Category: Food
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Travels With a Wine Focus
There are four pillars to our travels: food, wine, land and sea. This article is all about the wine and why it is part of our travel philosophy. As we began to travel more and more, we noticed that each place we visited we would learn, almost by accident, about…
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First Holland America Cruise: Specialty Dining
For our two specialty restaurant dinners that we had with Have It All, we chose Tamarind for an Asian night and Rudi’s Sel de Mer for seafood. Tamarind is located high on the ship with a beautiful view over the aft. There is also a bar in Tamarind that you…
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First Holland America Cruise: Included Dining
We all know food is subjective. We fully enjoy fresh well-prepared food. We like fancy, does not have to be. We like inventive, does not have to be. It just has to be good. On a cruise, we completely understand that the ship is serving thousands of meals daily and…
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Kiel: The Sailing City
This morning we sailed down the Kiel Fjord from the Baltic Sea. Kiel is the capital of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein and has a significant maritime ship building industry. Located in what was the former West Germany near Denmark, it was largely destroyed in WWII and rebuilt in a…
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Glorious Gdansk Poland
Visiting Poland represents two things: first, it’s a country that holds a piece of my family heritage and second, it is the fiftieth country we have visited in our travels. Our ship docked in Gdynia one of the Tri-Cities of this Baltic region (Gdynia, Sopot and Gdansk). Outside of docking…
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Stockholm: A Scandinavian Jewel
The ship’s arrival into Stockholm this morning was a slow sail through the archipelago that lends itself to its magic. If I am being honest, seeing this city has been “on this list” for a quite some time and I could not hide my excitement. As I saw the main…
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Helsinki: the City on the Sea
Today’s port of call is Helsinki, Finland. A drizzly morning turned warm and sunny which is always welcome. The ship docks a ways away from the City Center. We had some Shore Excursion credit so we did a ship sponsored tour. It was a Helsinki Highlights and Finnish Food Tastings…
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Timeless Tallinn
There are many ports of call throughout the Baltics. One that has always lured me is Tallinn, Estonia. The preserved Old Town with its towers, walls, red roofs and colorful buildings. How can you resist? It lies on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, 50 miles south of…
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A Stop Over in Rotterdam
After a final morning walk through Delft, we hopped a quick train to Rotterdam for a leisurely day before boarding our first Holland America ship, the Rotterdam. Hit the sites with the famous cube houses. St Lawrence church that largely survived the WWII bombings. And of course there is Markethal. …
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A Day in Delft
We made our way by train to the the quaint city of Delft. In many ways a smaller, calmer version of Amsterdam (also absent was the billowing marijuana clouds). We stayed at the very cool Hotel Arsenaal. Built out of the old arsenal on the canals. Super cool. Now the…
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An Evening to Remember
To cap off a wonderful day we passed back through to the edge of Jordaan to a small restaurant, The Good Companion. It has a small all seafood menu that changes regularly, broken down into bar bites, small plates and large plates. We opted for bar bites of a seafood…
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Canals and Jordaan walking food and history tour
A beautiful blue Spring sky greeted us this morning bright and early for an 8am canal boat tour on a wooden boat built in 1928, the jonckvrouw. We boarded with seven others to share a 90 minute early morning cruise through the canals with our guide Jan (fantastic guide and…
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Amsterdam Arrival
So we begin yet another adventure. We arrived in Amsterdam midday today following as uneventful flight and a quick train ride from the airport to the city center arriving at the stunning Amsterdam Centraal. After checking into the INK Hotel, we wondered through the city center including damrak. With a…
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Cork, Ireland
A brisk morning turned lovely quickly. We docked in the center of Cobh which is very convenient if exploring on your own. You can simply walk into town or take the 24 minute train to Cork across the street from the dock. The train is what we elected. 6.30 euro…
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Crete, Greece
I barely know where to start. This is the views as we approached Crete this morning when we woke up. We were picked up by Anna Maria our Sommelier for the day who took us to the Dourakis Winery in the mountains. A family owned vineyard for a tour, tasting…
Four Good Travels 