-
Segovia, Spain
Segovia lies just north of Spain’s capital city Madrid, a short thirty-minute train ride into the Spanish countryside. Tourists (like us) regularly select Segovia as a day-trip from Madrid not only due to its convenience, but also because it boasts three particularly spectacular sights: the Alcazar of Segovia, the Catedral of Segovia, and the Roman Aqueduct.
-
New York City (& Yerma Review)
The plan to travel to New York started with a singular thought: Billie Piper. For those who don’t know, Billie Piper played Rose Tyler in my favorite seasons of Doctor Who, alongside Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. She is a brilliant British actress who is altogether girlish, ultra-sexy, compassionate, and charming. I have adored her since the day I first met her as Rose. In the past year, her talents have moved from screen to stage, as she starred in an adaptation of Frederico Garcia Lorca’s Yerma, a play about a thirty-something woman whose infertility catapults her into a spiral of despair. Since the day Billie Piper started playing this role, she has gained…
-
Queenstown to Christchurch, New Zealand
We woke up on our last day in New Zealand with mixed feelings. The day before us stretched out like rays of sunshine greeting our faces, long and promising. As we grabbed a quick breakfast at a local Ranfurly cafe and packed the car, we kept asking each other, “will you miss it?” Yes. We will miss it. The feeling of stepping back in time to another world when we took our first walk down to the beach of Cathedral Cove. The feeling of my mind going blank and emotions bubbling to the surface as I saw the glowworms light up the Waitomo cave. The feeling of warming our tired…
-
Queenstown and Glenorchy, New Zealand
Our horseback ride took us out into “high country,” along the banks of the beautiful blue Rees River, to the base of the mountains, and into green, purple, pink, and white fields of lupins so high they touched my calves.
-
Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand
The glacier is constantly moving, so each day, the Glacier Guides have to carve, pick, and navigate new paths through the terrain.
-
South Island, New Zealand
On our first morning in the South Island, we woke up bright and early in order to catch a cab to Picton to retrieve our rental car from the ferry terminal. To make a long story short, the cab ride lasted about 30 minutes and cost us $105NZD. Our cab driver also took us to the wrong rental car location, so we had to walk quite a bit with our luggage to find the correct pick-up spot; when we finally did, we grabbed the keys to another Toyota Corolla and zoomed out of town as quickly as possible. Picton is a small fishing village on the northern tip of the…
-
Weta Cave, Wellington, New Zealand
On the day after Christmas, we woke up to the discovery that it was Boxing Day, a term that we Americans only partially recognized as a British holiday of some sort. Our hotel clerk quickly informed us that Boxing Day was a public holiday in New Zealand, where the stores run huge sales and people get out and shop. Wellington, which had been a ghost town the day before, was now a madhouse of people. For those familiar with the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, you will recognize Wellington as the hub of production for the cast and crew in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Wellington is home to the…
-
Wellington, New Zealand
Wellington is a four-hour drive south of Tongariro National Park, which is where we woke up on Christmas Eve. For most of the drive, we passed through beautiful countryside and farmland, spotting cattle, sheep, goat, alpaca, deer, and horse farms. We popped in at a small café in the tiniest little town you can imagine—“Bulls,” which made every effort possible to make a pun about cattle (“this café is unbelieva-BULL”). After lunch, our car zoomed across several smaller mountainsides and eventually wound its way to the West Coast, where I shouted in glee upon seeing the Tasman Sea, which spans between Western New Zealand and Australia. About an hour from…
-
Tongariro National Park
Tongariro National Park is situated about an hour’s drive south of Lake Taupo, and is home to three famous volcanoes: Mount Tongariro, the smallest; Mount Ruapehu, the largest; and Mount Ngauruhoe (arguably the most famous, since it served as Peter Jackson’s “Mount Doom” in the Lord of the Rings films). These three mountains are hugely important to the Maori people.
-
Stars Above the Water: Waitomo Caves, New Zealand
They were the titiwai, or “stars above the waters,” as the Maori call them. Seeing the titiwai felt like lying on the grass on a pitch-black night in the middle of nowhere, staring up at the stars above.
