Category: Travel

Hawaiian Adventures Part 1: Lemurian Huna

On By Chris BuddIn Travel3 Comments

One week ago today, my wife and I returned home after a 16-day trip of a lifetime to Hawaii. For the sake of simplicity on my part, and for ease of you the reader, I have broken this into three separate blog posts – one for each segment of our trip. First, an overview.

We had been anticipating this trip for nearly a year. While we had long dreamt of traveling to Hawaii, it was about a year ago that the dreams began to form into a reality. Isabelle had embarked on a journey with a new mentor and coach, Anne Bérubé. Based in Nova Scotia, Canada, Anne has been holding retreats in Hawaii for a few years now. We had actually looked into going on said retreat a few years prior, but we couldn’t justify the expense at the time. My how the times have changed.

Largely due to COVID-19, we have had a major shift in our priorities. No more would we stand back and hesitate when opportunities presented themselves to us; who knows if we end up with some other global pandemic or other event that prevents us from doing anything for the better part of two years. As avid readers of my blog will know, Isabelle and I had been planning our 10th anniversary trip for about 7 years, putting away money monthly to allow us to have an extravagant, fun-filled trip to Walt Disney World for October 1, 2021. This would be the convergence of our 10th wedding anniversary as well as the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World. But thanks to the aforementioned pandemic, our plans were canceled. Unable to travel, we decided to repurpose our savings from Disney 2021 to Hawaii 2026. We would finally take our long talked of trip for our 15th anniversary.

Cut to Isabelle’s program with Anne Bérubé in 2023. She was again holding a Lemurian Huna retreat in Hawaii in 2024. We had money this time. We had motivation. So we booked two spots on the retreat and started planning for our big adventure.

Since we were going all the way to Hawaii, we thought we would take the opportunity to extend our trip beyond the retreat. We decided that we would stick to two islands for this visit. Anne’s retreat would be on Kaua’i, so that was island #1. We opted to choose O’ahu for our second island so that we could visit Honolulu and Disney’s Aulani resort. But more on those in the second and third parts of this series of posts.

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Making Magical Memories

On By Chris BuddIn Disney, Travel4 Comments

I am now a week removed from my long-awaited Disney World vacation. I can hardly believe that a week has passed, but that is what the calendar is telling me. While out on our daily walk yesterday, the realization came to me that I am now fully into my post-Disney blues. It happens inevitably after every trip. Once you’ve been away from that magic bubble and reintegrated into the “real” world, it’s only a matter of time before the Disney Blues settle in.

So what better time for me to revisit some of those memories via a blog post? Maybe looking back will help me get over the blues. (added bonus: I’ve added a bunch of pictures!)

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Vacation Interruptus

On By Chris BuddIn Travel1 Comment

Following up on my most recent blog post, here’s another slice of true life in the world of Chris.

Today is my wedding anniversary. Eleven years ago today, Isabelle and I tied the knot and have lived truly blessed lives since that day. I am very recognizant of the privileged life that I live, and I am eternally grateful for all of the abundance that I have in my life. But even a privileged life like mine isn’t always perfect, despite what social media may tell you. Here’s the brief rundown of our long-simmering trip to Cape Breton.

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Dink Diaries – Happy Anniversary

On By Chris BuddIn DINK Diaries, TravelLeave a comment

As most of you who read my blog posts semi-regularly, my wife and I were celebrating our tenth anniversary this year. Ten years! We had decided on our anniversary plan about nine years ago – an epic two-week trip, along with my brother and his wife, to Disney World. The reasoning being that our anniversary coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Magic Kingdom. Eight years of putting money away week by week so that we would have a nice little nest egg to use for our trip. It was going to be amazeballs.

You can likely guess by the tone that the trip did not occur. Thanks to COVID-19, our plans were quashed. But we would not let this disappointment ruin our big anniversary. Given the travel constraints we faced, we instead opted to do a smaller-scale trip, but a fun one, nonetheless. Rather than head south to Florida, we headed north-west towards Quebec.

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DINK Diaries – Riding the Roads

On By Chris BuddIn DINK Diaries, TravelLeave a comment

Over the past few weeks, my wife and I have taken off on a couple of our DINK days. For those who haven’t read any of my previous DINK Diaries posts, it stands for Dual Income, No Kids. Translation? We are carefree, and can just take off to do things on a whim.

DINK Day number one was a random road trip to Fredericton. One of the main reasons for this trip was that we had wanted to go eat at a restaurant that my wife had the pleasure of discovering a few weeks earlier while in town for business. So off we went. We wandered around downtown a bit, hitting up a few of our regular spots. Then came the moment we’d been waiting for – lunch at The Lighthouse by 540.

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Adventures in Old Québec

On By Chris BuddIn DINK Diaries, TravelLeave a comment

When you’re given the opportunity to have two days to yourself in Québec City, you take it. Or at least that’s what I did recently.

My wife had flown up earlier in the week on a work-related trip. On Wednesday morning, at the crack of first light, I hopped in the car and started my 7-hour ride to meet up with her.

Fair warning – it’s a slightly longer post.

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And Now for Something Completely Different (for us)

On By Chris BuddIn General, TravelLeave a comment

It was a new experience for my wife and I over the last two weeks of August. While we always take vacation during this time of the year (both of our birthdays fall at the end of August, some 5 days apart), it was a bit of a departure for us this time. Firstly, my wife, no longer working in the school system, was relegated to only having a few weeks of vacation to use for the year rather than having the summer off. Secondly, we opted to not take any trips this year for our vacation. This meant that we had two weeks of rest, relaxation and quiet.

And boy did I need it.

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DINKs and Death Cab

On By Chris BuddIn DINK Diaries, Food, TravelLeave a comment

Last week, my wife and I took off on a short little getaway vacation to Toronto.  Although only a three-night stay, the fact of traveling to another city, in another province, did a lot of good for both of us. I find that going away forces your brain to realize, “Hey, I’m not at home.  I don’t have to worry about my job, or laundry, or yard work, or anything else.” 

We were in Toronto for a total of 72 hours (landed at 2:30 on Wednesday, took off at 2:30 on Saturday), and got in a total of 50 KM of walking over those 72 hours.  Here’s a quick rundown of our DINK Days.

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