Travel - Choice of Magic

Portugal

A Guide to the Azores – Part I – Flores Island

August 11, 2025

Welcome to what I hope will over time become a series of post about the 9 Açores islands. We start off with a guide to the island of Flores, which is rumoured to be the most beautiful of the lot. Flores it the second of the 9 islands that I got to properly visit (São Miguel was the first), but it is the first I properly documented for you guys. I will see whether the material I have on São Miguel is enough for me to write a post about it soon or if I have to conveniently go back for this. For now though, here´s everything you need to know for your next trip to Flores island, the Hawaii of Europe.

Switzerland

The Ultimate Guide to 72h in Geneva

January 21, 2025

This past December, in an effort to feel more Christmassy, visit a Christmas market or two, and to maybe even see some snow, we booked ourselves a long weekend in Geneva. In choosing the destination, and with the above criteria, we were looking at Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and finally settled on Geneva because none of us had ever properly visited the city, we found cheap direct flights from Lisbon to Geneva at hours that worked for us, and we found a very well priced hotel in the center of the city. All other expenses cost us an arm and a leg, but that doesn´t even matter anymore as we look back at the wonderful few days we had there. So let me tell you all about them!

Philippines

The Honeymoon Diaries Part I- Bohol, the Philippines

October 29, 2024

It feels a bit surreal to be writing this series but here we are. I am a married woman, and whether you’re here for your own honeymoon inspiration, or whether you’re visiting the Philippines just on holidays, I’m so excited to share our trip with you. We start in the island of Bohol – one of the lesser touristic islands that we visited. The island has a lot to offer, but here’s what really attracted us: firstly, the waters around Bohol are amongst the top in the world for diving, secondly, Bohol is one of the last places where you can still see tarsiers, one of the world’s smallest primates, and thirdly, the island´s Chocolate Hills are a unique geological formation that is nothing short of spectacular. So let’s jump straight in.

Portugal

The 12 Best Brunches in Lisbon

July 8, 2024

If you know me, you’ll know that brunch is my favourite dish of the day (perhaps you understood it when I published the list with my favourite brunches in Sibiu, my hometown in Romania). Call it pretentious, call it smug, but a meal that is literally designed around letting you sleep in, and letting you have champagne with your orange juice had my heart since 2011, which is the year I moved to Berlin and learned about the concept of brunch. So with all due respect to the simple yet yum Portuguese breakfasts I have these days, brunch to me has remained sacred and is something I do at least biweekly if not once a week. Hard as I tried to make a list of lesser known brunch places from all over Lisbon, by now all these places are swarmed by locals and tourists alike. Having said that, I´ve only ever reserved a table at Kefi (number 4 on the list) and managed to get into all the others on an impromptu basis. I tried recommending different dishes from each of these places, but truth be told I would most likely eat anything off their menus as they are all just finger licking good. So let´s look at the list and travel all throughout Lisbon.

Germany

My Favourite Restaurants in Berlin

May 24, 2024

It’s crazy to me to think that Berlin´s Best Coffee is one of the first blog posts I ever put online on the new choiceofmagic. I can hardly recognise the writing and the pictures anymore, but there you go. Your girl who drinks coffee every blue moon, wrote about the best coffee in Berlin, the city that never rests, where I lived for five years before moving to Lisbon. Fast forward a few more years, and having gone back to Berlin, I felt it necessary to write a post about my favourite restaurants in Berlin. Some of the old ones have unfortunately closed in the meantime, but here’s what rocked my taste buds in 2024, as I returned to Berlin on a beautiful spring day.

Brunch Food Romania

Three Fantastic Brunches You Need to Try in Sibiu

April 9, 2024

I’ve given you a restaurant guide to Sibiu with Food I Loved in Sibiu, but on this trip a realisation actually hit me – Sibiu´s brunch scene is blooming. And so, off I went to try them all (some again, some for the first time), and figure out which of these spots you should visit next time you’re in the city where houses have eyes. So without further ado, here’s where you should brunch in Sibiu next time you’re around.

Romania

Food I Loved in Sibiu

March 15, 2024

In the heart of Transylvania lies the town of Sibiu – the place where I was born and spent the first 18 years of my life. It’s a fairly mid-sized town for Eastern European standards, but to me and everyone visiting it (especially for the Christmas market or its many festivals) it’s like a piece from a fairytale. Eventually I´ll do a guide to Sibiu, but for now I´ll leave you with a collection of my favourite restaurants and bars in this magical city where houses have eyes.

Thailand

Travel Itinerary and All the Buses and Trains we Took for Six Weeks in South-East Asia – Part I : Thailand

January 9, 2024

Welcome to part I of a series of articles about the six weeks we spent in South East Asia last summer. It took us pretty much forever to choose a place in the world where we´d want to spend six weeks of our sabbatical. Things we took into consideration when making this decision were: safety, weather, cost, variety of things we could do (since we were going to spend such a long time on the road), and cultural attractiveness. When we ended up choosing South-East Asia it was then just a matter of figuring out how much can we squeeze into six weeks and which countries were prioritary for us. In the end we were left with Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. My idea for this series is to walk you through our itinerary, with focus on how we got from point A to point B, as the planning of transportation bit took us forever and I want to spare you all that research, leaving all the information in one place. There will be other posts expanding on some of these destinations, the food we ate there, and more. But in this one I will just focus on the itinerary of our 15 days in Thailand.

Thailand Asian Food

Food I loved in Bangkok

September 18, 2023

On our first evening in Bangkok I was utterly overwhelmed by how bright and loud it was. This overwhelming feeling turned out to just intensify over the next couple of days. From the aforementioned sounds and lights, to smells in markets and sheer options of where to divert your attention at or even what to eat. In a city equally famous for its street food as it Is for its Michelin Guide restaurants, where do you even begin? Well if you’re a first time tourist to Bangkok, let me try to help you a little bit by sharing with you my favourite places for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Spain

My Favourite Restaurants in Barcelona

February 21, 2023

My first trip of 2023 (if we neglect that I started the year abroad already), was Barcelona with my family. It was my third time there within six months, so by the time I was back to Lisbon, I felt I had plenty of material to put together this article on #foodIlovedinBarcelona. As always, I´ll start with breakfast and brunch places (including a great coffee spot and an artisanal ice cream joint), then head over to lunch and dinner restaurants, finally ending with some cool cocktail and dancing bars. I´ll be back to Barcelona in June, and might add some new spots after that trip, so stay tuned with this work in progress article. But until then, let this list inspire you.

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