Aspen, Colorado

Our friends recently decided to get married in Aspen and we are so glad they did! While we had both been to Colorado many times, neither of us had been to Aspen without snow. And now that we have been without snow, we may never go back in the Winter again! The fall colors, the brisk air and the calm vibe was perfection. The highs were about 55 degrees and the lows were about 30 degrees.

Accommodations 

Our friends got married at the beautiful Aspen Meadows Resort so for convenience purposes, that is where we chose to stay. The resort is surrounded by hiking trails and is about ten minutes from the center of town. The resort also offers shuttle service from into town every half hour so we chose not to rent a car. In hindsight, I think we should have rented a car but we got along just fine without one. The rooms at the resort are all suites so it was nice to have a living area that was separate from the bedroom. Especially because we had our seven month old with us.

Activities 

During our stay in Aspen, we took three hikes. We hiked the trails at our resort, Smuggler Mountain and Maroon Bells. The hikes around the resort were easy and perfect for a nice morning hike. Since we had our daughter with us, we had to baby wear so we were not super interested in steep hikes. Smuggler Mountain was by far the most difficult hike out of the three but was still manageable.

This is the carrier we use for travel and hiking

Baby Carrier

Aspen Meadows Resort 

Smuggler Mountain

Maroon Bells

Maroon Bells was the only hike where we had to take a bus to get to the top of the mountain but it was well worth the trip!

Our Eats

Ajax Tavern

This was a great lunch spot that is located right at the base of Aspen Mountain. Ajax Tavern had many gluten free options.

Poppycock’s

Poppycock’s is a great little breakfast and lunch spot right in the center of downtown. Make sure to get there early because it was packed when we got there around 11:30.

Farmer’s Market

There was a farmer’s market in the center of downtown on Saturday morning which was a fun experience! They had a variety of foods and goods to buy.

We can’t wait to go back to Aspen soon!

 

 

London, England

After wanting to go to London for years, we finally made it there!  We had a family trip planned for early June in Spain so we thought, “Why not stop in London for a few days on our way to Spain”! June in London is suppose to be beautiful so we thought it would be a perfect time to go, and it was.

Accommodations:

We chose to stay at the Marylebone Hotel in the Marylebone area. We chose the Marylebone area because it is centrally located, close to the underground train and very close to shops, restaurants and sites we wanted to see. The hotel had a modern chic feel to it and the bed was super comfortable which can be a rarity in Europe, in our experience. Apparently the hotel has a gym and a pool but we didn’t feel the need to workout and it was too cold to swim so we didn’t experience those spaces. It did have a wonderful restaurant and bar, which we visited quite a bit . They also offer gluten free afternoon tea service which we tried and enjoyed thoroughly.

Our Eats:

Marylebone Hotel Restaurant & Bar

Our travel agent, Rosie Goldberger with Vanguard Travel in Houston, Texas booked our hotel for us and was able to add in complimentary breakfast and tea service so of course we had to try the high tea and breakfast. We arrived in London around noon and were hungry so we made a reservation at the Marylebone Hotel Restaurant and Bar for afternoon tea service. Tea is served from 2:30 to 5:30pm every day so we made a reservation for 2:30 and walked around the neighborhood while we waited for our reservation. The dining room was comfortable and cozy. The food was very good and Mr. Traveling Honeymooner said “I can’t even tell that this is gluten free bread!”. We enjoyed our gluten free afternoon tea service at the Marylebone Hotel very much.

For breakfast, they have a juice bar, offer al la carte options and a full continental breakfast. Mrs. Traveling Honeymooner ordered a green juice and Mr. Traveling Honeymooner tried the continental breakfast. One afternoon, before shopping we stopped by the hotel bar and ordered coffee. Best part was that they had almond milk for Mrs. Traveling Honeymooner’s cappuccino. Everything we had was very good.

Fortnum & Mason

We couldn’t go to London and miss tea at Fortnum & Mason! Fortnum & Maison is a department store that opened in 1707 and has a beautiful tea room on the fourth floor.

 

Joe’s Juice

Joe’s Juice was located about three or four blocks from our hotel and they had the best juices and smoothies! Mr. Traveling Honeymooner loves chocolate and he got a banana chocolate chip shake and Mrs. Traveling Honeymooner got the kale juice; both were so good! We went back twice during our stay.

Our Sites:

We are fairly comfortable using public transportation when we are traveling because it is usually the fastest and cheapest way to get around. London has a variety of modes of transportation including taxis, the underground train, the above ground train and hop on, hop off buses. During our stay we used taxis, the underground train and the hop on hop off buses.

 

Westminster Abbey

Big Ben Clock Tower

Buckingham Palace

We were so glad we got to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. If you are in the area, it is worth seeing. They preform the ceremony more often in the summertime than in the winter due to weather. The ceremony starts at 11 but will not happen if it is raining or the weather is bad because the outfits they wear are made from bear hide and can not get wet. We recommend checking with your hotel concierge to see if the changing of the guard ceremony will take place. If you want a good spot, we would recommend getting there around 10am.

The Crown Jewels were spectacular. We arrived around 11am and were lucky enough to be able to join a free walking tour of the grounds which took about an hour. We are so glad we got there earlier in the day because by around 2pm, the line to see the crown jewels was over two hours long.

Tips: Buy your tickets beforehand and go early in the morning before it gets overly crowded.

Entertainment

We couldn’t go to London without seeing a show! We had both been wanting to see Wicked for years and had heard that the best place to see it was in London. The show was FABULOUS!! The show was held at the Apollo Theater, which did not disappoint. We sat in the first middle section, near the back and could see everything perfectly.  If you have not seen Wicked, go see it! Especially if you loved the Wizard of Oz.

We were only in London for a few days but the last day the temperature dropped and it started to pour! We were ready to get the heck out of there by the end of the last day and head for sunnier weather.

Overall, we had a great trip and can’t wait to go back! Except maybe next time we will go in July or August when it is less likely to sideways rain.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Traveling Honeymooners

Lombok

We arrived in Lombok via fast boat yesterday morning and have felt relaxed ever since. What a change of pace from the bustling streets of Bali. Lombok doesn’t have traffic and the street are wide, with plenty of room for cars to drive both ways. If you have ever been to Ubud, you probably know what I am talking about. If not, you just have to experience the “traffic” for yourself while exploring Bali. I have LOVED every single place we have visited on this trip to Asia. Each place has been so unique and had so much to offer us. However, I have to say, the subtle sound of crashing waves and the sunshine here in Lombok have welcomed us with open arms and have allowed us to take a big deep breath and find deep relaxation.

From Ubud, the east harbor was about an hour and fifteen minute car ride. We chose to take Bluewater Express which apparently was the most reliable fast boat company. We didn’t really understand the meaning of “reliable” until we got all loaded up on the boat and were cruising at a fairly fast speed. About twenty minutes into our trip the boat broke down and we floated for a bit while the captain and his men tinkered with the engines. After about fifteen minutes we were on our way again. This routine happened three different times during our journey but we made it to Lombok safely. I would hate to think of what an unreliable company would look like. Anyhow, the boat ride was peaceful and enjoyable. We met lots of fun people and chatted with them about their travels. The total time spent on the boat was about two and a half hours. Normally the ride is about an hour and a half. The thing I liked about Bluewater Express was that you could choose to sit on the roof of the boat, or inside. It was a beautiful day so we chose to sit outside and enjoy the breeze.

Accommodations

We are staying at Qunci Villas on the main island of Lombok. From the Harbor, Qunci is about a thirty minute car ride. The hotel is beautiful and the service is great. Before our trip, we made sure all of the hotels knew that I have Celiac Disease and Qunci has been very accommodating to my gluten free needs.

Our first night here we were tired from being in the sun all day so we chose to eat at the Mediterranean restaurant at Qunci. The food was delicious and the kitchen even made be gluten free bread to have with my mussels. I think the key to gluten free traveling almost anywhere is to let the hotels know you are gluten free well in advance and remind them upon arrival. This has been incredibly helpful for me and would recommend it to anyone who has a food restriction.

The rooms are nice. The bed is a bit firm for our liking but we slept comfortably and loved that we could hear the waves from our room. One thing to note about this resort is that each room has it’s own bathroom, but the bathroom is all outdoors. Meaning the toilet, sink and shower are all private, but open air. This is very common in Indonesia but this is the first hotel where were we have experienced it. Overall we have enjoyed our stay here!

Exploring

Today we took a slow boat from Lombok to Gili Air, Gili Trawangan and Gili Meno which are small islands just off the coast of northwest Lombok. We had so much fun snorkeling and exploring the islands. The Gili islands do not allow any motorized vehicles so you can explore the islands on foot, bike or horse drawn carriage. We chose to rent snorkeling gear from the people at the Harbor in Lombok but you could rent snorkeling gear anywhere on any island. The only regret we have about visiting the islands was that we did not have a GoPro or waterproof camera with us to capture all of the beautiful fish and sea turtles we swam with!

Tonight we are going to eat in the town of Senggigi which is about ten minutes from Qunci Villas. We have been told this is the place to visit in the evenings for dinner and drinks.

Update: We went into town and ate dinner at Asmara Restaurant & Bar and had a great time! They were very accommodating to my gluten free needs and served us one of the best meals we have had since eating at Bridges in Ubud! The Restaurant also offers a free shuttle to and from our Hotel, and others in the area.

We are also considering visiting Kuta tomorrow. Kuta is famous for snorkeling, surfing and scuba diving. We shall see!

Thanks for stopping by!

XOXO

The Traveling Honeymooners

Ubud, Bali : Art

We recently repainted our home back in Houston, Texas and knew we needed some new art to fill our walls. When we travel, we like to pick things up to put in our home that remind us of the places we have been. We love Bali and we love art so we figured getting a piece of art from an art village in Bali would be perfect!

Ubud is separated into different villages. They have wood and sculpture villages, stone work villages, textile villages, art villages, etc. so it is easy to find what you want. We had an idea of the type of painting we wanted so we started asking around to find the best place. We were looking for something modern and abstract. Multiple people warned us not to purchase art from the street if we wanted the piece to last a long time, which we do. Apparently many street vendors have low quality paintings and we didn’t want that. Our guide took us to two different places which had beautiful, high quality paintings but we did not find exactly what we were looking for. One of these places was called Dewa Putu Toris, and it had a huge selection!

Our hotel Komaneka at Monkey Forest and our guide recommended that we look at a smaller gallery called Srikandi, which is about a 15 minute car ride from Monkey Forest Road, and turned out to be the place we bought our painting! It was a smaller gallery but they had plenty of unique items.

The man that was working in the gallery originally quoted us $400 for the painting.  However, since we found another painting from another gallery that was similar in size and quality that was $300, he was willing to match the price for us.

We originally thought we would ship the painting home but the post office wanted us to pay more for the shipping than we paid for the actual painting so we decided to carry it on with us on our flight home.

Thanks for following our journey!

XOXO

The Traveling Honeymooners

Best Walking Shoes

To start: I am not being paid to write this article, even though I should be. I just love these ugly shoes so much.

There is NOTHING worse than traveling and exploring a new country with tired and sore feet. When we explore new places we like to walk everywhere. Partially because we would rather spend our money elsewhere and walking allows you to stumble upon cool new restaurants, markets, etc. We have met some of the coolest people walking the streets of new cities and have found some of the best local restaurants. When we travel, it is not uncommon for us to walk, at a minimum, ten miles plus a day so comfortable shoes are the first thing that go in my suitcase when packing.

I have tried MANY different styles and brands of “comfort shoes” over the course of our travels but no pair of shoes has made me want to skip down an unpaved road more than the shoes I purchased for this trip! I have walked in these shoes for twenty-one days straight. I have walked through water, forests, rocks, and have hiked up a mountain in these shoes. I LOVE them! The best part!?! They are under $70 normally but I bought them on sale at Zappos for $30. Yep! They are probably the cheapest, most comfortable shoes I have ever owned.

Mr. Traveling Honeymooner has made fun of me the entire trip because they are not the most sexy looking shoes but I don’t care. I have planter fasciitis and that shit hurts like nobody’s business.

I am sure by this point you are just wishing I would tell what kind of shoes they are so you can move on with your day (foot ache free) so here they are….

Skechers Go Walk

These shoes come is a variety of colors and styles. I personally have been wearing the gray, Go Walk 4- Pursuit but I am sure all of the styles and colors would be just as comfortable!

I hope these shoes change your life as much as they have changed mine.

XOXO

Mrs. Traveling Honeymooner

My Thailand Dental Mishap

So we were sitting in the airport in Chiang Mai, waiting for our flight to Phuket and of course…. my permanent retainer comes unglued on one side.

All this girl wanted to do was to eat her paleo protein bar in peace..but the universe had other ideas of how we should spend our day in Thailand.

My first response was to try to finish my protein bar (because I was starving due to oversleeping and missing breakfast) and ignore the fact that I had a sharp wire protruding from my lower jaw but that didn’t really work.

So we started to figure out what options we had at our disposal. This was our first time in Thailand and we were not sure of the quality of medical care, all we knew was that we didn’t want to wait three more weeks until we got back to the United States to get it fixed. We started googling and I reached out to my orthodontist and a few friends back home who had been to Thailand before. The consensus was that the quality of medical care in Thailand was actually really good! So we found a place that had all sorts of certifications and booked an appointment for the following day at Sea Smile Dental. To check out Sea Smile Dental click here.

While we were waiting in the lobby, we met people who had traveled to Thailand from all over the world who were waiting for dental care. That made us feel even more comfortable.

We waited about 20 minutes to be seen by Dr. Cho and it took him about 10 minutes to glue my retainer back in it’s place. Let me tell you…he did an EXCELLENT job. Sea Smile Dental was clean and everyone there was extremely professional. The total cost of our visit was 1000 baht which is $28.04 in US dollars. Not too shabby, especially compared to the $500 I paid 6 months ago to have it put in by my orthodontist in the US!

Overall, I was very pleased with our trip to Sea Smile Dental and I would definitely come back!

XOXO,

The Traveling Honeymooners

Chiang Mai, Thailand

WOW! We landed in Chiang Mai and instantly fell in love with this mountain town. It was such a nice change of pace from busy Bangkok. The weather was cooler and there was a bit of a breeze. Chiang Mai is full of ancient history, delicious food and beautiful scenery.  We knew there were so many things we wanted to do and see in this wonderful city so we started exploring right away.

We started our trip with a visit to Wat Suan Dok, a temple where ashes of former Kings of Chiang Mai and the Royal Family are kept.

The next temple we visited was called Wat Phrathat on Doi Suthep Mountain, which was founded in 1383 A.D. A road was built in 1935 to the top but many people still choose to continue to climb the 309 steps to the top. Once you arrive at the temple, you can see a 360 degree view of the entire city and explore the beautiful temple.

The next day we decided to take a bicycle tour of the southern part of Chiang Mai. We biked 25km (around 15.5 miles) through plantations, rural local neighborhoods, temples and the McKean rehabilitation Center.

We biked along the Ping River and ended up at the McKean Rehabilitation Center, which houses a former leper colony. The main road is lined with identical houses that  used to be filled with people who had Lepersy from all over Thailand. Now only 16 eople reside in these houses. The people that live there were cured from lepersy but their families are still too scared of the disease to allow them to go back home to their families. We met one woman who has lived in the community for over 50 years and her family still refuses to interact with her due to the fear of contracting the disease, even though it is not possible. The last known case of Lepersy in Thailand was diagnosed around 20 years ago but was cured in a few months. The community members have access to free treatment and health care as long as they live there. The government also feeds them three times a day. To learn more about the McKean Rehabilitation Center you can visit click here.

We continued to bike and visited a local temple and fed the fish, which the monks told us was good luck.

We biked through plantations, a fish farm and rice fields.

We loved every second of the bike tour and would highly recommend taking one in Chiang Mai.

We both LOVE cooking; well I love to cook, he loves to eat…so it was only natural that we took a cooking class in Chiang Mai!  We decided to take a class at a family owned and operated cooking school by the name of Baan Hongnual Cookery School and had a blast! We started our class by shopping for our food at a local market, then we headed to the school to make our meal. We made curry, stir fry, soup and coconut bananas for dessert. We made all of our food gluten free.

I will do a blog post soon about tips for getting around Asia and staying gluten free.

We are both animal lovers so we really wanted to see Thai Elephants during our stay.  After almost a year of research we chose to visit Patara Elephant Farm and we had a great time! We learned all about how to take care of elephants, feed them, bathe them and make sure they are healthy. I will do a more in depth post about our experience at Patara later because I do believe the topic of elephants deserves it’s own post. Until then, here are a few pictures from our wonderful experience!

ACCOMODATIONS:

We chose to stay at Ratilanna Hotel and Spa and loved every minute of our stay! It is a smaller hotel which was a nice change of pace from the Shangri-la in Bangkok and it was an added bonus that we were upgraded to a suite! During our stay at the Ratilanna, I enjoyed a foot massage and we both enjoyed the best couples massage we have ever had!

We were very pleased with the Ratilanna and would defiantly stay there again. For more information on the Ratilanna Hotel and Spa click here.

Thank you for reading our blog!

XOXO,

The Traveling Honeymooners

Bangkok, Thailand

We made it to Bangkok! After traveling for 24 hours from Houston, Texas, we have arrived and have explored this busy city.

We chose to stay at the Shangri-la Hotel which is right on the Chao Phraya river. The hotel is large with two towers, multiple restaurants, spa and shopping area.  The amenities were nice to have, but we did not spend much time at the hotel so they were not necessary in our case. The two best things about our stay at the Shangri-la was that the restaurant where they served breakfast was right on the river and the hotel provided free shuttle boat rides to the night market.

We took the free shuttle boat to the night market one evening and had a delicious Thai dinner at Baan Khanitha and walked around the night market afterward.

Bonus: The Shangri-la served gluten free bread at breakfast.

Neither of us had ever been to Bangkok before so we decided that we would do a few tours to get the lay of the land. We are both SO glad that we did! We had the best time with our guides! I would highly recommend doing at least one guided tour while in Bangkok because there is so much to see and experience!

The first tour we took was of the Grand Palace and surrounding city Temples. It is a historical time in Thailand right now because King Bhumibol Adulyadej passed away on October 13, 2016. The entire country is in mourning of their beloved King for the next year. The King’s body is currently being held at the Grand Palace so people can pay their final respects to him. People were lined up for miles. The city is currently working on building a crematorium for him to be cremated in right outside the Grand Palace. The streets outside the Grand Palace are lined with kiosks offering free food for people visiting the Grand Palace. We also saw the Emerald Buddha and the original school of traditional Thai massage here. If you are in Bangkok, the Grand Palace is a must see.

Next we explored Wat Pho and were able to catch the Monks morning chant. For me, this was one of my favorite activities and it became a morning ritual for us to find a temple to catch the morning chants.

We also hopped on the public ferry and took a short ride across the river to Wat Arun which was once the grand royal temple to King Rama II. Our tour lasted about three hours and we were able to cover so much ground in that short time frame.

Our tour guide, Nancy, was great!

The next day we took a tour with Bangkok Biking Company, the name of the tour was Rickshaw and Hike: The Colors of Bangkok. Our tour guide, Amm, was fabulous! We explored many different neighborhoods, visited multiple temples, took a long-tail boat across the river to Lumpini Park and walked through fruit plantations and fed the fish. Afterward we took rickshaws to a local restaurant on the water which was delicious!

Overall, we had a great trip to Bangkok! I think there is a misconception that there is not much to do in Bangkok but I feel as if we only scratched the surface during our three night stay.

XOXO,

The Traveling Honeymonners