Brunette is a savant about UNESCO World Heritage Sites so it was pre-ordained that our trip to Lisbon would include a visit to Pena Palace, Sintra. Sintra's UNESCO status The "cultural landscape" of Sintra is what has UNESCO status, not the Pena Palace, as many less intellectually rigorous travel writers fail to clarify. (This is nearly impossible to believe but there … [Read more...]
The Berlengas Islands – a fun day trip from Lisbon
The Berlengas Islands of Portugal If UNESCO’s server is ever hacked and they lose the records of all of their designated Biosphere Reserves they can call Brunette and she won’t be very far into the alphabet before she says “Berlengas”. If we were going to a desert Brunette would be trying to find a UNESCO oasis where we could snorkel. So when we began planning our trip to … [Read more...]
Szentendre, Hungary
Why visit Szentendre? If you’re going to Budapest try to find the time to take a half-day trip to Szentendre. And do it using Viator, even though we stupidly didn’t! We use Viator all over the world and should have for this trip but instead we used a local provider our hotel recommended. We do not recommend them and, to make matters worse, we don’t even remember their name, … [Read more...]
The Salvador Dali Museum in Figueres; a fun day trip from Barcelona
Barcelona is such a beautiful and fascinating city that you may think we're daft to suggest you leave it for a day trip . Well, we are a bit daft, but you should not get this close to the Dali Museum and not see it. It is literally unlike any other museum. Not only because of its contents but because Dali did not allow it to be catalogued or arranged in any logical fashion - … [Read more...]
Phangna Bay and James Bond Island, Thailand
Back when Roger Moore was James Bond and making the 10th Bond movie, “The Man with the Golden Gun”, it was filmed, in part, on an island near Phuket, Thailand. Even though the film was shot close to 40 years ago, was a critical dud and one of the lowest ranked films of the Bond franchise, the rock is somehow still a major tourism draw. The gun may not have been golden but the … [Read more...]
Our Dubai Desert Safari
Dubai has a serious Napoleon complex and appears to exist in part to achieve, document and proclaim superlatives. The world’s tallest building, the world’s tallest 7 star hotel, the word’s most twisty building (seriously), the largest shopping mall in the world and the world’s longest automated, driverless metro system. Brunette gets plenty of Napoleon complex at home from her … [Read more...]
Barcelona – Our recommendations on things to do and things to skip
[slideshow]Going to Barcelona is probably equivalent to a straight man meeting a beautiful young woman who just read the Kama Sutra and wants to try everything she learned - a veritable orgy of delights! But, alas, the man and the woman and you and Barcelona both probably have time constraints so our goal (beyond torturing this metaphor) is to give you a list of suggestions … [Read more...]
NASCAR here we don’t come!
[slideshow]Prior to our recent trip to Barcelona Blonde and Brunette decided to line up some activities that would be both enjoyable to do and fun for our readers to hear about. This post is about one that did not fall into the "enjoyable to do" category so we hope it at least qualifies for the "fun to hear about" one. Using Viator we booked the Barcelona Guided GPS Go-Car … [Read more...]