, albeit touristy, restaurant in central Lisbon, very close Rossio Square. Dan and I went here on a food tour years ago, and I remember thinking it was so, so beautiful! Casa do Alentejo is set an an old palace with Moorish feature, the most stunning tiling, and palm trees! So old school Portuguese, and just want you want to experience in Lisbon! So, when we were planning our pre-wedding weekend in Lisbon, we made a dinner reservation for 13 on our first night in Lisbon!
The foyer of Casa do Alentejo!
When planning my trip to Cuba, I really wanted to find an old school cigar lounge for Dan (who loves cigars!). Sad for me, they are not nearly as easy to come by as they used to be. Don’t get me wrong, cigars are everywhere in Havana but not upscale cigar lounges. In my research, I came across Casa Abel
The location was beautiful but the food
I flew all the way to Tuscany, Italy for San Miniato’s famous White Truffle Festival last November! Now, while the San Miniato White Truffle Festival is very well known and totally amazing, there is a surprising lack of information on the festival and San Miniato online! I tried to remedy that with my previous post on San Miniato! However, I did not review the most delicious restaurant – Osteria L’Upupa!
San Miniato from Frederick’s Tower.
San Miniato is a tiny hill town in northern Tuscany, located right between Florence and Pisa, and you probably have never heard of it! While certainly not as popular as other Tuscan hill towns, such as San Gimignano, Assisi, and Orvieto, San Miniato retains a distinctly Italian charm and is almost devoid of foreign tourists (especially American tourists). To draw in some tourists , San Miniato boasts lots of history (what Italian town doesn’t?) a ruined castle, a handful of churches, and its most well-known draw, the White Truffle Festival! And yes, I traveled all the way to San Miniato just for its fabulous white truffle festival in November 2016! In my defense, I have always wanted to go to a real Italian truffle festival AND we were going to Italy anyway! So why not?! And, San Miniato is totally gorgeous….
Overview of San Miniato.
Our first night in Havana got off to a bit of a rough start. We walked and walked and walked trying to find our intended dinner location, Casa Abel, without success. Of course, no one knew the restaurant, our cell phone GPS would not work, and our backup was booked up (spoiler alert, we visited both later in our trip!). I hate picking a place without any knowledge, but we had no choice, and decided to eat at Restaurant Decameron, just across from our hotel. Our choice turned out to be a great pick and this may have been the best meal that I had in Cuba!
As you probably know, the Hofbräuhaus is one of Munich’s (and one of Bavaria’s) most famous tourist destinations, especially for beer drinkers, and its name is recognized worldwide. In fact, it dates back to 1589, is one of Munich’s six breweries, and its now owned by the Bavarian state government. In my experience, the Hofbrähaus is a great place to visit as a tourist, especially for first-timers! I always take first-time Munich travelers to the Hofbräuhaus on one of the first nights!
Craig, Dan, me, and Pryor on Craig’s and Pryor’s first night in Munich!
This post is all about my long weekend in Colmar, Alsace! For those unfamiliar with the region, Alsace is the Germanic region of France lying on France’s Eastern border next to Germany. Throughout history the Alsace has switched off between French and German rule and as a result, the Alsace retains its own culture, food and even language that is not quite French but not quite German, either. In any case, I have been wanting to visit Alsace for years! Actually since college, when a French professor that I didn’t particularly like went on and on and on about her time in Strasbourg (Alsace’s capital). I always envisioned staying in Strasbourg, the biggest city in Alsace and home of European Union offices, but in planning my trip I kept reading about Colmar, the picturesque town a short train ride from Strasbourg.
Since the first part of my trip consisted of two large cities (Stuttgart and Munich, Germany), I opted to stay in Colmar over Strasbourg, and it was the perfect decision for my trip (although Strasbourg is pretty fabulous, too). I mean, look at these canals lined with timber-framed buildings, which were everywhere (!):
COLMAR, ALSACE!
TIMBER-LINED HOUSES!