This May, I had the opportunity to fulfill my childhood dream of going to Hogwarts. While I didn’t actually receive an acceptance letter via owl post, it was still a memorable experience.

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I packed up my bags and went on yet another adventure this year. This time, the destination was Ireland and Scotland!

We split our time up pretty evenly between the two countries and had approximately three days in each location. This allowed for a bit of time for exploring in Dublin and Edinburgh, as well as day trips to Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands.

First Leg: Ireland
Dublin is an awesome city and I surely wouldn’t mind traveling back someday. I even managed to get out to Phoenix Park for a few runs, which was necessary since I was in the midst of training for a marathon.

(Of course, a stop in Dublin wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the Guinness brew house and a few Irish pubs as well!) Continue reading →

They say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so of course I’ve decided to write a blog post about my experience. Unfortunately (fortunately?), nothing that crazy happened while vacationing in Sin City so I don’t have any hesitations about sharing details to the internet…

What do you get when you bring together friends from all over the country? A weekend full of memories.

First, a bit of back story. Now that we’ve all graduated from college and have started our careers, my friends live all over the United States. The posse for this trip was comprised of friends from Boston, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., and Seattle. Half of the group are accountants. Conveniently, our trip occurred the weekend after April 15th – it was meant as 1) a celebration of the end of tax season, and 2) a quarter life crisis trip (most of us are turning 25 at some point this year).

Las Vegas – Blue Man Group & Casinos, Casinos, Casinos. And a bunch of old ladies handing out stripper cards.

The Las Vegas part of the trip started for me on a Thursday evening. Tym & I flew in fairly late, and everybody else were all pretty worn out since they had arrived from the east coast. I spent some time witnessing the Las Vegas nightlife, and my takeaways from the first night were as follows:

1) Nevada is very flat.

2) There are a lot of bright, flashy lights in Vegas.

3) Old women like to hang out on every street corner, trying to give passersby stripper cards of women that are definitely much younger than them (and who are definitely wearing much less clothing).

The Vegas adventure truly kicked off on Friday. While half of the group spent the day traveling in Utah, the rest of us explored the various casinos and made a bit of cash.

What? You *made* money while you were in Vegas?! Impossible.

Yep, we made cash on our first day in the city! While walking down one of the sidewalks along the Vegas strip, we were stopped by an affiliate of NBC collecting feedback from various individuals regarding potential new TV shows coming this fall. I was whisked away to a creepy, secluded location, where I watched the pilot for Old Soul and pocketed $20. Not a bad deal.

The highlight of Friday (and one of the main highlights of the entire trip) was attending a Blue Man Group performance that evening. I hadn’t known much about the show beforehand, and it was definitely a memorable time. They even let us photograph and record the last five minutes, which ended up being a giant party with floating balls and toilet paper.

Saturday & Sunday were additional days in Vegas and included more sightseeing (specifically, Fremont, the Stratsosphere, and the Las Vegas Sign), and of course a bit more drinking and gambling. I crossed another item from my bucket list and played live blackjack in a casino. Sadly, I did not profit over the weekend.

Hoover Dam, Route 66, and the Grand Canyon

If there’s one takeaway that you get from reading this blog post, let it be this:

Do NOT try to fit in the Hoover Dam, Route 66, and the Grand Canyon all in one day.

Monday was the last full day of the trip and so we had approximately 16 hours to tour the Hoover Dam, drive on Route 66, visit the Grand Canyon, and travel the 4+ hours back to the hotel in Vegas.

The Hoover Dam was magnificent, and I was in awe that something so large was completely man-made. You can explore the outside of the dam for free, so I would definitely recommend just doing that and skipping the tour if you are a bit pressed for time.

The drive through Arizona was relatively boring, but I did learn that tumbleweeds actually do exist. I always thought that they were just placed in cartoons and movies for exaggeration, but in reality the tumbleweeds that I saw in Arizona were probably the most movement I saw out there all day. We did find a cool diner while traveling on Route 66, though.

Unfortunately, the one negative to this part of our trip was that we did not arrive to the Grand Canyon until after 5:30pm. The sun set just after 7pm, so we had very little time to explore the canyon. We managed to stop at two different points, but there were several other points that we missed.

However, we did get to witness one hell of a sunset.

I’ll definitely be making a trip back to the Grand Canyon in a year or two. One could easily spend multiple days hiking the canyon and sightseeing. It is truly one of the most beautiful wonders of the world that I have ever experienced.

Where’s my next adventure?

I’ve certainly had a travel bug lately. You may have read about my adventure in Europe last summer, and I definitely want to head back that way soon. I don’t have anything specific planned yet, but Italy and Croatia are the top two contenders at the moment – potentially later this summer or fall!

Any recommendations?

– Robert

At the end of May, I had the opportunity to travel to Europe – specifically, Amsterdam, Southern England, & London! It really pays off having a best friend who loves to travel (and also loves doing all of the planning).

The 9-day adventure was full of amazing sights with awesome friends. Each location was incredible in its own way, and the three destinations were so different that it’s hard to pick which one was my favorite.

Amsterdam Highlights

The adventure started on a Friday afternoon, though it took us until the afternoon of the following day to finally reach Amsterdam. We immediately started to explore the city, even though we were all a bit jetlagged. Saturday was the day for drinking tours, as we made stops at both Heineken and the House of Bols.

My favorite part of Amsterdam was definitely the architecture – every house is so different, and many of them have their own coat of arms. A lot of the buildings are older, with narrow staircases, and have hooks at the top of their roofs to help pulley furniture to the higher floors.

One of the characteristics that stuck out to me the most was that almost everybody bikes in Amsterdam, and you’d better get out of the way if you ever find yourself in the middle of a bike lane. Because of the number of number of walking paths and canals, it was also easy to navigate your way around the city. All of the canals are constructed in circles surrounding the city, making it difficult to get lost.

The second day of the trip was full of more tours, rides on the canal, and exploring the city. We made stops at the Anne Frank House, Brouwerijtij, and the Red Light District of course. I also highly recommend getting a pancake while visiting the Netherlands – my vote is for the banana and Nutella pancake!

On the third and final full day in the Netherlands, we had a private tour guide take us to view the windmills and to explore the city of Rotterdam, among many other places.

Southern England Highlights

The second leg of the trip took us to southern England, near the shore and right smack in the middle of the English countryside. The views here were gorgeous, and we were very lucky to stay with a former pastor of a church from my hometown in Pennsylvania. We toured the area where the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, and it was a nice change of pace from the hustle of the city life.

London Highlights

The final stop of our journey was London, a complete opposite experience from the previous days of exploring the country. While London was too far spread out for me to ever want to live there, I loved doing all of the touristy things such as riding the London Eye and looking for the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Another highlight for me was touring the Belfast ship.

My favorite part of the London segment was definitely watching the Lion King performance. We went all out for this show and had front row seats overlooking the orchestra pit. It was amazing to me how well they stuck to the original movie, and the production of it all was phenomenal.

We also had the opportunity to tour Parliament, and the nerd in me convinced everybody to take a short detour to King’s Cross station as well!

As always, any trip planned by Curtis is a great one, and I’m looking forward to the Las Vegas and Grand Canyon adventure in April. I may not post a recap about that one, though, because you know what they say about what happens in Vegas…

– Robert

As I’m writing this, I’m 36,000 feet in the air, on my way back home to Seattle.

No, I didn’t make a typo in the previous statement. I really am flying home.

The past few months have been quite a blur. There are so many different topics that I’ve been meaning to discuss since my latest update in March, but it’s been hard for me to devote time to sit down and actually write about them.

I’m living in Seattle now. If you would have told me this a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. I never expected to ever move to the west coast. I’ve always lived close to home, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss Rochester and my hometown in central Pennsylvania.

But you know what? I haven’t regretted a single minute of this decision so far. Rochester is a great city, but there is so much more to do and explore in Seattle. And it’s beautiful here. Oh, is it ever.

Where else can you go to the beach on an eighty degree day and look out at the snow-capped mountains? Or see a homeless mountain goat while out partying in downtown Capitol Hill? I’m guessing there’s not many places like this. And the available running and biking trails are excellent. It’s an adventurer’s dream.

Now, I’m currently on my way back from a work trip in Rochester. That’s right, I still have the same job that I so very much love and enjoy. I miss my friends and family, and haven’t had much time to start making many new friends yet, but I’m confident things will work out with time. Life is great.

I guess the point of this post is to remind everybody that it’s okay to take those wild chances and opportunities every once in awhile. Sure, some decisions won’t always turn out the way you wanted them. But you’ll just regret them forever if you don’t take the risk.

– Robert

Author’s note: This post was originally drafted in July, but I’m just now getting around to publishing it. My opinion on Seattle hasn’t changed, though!