Sharing a full recap of our cruise on the Disney Fantasty from Barcelona to Rome, Pisa (Florence), Genoa (Milan), Bandol (Provence) and back to Barcelona. This is Disney cruise #6 for us (gold, baby!) and was my favorite one so far. For Disney cruise tips and tricks, check out this post.

Hi friends! How are you? I hope that you’re having an amazing morning. We’re here in Sevilla having a great time with our friends and enjoying some chill time after our trip to Barcelona, epic Disney cruise through the Mediterranean, and time in Barcelona following the cruise. I hope that your summer is off to a wonderful start, too!

(Had to use Canva to remove a couple of people from the front of the pic. Kind of worked lol. Link to the dress is here!)

For today’s post, I wanted to share a recap of the cruise! You guys know we loooove Disney cruises – I never thought I’d be a cruise person in general, but here we are – and this was an itinerary I’ve wanted to do for years. I was a blitz through all of my favorite places (so far): Spain, Italty, and France. It was an absolute dream.

Disney Fantasy Spain, Italy and France recap

We booked this trip with some of our closest friends and cruise buddies – I think this was Disney cruise #17 for them. We planned this trip *hoping* the Pilot would be done with airline training – he had to complete training again when he retired from the military and went back to commercial – but unfortunately the timeline didn’t quite work out. Since he’d be gone anyway, we decided to stick with our plans and enjoy a girls’ trip. I think the girls will always remember this solo cruise trip with just the three of us plus some amazing friends.

Disney Fantasy verandah room

We got a verandah room and in the past, we haven’t taken advantage of it as much as we should. This time, I spent a lot of time on the verandah drinking coffee and reading, or

Hi friends! Happy Friday! How are you? I hope you’re having a wonderful start to the weekend. We’re back in Barcelona after an amazing Disney cruise around the Mediterranean. I have a full recap going up next week, but in the meantime, here are some pics of the fun!

Read more

Sharing some of the things I’ve packed for our Spain trip and Europe adventures this summer.

Hi friends! How are you? I hope you’re having an amazing day so far. Cue the Mariah Carey *it’s tiiiiiiiiiiime* because we’re escaping the scorching Tucson oven before it begins and are off on some adventures. (To be honest, it’s been the mildest spring and beginning of summer ever. It’s been suprisingly gorgeous in Tucson – usually it’s super hot by now!)

I’ll be sure to share all of the fun, what we’re up to, and what we’ve been eating. 😉 Definitely follow along on IG stories, too!

We’re gone for quite a while and have someone staying at our house while we’re away. I also had to haul the guinea pig’s cage to madre’s house (sorry madre lol) because after 7 years Donut is still very much alive.

We’re going to be in a few different places: Barcelona, Rome, Pisa, Provence, and Sevilla, and possibly some other stops along the way. I’ve always wanted to do something like this, and feel so so thankful that we’re going for it. The girls’ schedules are just going to get busier, especially since P is in competitive basketball and summer is typically tournament season, so I figured it was our chance.

Packing took at lot of strategy because I didn’t want to overpack but also wanted to make sure we have everything we needed! Of course, I need to save a little room for shopping finds while we’re out there. 😉

Here’s the great list of things I’m bringing with me:

Spain packing list

Clothes:

The plan is to wear dresses with sandals or sneakers, dressier sandals for evening, and a cute sweater/jacket to layer on top.

Dresses:

Maxi dress

Pink shirtdress (it’s sold out in pink but SO MANY cute colors available)

Polo dress

I got a few cute dresses from RTR that I’m excited to bring <— you can use my link to try it free! I l

Sharing some questions that I received about our Spain trip!

Hi friends! Happy Monday! How was the weekend? We spent some time in Aulani, which was an absolute DREAM. P and I are huge fans of lazy rivers, and we pretty much love Disney anything.

For today’s post, I’m sharing one last Spain recap. I’m sorry I’ve dragged this out so much, but I’ve had a lot to say! I can already tell you that we’ll definitely back and I’m scheming to see how much time we’ll be able to spend out there. The Pilot will be retired from the Air Force in January (!) so that opens up a lot of options. Fitnessista in Sevilla has a nice ring to it, just sayin.

Here are the questions you sent in on IG!

(dress on sale here!)

Spain Q&A post

Any issues with language barriers? I’d love to visit but nervous about it!

So my family speaks Spanish, and I minored in Spanish, so I understand it pretty much perfectly. However, I don’t have a ton of experience or confidence speaking Spanish. Growing up, I’d always respond to family members in English, and in college, we spent so much time studying Spanish (reading novels, analyzing poems, writing essays) but very little time actually practicing. Getting more comfortable speaking Spanish has been a huge goal of mine, so I started taking weekly Itaki private lessons in January. It’s made a huge difference and I don’t freeze up like I used to!

It was pretty amazing to get to practice in Spain, and I also found that they’re extremely patient and I think they appreciate the fact that you’re trying to speak their language.

If you don’t speak Spanish but would like to, I highly recommend Italki. You can also download this audiobook for phrases to know while traveling.

What made you pick Sevilla to visit over other cities in Spain?

We have good friends there, so that was the main focus of our trip! They have lived in Sevilla for the past year and absolutely love it, and we knew we wanted to make a visit (and also give P the chance to see her best buddy in the whole world). Next time, we’d absolutely love to see Madrid, Barcelona, and head over the Portugal.

How/why you picked the area you went to and how the food was?? I’m half Spanish

We stayed close to our friends in Alfalfa Plaza. It was a great location, close to tons of restaurants, cafes, and shopping.

Read more

Sharing some of the food highlights from our trip to Spain. If you have any recs to share, please shout them out in the comments! My last Spain recap is here. 

Hi friends! Happy Monday! I hope that your week is off to a great start. We had a lovely weekend over here. We celebrated my nana’s birthday – I’ll share some pics in Friday Faves – enjoyed the Tucson monsoons (SO good), and got ready for a little adventure. I post a lot more over on IG stories if you’d like to follow along there!

For today’s post, I wanted to share some eats from Spain! You guyyyyyyssss. The food was incredible. Everything was fresh and delicious – even the fried options felt light and less greasy than their US counterparts – and I’ve already tried to replicate some of our favorite dishes here at home. While we went out to eat a LOT and tried so much incredible places, I’m sharing our top picks from Sevilla below.

A funny note before we get started: we like to eat. Like, a lot. We’re all foodies, we all enjoy it, and we like the try ALL the things. Also, when we travel, we tend to have one giant meal each day and then snack and grab smaller bites the rest of the day. (You can see an example of this when we went to Mykonos here.) At least three times during the trip, the server asked us to stop ordering. “Ok, that’s enough food.” LOL. Let it be known that we ordered a lot – you know, in the name of research – and we crushed it. Maybe they’re used to tourists ordering a lot of food and wasting it? Welp, that wasn’t us.

Sevilla Food Recommendations and recap!

Read more