Our trip to Paris and London back in 2012 was so beyond exciting for me. It was my first overseas vacation in a very long time (the motherland never counts!), I was going away with Waseem, & hello he ended up proposing to me in Paris! Literally a dream come true. Fast forward 3.5 years, a week away from 2016, both of us burnt out from an extremely busy, but amazing, year and our friends convince us to go to London with them on 6 days notice! We didn’t care that we were running on fumes, we were so excited to jetset with our friends and revisit an itinerary so near and dear to our hearts. My individual Paris and London photo-diaries are on the way but I wanted to share my vlog with you the moment I finished it today! Our 2012 trip was my very first travel vlog; and it wasn’t very good haha so I’m excited to come back with a do-over! We were corny sightseers the whole time so hopefully this isn’t too boring. Enjoy!!
I’m recuperating in our hotel room after a very long day of travels and I’m finally ready to share my camera/gear collection with you! Obviously I filmed this when I was in Mexico two weeks ago but I held off on posting it because of the holiday. I thought I’d squeeze it in before I post my New Years Eve tutorials this week – because who wants to wait another week?! I’ll list the items in order of the video but I’ll include all of the little accessories that I didn’t mention in the video here as we go. Enjoy!
PS don’t forget to enter to win an all-inclusive trip to Mexico HERE! Contest is open until New Year’s Eve!
If you keep up with me on social media you know that I was in Mexico last week – sorry for all of the Instagram and Snapchat spammage! 🙂 It was my very first trip to Mexico and it was just a dreammm.. the area was so beautiful and the people were so warm and kind. I spent my time in Riviera Nayarit, about 30 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was no damage to the region unlike other areas after Hurricane Patricia hit in October. While Mexico might be holding some grudges towards that Patricia in particular, the nation wants us to know that there are no hard feelings towards the good Patricias of the world and wants them all to visit! Mexico is giving the good Patricias a chance to win an all-inclusive vacation to the region @ WelcomePatricias.com! Don’t worry if you have a different name because the winners get to bring a friend, aka you, so share the word!
Happy Fri-yay! Exactly two weeks ago I was stepping off of a plane in the northern-most city in the United States, located less than 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle – Fairbanks, Alaska! One of my husband’s dreams has been to see the Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights, and its found its way onto my bucketlist as well. Periodically from time to time I check fares to Iceland and Norway with our Aurora dreams in mind but fares are always a bit pricey or we simply don’t have the time, especially now that we live on the West Coast crossing the pond aint so quick or easy! I randomly saw a great fare to Anchorage, Alaska from LA and I started to get curious and got my Google on. Can you see the Northern Lights in Anchorage? Oh, faintly? Well, where in Alaska can I get good viewings? Fairbanks!<– That was my train of Googling & internal thoughts. Turns out Fairbanks is an amazing place to catch the Aurora Borealis as it lies within the Aurora Oval. Places within the Oval will have viewings directly overhead – from further away you can view them closer to the horizon. Apparently there were gorgeous sightings in the horizon from our connecting flight from Seattle but of course we were sitting on the opposite side of the plane, womp womp. To make a long, bummer of a story short, the entire weekend was too cloudy to see anything and although I was so disappointed over it we seized our time and had an amazing weekend getaway together! Fairbanks is so beautiful and peaceful we had an amazing time just driving around, flying our 3dr Solo drone, and filming. Apparently Alaskans like to shoot drones out of the sky lol.. luckily our bird made it home safe and sound!
In the quiet town of Fajardo, you’ll find one of Puerto Rico’s nicest and most well known resorts, El Conquistador, a Waldorf Astoria Resort. This resort sits on top of a 300 foot cliff overlooking both the Atlantic Ocean & Caribbean Sea. The views are truly picturesque and we were lucky to be able to take it all in from our cliff-top room. The grounds are huge so we really appreciated the hospitality upon checking in – we would have been completely lost trying to find our room and getting our luggage there would be even more difficult.
The resort is beyond self sufficient. If you’re the resort-y type that loves to relax at a fab hotel, by the pool, or on the beach you literally won’t have to leave. El Conquistador offers personal concierges, pre-arranged babysitting, four freshwater swimming pools, a huge golf course, seven tennis courts (yes, seven!), 32 restaurants, bar, & lounges, a water park, private island….. I can go on & on!
After settling into our room we decided to head down to the waterpark, Coquí, where we enjoyed slides, a lazy river, and an infinity pool. It was so fun to be a kid again with my BFF! We took a cable car down the cliff to then walk over to the waterpark which gave us even more stunning views and a nice walk past the marina. The marina offers deep-sea fishing charters, sailboats, catamarans, & yachts BTW! Now about El Conquistador’s private island… Palomino Island: you can enjoy horseback riding, scuba diving, and so much more. I swear I felt like I needed a week just to explore the property! A water taxi leaves to and from Palomino Island from the resort every 30 minutes so its very easy to go back and forth and I’m sure the water taxi ride itself is a fun adventure! I had my heart totally set on horseback riding but unfortunately we didn’t get to check out Palomino Island due to time constraints :-/ I’ll get into why and everything we explored when I do my full Puerto Rico travel diary! For now, I know you’re dying to see photos so please enjoy & I’ll chat as you scroll
