Jeremy

Jeremy founded Living the Dream in 2008 to chronicle his long-term trip around Asia. Since then he has been on two long-term trips, visited 69 countries, and is just getting started. He is now on a Lifestyle Design quest to build businesses to pursue a life of travel.

Iceland Ring Road – Tips and Advice for Your Driving Itinerary

When it comes to an Iceland road trip, you would think that driving around the Ring Road would be a simple thing to plan. The country is an island, the Ring Road is the only road that goes around it in its entirety, and generally speaking everyone goes on the same tried-and-true path around the country.

All of these things are true, except for that last point.

While it is true that all Ring Road travelers do circle the country, the amount of time you spend on the Ring Road will vary. You could blast through it all in about five days without leaving the Ring Road at all. You could add on one detour (perhaps our favorite detour to Borgarfjordur Eystri to see the puffins) if you have limited time. Or you could spend up to a month exploring all the back roads and highlands- all while only barely touching the Ring Road at all!

As such, planning your dream itinerary will end up being a lot more difficult than you might have previously thought and we have three important tips to keep in mind when planning a visit based on our recent experience in Iceland.

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Hilton Reykjavik Nordica Review – Stellar Upgrade Perks

As many readers here know, we are Hilton loyalists in our travel hacking endeavors (but are also one of the brand’s fiercest critics). We travel with Hilton for work and use our Hilton travel rewards credit card for just about everything in order to rack up as many points and weekend night certificates as possible.

This doesn’t allow us to travel the world for free as some travel hackers would have you believe, but it does give us a few free hotel nights anytime we travel- more often than not at a significant upgrade from what we’d otherwise pay for.

So, naturally, when it came time for us to book our one-night stay at a hotel in central Reykjavik, Iceland, on our recent vacation, we knew exactly where we would be staying without hesitation.

At 40,000 points, the Hilton Reykjavik Nordica is an incredible deal in its own right, but the perks of being a Hilton Gold member made this stay one of the best we’ve ever had with the chain in recent memory.

So for those who are Hilton loyalists like us with the status to match, this one is definitely for you.

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When Can We Get a Real Spanish Tapas Bar in the USA?

We were spoiled when we went on a vacation in Spain for our honeymoon.

There is no easier way to say it than that. 

From the world-class cuisine, amazing Spanish tapas bars, free-flowing wine, all the way to the famous ham that we ate with every single meal, Spain satisfied our appetites with every bite. 

After returning home we tried to find a great restaurant that embodied all of the wonderful meals we had while in Spain.  In particular, was our quest to find a great tapas bar with the small plates of food that we had just about every day in the country. 

But as it turns out, tapas bars in the style we fell in love with are hard to come by, and our search has gone on unfulfilled for the last year.

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Travel Instagram Strategies to Take Your Profile to the Next Level

For those who don’t know me, you should know that I am an engineer as well as a travel blogger- which at times is a very dangerous combination. When I try out something new to help my brand grow, I put together a test and log everything so I can get to the real reason for why something works. (We then write about it in our Blog Your Trip series to share it with you).

Over the past year I’ve been conducting many successful Instagram tests, and they’ve been picking up in popularity thanks to this social network’s continued rise in prominence.

As I’ve had some time to reflect on our most recent tests (find the one on Instagram hash-tags and the one on gaining targeted Instagram followers here), I need to tweak some of the recommendations I wrote about in those posts to form our game plan moving forward.

So, before reading any further, I highly recommend you read through both of those first. Finished? Good, let’s recap.

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