The most beautiful art that we can admire is made by nature, the best color combination we found it in nature. What do you think about orange and blue?
The most beautiful art that we can admire is made by nature, the best color combination we found it in nature. What do you think about orange and blue?
This series is about my visit to Wyndwood Walls in Miami. Wyndwood Walls is s street art museum, where walls are converted in giant canvas with street art. The art is very colorful and I wanted to give a little twist to my visit there and make it a little surreal experience of my own. … Read more Vibrant Journey
I am happy to announce that I can help anybody on creating their own travel stories! And even better, this will help me create my own travel stories to share with you on my blog!!
I decided to become a travel consultant! I been thinking about this for months now and finally made my decision. Travel is one my passions, I want to see with my own eyes the beauty of this world and cultures. But lately has been difficult to do that with my full-time job and other responsibilities. Also we just bought a house and you may know all the expenses that comes with that. I am in need of an extra income that eventually I want to convert in my main source of income.
What a team we are going to be my husband and me! A pilot and a travel consultant, I think we will be well equipped to help you with your travel and tourist needs :).
I am in the process of getting my certification at this very moment. Soon I will be announcing and sharing my website that I will link with my blog. Now you see why is a win-win situation! I help you, you help me, we both travel and I can write more stories! And if you are a blogger or a travel writer even better you will have your own stories to write 😉
When we were looking for tours for our cruise, we wanted to do something different in each place that we were going to visit. We notice the Electric Bike Tour in Barcelona. None of our other stops offered a bike tour, but this was not any bike tour. It was an ELECTRIC BIKE TOUR. When we read the description of the tour, said that we were going to be using MERCEDES BENS BIKES. “Wooa” I thought…
I love to ride bicycle but I am not a cyclist,and I am not a sport oriented person. I like to run bicycle in a very girly way. I always have this image of me running my bike with flowers in the bike’s basket, enjoying a beautiful scenery. Mountains, flowers, beautiful blue skies, crispy cool environment… And flat, straight streets or down hills street only, where the wind can caress my hair. Do you see the picture? That’s what I dream about, but for some reason it looks like this kind of image is only vivid in my imagination.
We already had the experience during the summer of riding bikes at Central Park in NY. After that experience we agreed that we never will do another bike tour or anything that include a bicycle, because we are not in condition to keep up. But my cute ignorance saw the description of ELECTRIC MERCEDES BENS BIKES, and I thought for some reason that this was some kind of scooter. The description of the tour said that we were going up hill, but I wasn’t worried about it because I was going to be riding a Mercedes Bens Electric Bike! Did I said ELECTRIC! It had to be some kind of a scooter, no doubt about it.
We were a small group of 8, four couples. There were two couple older than us, so I was convinced that this was going to be an ease thing. First we had to wait almost 30 minutes because our tour guide didn’t arrived on time or he said that he didn’t see us. Because of that 30 minutes delayed, the four and half hour tour became a 3 1/2 hour tour, in a literally bike that you have to pedal up hill!
When I saw the bikes my dream bubble popped really loud in my head. In top of that, the nice newer bikes were to tall for me. I am 5 feet tall, so I need little kids bike. The smaller bikes were older bikes, I had to carried an extra battery wrap behind in my bike just in case I ran out of battery. So, the way this work, you have to pedal and the battery help you to make it “easy” for you. But when you are going up hills… Hmmm when you are driving around hundreds of people around you in the middle of the city…
Taking my breath, my heart wanted to jump out of my body…
Oh boy! What an experience. It was hilarious, because I was in such a stress of trying to keep up with the group that every time I was going to start pedaling I couldn’t keep up my balance and I zigzag almost tumbling with everyone beside me. I was a menace for my group. Now, after I completed my zigzag at the beginning, then everything went well until we were up the hill. We started to fall behind until we were the last ones. Poor Jorge was so embarrassed. He was behind me, he didn’t want to leave me alone. When we got to the top our tour guide was all worried and ask us if we were ok. Jorge answer with an excuse than only him believed.
The “top” of the mountain for us, was just the lower station of Montjuïc Cable Car. From there, the cable car was going to take us to a higher station where the Montjuïc Castles is located. Each couple with their bicycles got in one cable car to the top were we all meet.
Montjuïc Castle
After we enjoyed resting in front of the castle for a few minutes, we went down hill. Now we are talking about! At this point I was enjoying my trip more than ever. This is the part of my dream that came true. when the wind caress my hair.
A stop that we did in our way down the hill.
After this I tried my best trying to keep up with the group. For a moment I was the second one in line, behind the guide. I was pedaling like a maniac, I couldn’t stop or look back, I couldn’t take the chances of falling behind again. But when we stop to wait for the others… I lost my rhythm and started again with the zig zag…
When we were getting to the Sagrada Familia Church I was almost run over by cars… There were so many cars, so much people and I was so focus trying not to lose my group that I didn’t notice that the traffic light changed. It was a really scary moment for me, all cars where almost in top of me, they didn’t want to stop and I was already in the middle of the street, I didn’t have a choice that to keep going.
But over all I am so glad we did this tour. My adrenaline levels were overflowing my body. At night, when we were at the cruise eating dinner, Jorge and I couldn’t stop laughing remembering our crazy day in Barcelona. Jorge started to make fun of my zigzag riding style. We laugh so much that our waiter was intrigue of our laughter. I was even crying, my tears ran over my moving cheeks with no control, my stomach even hurt, it was hilarious.
The next post I will just share the random pictures that I took every time we stop on our way, for the tour guide to explain something. Check out the next post!
There are so many things that I could talk about Malaga and our 5 hour experience in town. But first I want to share my first impression, in other posts I will talk about our tour and the places we visited.
As you can see in the pictures above, the port looks clean and inviting. And that’s the way it kept looking as we went in and through the city in our bus tour. Looking through the window for a moment I regret not staying around and explore the city on our own.
Picture taken behind my bus tour window
Our tour took us out of the city to a rural area, which I will talk more about it later. Everywhere we looked in general had a nice city look, full of life and with so much to offer. I looked through the bus glass window with a sun-ray blinding one of my eye. Fountain pouring it’s crystal water, people crossing the street while looking up to the mountain looking at the moorish castle, streets clean and I don’t know how may trees wave goodbye at us while we pass by the Botanical Garden. All this and more means we’ll have a good excuse to come back to Malaga someday.
Something we learn is that the city is warmer than we expect it. Malaga and all the Costa del Sol towns are like Florida to United States. All people from the North come during cold weather because is always sunny and warm.
We learn that Picasso was born here in Malaga and later moved to France where he lived the rest of his life. Now thanks to a grandson and daughter in law, Malaga have a collection of Picasso’s work in his home town. People that love art and museums will have agreat time in Malaga, there are plenty of museums including a Picasso museum.
So, I guess knowing a city for the first time is like meeting somebody for the first time. That first impression could make you want to know more about this “person” or city or it could make you want to run away the other way. I know is not fair to make a conclusion of nobody or any place until you give it a chance to know more about it. But for sure a good first impression could be inviting, refreshing and leaving you with desires of knowing and learning more. This is what happend to me when I start seeing the city and our tour guide was telling us so many great information about it while traveling through and out of the main city with a destination to our first stop “La Finca de Juanito”.
Cook, go out, perhaps the outdoors, water sport, family time? What about reading, listening to music, traveling?
It’s important that we do things that we like, that we enjoy, because that help us motivate a balance in our life. We all have to work, to provide for our families, we all have responsibilities with our society. But, what about clearing your mind of the heaviness of the everyday life? What about breaking the routine once in a while? Those things that take us out of the loop, are the ones that bring balance to life. Those things are the ones that will give a real meaning of all the work that you do.
Traveling, having fun, taking time with family, explore the tourist area where you live, water fun, hiking, adventure, friends… The list could go infinite, those things are a need in our lives. Some people may think that those things are luxuries, but they are not. Everything that we do out of balance tend to be a problem sooner or later.
Personally I will love to travel 24/7… But I can’t. At least at this moment I can’t do it. But still there are so many things that I can enjoy close to home. I personally love spent time with my family, I think everybody should take time to do that, it’s very rewarding and everybody benefits from it. I combine the two things I like the most, the result:
Great time as a tourist close to home with the people I love.
I am always in the look out for things to do with my teenagers and Jorge. That is why I love Groupon! It give me so many options of things to do around the Orlando area with the great bonus of discounts. I encourage you to check them out, I am pretty sure they have something to offer in your city.
I found these two Groupon for kayaking and swimming with dolphins and manatees, we try them both in two different occasions. Both of this Groupon are from the same company, but sold separately. It really is a good deal! 😉
Jorge and I went for a little adventure for ourselves…. The tour lasted for two hours. I would say that is more for beginners. But still two hours were you can stop what are you doing and enjoy the sun, the warm water and the Florida fauna.
They take you to a little Island on the Banana River where dolphins and manatees pass by like cars in a highway. They don’t guarantee the encounter with the dolphins or manatees but its most likely to happen. Of course there are rules to this, if the mammals come by you can’t harass the animals or chase them, or go on top of them. You have to be gentle and always remember that they are wild strong animals. They are so used to people that they will come to you. Specially manatees! They like to be pet like dogs do. The tour guide was telling us to stay around in the area that sooner or later they will come to you. Exactly that happened! We had two visitors, and indeed they like to be pet and rub. So cute! One of them stayed with the group for a long time. It kept poking us, for us to touch him and rub his back. Later came another one, and this one roll to the belly to be touch and rub too.
We saw some dolphins passing by but they didn’t stop to say hi. Probably they were in a hurry or something. Our tour guide told us that sometime they stop by too and like to be touch and they are playful. We were not that lucky with dolphins but the manatees filled our heart with cuteness.
Take a look to our fun outdoor adventure here in this video.
If someday you are around Central Florida, you should stop by and have one of this tours. I will be taking another kayak tour soon with other company and see how it go. I will share my story with you later about that. If you want to know more information of things to do in Central Florida send me a message and I will do my best to help you.
Thank You so much for traveling my stories with me. Until then,
Most people have on their bucket list something they want to do or see . Well, beside travel the world, there are few things more specific that I want to do. One of them was crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, but I didn’t want just to cross it I want it to know the history behind it.
Thanks to the New York Passes (www.newyorkpass.com) we took two different tours that were included with the price. The first was the Night Bus Tour with City Sights NY (http://www.citysightsny.com/nyc-double-decker-night-tour) it gave us great information and we were able to see the Brooklyn Bridge at night from the Manhattan Bridge. I highly recommend this tour, you will learn things from NY City that you probably don’t have idea of.
The second tour that we took was the The Brooklyn Bridge and DUMBO Neighborhood Tour, that was a walking tour crossing the bridge and ending at the Dumbo Neighborhood. The tour guide do several stops giving the history of the bridge, telling us all about the difficulties that the people in charge went through and all the casualties that happened during the construction. I had no idea of any of the things that happened during the 14 years of construction. Some times we take things for granted, the only thing I knew is that the Brooklyn Bride is an icon of NY City, that is a beautiful landmark and that I wanted to cross it. I never imagine that more than 20 people die constructing the bridge, I didn’t know that a woman was the one able to complete the project and much more. I don’t want to give you all the information so you can get motivated and go and find out for yourself! It’s a great tour and you will WALK a lot, so be ready to so some exercise.
Dumbo Neighborhood. View of the Manhattan Bridge
Here is a video of our two experiences. I hope you will enjoy it!
TravelmyStories 