There are so many ways you can see @sydney but by far my favorites are: @bridgeclimb at night during @vividsydney and a seaplane ride over the harbor, then up past the Northern Beaches at Golden Hour with @sydney_seaplanes. The latter is how I took this photo of the harbor, the bridge and the Opera House. It’s hard not to get a little choked up and just fall instantly in love with Australia when you’re looking at this out the window of the seaplane. Amiright?! Have you ever been in a seaplane before? If so, where? 🇦🇺🐨 @visitnsw #ilovesydney #newsouthwales by kirstenalana

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VividSydney fills my nights but during the day I’ve been trying to get to know @Sydney’s neighborhoods better because they are what really make the city great. Right around @theoldclare where I stayed for 2 nights, Chippendale and Red Fern are rapidly changing, filling up with cool shops, restaurants and galleries. I discovered some of the gems of the area on a tour with Randal of @culturescouts and I’m not sure what I loved the most: Randal himself, the tour or the places we visited. The whole day was fantastic!! I took this photo at White Rabbit in Chippendale, in the the Tea House portion of the gallery, which houses one of the largest collections of Contemporary Chinese Art in the whole world and certainly the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The current collection, entitled ‘Heavy Artillery’ is unusual, thought-provoking and very engaging. Kind of like the area of the city that it calls home! 🇦🇺🐨 @visitnsw #ilovesydney #newsouthwales by kirstenalana

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It’s so hard to actually explain @vividsydney in a still photo, so I might share a short video soon to give you a better idea of why you should visit @sydney during this festival in particular. It takes over much of the city for almost 3 weeks this year. So you still have time to visit, because I’ve just arrived at the beginning!! I captured this image at the first event I attended for Vivid, at the @tarongazoo. It was a night of wandering around in the dark, from patch of light to light installation, feeling child-like wonder for the first time in longer than I can remember and wondering how something so simple as light and color can be made to be so unbelievably beautiful…. 🇦🇺🐨 #ilovesydney #newsouthwales by kirstenalana

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It feels like mere hours ago that I was still in Europe with my mum but this morning when I woke up to stunning light filtering through the curtains here at @theoldclare it finally hit me that I’M BACK IN AUSTRALIA 😍 I honestly wasn’t sure because I spent the first day in a jetlagged haze running into walls and falling asleep while standing up. But this is one of my favorite countries and after a superb experience with @Qantas flying business to @sydney_sider plus a really packed first day listening to @alyxgorman interview @margaret__zhang for @vividsydney’s Game Changers speakers series at the Sydney Town Hall which is an architectural jewelry box, then attending @tarongazoo’s Vivid event which made me feel child-like wonder for the first time in a long time, before capping the night dining with the amazing-beyond-words @rockpoolgroup at Rockpool 1989 … I think I’m finally really feeling HERE, ready to dig in deep to explore aspects of @VisitNSW that were previously unknown to me. Thanks for asking me to do this @travelandleisure 👍🏼 #ilovesydney #NewSouthWales by kirstenalana

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Last post for a while from my @viking_cruises trip because I’ve just landed in Sydney!!! But I’m saving all the best for last because starting with where this photo was taken in Strasbourg, France — our Viking Cruise just got better and better every day toward the end, until I felt like I just never ever wanted to leave Europe. Excepting that the next job was calling of course! Famous last words. Naturally, I fell in love with Strasbourg at first sight because I’m such a huge Francophile. But I also fell in love with the city and the area itself because of its philosophy. As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s committed to friendship with its German neighbors (i.e. footbridge between the two countries) yet it also has a deep seated commitment to the well being of Europe herself. Both the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights are based in Strasbourg and they’re not the only organizations who have chosen to make this part of Alsace their home and who are working to form a better world. It’s a place that in some ways defies all the odds which have so often hindered humanity in the past. PLUS, it has adorable architecture, picturesque canals that even in the rain made me happy and AMAZING food which Viking arranged for us to discover via @foodandcitytours_strasbourg. Needless to say, if you haven’t been to this special city in France, I can confidently say you must change that! It’s not to be missed. 🇫🇷 #VikingCruises #ShotOnMoment by kirstenalana

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Once we passed the Middle Rhine and then Rüdesheim, @viking_cruises next took us to Heidelberg. Mum and I had one of the best meals of our trip there at Brauhaus Vetter, which brews its own very delicious beer. I highly recommend not missing that! The town itself is known as one of the most picturesque in Germany and it lived up to that title for me between the gorgeous townhouses that border the river, the Old Town [Alstadt] and the fascinating castle. This is just a portion of it, with its ornate Gothic-Renaissance details. The entire complex sits high up on a hill overlooking the city and looks as if it’s almost floating in the trees when you’re standing along the river. It also looks partially ruined from certain vantage points which is an incredible contrast to areas of it that look like this. Inside, deep underground is one of the world’s largest wine barrels which once held 50,000 gallons of wine!! Perhaps the most well known thing about Heidelberg for Americans though is that Mark Twain spent 3 months there and said, it was “the last possibility of the beautiful.” 🇩🇪 #VikingCruises by kirstenalana

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During our @viking_cruises trip on the Rhine I learned that much of the lands which directly border the river have changed hands many times in the past. Sometimes back and forth repeatedly so often that people of a certain town or region have traditions and cuisines which are a combination of two distinct cultures. This is evident in a different way along the Middle Rhine where castles such as this one that now stand in ruins are in that condition as a direct result of one ruler trying to destroy many castles all at once across a huge area, in his path during a time of conquest. Later on some were rebuilt, many never were. Not long after this part of the cruise we also visited Kehl, Germany & Strasbourg, France which are so close together in both proximity and friendship today, that they built a foot / bike bridge over the Rhine, a bridge that literally spans the border between France and Germany so that all its citizens need do in order to continue cross-border friendship is to take a short walk or bike ride. Europe has so much evidence everywhere of the former evils of man but if you pay attention you will also find that almost everywhere there are people determined to see we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. I hope that these are the voices who succeed. Not the voices which say we should live in fear, tear down one another’s strongholds or worse…build more walls that only further divide us! by kirstenalana

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The Middle Rhine portion of the Rhine River as it flows through Germany is often called “The Romantic Rhine” and I believe it having now cruised through it with @viking_cruises because every few minutes you see another castle (or two as in the case of this photo!) and usually not far away from said castle is also a picturesque village and/or vineyards covering the sloping walls of the wide canyon the river flows through. Our Viking Program Director, Ryan, is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever heard outside Scotland and he carefully researched every castle on the river, even visited many of them separately from his job with Viking, so that as we were traveling he could tell stories to us about what we were seeing. It just so happens the castle in the foreground is my mom’s favorite. She owns a watercolor painting of it! And the story goes something to the effect that a father put his daughter in the castle hoping to keep her pure but she ended up with a visitor, or escaped to visit with a suitor…and became with child, spoiling her father’s plans for her! Ha. It’s also the only castle we passed that’s on its own island, in the actual river not up on a bank or high on the hill. 🇩🇪 #VikingCruises by kirstenalana

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After visiting Köln and Brühl with @viking_cruises we next docked at Koblenz where I chose a tour that went to Ehrenbreitstein Fortress (Festung). The view across the river to the city was superb and the sun came out just enough to make all the green before me seem like fields of emeralds. Other guests chose to visit Marksburg Castle but knowing the next portion of our trip would be dozens of castles one right after another, I was glad to have a different perspective on the area. The Fortress is on the site of a long-gone castle and was first constructed in the 16th century before being razed to the ground by the French. What we saw was begun in 1817 by the Prussians. There was a fair that day selling everything from traditional German clothes to bratwurst to trays of succulents. If I had come to shop, I’d have needed an extra suitcase just for that day!! I’m beginning to enjoy the rhythm of boating from one interesting destination to the next because there’s always been something that’s brand new to me. And I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe!! 🇩🇪 #VikingCruises by kirstenalana

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