Author: Ryan Lee

France

Hidden Gems of the French Riviera – Sainte Maxime, Plateau de Valensole, Verdon Gorge and Gréoux-les-Bains

Author ByRyan Lee

When you search French Riviera, you will often see the search results filled with Nice, Eze, Monaco, Cannes, Antibes, and Saint Tropez.  Actually, why bother searching when I could tell you about my first time going to Cote D’Azur?  Or I wrote again in my blog (2nd time going) about going to Eze and Cannes and Menton and Monaco. So you can check all of them out.  You can see my video clips at https://www.youtube.com/@travelwithabutterfly.  Or if you’re like me, a tourist who wants to visit the off beaten paths and go to less touristy places, you can check out Sainte Maxime, Plateau de Valensole, Verdon Gorge and Gréoux-les-Bains.  It’s so less touristy that most of the people in the region, including the staff in the hotel, that they actually don’t speak English at all.  You can also read about Saint Tropez or places to eat in Nice or things to do in Nice.

We stopped by Sainte Maxime from Saint Tropez because we had to drop off our friend.  He had to go back to Nice to catch his flight the next day.  At first, he didn’t really want to go to Saint Tropez because of the inconvenience of going to St. Tropez and back to Nice and worried he might miss his flight.  But since we were driving to Plateau de Valensole for the lavender fields, we would pass by Sainte Maxime there, which would be easier for him to catch an Uber, take it to Saint-Raphaël, and take a train back to Nice in the evening.  I think the uber from Saint Maxime to Saint-Raphaël costed about €50. Had he taken from Saint Tropez directly to Nice, it would probably costed him €300!!

Continue reading Hidden Gems of the French Riviera – Sainte Maxime, Plateau de Valensole, Verdon Gorge and Gréoux-les-Bains

France

One Day Itinerary for Èze AND Cannes

Author ByRyan Lee

This is my second time going to Èze and Cannes.  To read about my first time experience, you can read about my Cote D’azur blog, the time where I get to see Arnold Schwarzenegger in person as well.  If you want to read about my recent blog post about one day itinerary for Menton and Monaco, click here.  For raw video clips, go to youtube.com/@travelwithabutterfly.

In my opinion, both places don’t actually have much to see as a tourist.  When you visit Eze, you’re mainly going to see the botanical garden.  When you go to Cannes, it’s mainly just shopping, clubbing, and good dining, but not many tourist attractions per se.

 

Èze

Originally, Eze wasn’t part of my itinerary in this trip, and for good reason.  I felt that going to Eze, there wasn’t much to do, as I mentioned, but during an Uber ride from Cremat Castle back to Nice, the uber driver we had suggested as a first time tourist that Eze was beautiful and we should definitely visit, so fine I’ll go again to Eze. Continue reading One Day Itinerary for Èze AND Cannes

France

A One Day Itinerary to Menton AND Monaco

Author ByRyan Lee

This is my first time going to Menton, but my second time going to Monaco (and the rest of my south of France trip).  If you want to read about my experience the first time, you can read about my Cote D’azur blog which I actually saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in person.  For raw video clips on this trip, visit my Youtube shorts.

Menton is often treated as a “second priority” when it comes to the south of France.  When you research about places to go in the French Riviera, it’s always Nice, Saint Tropez, Cannes, Eze, Antibes, and Monaco.  But to be quite honest, despite my limited time in Menton, I actually thoroughly enjoyed my time there and I definitely don’t think Menton should be disregarded, and perhaps should take higher precedence than other places in the French Riviera.

I actually had made reservations for a three star Michelin restaurant called Mirazur, as recommended by Alexander The Guest in his youtube video.  The reservation wasn’t very difficult, as I just went online to make the reservation for lunch.  The only problem was, I decided to cancel it, not because of the price, but because of realising how long the meal would take.  At best, it would probably take at least 2.5 hours, but it could potentially go up to four hours, and given the limited amount of time we had at Menton before we had to reunite with our friends in Monaco, we decided to spend our time elsewhere touring around Menton.  But I’m putting it out there in case you have a whole day and do plan to dine at a fantastic restaurant with magnificent views; you can let me know how it goes! Continue reading A One Day Itinerary to Menton AND Monaco

Denmark

Four Days Itinerary in Copenhagen, Denmark (Part Two)

Author ByRyan Lee

This is a continuation of my 4 days Copenhagen trip, featuring Days Three and Four.  If you haven’t done so already, you can read about Part one for Days one and two right here.  Some of my thoughts and opinions on Copenhagen were expressed in the previous post, so I highly encourage you to read that post before reading this.  Moving on directly – and again I will post extra photos at the bottom to make the flow of the blog post feel a bit better rather than bombard with loads of photos.  For my Youtube shorts for Copenhagen, click here for shorts.

 

Day Three

Our first stop was checking out this bakery place called Hart Bageri (website), which was about a 10 min walk from our Coco Hotel.

Hart Bageri

Hart BageriYou can say that my friend really loves pastries, but so do I (mainly in Copenhagen though). Continue reading Four Days Itinerary in Copenhagen, Denmark (Part Two)

Denmark

Four Days Itinerary in Copenhagen, Denmark (Part One)

Author ByRyan Lee

I came to Copenhagen to explore a new city / country prior to going to Tomorrowland (click here for my tips on surviving Tomorrowland).  As the first Nordic country I’ve ever been to, overall I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.  Everything was simple, minimal, walkable / bikeable, clean, organized, and civilized.

I came here without any expectations except for the fact that food was supposed to be expensive in these Nordic places.  But to my surprise, it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined.  Plus, I only knew about Noma, the holy grail of three star Michelin restaurants.  But little did I know that there were a lot of fine dining restaurants and aspiring Michelin restaurants in this city.  My friend even commented that a lot of the techniques used in Michelin restaurants around the world were first adopted here in Copenhagen.  The reason for that was because of its relaxed culture, allowing chefs to take on risks and experiment; compared with many other places in the world, chefs would be scolded for making mistakes.

Adding on to that, from stories I hear from other people, Denmark does have a culture of leniency and relaxation and a stronger emphasis on work life balance.  For example, if you’re in United States or Asia, you’re expected to go to school and go directly to university then start working.  In Denmark, it’s expected of you to take a gap year before, during or after college so you can take time off and do what you want.  I even had a friend’s family in law where one of their daughters in Denmark took a total of three gap years, so by the time she was in the workforce she was 25 years old or something like that.  What I’m trying to say is that Denmark has a very relaxed culture, which encourages people to find what they like, discover about themselves, and allows them to experiment and take risks more. Continue reading Four Days Itinerary in Copenhagen, Denmark (Part One)

Hong Kong

Tour Around the Ex-Sham Shui Po Service Reservoir

Author ByRyan Lee

This is going to be a very short blog post.  But I just wanted to write this quickly because a couple of weeks ago, I went to the Ex-Sham Shui Po Service Reservoir tour in Hong Kong, and the tour exceeded my expectations!

Despite the images of the service reservoir and how it looks like as if you’ve traveled back to Europe, what was the most fascinating of this place wasn’t the remnants of the reservoir, but actually the presentation on the history of Hong Kong’s water situation and why the reservoir was built, as well as a guided tour talking about why the service reservoir was designed the way it was.

You’ll get to learn about the history of why the service reservoir was built, how some districts that we can stand on Hong Kong were actually the sea, problems when distributing water before, water shortage problems in Hong Kong, how Hong Kong people behaved back in the days to manage the water supply, and so many more interesting tidbits of information. Continue reading Tour Around the Ex-Sham Shui Po Service Reservoir

Belgium

Comparison Between Tomorrowland, Coachella, and EDC Vegas

Author ByRyan Lee

Having been to these three mega music festivals, Tomorrowland, Coachella, and EDC Vegas, I wanted to do a comparison from my own experience so that if you are deciding on which festival to go to (first), you can get an idea of what to expect from each one.

Please note that at the time of writing in Aug 2023, I’ve been to Tomorrowland and Coachella this year and EDC Vegas in 2015, so there may be a bit of recency bias and obviously a better memory of what happened at Tomorrowland and Coachella than at EDC.

The topics I will go through include: getting there and back, food, accommodations, music, venue, stage production, value, the crowd, fashion, art/partnerships, and just the overall vibe and atmosphere.

Read my EDC Vegas blog, Coachella blog, and Tomorrowland blog for more details about each of them.  You can also check out other music festivals I’ve been to such as Fuji Rock and Wonderfruit.

Tomorrowland 2023
Continue reading Comparison Between Tomorrowland, Coachella, and EDC Vegas

Belgium

THIRTY Super Good Tips To Have The Best Tomorrowland Experience

Author ByRyan Lee

Tomorrowland is one of THE music festivals that you have to go to once in your life, especially if you’re into EDM and dance music.  I was incentivised to go this year since I was collecting a lot of NFTs over the past years and also decided to collect Tomorrowland NFTs as well, which gave me access to presale for tickets!

This was my first year going to Tomorrowland, and it was definitely a very worthwhile experience to attend.  And so, I want to share my tips and thoughts about going to Tomorrowland for those who are planning to go soon or even for Tomorrowland veterans who might pick up some new tips as well!

(p.s. I uploaded a lot of Youtube shorts at https://www.youtube.com/@travelwithabutterfly for those who want to see what Tomorrowland 2023 was like! Search Tomorrowland in channel)

Continue reading THIRTY Super Good Tips To Have The Best Tomorrowland Experience

Mexico

Get Up Close and Personal with Turtles and Dive into Cenotes in Tulum

Author ByRyan Lee

In my previous post, I talked about the accommodations and restaurants of Tulum which you can read right here.  Additionally, if you’re looking for tips on how to avoid scams in Mexico, you can read that right here.  But right now in this post, we are going to be talking about the things I did in this trip that you can also add to your itinerary when visiting Tulum.

I personally think that staying in the resorts is of itself an activity you should spend some time enjoying rather than just treating it as a place to stay.  Not only are there usually different activities to do, but there’s like spa/massage or yoga that you can participate in as well.

But of course outside of the resorts, for this trip, we went to five(!) different cenotes, swam with turtles in Akumal Bay, visited one of the new seven wonders of the world Chichen Itza, and also checked out Tulum Pueblo and took some photos at some touristy spots. Continue reading Get Up Close and Personal with Turtles and Dive into Cenotes in Tulum