Country #79 - Bahamas Day 3

The Conch and The Snake

It’s our last full day at Old Bahama Bay, and also New Year's Eve, so we had to make the best of it! We started the day on the beach again before going for a walk along the water and finding some giant conch shells. And I mean giant! They were very pretty and literally everywhere along our walk. Our walk also turned interesting pretty quick when I was recording the crane that had been perched on the beach for the past few days. After a few minutes of just standing he all of the sudden went in for a fish - or so we thought! Up came the crane with a giant snake hanging out of its mouth. It was shocking but so entertaining at the same time! He struggled for a really long time but finally swallowed the snake whole.

When we walked back he had finished eating but then, all of the sudden, he went in for another snake, and the drama started all over again! It was quite the unexpected ordeal, and I definitely made sure to stay away from the crane and his snake food. We then walked the other direction out to where the boats come into the marina. This part of the shore stretched out way into the ocean, and it was really cool to be surrounded by deep water on all sides.

As if we hadn’t had enough adventure already, we then decided to ride bikes around the property! You could just take the bikes as you please which was really nice. We rode all around the houses that sit opposite of the Old Bahama Bay rooms. They were beautiful to drive through and some of them were just massive. One of the houses was literally an entire compound and one of the coolest houses I’ve ever seen! The biking got pretty exhausting pretty quickly and afterwards, we headed back to the room to recuperate.

Next, we ate a late lunch/snack at the tiki shack set up by the pool. I had nachos and my mom had conch fritters. They were okay as long as I avoided big bites of fish. I also had a really yummy frozen strawberry drink that all of the little kids were drinking. Not kidding, it was fantastic. By this point, I was pretty sunburnt so after sitting on the beach for just a bit longer I sat on the balcony for the rest of the day. Our last outing was to try and play giant checkers! However, we were attacked by mosquito bugs so that didn’t last too long. We stopped by the gift shop to buy an Old Bahama Bay t-shirt before heading back to our room for the night.

I worked while watching New Years Eve coverage and we also watched the movie Passengers on and off too. Then, all of the sudden, we heard fireworks! We had seen some people carting around a wagon full of fireworks earlier, and were excited that they were setting them off at Old Bahama Bay. And they were some big ones! Like, they went on forever and were super impressive. It was so cool, and pretty perfect, to watch fireworks on the beach from our balcony.

We then rang in the new year with Ryan Seacrest before calling it an early New Years Eve. The sunburn was really taking its toll and I was pretty sleepy! It was a great last full day in the Bahamas, and the fireworks were just the cherry on top!

The Travel

It was, of course, an ordeal getting back to the US as well! We left for the airport at 11am, and on the ride there realized we would not make it on the flight. If only we had known just a bit earlier then we could have waited for five hours at Old Bahama Bay instead of the airport, but the airport ended up not being half bad to sit outside of - it was 75 degrees, sunny, and there were palm trees! Our same driver from the first day drove us back to the airport and it was a bit sad to tell him farewell as he had been such a fun guy to get to know during our drives!

We spent hours figuring out how best to get back after we got to Miami because all flights were looking bad at this point. We ended up finding a solution that would take us through San Antonio. Not quite Dallas, but as close as we could feasibly get. Our flight from Freeport, Bahamas to Miami was literally about twenty minutes if not less - it was crazy! And much more enjoyable than the seasickness inducing ferry ride.

We made it to our gate in Miami without issue and even lucked out on the flight as well. The man in the aisle seat was upgraded once he was on the plane, giving us a row of three to ourselves! I was watching the Oklahoma vs. Georgia football game, followed by the Alabama vs. Clemson game, and my mom slept most of the flight to get ready for our drive.

When we landed in San Antonio I had to immediately change out of shorts as it went from 70s to below freezing. We took a bus to the rental car place where, sigh, we did not get a yellow mustang this time. The car would get the job done, though! We made a quick stop at In and Out Burger before making the four-hour drive. Actually, I slept most of the way and my mom drove - she was quite the rental car trooper once again!

We made it to Dallas around 4am, and my mom left the following afternoon to head back to Alabama. The Bahamas was a great way to cap off our month of travelling together. Even though we had to endure some crazy travel adventures I had such a great time and am so glad she was able to come along!

79 countries down, 117 to go.

Read about my second day in the Bahamas here.

To learn more about Old Bahama Bay click here.

Country #79 - Bahamas Day 2

The Beach

The long day of travel was made completely worth it today because we spent the entire day at the beach! I slept in (thank goodness) before heading outside around mid-morning. My mom had been up since 6am she was so excited for the beach! I joined her in the chairs right outside of our room for a bit, and then we decided to participate in some of the free activities at Old Bahama Bay!

Our first adventure was to try out the kayak. We successfully rode in the kayak together without falling out or generally making a huge embarrassment of ourselves. The coolest part was finding a giant starfish! It was huge and just as clear as can be in the blue water under our boat. After we got sick of attempting to pretend we knew what we were doing we headed back to shore and I decided to try out the paddle board next. It was probably quite entertaining to watch because the board was in such a shallow area of the water to start that it took me forever to paddle enough to where I could finally stand up. It’s pretty challenging on even the smallest of waves but it was fun to try.

After our water adventures, we went inside for lunch (consisting of lots of snacks that we brought) before enjoying outside even more. The sunset relatively early so we sat on the porch for a bit before heading to eat dinner at the restaurant at Old Bahama Bay. I was excited for some real food! I had a yummy burger with some mashed potatoes and was very satisfied. We headed back to the room where I worked on planning for a bit while my mom went to sleep early yet again. I followed soon after as I was stuffed and starting to get sunburnt so the beach exhaustion was setting in!

79 countries down, 117 to go.

Read about my first day in the Bahamas here.

Read about my third day in the Bahamas here.

To learn more about Old Bahama Bay click here.

Country #79 - Bahamas Day 1

The Mustang

Today started quite early and ended up being an endless day of travel. Unfortunately, I had a hard time deciding exactly where I wanted to travel over the holidays, so I ended up deciding by default to go ahead and burn my saved country of the Bahamas. I was saving it for if I needed to be home for any unexpected reason for a long period of time, but oh well! It’s going to be a great place to visit in December for sure, and my mom is tagging along again so it will be a great little trip. The bad news, though, is that since I decided too late, we have to fly on standby family passes during the busiest travel period of the year. It was looking rough on anyway for us to possibly get to Miami today, so we ended up going with the best possible option at the time. And it was definitely quite the roundabout adventure!

We woke up at 4am, headed to the airport, and flew from DFW into Savannah, Georgia. I wish I would have been able to see some of Savannah, but we had no time when we landed. The original plan was to rent a car and drive to Jacksonville to then fly to Miami, but by the time we landed in Savannah that flight had filled up. Our only option then was a flight from Gainesville to Miami. So we had to rent a car and head that way! We rented a car from Alamo, and at the counter, we were told that we would be upgraded to a sports car for free. Yay! We had no idea what to expect, but when we walked to our car and found a yellow Mustang we almost died laughing. And my mom suddenly got really excited about our three-hour drive! It was extra funny because my brother, Edward, wants a Mustang, so it was great to send him that picture.

The drive was definitely made more fun by the surprise Mustang, and I had fun playing with the Apple car play. It was a bit rainy but we were in Gainesville pretty easily. We stopped for some Wendy’s, refilled our gas, and then returned the car. By the time we arrived the flight had gone from looking like a good possibility to not so good. Two people had bought tickets at the counter, which I didn’t know was a thing anyone really did anymore. It didn’t look good but we decided to wait because it would be close if at least one person missed the flight.

Closer to take off we were suddenly told we would be on the flight! I had no idea how because from what I could tell online the numbers were not working in our favor, but I wasn’t going to argue. We were in line to board when I saw that there might be a problem. The paying passenger in front of us had somehow been removed from her seat, leading me to think that this probably had happened to put us on. The gate agent did not think so, though, as he still allowed us to board. So we did it, we were on the flight! Until we weren’t – it was a very bad sign when the gate agent walked on board, and even worse when he walked to our seats and asked us to follow him.

Apparently, three paying passengers had had their seats removed so the system then showed those seats as available. So we were out of luck. One of us could have gone on, but that made little sense, so we headed back to Alamo. And rented our Mustang again. Not even purposefully – we were just given the Mustang again, so at least we were able to laugh at our unfortunate situation. We decided at this point to just drive to Miami – my mom was quite the trooper on the five-hour drive, dealing with lots of back roads and darkness. We stopped at Shake Shack outside of Miami which was quite appreciated and stopped at Target too to buy some snacks for our trip.

We finally arrived at the Miami airport where we returned the car without issue and then took an Uber to a hotel near the airport. It had an unfortunate smoky smell, but it did the trick for a few hours. We decided to take the ferry from Miami to Freeport, Bahamas tomorrow instead of messing with flights anymore. After almost an entire day of travel we finally made it to Miami (too late for our intended flight), but at least we had a plan to arrive at the Bahamas in the morning!

The Rocking Ferry

It was nice to get some much-needed sleep before continuing our travel adventure. We took an Uber to the port of Miami where we checked in for our ferry to the Bahamas, the FRS Ferry. The ferry seemed similar in size to the one I took way back when from Argentina to Uruguay. We sat upstairs and were soon off headed towards Bimini where we would stop before heading to Grand Bahama Island (where Freeport is located). It was really cool to go past all of the giant Miami buildings on the ferry. It was my favorite (and only) good moment of the ferry. From that point forward, the waves dominated the situation.

It was so wavy! There was a reason that there were sea sickness tablets available and barf bags in the seats – it was so intense. I tried to sleep through it as best as I could to avoid thinking about it. The ride to Bimini really wasn’t too bad, but Bimini to Grand Bahama was insane. There were points where the entire ferry would collectively hold its breath! It was cool, sure, but not worth the seasickness. The poor guy sitting near us had to use his barf bag, and I just tried my best not to think about it. Our stop in Bimini was beautiful – I would love to go back someday as we didn’t leave the boat. I was very glad to finally arrive on Grand Bahama Island, though!

We were met by our driver right outside of the ferry terminal which was really nice! He stopped by Solomon’s grocery store for us to run in and get a few last things we didn’t get before we left the U.S. We would be staying far from the city so we tried to stock up! After Solomon’s we drove about thirty-five minutes (and had a fun time talking with our driver during the drive) to the far northwest end of the Island to the settlement of West End, where Old Bahama Bay is located. I cannot thank Old Bahama Bay enough for sponsoring this segment of my trip! It was so nice to have a place to stay for a few days in the warmth of the Bahamas, and Old Bahama Bay was the perfect spot. Our room was incredible – literally right on the water! We had a huge room with tons of space, the best view, and easy access to everything at the resort. I’m very excited for the next few days at Old Bahama Bay After all of our travel difficulties, it was all worth it once we arrived at such a beautiful spot.

We spent some time walking around to see everything at Old Bahama Bay, including the marina, giant checkers board, activity hut where we could get kayaks or paddle boards, bikes, the infinity pool, the restaurants, shuffleboard, corn hole, and more! It was nice to walk around and have an overview of everything. We then headed back to our room where we sat on the balcony for a bit before eating dinner – it was an inexpensive night filled with microwave pizza and other snacks! My mom went to sleep really early (understandably after the lack of sleep and plethora of driving), and I stayed up and worked a little bit on planning my next trip before going to sleep as well. It was quite the ordeal getting to the Bahamas, but after arriving I can safely say that it was totally worth it and I can’t wait for the next few days!

79 countries down, 117 to go.

Read about my second day in the Bahamas here.

To learn more about Old Bahama Bay click here.

Country #78 - Ireland

The Airports

My mom and I woke up at about 3:30am this morning, making it without a doubt our earliest morning of the trip. We took a taxi to the Budapest airport (BUD) where we had to go through immigration as we were leaving the Schengen Zone. It didn’t take too long and we were soon on our first (of three) flights of the day, this one being to London Stansted (my least favorite airport, of course). The flight took about two hours, the first of which I blogged and the second I slept. When we got to Stansted we had purchased fast track passed for both immigration and security as we had a really short time to transit. Immigration was pretty simple (we just went straight to the front of the line), but security took a while longer.

The fastpass line for security was almost empty, yet somehow it seemed like almost every person in line had to have a bag go through extra screening. So we were through security in like two minutes, but along with everyone else had to wait over twenty minutes. I get it, but also there is a limit – if your systems can’t handle the extra screenings effectively then something needs to be done, and if I’ve learned anything through my travels it’s that Stansted Airport can literally handle nothing effectively. We finally got our bag (which wasn’t even checked, just randomly selected when there was already a line of twenty bags), we then grabbed a quick snack at Pret and headed to our gate.

It took a little bit to board but even longer to actually leave. We sat on the tarmac for over an hour, eventually arriving an hour late to Dublin on what was only itself an hour-long flight. When we arrived we then had three hours until our next flight instead of the four we had originally planned on. I know that sounds incredibly early, but Dublin has a different system than any other airport I have ever flown to the US from. It is called US Preclearance, and you actually go through US Customs and Border Patrol in Ireland. So then when you land in the US, you are treated like a domestic incoming flight – you just walk right out of the airport. Anyways, I had no idea how long this process would take, so we were trying to be extra early.

Exit immigration was annoyingly slow as they only had two desks open for a very long non-EU passport line while they had at least twenty EU lines open. We got through after about twenty minutes, and then had to switch terminals. We checked in to our Norwegian where this time they thankfully didn’t weigh our bags, because they without a doubt would have been overweight. I am actually amazed that we fit everything in our bags to get it back home – it was definitely a struggle, though! I got witnesses to sign for Ireland as well at the check in counter, and then we made our way to round one of security.

You have to go through security twice when flying to the US through somewhere that has US Preclearance. The first is the airport’s basic security, and the second is a TSA level security screening. I was randomly selected for extra screening today which wasn’t too exciting, but the line was actually shorter than the regular lines so I ended up finishing at the same time as my mom. The next step was immigration, which was a breeze as always for me thanks to Global Entry – I’m so glad they had it at US Preclearance! It took my mom twenty minutes in the regular line while I was done in maybe two at the most. I waited for her on the other side before we bought a few snacks and made our way to our gate.

We boarded and were off without issue. Takeoff was actually pretty exciting as there was a bunny right by the runway! That's definitely not something you see every day. Once we were in the air there were enough seats for us to move and each have an entire row right across from each other – it was so nice, especially after such a long day! When we land in New York we are being picked up in Newburgh by my Aunt Dana, and are then headed to eat dinner with my cousin Robert who is a freshman at West Point. It will be so nice to spend time with them both, but especially to get to see Robert as he doesn’t get too many Alabama visitors so far from home!

I know that I didn’t get to spend a lot of time in Ireland, which was definitely sad for me as it is one of my favorite countries that I have visited before starting this trip, but my main reasoning was that I just spent so much time here last year. I spent a week traveling all throughout the country only eighteen months ago, so of every country that I have skipped through quickly, it was one of the less painful to do that for. I’ll definitely post some pictures from my actual visit though! I spent time in Belfast (it’s in Northern Ireland, so technically the UK), Dublin, Galway, Killarney, and Cork, and it was a great introduction to just an amazing place. Some of my favorite stops were the Titanic Museum in Belfast, spending a few days in Dublin, the natural beauty of Killarney National Park, being poured rain on in Galway, and kissing the Blarney Stone in Cork. If you want to learn more, check out my Ireland guide. I had the most incredible time on that trip (I travelled most of it by train), and cannot wait to visit again in the hopefully very near future!

This trip to Europe for the past two weeks with my mom has been so much fun and really just the best time. I travel by myself so much that it was so nice to have someone to share things with, even if only for a little while! Solo travel and travel with others are just so different but I love them both so much. One of the best aspects of this trip was that we visited many places that I had been before, so I was able to share my favorite things from those places, but then we also did so many new things and visited even those places that I had been before during an entirely different time of year. The Christmas Markets were an amazing part of our trip, and I highly recommend you take a trip to Europe to see and enjoy them. My favorites markets were Helsinki and Prague, my favorite street lights and decorations were Amsterdam, Helsinki, and St. Petersburg, and my favorite light show was hands down in Brussels.

It was truly just the best and it is a bummer to be going home, but at least we are headed home for an exciting few weeks around the holidays! I’m very glad to be home for Christmas with my family and both of my extended families before setting off again at the end of December. Also, fun side note, I am now officially 40% done visiting every country in the world!!

78 countries down, 118 to go.

Country #77 - Hungary

The Fisherman’s Bastion

It’s a sad day as it is the last day of my trip with my mom through Europe. We had a full day in Budapest, Hungary though, so we definitely finished on a high note! We began the day with breakfast at our hotel, Fraser Residence Budapest, before taking the great public transit in Budapest over to Buda Castle. Inside Buda Castle we visited the Hungarian National Gallery for about forty-five minutes. It was really cool because almost all of the art was Hungarian and it covered Renaissance to Modern art. Afterwards we headed outside to watch the changing of the guard. It was definitely unique and I’m really glad we saw it. There were about ten men doing a drill with their guns to a snare drum.

Afterwards we walked over to Castle Hill where we first visited Mátyás Templom. Mátyás Templom is a beautiful and very unique church that is one of the highlights of Budapest in my opinion. It is so intricate both inside and out, and I love how inside you can climb to the second level and go through a small museum. When we finished at Mátyás Templom we then did Fisherman's Bastion which was right next door. The architecture of the interesting structure that is almost synonymous with Budapest is fantastic as art the views out over the city from it. We walked along it before then buying a few souvenirs on our way to lunch.

For lunch we ate at one of the best restaurants of my trip thus far, 21 Hungarian Restaurant. I want to thank 21 so much for sponsoring this meal of my trip! It was an absolutely perfect meal. I started off with some yummy (and, more importantly, warm) hot chocolate. We had bread to start with a tasty local spread. Next, we shared a goulash and man it was so good. Like we could have stopped there with our meal and been more than satisfied! We kept going, though, and our main courses were exquisite. I had wiener schnitzel and my mom had chicken paprikash, though we definitely shared with each other. Mine came with creamy mashed potatoes that were so buttery and good.

We were absolutely stuffed by the time we finished, but we ordered traditional Hungarian sponge cake for desert anyways. It was a good call because it was so tasty and a great way to finish off our perfect meal! 21 Hungarian Restaurant not only had great food but a great location (right by Fisherman’s Bastion) and a really cool asthetique as well. Thank you again so much to everyone at 21 - we had excellent service throughout our meal and could not have asked for a better lunch!

After lunch we took the bus over to walk along the water from the Chain Bridge and see the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial, which is dedicated to those who were shot into the Danube during WWII. It is a really unique but very well done memorial, and you should definitely visit if you ever find yourself in Budapest. From there we walked to the famous Hungarian Parliament Building, which truly is one of the most intricate and beautiful buildings. We decided against visiting inside, though, because it was really quite expensive and there wasn’t another English tour for an hour. Our next walk was to St. Stephen's Basilica. On the way there we passed two of the cutest puppies playing together in a park and it was just really a cuteness overload.

We arrived at St. Stephen's Basilica and found the first of two Christmas markets we would be visiting today set up outside. We went in St. Stephen's Basilica before doing the market to give ourselves plenty of time to shop. It is a beautiful church and the inside is so beautiful and intricate. The exterior is also the perfect backdrop for a Christmas market, and made the market all the more enjoyable. We visited all of the stalls and bought a few souvenirs before making our way to a second Christmas market located at Vörösmarty Square.

The street lights around Vörösmarty Square were so pretty and much more plentiful than throughout the rest of the city (there were lots throughout the city but this area wa especially well decorated). There was a cool light display on one of the buildings in the square, and we spent a good amount of time shopping through all of these stalls as well. Once we finished shopping we had a great Hungarian snack for a light dinner, as we were still stuffed from lunch, called a langos. Our langos (and what seemed to be the most basic offering) was basically a funnel cake covered in sour cream and shredded cheese and boy was it good. Someone needs to start selling them at home because I would definitely buy them! We also had mulled wine to drink which was good but more importantly warm.

After eating we walked back through the market and then took the metro back to Fraser Residence Budapest. It was relatively early but we have to be up at 3:30am tomorrow for a very early flight to start off our crazy long day of travel to get back home. It was a great last day of the trip, though, and a really perfect day spent seeing Budapest!

77 countries down, 119 to go.

To learn more about Fraser Residence Budapest click here.