Geiss Up Your Life

Hillside Beach Club Hillside Beach Club is a highly acclaimed beach resort located on the Aegean coast of the Mediterranean Sea in Fethiye, Turkey.  The resort is quite popular with European tourists looking for an all-inclusive stay, but we never encountered another American during our stay.  In fact, most of the Club’s employees were both …

Finally, after touring through Turkey for ten days, we made it to the city that inspired the whole trip: where East meets West, Istanbul.  Emily had been begging to visit Istanbul for years, so with several successful international trips now under our belts, we were ready to tackle this busy city of enormous historical and …

The fourth leg of our two week adventure in Turkey (aka “Turkey Leg”) was the part that I’d most looked forward to, Cappadocia.  Meaning “The Land of Beautiful Horses”, Cappadocia is a mystical and historical region of the country, where the landscape is as other-worldly as it gets and the culture is unique to the …

We left Pamukkale around midday after a morning exploring Hierapolis and began our drive west to the Aegean port town of Kuşadasi.  If you missed the details of our previous stop, check out my page “Road Trip to Pamukkale and Hierapolis”. The drive from Pamukkale to Kuşadasi is another 3-hour journey, mainly on highways of various …

After several amazing days of nonstop Mediterranean sun at Hillside Beach Club, we were ready to see what else Turkey has to offer.  Our next stop, Pamukkale, was only a short, 3 hour road trip away from the resort in Fethiye.  Due to some cloudy weather forecasted to arrive on our only full day at Pamukkale, we …

First thing Monday morning we were picked up for our four day minibus tour of the South coast of Iceland.  To read all about our time in Reykjavik prior to and after these four days, click here. Troll Expeditions Tour Like many tourist destinations around the world, Iceland has many tour companies to choose from, …

When a well-planed pre-Christmas trip to Germany and Austria had to be cancelled due to COVID-19, we had to quickly pivot and change our plans.  Fastforward several weeks, and we were landing in Iceland!  A direct flight from Chicago to Reykjavik made this an easy international getaway.  Most of our preparation revolved around packing the …

Day 11 of our big Spanish adventure began with another train ride to our final stop, Barcelona.  In case you haven’t been reading along, we’d already traveled to Madrid, Segovia, Ávila, Toledo, Seville, and Granada.  Unfortunately, Barcelona was the only city in the Northern part of Spain that we were able to visit during this …

We woke up early in the morning once again to catch our train from Seville to Granada.  At about two and a half hours, the ride was another pleasant one and planted us in the city by 10:30 AM.  We took a short cab ride from the train station to our hotel for two nights, …

Travel to Seville After 5 days in Madrid, it was time to head south to the region of Spain known best for its Moorish history and influence, Andalusia.  We returned to the Atocha train station early in the morning to board our first high-speed train.  These are a popular travel option in Spain, as the …