Sara Smiles

Our last big stop on our Scotland trip was Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. Tobermory is a little harbor town full of cute shops and restaurants. I love Mull Pottery, I am so happy I was able to find a little piece of pottery I could fly home with. You must take a ferry to get here. I love ferries so much. We stayed at the Tobermory Youth Hostel in a private room and it was the perfect location.…

The Isle of Skye was a place I had heard a lot about before our trip, and it definitely exceeded all expectations. We stayed in the little town Portree. Portree is the main town in Isle of Skye. We stayed at an airbnb right near the center of the town. We could walk all over Portree. Our first full day on the Isle of Skye was jam packed! We went to the Fairy Glen first and did a nice little one…

After Edinburgh we got our rental car and headed to The Highlands. Our first stop was Ossian’s Hall which was a short trail to Black Linn Falls. We spent the night in Pitlochry, our cottage was called the Atholl Cottage we had a LOT of fun with that name. The main reason for this stop was to visit the Blair Atholl Distillery. It is one of the oldest whiskey distilleries in Scotland. We were able…

If you recall, back in 2020 I was set to visit Scotland for my 30th birthday and we ended up having to cancel our trip due to Covid. This past summer I finally made it to Scotland. It was so worth the wait. I traveled with two of my best friends from childhood, Amanda and Marisa. Our first stop in Scotland was Edinburgh. We took the train from King’s Cross Station in London right into Edinburgh.…

After Bergen we headed to Tromso via airplane. Tromso is known as the Northern Lights Capital of the World and it is north of the Arctic Circle. I was SO excited to visit somewhere so northern. When we arrived it promptly started to snow on us. We trekked, and I do mean trekked, through the snow to our Airbnb. It was a bit of a walk from the bus stop, but once we found it we were treated with…

Our next stop in Norway took us to Bergen. Alejandra and Julian LOVED Bergen and it was easy to see why. We took a long bus ride from Flam to Bergen. We only used public transport to get around our entire time in Norway and it was super easy to do (when you have a Julian planning it all). We got to our Airbnb when it was already dark, and we were SHOCKED by the size!!! It was tucked in the…

This past March I went on the trip of a life time. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to see the Northern Lights. One of my amazing co-workers and friends had gone to Norway in September and fell in love. She and her husband were planning to return for our school Spring Break and invited me to join. I had never traveled with them before, and I was worried about being the third wheel. I…

So what was I up to all of 2022? Well, I definitely did some traveling that I promise to post about, but the biggest change was adopting my new pup HARLEY! I adopted him in September when he was about 10 months old. He is a MASSIVE Golden Retriever Puppy. When I first got him, my anxiety and stress level sky rocketed…I seriously don’t know how people do this from the puppy stage. I was SO lucky…

One Year Later: Summer 2021

A moment of peace during my Spring Break This is the absolute longest I have gone without posting to my blog in the 11 years I have had it. I am totally blaming Covid for the lack of posting. This year has been crazy. This year has been focused on surviving. In August the world was very different than it is now, but I still found myself back in the classroom in person teaching while so many…

30, Flirty, and Thriving (a post that should have been shared a year ago. whoops)

(Edit this is from a year ago, found it sitting in my drafts for an entire year…whoops. Posting it anyways) It finally happened…I am officially 30 years old. Growing up I loved the movie 13 Going on 30 with Jennifer Garner. It is about a 13 year old girl dreaming to be 30 so she can live a fabulous life, hence this title “30, flirty, and thriving.” This post is a tad late…but hey I’m old now…I…

Blue Ridge: Mountain Getaway

My best friend Amanda and I were supposed to travel to Scotland in June to celebrate out 30th birthdays, but Coronavirus had other plans. We were devastated to have to postpone our big trip, but still wanted to do something. We brainstormed a safe and easy trip for both of us. Amanda lives in Atlanta, and I live in Florida. I usually fly to Atlanta when I visit, and I even had a flight purchased.…

Every summer since I was little my family has taken a summer vacation somewhere. When we were little it was usually National Parks out west, but the past 10 summers it has been the Bahamas. We were all set for our annual trip to Exuma, the flights were booked, the house was set, and we already had several days planned with Out Island Explorers . Covid-19 had other plans for us. We ended up…

Dealing with Travel Changes

Well, if you read my last post you know all about how I had to cut my Spring Break Trip short due to Coronavirus…but cancelling a trip WHILE on the trip is not the easiest thing in the world. It is very stress inducing which is not good for this anxiety prone girl. Thankfully I was traveling with my Biffle who took the reins and called to talk to places (I HATE TALKING ON THE PHONE)!

Changing…

Traveling at the Start of a Pandemic: Portland, ME

I am going to start this post by saying that in hindsight we probably should’ve rescheduled our trip from the get go, but we took the advice of doctors/research and left on our trip. Before we left things were still fairly calm in most places, the day we left Maine only had one confirmed case. We left on March 13, and once we arrived things continued to change rapidly.

We tried our absolute…