Loren and I recently spent a quick weekend in the Canadian Province of Quebec. We spent most of our time in Montreal and also took a day trip up to Quebec City, today I'm going to share our adventures in Montreal.

We flew on Porter Airlines, a discount Canadian carrier. It was our first time and actually a pretty good experience. It seems that all of their flights stop in Toronto but the airport was so nice. The airline had a lounge set-up with complimentary snacks and drinks. And, mostly importantly, LOTS of power outlets! :)

We decided to spend our first afternoon exploring Old Montreal, specifically the Old Port area. We took the Metro public transportation from our neighborhood to the Champs-de-Mars stop and walked from there. The streets leading us to the Old Port were beautiful and had such a European feel to the area.

We finally made it to the Old Port of town and it was really cute! There were vendors set up selling random things, but my favorite was walking along the water.

We walked to the clock tower...I have a love for clock towers. :) After that we decided to hit up one of the rooftop bars we'd noticed while out walking. We ended up at Terrasse Sur L'Auberge. The views were incredible and the drinks were good. They had a small menu but we just had a drink and left. There was a line to get in so we didn't want to hog our table. Plus, I wanted poutine.

We walked back to Rue St Paul which is a hopping area of town. Lots of souvenir shops, bars, restaurants, and gelato shops. People in Montreal seem to really enjoy gelato. After browsing the shops for a magnet, we stopped at 3 Brasseurs for dinner. It's a brewery so Loren was a happy camper. That was about all we could handle for the first day and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Day two in Montreal started with some super delicious bagels. We went to Fairmount Bagel. The company started in 1919 but became Fairmount Bagel in 1949. The bagels are rolled by hand and then baked in a wood-fired oven and SO DELICIOUS! Seriously, so so good.

After carb loading (we may have went back for a second helping of bagels), we started a long walk to Mont Royal. It was a hike to get up to the top, and I wouldn't recommend wearing sandals but the views were gorgeous. And there was a building with snacks and a shop at the top to cool down and relax. There were actually several people in there napping! We passed on the nap and just enjoyed the shade for a bit.

Once we reached the bottom again we grabbed an Uber (which are actually illegal in Montreal and was a little scary) to Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal. The basilica was stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. We'd heard that it was blue inside and I was sort of skeptical but wow. 

We were starving again by this point and headed back over to Rue Sainte Paul for a late lunch. We ate outside at this sports bar called La Cage. They had the most delicious lemonade and apparently the beer was good too. :) The atmosphere was nice, being outside and able to people watch. 

That's pretty much the end of our excursions in Montreal. We had so much visiting, it was a fun little getaway. If you have the chance to go, I'd really recommend it. And, I'm thankful to my cousin for all the travel tips before we left! Our last full day we took a trip to Quebec City and I'll be back to share those details soon. Thanks for reading and letting me share our adventure with you! 

Love, 

K

P.S. 

Yes, I ate poutine everyday! :)

Cruising

I'm back! I wasn't feeling myself the past couple weeks so I took a little break (practically a life break...seriously, productivity was non-existent) but I'm feeling better and we just returned from a quick little trip I wanted to share with you.

Loren and I went on our first cruise over Memorial Day weekend! We've put off going on a cruise for years. It just never really seemed like our cup of tea but since moving our usual trip to Vegas became more expensive and the additional travel hours didn't seem worth it. We started searching for some new long weekend alternatives and found a great deal on a Norwegian 3-night Bahamas cruise. Perfect amount of time, and on this cruise the cocktails are included! We were excited about that since we've always heard that's where the cruise ships "get ya". Enough with all that lets get to the fun stuff! :)

We flew to Miami the night before our cruise so we'd have a little bit of time to explore the city. The hotel we stayed at was the Royal Palm South Beach based on a recommendation from a friend and from one of my favorite bloggers Cassie, at Hi Sugarplum.

The hotel was gorgeous and I actually wish we would've had longer to stay and hang out there. It's right on the beach so we did take advantage of that perk...and ended up with some crazy sunburns. But the views, they couldn't be beat.

After sunburning beaching it up, we grabbed our bags and headed to the cruise port terminal. I was so nervous and excited all at the same time. I think I've seen Titanic too many times because the week leading up to the cruise I had several dreams that involved water filling our room and us having to make a run for it. (Obviously I would've shared my door with Loren if it came to that...Rose was so selfish!)

We boarded pretty late in the day so it wasn't long before we were off. The first night was pretty tame. Loren went to the onboard casino for a bit and I read by the pool. The sunset was gorgeous. One that gives you all the feels about life. I was happy to have caught it just in the nick of time.

We woke up Saturday in Nassau!

Loren and I had decided to skip the super spendy Atlantis excursion option and headed to Blue Lagoon Island. It turned out to be the perfect choice for us. Lots of beach chairs, food & drinks, and nice Caribbean water. Of course, it rained briefly while we were there but it wouldn't be vacation for us without getting caught out in the rain! We spent the day alternating between swimming and lounging under our beach umbrella.

We had some FRESH coconut water and man, it was delicious! I don't normally like coconut water but that was some tasty stuff. Loren tried the Bahamas Goombay Punch, I think mostly because the can was funny, but it tasted just like fruit punch. We were able to roam around Nassau before heading back to the ship. The parts available to us seemed like exactly what you'd expect for a tourist area in a beachy locale. We picked up some rum, took a few pics, and called it good.

This is my Kenny G hair style, haha! Saturday night was the White Hot Party on the ship. Loren and I both agreed that we had WAY more fun than we expected to. There was face painting, glow necklaces, and decorations, what's not to like?! We danced it up and had a blast! It seemed like everyone was having fun and it was one of my favorite parts of whole trip.

Sunday morning it seemed like people were slow to rise (us included). A little too much White Hot Partying the night before, perhaps? Sunday we docked at Great Stirrup Cay, Norwegian Cruise Line's private island. Much like our time at Blue Lagoon Island, we just swam and relaxed on the beach. Since the island is owned by the cruise line, lunch and drinks were still complimentary all day. That was really nice! And even though there appeared to be two ships worth of people on the island there was plenty of chairs/space for everyone and waiting for food and drinks was pretty painless.

Sunday night was our final night on the ship. We went to a few shows on board including karaoke. The sweetest little girls were so brave and sang "Let It Go" in front of everyone in the audience and it was too adorable. I cried. Haha!

Final thoughts on the trip - Norwegian Sky was a perfect starter cruise for us. I'm not sure that we're "cruisers" in the sense that we'll want to go every year or anything but it was a good time. The shows were much better than I expected, the food was tasty, and the drinks were plentiful. Throw in the sun and sand and it doesn't get much better (well, maybe not having a sunburn). If you're looking for a cruise intro I'd recommend this one for sure.

If you made it this far, thank you! Haha! Hope everyone had a fun Memorial Day weekend! Happy Summertime!

Love, K

Travel Diary: Florida

Loren and I recently took a little trip to Florida to visit my Grandparents and we included a quick Disney trip at the end of the week.

Our time spent with Grandma & Grandpa was fun and relaxing, the perfect combo. We had good weather while we were there so Loren and I usually spent a few hours at the pool everyday, soaking up the sun. We fit in all our favorite activities playing cards, eating lots of good food, shopping at Bealls, and of course, visiting Plant City for their famous strawberry shortcake. My Aunt & Uncle also drove down for a couple days and it was so nice to get to see them this visit.

We went to Disney for two nights. We always have so much fun at Disney and it was nice to go for more than a day visit this trip. We visited Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and Animal Kingdom. I think my favorite park is Hollywood Studios because we have so much fun on the rides there. I LOVE the Rockin' Roller Coast and the Tower of Terror is super fun. We realized this trip that the Tower of Terror in Florida is different than the ride in California and it makes it more suspenseful. I don't know why it's so fun to scare yourself silly but it is. I accidentally grabbed the man sitting next to me and then ran into him later on the bus ride back to the resort!

We also went to the Frozen sing-a-long which was the most ridiculous fun ever. It snows, INSIDE!

Magic Kingdom is always fun to me but it's starting to lose some of the appeal. I would definitely consider myself a kid at heart but there's just too many kiddie rides at Magic Kingdom for me to think of it as the "best time ever" anymore. I want a few more thrills and less teacups. The castle will always make me happy though. And the Electrical Parade and nightly fireworks...forget it. I'm in tears everytime.

Disney wasn't all fun and games though. I had registered for the Disney Princess Half Marathon before we knew we were going to move. Since moving across the country is stressful and chaotic, I got behind in my training. Like, really behind. Didn't start until January kind of behind. I tried to switch to the 10k since I felt comfortable running that distance but it was sold out so no go. So I headed into the half determined to try my best and finish. That's all I wanted. The run was going well until about mile 8. I started feeling it then and all the banked roads Disney makes you run were really brutal. Thankfully the last couple miles there were a lot of people there cheering us on and it was motivating. It always makes me emotional when I see total strangers standing there cheering for the runners. I know it's likely that they have a friend or family member running but they cheer for everyone. It makes me well up with tears just thinking about it. I did manage to finish the race. It wasn't my best time but it wasn't the worst so I'm okay with that.

We finished our visit at Animal Kingdom. We had only been to this park one other time (our honeymoon) so it was fun to visit again. I admit, I wasn't too excited about it beforehand but I was pleasantly surprised. The Expedition Everest ride there is SO FUN. And we were able to do the safari ride this visit and that surpassed my expectations. The animals were so close to us and it was neat to just see them roaming around. There were lots of giraffes too which might be my favorite.

I didn't mean for this post to turn into such a novel, thanks for sticking with me if you made it this far! Until next time!

Love,
K