Originally published at Travel to .Live. to Travel. Please leave any comments there.

Well, after dawdling for a few months we finally got our honeymoon in order–but not without some hiccups.

When we finally decided on Spain, we targeted Barcelona as the city we wanted to base ourselves in; however, when it came time to book my frequent flier miles, United only let me go to Madrid–except we had to leave at 7am from Washington, DC. Okay, well, fine. It’s a free flight to Europe, I’ll take what I can get. We’ll go to Madrid too–we even ignored everyone who said, “Oh, but you guys would love Barcelona so much more,”

Fast forward a few months later–we’re working with our travel agent, Heritage Tours, for our Morocco leg. I decided to double check my flight schedule so the agent, we’ll call her Trisha, can make a much better itinerary for us. Low and behold, Aer Lingus had mysteriously decided to CANCEL the flight to Spain (but oddly, not the flight FROM Spain) months earlier, but failed to inform me of this very important little tidbit of information.

I called up United, ready to do battle. However, to my surprise, I got a very helpful friendly guy who acknowledged that the cancelling a flight without informing me was really uncool–and so, I managed to get a brand new flight for the same points with the only extra cost being a few dollars more for tax. Here’s the amazing part though:

• We got the trip to Barcelona.
• Not only that, it leaves from a better airport for us, JFK (aka in NYC).
• And it leaves at 9pm…thus saving us a day of vacation we don’t have to use.

Amazing!

Well, that happened two months ago and now we’ve finally finalized every leg of our trip today.

NYC -> Fez, Morocco -> Marrakesh -> Essaouira -> Mallorca, Spain -> Barcelona -> NYC

So excited to finally go to continental Europe and Africa (well, North Africa.) And yes, even more excited as this will be the first real vacation we’ve had in a year and a half (which is eternity for us), let alone the first trip in ages where we weren’t backpackers. I mean, I loved backpacking, but carrying everything on my back got old

Originally published at Travel to .Live. to Travel. Please leave any comments there.

5 types of tourist in NYC. Funny because it's true. (Jon Keegan)

So in my research about traveling in Barcelona, I came across a somewhat funny article called Barcelona Clothes and Dress Code: Tips on How to Blend in With the Locals. The primary reason for this article is to keep tourists safe from scam-artists and pickpockets, but I would argue that those people would be targets anyways no matter how you dressed them up simply because they obviously lack something vital as a traveler: common sense.

People spend all this money buying money-belts and fancy traveling gear when you could simply just dress and act like a local, as much as possible. Obviously this isn’t possible everywhere in the world, but it’s certainly possible in a worldly cosmopolitan city like Barcelona that’s full of foreign expats. For example, I live in New York City — a city that tourist guides will tell you is dangerous. Don’t do this, don’t talk to these people, don’t stop here, etc. Yet somehow millions of people live in this city without ever getting pickpocketed their entire life, yet a tourist manages to in the few days they’re here. Amazing odds, really. Like most of these tourist women do in their hometowns, I carry a purse every day, and like they probably are back home, I’m very careful with it. Yet somehow these visiting ladies come here wearing a fannypack because they’re suddenly a tourist. If you wouldn’t be caught dead in something at home, why would you wear it in a cosmopolitan world city suddenly because you’re a visitor?

Being a tourist is a state of mind! We’ve found that if you don’t act like one then most people won’t treat you like one, especially not thieves — cause really, why bother with the person who MIGHT be a savvy local expat when you could harass the tour-package couple with their map hanging out of their back pocket?

Originally published at Travel to .Live. to Travel. Please leave any comments there.

After months of deliberation we finally narrowed down what we wanted to do on the honeymoon.

Something exotic. Something with diving possibilities.  The beach.

We added the stipulation “no Asia,” since we’d lived three years of our life there and already been to various countries multiple times (as much as we love Asia, there’s many other areas of the world to explore.) We also wanted nowhere we could feasibly go “just for fun.” While the Caribbean is tempting, we rationalized that we could go there anytime we wanted as long as we had the funds. A honeymoon is one of the few times we’ll have for awhile where it’s socially acceptable to take a couple weeks off of work after only working for less than a year during a recession.

So basically that meant the only choice was Africa or South America, and we decided to go with Africa. We’ve further narrowed down the choices to Tanzania and Mauritius, with Mauritius being the strong contender. We’re going to stop by a travel agent tonight to see our options. Yay! I have travel in my future!

Update: Annnnnd…. we decided to go in the complete opposite direction and go with one of our original choices, Spain + Morocco. Oh well, at least we’re decided!