Visiting Italy and especially Cinque Terre were very near the top of my bucket list and I made it there this week!  I visited four out of the five villages.  The only village we did not visit was Corniglia because it requires a fairly lengthy hike and climbing many stairs to get there.  The tour lasted fourteen hours so it was quite a long day already. Cinque means five and terre means land.  I must say that this enchanting area is just as beautiful as I imagined and looked just as magnificent as all of  the photos I've seen! Cinque Terre became a national park in 1998.  Fishing was what sustained their economy until that time and then they needed to find new sources of income.  Cinque Terre's current number one source of income is from tourism and the second is from the incredible white wine they produce.  More than 3 million people visit Cinque Terre each year.

I know many of you have seen some really beautiful and incredible photos of this magnificent place.  Hopefully mine will share a slightly different perspective.  I'm just really happy to have some of my own photos and memories of this experience.

I couldn't get enough of the beautiful scenery!

  A very out of focus shot of a very jet lagged yours truly :)

This was one of my my favorite areas of the tour:

The beaches were a little rocky but nice and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Are the kids on top of that BIG rock crazy or just being kids and having fun?

The above is a VERY large statue stone carving in the cliffs high above the beach

Flowers everywhere - especially framing the windows.

  I loved the brightly colored houses perched on the cliffs

As in most of Italy there were several lovely cathedrals.

Looking down on the busy town

The structure which is built into a cliff above was built to help prevent landslides which have been a problem in this area.  It has helped a little.

As you can see the land is terraced for growing crops such as lemon and olive trees.

These final three photos were taken in the village of Riomaggiore

I am debating staying in one of these gorgeous villages for a few days this summer.  Do you think you would enjoy being in such a remote area with so many tourists or would a day trip be enough for you?

 Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope you have a nice week!

~Michelle

In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, a group of travel bloggers and I collaborated to create a post about national parks around the world. There are some really interesting places/photos in this post and my bucket list is even longer now! It truly is amazing what we can do when we work together

http://travelphotodiscovery.com/earth-day-celebrating-national-parks-around-the-world/

My portion of the post is on Ha Long Bay, Vietnam:

Please remember to recycle and reuse as much as possible!

I got the above photo from Pixabay.com

 Thanks for your visit and I hope you have a wonderful week!

~ Michelle

I knew Bermuda would be nice, but I thought it is one of the most amazingly beautiful place I'd ever visited!  The people are so friendly as well. Needless to say I really enjoyed vacationing there!  I thought it would be my one and only trip there, but I thought I'd found paradise.

***I am so unhappy with these photos I took three years ago that I'm looking into going back to Bermuda to take some better ones as I write this post***

Here are a few photos that I'm afraid do not do justice to this lovely island. 

The pink sand beaches are stunning!

The below photos are of a "blue lagoon" type of area that is part of Horseshoe Bay Beach in Bermuda.  My photos don't do it justice.  the sand is a peachy pink color and the water is bright aqua blue.  It is also the perfect temperature! 
 Horseshoe Bay Beach which is ranked in the top 10 in the world!

I received several e-mails and comments from people saying they were interested or planning a visit to Bermuda after my past posts.  Everyone we talked to while there said pretty much the same thing: "I think I've found paradise".  Many people said they had traveled to Thailand, Bali and other destinations much further away, but felt Bermuda was just as beautiful!

Bermuda has an affluent economy, with finance as its largest sector followed by tourism giving it the world's highest GDP per capita in 2005. It has a subtropcal climate.

Here is the golf course on the property:

Almost all of the homes are pastel colored and very pretty like the one below - my dream house:

Below is a restaurant called "The Ocean Club" that overlooks Horseshoe Beach which is one of the nicest in the world and is on the Southhampton Hotel's property.  It is fabulous in my opinion.

Me after eating at the Ocean Club:

On the ferry ride to shop on Front Street:

Below is Front Street.  It is very clean and pretty I thought.  I wish I would have known that most of the stores close at 5:00 PM.  That might be a good thing since most of the stores looked very nice featuring names like Prada, Escada, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton.

 
I love flowers and everywhere you look you see beautiful trees and plants like these:

   
As always, I appreciate your visit and hope everyone is dong great!

~Michelle

"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign."

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I visited Costa Rica two times about five years ago,  It's definitely a place I would love to return to.  I dug up these old photos that I took with a very inexpensive point and shoot as I'm planning to take my husband there for his birthday this fall.  I fell in love with the nature and the untouched beauty of the country!

We stayed at the Los suenos Marriott on the west coast.  It was a two hour drive from the nearest airport on very mountainous and curvy roads.  It was an enjoyable trip given the lush, green, and gorgeous scenery we saw on the drive.

We went on a jungle tour where the animals were everywhere!  We watched this sloth cross the road VERY slowly!

These pale-faced monkeys were everywhere.  It was so amusing watching them play in the trees.  They wanted food so most would walk right up to you,

This one wanted the banana I was holding very badly!  Of course I had to reward him for striking this pose for me :)

AND how does one ignore a face like this?

The jungle like most of the country was very undisturbed by humans.  I hope it remains that way.

We were brought to a lovely lagoon/swimming area after the hike through the jungle.  The water was a great temperature and was so refreshing!

 The Los Suenos Marriott hotel is nearby a town named Jaco which is very popular for surfers.  The waves were much larger than they appear in my photo.  Hopefully I will capture more of the wave action during my next trip!

Here are a few images taken at the Los Suenos Marriott which was a beautiful resort that I would definitely recommend.  I loved watching and participating in the daily water aerobics shown in the last photo :)

 Thank you so much for stopping by.  I love to read your comments or questions and and reading other people's blogs as well.  Your e-mail address will never be published.  Until next time, take care my friends!

  ~Michelle

"Hawaii is paradise. It sounds cheesy to say it, but there's music in the air there."

Bruno Mars

If anyone were to ask me if I like Hawaii I would tell them that I have visited five times in the past three years and stayed there for a total of four months.  I have visited three of the islands and my favorite is probably Kauai which is the island I will focus on in this post.  There is really nothing I don't like about Hawaii other than the price of food at the grocery store and gas for your car.  However, there are plenty of farmer's markets to buy fresh organic vegetables and fruit everywhere.  There is nothing like the fruit in Hawaii I tell you!

During my first trip we focused on the nature which  abundant and during my second trip the people I went with wanted to do a lot of touristy activities such as a helicopter ride around the island, a sunset boat cruise,  A Hawaiian luau, and a tour of the botanical gardens.  Both trips were quite different, but I enjoyed both and I feel like I got to do everything or almost everything I wanted to on Kauai between those two trips.

  On the Kalalau Trail

Waimea Canyon

Below is a photo of a natural geyser called "Sprouting Horn"

Wailua falls

 Queen's Bath

Meditating at Queen's Bath

Practicing Yoga on one of the many beautiful and free public beaches :)

At a beach in Hanalei using the tree roots as a cabana for swimming and snorkeling gear

  The next four photos are from the helicopter ride which was amazing!!!  We saw SO many waterfalls due to the large amount of rain the island had recently received.

The next four photos were taken at the Botanical gardens.  In the first photo, my friend Sylvia and I were holding grapefruits pretending we'd found dinosaur eggs in "Jurassic Park" since Kauai is where that movie was filmed.

The last four photos were taken as we were sailing along the Napali Coast at sunset.  As you can see we saw a beautiful rainbow after it rained briefly.

   I would love to visit Hawaii again.  I've loved all three islands I've visited including Kauai, Maui, and the Big Island.  I would love to return and am in the process of making plans to return to the the Big Island during 2014.

 Thank you so much for stopping by.  I love to read your comments or questions and and reading other people's blogs as well.  Your e-mail address will never be published.  Until next time, take care my friends!

  ~Michelle