Just two weeks after our spectacular anniversary trip to Lake Como, Interlaken, and Alsace, we headed back to France for another "bucket-list" trip: visiting Provence during lavender season.
Four Days in Provence
Category: Western Europe
Nine Days in the Alps and Alsace
As soon as we started thinking about moving back to Atlanta, I began frantically narrowing down our list of "must-visit" places. One of my more creative solutions for maximizing our travel opportunities was coming up with an itinerary that allowed us to visit several completely unrelated places on the same vacation.
Three Days in Basque Country
In mid-April, my best friend Susan and I headed to Donostia / San Sebastián in the Basque country, the historic region spanning an area across western France and northern Spain along the Bay of Biscay. We also fit in excellent day trips to Rioja, one of Spain's most celebrated wine regions, and the seaside town of Biarritz on the French side of the border.
Three Days in Megève
After an amazing experience in Chamonix last year, Andy and I were extremely excited to head back to the French Alps for our first ski trip of this season. I ultimately decided on Megève based on its reputation as a gastronomy hotspot, and the sophisticated little village certainly lived up to the hype.
Weekend in Basel
The older I get, the more and more excited I get about Christmas decorations and the holiday season in general. I try to buy at least one ornament on each trip we take, but my absolute favorite places to find new holiday decorations are the Christmas markets that pop up across Europe each season. We had to cancel our 2021 Christmas market trips due to the Omicron variant breakout, so I was more than ready to finally head to Basel to experience its legendary Christmas market scene.
Weekend in Nice
One of the downsides of living abroad is that we have inevitably had to miss lots of big moments for our friends and family back home, including several weddings that we would have normally attended. On the flip side, it is much easier for us to go to destination weddings in places like the French Riveria, which is how we ended up spending the first weekend in July in the Côte d'Azur celebrating the wedding of one of my favorite colleagues. It truly couldn't have been a more idyllic experience.
Weekend in Berlin
After several fun-but-exhausting weekends in a row spent hosting friends and family in London, we were excited to get back on the road (in the air?) with a quick trip to Berlin. Andy hadn't been to Germany before and I had only been to Munich, so we were both really looking forward to finally exploring such a legendary city. Everything about our weekend getaway in Berlin was honestly perfect, and I'm already looking forward to planning our next German adventure.
Weekend in Luxembourg
My new year's resolution for 2022 was to visit 10 new countries this year, which meant that we needed to get a little more creative with our weekend trips. With this in mind, we booked a quick trip to Luxembourg City, the elegant capital of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Although Andy was skeptical about heading to yet another place we hardly knew anything about, we had an absolutely lovely weekend in one of the smallest sovereign states in Europe.
Weekend in Burgundy
One of the most exciting parts about moving to London is getting first-time visitors and at the end of March, I finally got to experience my mom's first trip to Europe. We spent a few days in London and Paris before making our way to the real reason we were in France -- the Burgundy wine region. We stayed in Beaune, which is about 25 miles south of Dijon along the famous Route de Grande Crus, and it couldn't have been lovelier.
Four Days in Chamonix
We spent the last weekend of January in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, which is a resort area at the base of Mont Blanc (the highest peak in the Alps) in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France and just across the borders of Switzerland and Italy. Despite Chamonix being a pretty challenging ski area for a second-time skier like me, we had an absolutely fantastic trip.
Lindsey in London 