Pearl of the Adriatic (Summer Sailing 2018)

Pearl of the Adriatic (Summer Sailing 2018)

They call it the Pearl of the Adriatic for a reason and now, I finally know why. Dubrovnik is one of those ports that stays with you long after you leave it. Even now, I close my eyes and I can picture the deep blue colour of the sea and the orange roofs seen from the top of the city walls. I can feel the sun on my skin and imagine the same breeze that I felt standing on the top of the fort. The beauty of the place was astounding. Even that word doesn’t sum it up properly. The city is incredibly photogenic; no matter where you turn, there’s a good photo just waiting to be taken. Each and every view looks as if it was pulled straight out of a picture book, and the colours look as if the saturation was turned all the way up on Photoshop.…

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Sunny, Sunny Split (Summer Sailing 2018)

Sunny, Sunny Split (Summer Sailing 2018)

Split was our first port of call this trip, and it was such a good opener for the journey ahead. Beyond this, it was such a good taster of Croatia because it got us so excited about the country’s beauty and attractions. Split is Croatia’s second largest city (after Dubrovnik, our next port of call) and it has settlement dating back to the 6th century, making it one of the oldest cities in the region. So, that’s why going to see the old city was a must. We weren’t booked on a tour for this port because everything was within walking distance from where the ship was docked, and we liked to see the city via walking because you always got to see more of it, both the expected and the unexpected. After getting off the ship, it was about a 10 to 15-minute walk to the Peristyle, which is…

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In the City of Love (Summer Sailing 2018)

In the City of Love (Summer Sailing 2018)

And we found ourselves back in the city with waterways instead of roads and gondolas instead of cars.  We were back in the company of gelato, masquerade masks, and hidden alleys built on water. We were in Venice, and it was so good to be back for the second time. I finished the book, Sapiens, just a couple months ago and the author writes about this whole idea of romanticism that has really exploded, especially in the 21st century. It involves buying experiences over material goods. As human beings, we long to see the world, we invest in trips abroad, we go to movies, or we throw money at cool restaurants that let you eat blindfolded. Because it’s all about the experience and over time, it is this collection of these experiences that make up a life. Our life. We were complete romantics in Venice. For us, the one day…

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Monthly Musings: July

Monthly Musings: July

And just like that, we’re in the heat of the summer. (In the literal sense too – just last week, Toronto had broken its highest recorded temperature on that day in 54 years). The children are out of school, the days are getting hotter, more people are flocking to the cottage on the weekends, and the summer barbeques are ramping up. It never fails to amaze me (or scare me) how fast the summer months fly by. This is pretty disappointing since Canada only gets so many months of good weather in a year. This sudden realization scared me in another way in that I realized I didn’t have much longer to do all the things I had originally put on my “summer bucket list.” It’s hard because, for our entire lives, we have all these grand ideas of things we want to do and goals we want to achieve.…

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Summer Sailing 2018

Summer Sailing 2018

And with another summer often comes another summer getaway. Another series of memorable destinations, another series of blog posts and another couple thousand photos to remember all that was seen and felt. This summer is definitely no different. This year, we’re setting sail on Holland America’s ms Oosterdam for the very first time. It takes a lot for us to stray away from booking with Princess Cruises, but this cruise line offered the perfect itinerary for us. We could only escape during the month of August, and we wanted to go back to the Mediterranean region. The last time we were there was four years ago, and after spending the past two summers traveling to colder regions, we were craving the heat. We wanted to be eating our weight in pasta and pizza in Italy, and we wanted to surround ourselves with the white houses in Greece again, with the…

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