Photo of the Day
This transformation photo of the day comes to you from the Corvin Castle of Hunedoara, Romania.
Being a photographer tourist at a beautiful place like this can be pretty frustrating. Most times there are lot of people in the way of your ideal shot and often the hours that you can even go see the place are during the middle of the day. This almost always means that unless you get lucky with some crazy good lighting and that you happen to get just the right angle of the building on your first trip, your photo will probably only be about 60% as good as it could be.
Take for example this shot. I had already taken quite a few pictures at different angles and had settled on this angle as a pretty good one. The lighting, however, is not pretty good. The sun was beaming full force and the sky is less than ideal. On top of that, there are a bunch of people in my shot… but this shot is about the best I had. Enter Photoshop. A lot of people consider “photoshopping” a picture to be cheating, and they might be right. Photoshop is a whole other art form though, and it’s a lot of fun to see how far I can take a picture. First, the lighting on the castle needed to be improved. That is a pretty basic process and it helped, but didn’t solve the problem of the washed out sky.
I started looking through my photos from the trip and found this beautiful pre-sunset sky from another location in Romania. The process of switching out a sky is a little tedious but not too technical, but removing the people was a little more difficult. The Orthodox lady happened to be walking in at that exact moment, and somehow it seemed fitting to leave her in the picture. That little bit of luck brings a whole new dimension to the photo.
In the end, I probably spent around 2-3 hours in photoshop, and I was pretty happy with the photo. It’s not 100% perfect, but a photo almost never is. That, though, is the reason we keep going out there over and over.
Our Honeymoon in Punta Cana
Before Anita and I got married in September of 2016 we decided that we would like to spend our honeymoon on a beautiful beach somewhere in another country. We briefly considered some of the classics such as Mexico and Jamaica. We settled on Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, not necessarily because it was a much better option than the others, we just liked the location and decided to settle on it.
We knew from the beginning that we wanted to go to an all-inclusive resort on the beach. The idea of just sitting back and enjoying vacation without worrying about paying for meals and drinks sounded amazing. I’ve heard that if you run the numbers it’s considerably cheaper to just book your own tickets and rent a place and buy your own food, but we weren’t really looking to cut a lot of costs on this trip. However, it was more affordable to spend 10 days than I anticipated. Our total at that time was around $2800, which included food and transportation. We did end up doing a few extras (parasailing, snorkeling, etc.) that brought our total closer to $3500. Honestly the same experience in the United States would probably have been most of double that.
We booked through a travel agency, but they basically just booked us through applevacations.com. Honestly, if I had it over to do, I would just book straight through applevacations.com. Their search system is pretty good and when you are booked they take care of you from end to end, including transportation to and from the airport. In the end, we settled on Bavaro Princess Hotel All Inclusive Resor, and never for a moment regretted our decision. The resort has since been remodeled but it was already an incredibly beautiful place. The staff of Dominican Republican natives were some of the friendliest people I have ever met. A lot of them could barely speak English, but they knew just enough to be able to understand what you needed when you had a request. Their smiles and hand gestures were always sufficient to make up for the language they didn’t understand.
Pretty much every day, we would get at least one Pina Colada. Believe me when I say they taste several levels better than anything of the sort you can buy in the U.S. The resort had nine restaurants and several “drink” stations on the grounds. There is something extra fun about walking into a nice restaurant, being served by friendly people, and then standing up and walking out without worrying about the bill.
On average, the dining was pretty nice, by our standards at least. With the exception of one or two of the restaurants that were breakfast or lunch buffets, it was mostly cloth napkins and dress codes. The variety was pretty good, but by the end of ten days I was ready for non-restaurant food.
They loved making fancy desert plates that, on average, looked a lot better than they tasted.
The crepe station, on the other hand, had food that tasted even better than it looked. Our favorite was filled with Nutella and covered in raspberry sauce.
We also decided to go parasailing and didn’t regret that decision for one minute…
Actually, when this guy showed up to take us out to the parasailing boat we did wonder whether or not we should regret our decision. Apparently, the mask is more to keep out the sun than to hide his identity but somehow it’s still pretty unsettling.
Our view of the courtyard from our balcony.
We also decided to go on an outing with Reef Explorer. Basically you get taken 10ish minutes out into the ocean to a small manmade island. They have several options to try out there, snorkeling, paddle boarding, ocean kayaking, and that sort of thing. They also had and stingray and vegetarian (at least that’s what they said they were) sharks that we swam with.
They even included a short massage while we were out there!
A baby-faced, young, and happy version of us, leaving our honeymoon and heading back to the real world.
Our Trip Around (a small part of) The World.
Two years ago, we decided to take the advice we had so often heard from people with more experience then us. Travel before you have kids, they said… so we did. We chose the DIY path rather than going with a travel agency, and with that experience, learned some lessons the hard way. Hopefully this post can inspire you to take your own DIY globetrotting expedition without making the mistakes or wrong assumptions that we did.
The premise of our trip was to have 2 main stops (Romania & Kenya) and catch as many 1-3 day stops as possible between those destinations. Our itinerary looked something like this:
Take off from Chicago
layover overnight in Boston (thanks to delayed flight)
Layover in Reykjavik, Iceland (also thanks to the original delayed flight)
1.5 days Dublin, Ireland (originally 2 days but aforementioned flight delay changed that)
layover in London
7 days Romania
layover in Milan, Italy
layover in Barcelona, Spain
layover in Dubai, Saudi Arabia
7 days Kenya, Africa
Touchdown in Chad, Africa (on the way to Morocco)
layover Morocco, Africa
3 days Paris, France
1 day Reykjavik, Iceland
Back in Chicago!! (a bit over 3 weeks later)
As I mentioned earlier, we decided to book the trip without the help of a travel company, because we felt confident in our travel-navigation skills. We have both traveled internationally a few times and Anita has lived in Romania as a missionary with her family for several years. More than feeling competent enough, we wanted the adventure (and budget) of “figure it out as you go” travel.
Our booking started with deciding on our main locations that we for sure wanted to hit (Ireland, Romania, Kenya, & Paris), and then seeing where the normal layovers took us to make sure we didn’t want to spend more time in those places as well.
Once we finalized our destinations and dates, the price checking began. Almost without fail, I checked our prices at least daily for about 2 months. The prices were consistently a few hundred dollars cheaper on Tuesday or Wednesday than they were on Sunday. Apparently there are studies that back up my observations… according to Farecompare.com “In the U.S., Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday are usually cheapest. For international travel, weekdays are usually cheaper than weekends. Expensive days: Fridays and Sundays usually cost more, especially in the U.S.” In the end we spent around $1100 per person for our round trip airfare.
Our first stop, Ireland, was a destination that we had both dreamed of visiting for quite some time. It didn’t disappoint, but because we had delayed flights we had only a little less than 2 days to enjoy it.
Our Air B&B castle. Actually we slept in the “granary”… which is the building on the right.
After landing, we had the afternoon to find the castle where we were to spend the night (I’m not kidding), and go to find some supper. Eventually we found an inn overlooking the Irish Sea, and people with thick Irish accents served us dishes such as fish and chips. It felt like something out of an old novel.
The Irish Sea.
We spent the next morning in Dunmore East, enjoying the breathtaking greenness and foggy beauty of coastal Ireland. The rest of the day was spent walking around Dublin, seeing the sights, going on trolly tours, and looking quite like tourists.
Dunmore East
After our short stint in Ireland we packed our bags and boarded a plane to Romania. We had a few hour layover in London, and for a bit we debated trying to grab a taxi and make a dash past the Buckingham palace. In the end, we decided the risk of missing our flight was too high and opted to spend our time braving the crowded airport.
Romania was on our destination list because Anita had spent several years there as a missionary with her family when she was a teenager. Our basic objective was to spend some time in the village where her family had lived and she had so many memories in.
Fun Fact: Anita is tri-lingual. In addition to English, she speaks both Pennsylvania Dutch and Romanian fluently.
The Village where Anita spent several years as a teenager.
My first impression of Romania was less than ideal, to say the least. We thought we had a rental car booked for our 1.5hr drive to the village. Apparently however, the booking systems did not know that every one of this particular airport’s rental companies had shut down for the night… several hours before we got there. In the end, we spent the night at a sketchy motel nearby and then waited for well over an hour past “opening time” at the door of our rental car company. Then we spent another hour waiting for our car to show up… Good times.
With the not-ideal start behind us, we headed off into a surprisingly beautiful Romania. Our week or so in Romania was pretty relaxed overall. We spent some time visiting old acquaintances of Anita’s and she took me on a walking tour of the village, complete with stories about the “old days”. We also were able to do some “touresting” in Romania as well.
Corvin Castle (Hunedoara, Romania)
The Corvin Castle in Hunedoara, Romania was one of the most stunning displays of a bygone era that I have experienced. Construction on it began in 1446! There were small prisons for whomever the King decided to torture, but just around the corner would be majestic rooms lined with the classic knight armor and swords. It is mind blowing to walk through a place with nearly 600 years of history and try to image that people actually lived so luxuriously and brutally at the same time.
Romania was surprisingly beautiful, as a general rule. The landscape is quite a bit more mountainous than I had expected and there is a lot more “untouched” greenness (pastures, forests…etc.) than I expected to see. Thirty years ago, Romania was still a communist country. As a result, the culture is a unique mix of communist-style laws and corruption, offset by strong Western values and a desire for true freedom.
Feeding the Pigeons at Centru (the Center) Timisoara, Romania
The historical architecture of Romania’s larger cities is also stunning. As someone used to “old architecture” by American standards, I was blown away by just how much older and, on average, more beautiful the European architecture was.
Orthodox Cathedral (Timisoara, Romania)
Orthodox Cathedral (Timisoara, Romania)
After our stay in Romania, we were off to Kenya, Africa! I had been to Kenya with some of my buddies before we were married, and I was excited to show Nita one of my favorite countries.
First, we had an insane day or two (the days get confusing when you are constantly changing time zones) of travel. Originally our flight schedule was relatively reasonable, but for some reason one of the flights was cancelled several weeks before our trip. To get us to Africa in decent time, the booking agency had to cobble together a few small flights to make up for the cancelled flight. We ended up flying into Italy, Spain, and Saudi Arabia. While we didn't get to “experience” those countries, we did get an interesting glimpse from our airplanes at the landscape. The people working in the airports also gave us a glimpse of the cultures and lifestyles of those countries. With the exception of a $130 fee because the people in Dubai singled us out and weighed our overweight carry-on bag, that stint of the trip went quite smoothly.
Dubai from the sky.
In Kenya, we visited my cousin for a few days at the mission where she was working and during that time we got to do a little shopping in their crazy marketplaces and experienced their unreal driving conditions. Rush hour in Africa makes even the craziest American traffic look like a Sunday snooze.
This is either a fun way to ride around, or it’s a tin can of suicide on wheels, depends who you ask.
Everything in Africa feels just a bit more dangerous. If you enjoy constantly feeling in control and safe, it’s definitely not the place for you. If, however, you like adventure; Africa is a wonderful country! The people of Africa, especially the children, have a way of crawling into your heart. Their winning smiles and over the top joy in the simplest things (like having their photo taken) is contagious.
The event we were all looking forward to was our safari trip to the Masai Mara. I had been on a self-guided Mara trip with some of my friends on my first visit to Africa, and I was beyond excited to be going back. This trip, however, we went with Fairmont Mara Safari Club, a lodge complete with professional guides and luxury tents.
The main lodge
The Mara is pretty much every photographer’s dream. It feels like you are living in a National Geographic documentary…
In two safari trips, this is the only mature male lion I have seen.
Our guide pulled right up to this lonely old Cape buffalo, and turned off the Rover. He then proceeded to inform us that lonely old Cape buffalo are the most dangerous kind… Thanks a lot, Buster. Apparently they tend to become frustrated with life when younger bulls overthrow them and kick them out of the herd, and become more aggressive.
Zebras and Wildabeast by the thousands
Fastest mammal on earth.
Impala
The rovers they use to take you around the Mara have a personality of their own. The ditches, and gulleys, and small rivers these vehicles get you through are mind-blowing.
As our time in Kenya came to a close we once again packed our bags and got ready to travel. This time we were headed for Paris! But first, we had to brave the Moroccan airline, Royal Air Maroc. We are no strangers to not-great airlines, but this particular airline was on a planet of its own. The first red flag was the lady behind the check-in counter hand-writing tickets… no joke. I’m no genius, but that didn’t seem like a good thing. Next red flag was our flight attendant asking to see our (handwritten) boarding pass which she cross referenced with a spreadsheet she was carrying around. Mental red flags 3-6 were raised when she came back through and cross checked our (handwritten) boarding passes with her paper FOUR MORE TIMES! At this point we were wondering what our odds of survival were. Thankfully, the plane wasn’t super full so we had plenty of breathing room… if only we knew. Either I didn’t notice when we booked, or they “neglected” to let us know, but at some point a passenger pick up stop was added to the flight. We were about three hours into our six hour flight when the plane began it’s descent into the desert of Chad, Africa. When we taxied a stop in the tiny run-down airport, a second boarding process began. This time, there was no extra breathing room. The flight attendant stood sternly in the aisle and ushered the new passengers into the seats, front to back. Later in the flight, when we went to the back of the plane for a bathroom break, we discovered why she had ushered us in so tightly. The back six rows were completely empty so that each flight attendant could have a set of three seats to themselves. Maybe that is what being employee-centric looks like. In the end, our six hour flight took around nine hours, but we survived.
Paris was on on our destination list because it always seemed like a fun place to visit. The city has an unusually strong aesthetic appeal. I don’t who was responsible for marketing Paris as a dream destination, but they did a fantastic job. I’m still not sure if it truly is an extra special city, with an unusual romance and charm, or if that is just a perception that movies and marketing have convinced us of. Either way, it truly is a beautiful place. We had three days to explore Paris, so we got started. We visited the Eiffel Tower, first thing of course, took the riverboat cruise, visited the Notre Dame Cathedral, and ate a lot of crepes.
We also were fortunate enough to be able to tour the Notre Dame Cathedral... that of course felt more significant when if was partially consumed by fire earlier this year.
Notre Dame
The worst thing about Paris is the traffic… by far. Unsurprisingly, the main attractions are super crowded. However, if you can see past the masses, the architecture is stunning
Classic Paris shot… Beautiful architecture in the Notre Dame, photobombed by a tourist taking selfies.
Fun fact: It is illegal for me to post my favorite picture of the Eiffel Tower. It’s legal to take pictures of the Tower during the daytime and post them, because the Tower itself is considered public domain. The artist who did the lighting of the Tower, however, still owns the copyright to the lighting of the Tower. Basically any pictures after dark of the Tower are illegal to post unless you get copyright permission.
Paris is filled with little shops serving both pastries and crepes. It also adds to the fun to get these foods in the non-touristy areas, where the super friendly shop owners don’t speak any English. It quickly turns into a point and wave and nod conversation, but that’s half the charm.
In the end, we thoroughly enjoyed Paris. However, if we had the opportunity to spend three days in France again, we would definitely take at least half a day to go out and see the French countryside outside of Paris. For some reason, that option never crossed our minds until it was too late.
After our short stop in Paris came to an end, we once again packed our bags and headed to the airport. This time, we were going to our last stop, Iceland.
Iceland is without doubt the most beautiful place I have been to. Unfortunately, we had only one day to enjoy it. The Viking folklore and the rugged and beautiful terrain make this island incredibly intriguing. We basically spent our time driving from one beautiful location to the next, doing our best to cover as much of the island as possible.
This random stone on the cold beach has a small hot pool of water. It is uncanny to reach into a “puddle” on a cold day and feel water that’s almost too warm to keep your hand in.
Aurora borealis
On the final night of our trip, we left the airb&b around midnight and headed out to see the northern lights. This has always been on my photographer bucket list. Unfortunately, the northern lights that night were pretty much on the bottom end of what Iceland is capable of displaying, but for this Midwesterner, they were stunning. The lights were a perfect ending to an exhaustingly wonderful trip.
Final Tips
Enjoy the Culture You are Visiting.
It’s easy to get caught up in the “annoying” parts of being in a different country. For example, the service that you get in an African restaurant tends to be awful compared to American restaurants. That can be really annoying, or you can decide to just enjoy a slower culture.
Budget Airlines aren’t a Great Deal if You Have a Month’s Worth of Luggage.
We didn’t really intend to book budget airlines but that’s what we ended up with. They are great deals if you only want to take a short flight from location A to B. If you are going on a month’s journey however, the fees that they charge for even one check-in pretty much eliminate your savings. Plus, they often don’t offer even water as a complementary beverage.
NEVER Fly with Royal Air Maroc. Never.
Ok, if someone pointed a gun at your head and told you to get on a Royal Air Maroc flight, I would probably encourage you to go ahead and board the plane. But that’s about the only situation in which I would recommend it.
Ireland is as Dreamy, Green, Beautiful and Rainy as Any Place Could Be.
Romania is Surprisingly Beautiful.
Kenya is an Exciting Country Full of Adventure.
The Masai Mara is Unbelievably Fantastic.
Paris is a Beautiful City, but it’s a Little Bit Overrated.
Iceland is Quite Possible the Most Beautiful Country on Earth.
Enjoy Your Trip the Way that You Like to Enjoy Traveling.
See all the sights if you can’t stand to waste a minute, just relax if you are more into that, take a ton of photos if you love photography, leave your camera at home and just get the basics with your phone if taking pictures distracts you from your trip. Whatever you do, enjoy your trip. You’ll never regret that.