Definitely more of an adventure/see stuff type trip. Our last two vacations have been all inclusive beach type trips, aka my kind of trip
. She's more of an adventurer, so I'm looking to go more that route this time.
I'll second the Costa Rica rec. There's so much nature to hike through and so many cloudforests, canopy walks, beaches, volcanos, hot springs, etc. to see. I did a trip through Arenal, Monteverde and Manuel Antonio a few years ago and it was such an amazing trip with tons of walking/exploring but a good amount of relaxing and enjoying the sun to balance things out.
If you want to go to Europe, I'd suggest:
Prague, CZ - Beautiful city, amazing history, gorgeous architecture, great people. Food and restaurant scene was absolutely terrific. Very lively, cool places. Not expensive (and quite a lot cheaper than most European cities) so it makes it a good place to not have to spend your life savings.
Vienna, AU - Vienna is a crazy beautiful city. The architecture is unbelievable. The art and music is some of the best in the world. The food is terrific and varied. The opera house is ****ing majestic. The river is open for people to use and they sure take advantage of it.
Budapest, HUN - What an amazing city. The Hungarians really have a great grasp on life. Beautiful city with a river separating the two sides. There's some really stunning buildings like the Parliament, the Fisherman's Bastion, the bridges, the Citadella which is quite a hike but has seriously incredible views. It's also the spa capital of the world because the whole city sits on thermal water. You can spend a day at so many different bath houses soaking up the warm, mineral waters and maybe getting some cool spa services. Very inexpensive to access the bath houses especially by North American standards (about $20 for entry to the bath house compared to about $50 for Nordik's baths here in the city). The food scene is terrific there too. They have several Michelin starred restaurants and a lot of chefs really hungry to join those ranks. Super cool nightlife scene as well. The ruin pubs are something you can spend your whole afternoon and evening doing and meeting cool people from all over the world.
Split, CRO - Most people think of Dubrovnik when they think of Croatia but Split is every bit as beautiful and much, much cheaper. Much easier to get in and out of and if you rent a car somewhere along the way you can visit Plitvice Lakes National Park and you can even head down to Dubrovnik since it's only about 4 hours away.
I think that's a really cool progression to make going Prague-Vienna-Budapest-Split.
There's also southeast asia. Once you get down there it's so easy to go from Vietnam to Laos to Thailand to Cambodia to Malaysia. It's hard to even write a description for these places because there's so many amazing, beautiful places to see while you're in that area that I would need to write a full feature that you probably wouldn't want to read anyway. But it's super cheap, the food is off the charts, the scenery is mindblowing and most of those countries have really really lovely people who treat tourists with respect and are genuinely proud of their beautiful countries and cultures.
Anyway, I could keep going recommending places but I'll just end up recommending half the world to you hahahaha.
