Turning physician sabbatical dreams into reality
Turning physician sabbatical dreams into reality
Food Friendliness Wildlife History Natural beauty Budget friendly Colombia 7 8 0 (that we saw – definitely available in other areas) 5 4 8 Galapagos 3 3 10 2 3 3 Egypt 7 7 4 10 5 5 Morocco 8 9 0 6 3 9 Portugal 6 5 0 7 6 3 Spain 3 5 …
The cheapest airport in the world to fly back to the US on New Year’s Eve was from Tahiti. We connected through New Zealand and arrived in Papeete, Tahiti at 1:30am. There was a full band playing traditional music to welcome us to the airport, which would make anyone happy. We spent the night in …
Australia is a huge country and the kids really wanted to see koalas, kangaroos, and penguins, so we focused our time there on wildlife. Australians were some of the most consistently friendly people we met. Every time we went to the grocery store the checkout person asked us how our holiday was, and they were …
Bali was by far our least favorite destination. It started off with a 3 hour immigration line, the longest we experienced anywhere. Then we drove for 2 hours to Ubud, which we chose because it was supposed to have the most history and culture in Bali. Our hotel was lovely and had amazing food and …
Our kids really wanted to see the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. This was one of their main travel requests. And it was kind of on the way to Australia, so we went for it. Dubai is best at night when it’s lit up beautifully. Only 12% of the population in Dubai …
We took a bus to Eilat, Israel then walked to the border crossing in Jordan, which involved getting dropped off on the side of the highway and walking a mile to the border crossing area. It was completely empty when we were there and logistically very easy, though kind of surreal to cross on foot. …
Israel was one of our favorite places. Being in spaces that have been sacred for thousands of years feels special. We arrived in Tel Aviv and promptly accidentally left 3 of our kids on the public train platform on the way to Yardenit to have our youngest baptized. The train was packed and the kids …
On a whim, we did a free stopover via Royal Air Maroc to Casablanca for 3 days. While I wouldn’t recommend Royal Air Maroc for literally any other reason, the free stopover was great. A short list of issues with Royal Air Maroc: seats had wet gum on them, food was inedible, the plane we …
We decided to change our flight to leave the Galapagos early and head to Egypt, since that was the kids’ main bucket-list attraction. This was made easier by the fact that the Ecuadorian government forces tourists to buy the higher-priced plane tickets which are generally easy to change without penalty. The tickets are listed as …
Our second stop was the Galapagos. I could write pages about the inefficiencies and constant tourist checks and taxes required to get to the Galapagos, but suffice it to say that there are a lot of hoops to jump through. It’s great that there are taxes to help protect this amazing part of the world, …