When I was researching things to do in Salzburg, one thing that kept popping up was to make sure we try apple strudel. Strudel, one of Austria’s most famous desserts, is a relatively simple dish. Paper thin dough wraps around a fruit and cinnamon mixture of your choice, and then baked to perfection and served…
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Located 2.5 hours from Vienna by train, Salzburg is famous for music. Music, as in, The Sound of Music, which was filmed here. Going even further back, this small Alpine city is also the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But there’s far more things to do in Salzburg—whether you’re interested in music, beer, art, hiking,…
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Located a two-hour train ride from Berlin, Hamburg sits on the Elbe River, close to the North Sea. This beautiful northern German port city is running over with old-school charm and picturesque romance (with a few raunchy winks to boot!). And with the opening of its new philharmonic hall, Hamburg launched itself into the cultural consciousness,…
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Summer in Berlin is unparalleled, and the best place to spend a gorgeous bright weekend is at one of Berlin’s many biergartens. While they might not be a classic as the ones down in Bavaria, Berlin’s biergartens have a uniquely urban appeal. Like the capital itself, they marry old and new to provide an experience…
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Berlin is a busy city. And if you live here, chances are high you’ll be busy too. Tim and I both have crazy jobs that take us away from home (and each other) for the bulk of the week. So last year we decided to institute a weekly date night. We reasoned it wouldn’t just…
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It seemed completely right that we visited both The Valley of the Kings and The Valley of the Queens on the day of the dead. We saved it for our last day in Luxor—anticipating that exploring the tombs would be un-toppable. And I have to say, our assumption held right. On the list of things…
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I was lucky enough to grow up in the Bay Area, so it’s with a bit of bias that I say that San Francisco is the jewel in the Golden State’s crown. It combines all the best things about the state in one trip to California. Nature, food, art, nightlife…there are always things to do…
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The sun beat down from a nearly white sky. The air was dry, the ground hot. The only shade to be found was in the ruins—colonnades with swollen pillars, towering statues of crossed-armed rulers, thick walls laden with the deep carvings of ancient kings and queens. This is Luxor, straddling the banks of the Nile,…
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Our visit to Abu Simbel kicked off like this: staggering out of the van and staring at what appeared to be a giant pile of dirt. Maybe it was because of the harsh morning sun. Or the fact that we’d been traveling since 4am, coasting on 3 hours of sleep from the night before. It…
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I learned the phrase, “an embarrassment of riches” in a college poetry class, but I never fully understood it until we walked into the Egyptian museum. Many museums around the world have Egyptian pieces or play host to Egyptian exhibits, temporary or permanent. Having one stone sarcophagus, one golden mummy mask, one ancient chair can…
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