I’ve been teasing on Instagram that my husband and I are planning our next vacation, but I didn’t want to reveal the locations until we actually booked. Well, tickets are finally bought, so the secret’s out. We’re heading to Madrid, Israel, and Rome at the end of the month!

Our original plan was to visit Japan this year, but then my husband’s cousin got engaged, so we’re headed to Israel for his wedding. I’m very sad to put Japan on hold, but excited to get back to Israel where we both lived for some time. We even overlapped one year, but we didn’t know each other yet. We always wonder if we ever passed each other there -- very probable since we hung out in the same spots. 

I’ve probably been to Israel close to 10 times at this point (although my last visit was 8 years ago!), so I wanted to see if we could include a couple other countries on our trip. I’ve been to the majority of the nearby countries we’re both interested in seeing, so we decided that this vacation would be more about leisure, less about exploring new territory. While we both love new experiences, it’s also nice to travel with zero pressure since you’ve already done all the tourist activities. I’ve been dreaming of going back to Greece and Croatia though, so I would have been more than happy to make a repeat trip, but November is definitely not beach weather. That said, all beach towns, along with Venice and Finland were immediately nixed. 

On my search for a fun second location, I found this site called airwander.com (NOT AN AD), which connects flights from different sites to create long, awesome stopovers. Since we were so limited in the dates we could fly, we didn’t have too many options, but we snagged the flights stopping in Madrid because the weather will still be beautiful, and we’ve been wanting to see the city. We didn’t have the chance to go on our most recent trip to Barcelona, so this will be the perfect opportunity. We’ll even be sleeping there since the stopover is 23 hours. We chose a similar flight stopping in Rome on the way back. I’ve been to Italy a couple times already, but my last time in Rome was mostly spent eating lunch and checking out the Vatican, so I’m really excited to see more of the city with my favorite human. 

If you have any recs for our upcoming travels, please let me know! We haven’t even booked hotels yet, so we could use as much help as we can get. 

xx Esther