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…Fairytale villages, medieval castles, riverside cities, fabulous beaches, delectable seafood, powerful fortified wines… Portugal has everything you need for a satisfying holiday...UNESCO World Heritage Sites, idyllic scenery, friendly people, beautiful & delicious food, and fantastic wines (white, red, and fortified).
We had a lovely week long visit to Portugal. We flew into Lisbon and then leiusurely drove up to Porto with stops in several fairytale-like villages (Sintra, Obidos) and the University city of Coimbra. It was awesome to experience both of the two main cities as well as some of the smaller villages and student life. We plan to come back to check out more of the beaches, countryside, and wine regions! Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trip...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Lisbon
Sintra (30 min west of Lisbon)
Obidos
Coimbra
Porto
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…Plentiful UNESCO World Heritage sites, thought-provoking architecture, diverse and beautiful scenery, fabulous wines, delicious cuisine… We’ve only visited Spain once so far and so have only seen a small portion of this large and diverse country. Spain is home to the world’s third largest number of UNESCO World Heritage sites. So, we will definitely be back to see some more of these sites as well as to experience more of the spectacular scenery, amazing wine regions, and delicious cuisine.
Our trip focused on Barcelona, Rioja, and San Sebastian and was mostly about food and wine. Each day we'd carefully plan out our (limited) number of meals and wish we had bigger stomachs! Food in Spain is amazing, possibly some of the best in the world (second only to Japan in our opinion). Spainards focus on high quality and fresh ingredients, take great pride in their food, and love to eat and drink wine. In fact, we ended up with ended up with more "food" pictures (85) than "sights" pictures (65)! Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trip...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Barcelona
Rioja
San Sebastian
…Numerous world heritage cultural sites, amazing culinary scene, wealth of wine regions, spectacular natural beauty… Italy home to the largest number of UNESCO World Heritage cultural sites in the world. This alone would be reason enough to visit, but it also has an amazing culinary scene, a plethora of wine regions, and a diversity of natural beauty (7600km of spectacular coastline, crystal clear lakes, lush green mountains).
We’ve been fortunate to have visited twice so far. Our first visit explored both the big cities of Rome and Florence with their multitude of famous cultural sights and the countryside of Tuscany with its amazing wineries and quaint medieval hilltop villages. Our second visit took us further north to the high fashion city of Milan and to several of the surrounding lake districts and wineries. We’ll definitely be back to check out another area of the country and some more wineries! Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trips so far...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Rome
Florence
Tuscany
Milan
Mantova (small village ~1.5 hour drive east of Milan)
Valpolicella (viticultural zone of the province of Verona, east of Lake Garda)
Lake Iseo
Lake Como
Lake Lugano
…Rooftop bars/restaurants, stark desert moonscapes, ancient ruins, beaches, mezze… One of our favorite holidays was visiting Turkey. We met up with some friends in Istanbul and then continued on to explore Cappadocia, Ephesus, Pumakkale, Faralya, and Kas. It was a great combination of historical sites, beautiful nature, and cosmopolitan nightlife.
Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trip...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Istanbul
Cappadocia
Ephesus
Pumukkale
Faralya
Kas
…Towering volcanoes, beautiful lakes, rejuvenating natural hot springs, delicious food and wine… Chile is another one of our favorite travel destinations and we’re already planning another visit early next year to explore another area of this long, narrow country.
Similar to Japan, it offers great hiking, stunning scenery, natural hotsprings, and excellent food. Spanning 4,300km north to south, it has a great diversity of scenery from the desert (up north) to vast glaciers (down south). Our first trip focused on the Sur Chico area, which is famous for its volcanoes and lakes. Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trip...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Santiago
Pucón
Parque Nacional Huerquehue
Lago Calafquen
Lago Ranco
Parque Nacional Vicente Perez Rosales
Rio Cochamo Valley
…Beautiful beaches, world famous surfing, stylish beach clubs, massive Komodo dragons, fantastic diving, ornate temples, scenic rice paddy fields, lush rainforests, active volcanoes... We’ve done several holidays to Indonesia to visit our good friends and because there are frequently great fare sales from Australia. We’ll definitely be back to explore more of its volcanic islands and amazing diving sites.
Indonesia is the largest archipelago nation in the world with over 13,000 islands. It is also the most widely spread country in Southeast Asia. Even though it has a large population and several densely populated cities, it also has vast areas of wilderness and an impressive level of biodiversity. In addition to the amazing natural scenery and wildflie, there is a also a rich cultural diversity and many temples and palaces to visit. Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our various trips so far...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Bali
Komodo
Nusa Lembognan
Lombok
...Ancient sandstone formations, aboriginal rock art, massive tidal changes, stealthy crocodiles, huge bird colony, pods of migrating humpback whales... The Kimberley is a massive and remote region in Northwestern Australia. It has 12,000km of coastline, more than 2,500 islands, a land area of ~425,000 square kilometres, but a population of only ~34,000, almost half of whom live in Broome.
We’ve been eager to travel to The Kimberley since we moved to Australia, but it’s not the easiest place to visit due to the remoteness and limited roads. So, we were excited when Ponant, an expedition cruise company we’ve traveled with to other remote places (Antarctica, Kamchatka Peninsula) announced that they were starting trips to the Kimberley in 2017. Exploring this area by ship has the advantage of being able to directly explore the coastline, which is not accessible by road, and traveling with Ponant has the added benefit of enjoying delicious French cuisine and wine. The Kimberley is famous for it’s ancient colorful sandstone, some of which dates back 1.8 billion years. Various forces have molded and shaped the sandstone into crazy contortions. Another unique force in the area is the tides, which can vary as much as 12m between high and low tide, which means the water is rising/falling at 4cm per minute! Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trip...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Itinerary
Timing
...Remote, uninhabited wilderness, dramatic and diverse scenery (volcanoes, geysers, arctic tundra, rivers), amazing wildlife (bears, walruses, otters, whales)... After an amazing trip to Antarctica with Ponant, we were eager to do another expedition cruise with them to experience another remote area of the world. During a presentation of their upcoming trips, we were enthralled by the descriptions and photos of the Kamchatka Peninsula and decided we just had to experience it for ourselves.
The Kamchatka Peninsula is one of the most remote areas in the world with the majority of it accessible only by boat or helicopter. While it represents quite a large area in the Russian Far East (1,250-kilometre-long peninsula with an area of about 270,000 km²), it has only 400,000 inhabitants, half of which live in the capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsk. There is just one road heading out of the capital and it ends halfway up the peninsula. As such, the majority of the peninsula is uninhabited wilderness with a couple of completely isolated settlements of indigenous people. The Kamchatka Peninsula is often referred to as the “land of fire and ice” due to the high density of active volcanoes and glaciers. This combination results in scenery that is dramatic and diverse. The Kamchatka Peninsula is also home to a variety of exciting wildlife, including large populations of brown bears, walruses, sea otters, and puffins. Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trip...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Itinerary
Timing
...Lush tropical jungles, secluded waterfalls, amazing corals, beautiful sunsets... Fiji is one of our favorite places to escape the winter in Sydney and we’ve done 2 trips so far. As an archipelago with over 300 islands, there’s lots of options, which makes you want to visit more than once. It also has one of the best arrival experiences with live music in the arrivals hall and greetings of “Bula!” with huge smiles.
Its major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, contain most of the population. Just a boat and/or plane transfer will get you to one of the many remote, secluded islands to relax and recharge whilst enjoying fabulous hikes, kayaking, snorkelling, and diving. Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trips so far...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Taveuni (northeast of Viti Levu)
Waya Island in the Yasawa Island chain (northwest of Viti Levu)
Ono Island in the Kadavu Archipelago (south of Liti Levu)
...Remote, isolated, extraordinary biodiversity, unique flora & fauna, striking volcanic landscapes... Visiting the Galapagos Islands was one of our favorite and most memorable trips of all time!
The Galapagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands ~900km west of Ecuador. They are extremely remote and isolated, which has resulted in an unprecedented amount of biodiversity and unique species of plants & animals. It also makes the animals completely indifferent to visitors watching them at a pretty close distance. We had some of our most amazing and unforgettable animal encounters on this trip both in the sea and on land:
In order to protect the islands, the government has recently put restrictions on the number and size of boats allowed to visit the islands. They are also limiting when each of the boats can visit certain islands to prevent the boats from inundating the more popular islands. In addition to the benefits from a conservation point-of-view, it also means as a visitor that you will hardly see any other boats or passengers from other boats, which is awesome! The tricky part, though, is being able to see everything you want to see, which can mean doing more that one trip or doing an extended trip, which is what we chose to do. Here are highlights (DINK Trip Tips) from our trip...for more details or to help plan your own visit, contact us! Itinerary/Islands
Boat
Timing
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