For millions of Filipinos, the United States of America is the land of promise: famous cities, iconic landmarks, relatives eager to show you around, fantastic food choices with huge servings, exciting NBA games, and loads of shopping. Unfortunately, we Filipinos cannot just fly into the US. To be able to legally enter America, we need an official document from their government authorizing us to enter their territory. This document is what we call a visa. A US visa carries several advantages: 1. Duration - an approved US visa can be valid for a few weeks to up to 10 years depending on how your whole application is processed by US Embassy officials. Compare this to EU Schengen (duration of stay as per itinerary), UK (6 months), Japanese (3 months), and Chinese (duration of stay as per itinerary) visas 2. Value for Money - Total visa application fee is at $160. If you get a 10 year visa validity, that fee comes out very economical. 3. Other Visas - It is not explicitly stated

After getting through the PLANNING phase (PART ONE) , we now go through PREPARING for the Embassy appearance and interview!

The fourth stop on our Honeymoon Itinerary is the Imperial City of Vienna . The capital and largest city in Austria, Vienna was also the center of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and is known as the "City of Music" due to its enormous musical legacy. A great cultural center in the history of man, Vienna was home to such prodigies as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert . * One of the bonuses of this trip, was that we got to recreate a scene from one of my favorite movies of all time, Before Sunrise .

* A memorable honeymoon, as with a happy marriage, succeeds with a good mixture of compromise and win-win situations. For the writer, this amounts to going to places rich in history and culture (food, music and landmarks) where his inner historian/adventurer can be satisfied; and for his wife, this amounts to loads of shopping and picture-worthy sites. This was our first challenge as newlyweds, and we both jumped at the chance to tackle it head-on. * Grabbing one of my favorite books from the home library, we decided to work on a big chunk of our bucket list by crossing out Central and Eastern Europe, site of some of history's most important moments and wars, as well as the home of Europe's ancient Kingdoms (Polish, Magyar, Austro-Hungarian, Bavarian, Bohemian and Venetian) * Our honeymoon travels would take us from the World War II battleground of Warsaw , to the home of Polish Kings, Krakow , from fairy-tale  Budapest  to the majesty of Imperial Vienna , pas

After 13 hours, 3 movies, 5 TV shows, 2 full meals, 1 in-flight magazine (read from cover-to-cover) and numerous conversations with my colleagues, we finally arrived in London.. just in time to catch our connecting flight to Scotland! * Thank God for the gift of   aisle seating  as I had the chance to stretch every few hours. I could have happily walked for miles upon arriving in Heathrow after that grueling flight duration.

My iPad was such an indispensable tool of my last three trips (Mid-East, China, Europe) that it has become THE constant source of Ready Information and Entertainment in other facets of my life. With so many great apps out there, I decided to concentrate on the 8 that are truly useful for the budget, foot travelling, wanna-experience-all-the-sights-and-sounds-in-limited-time traveller such as myself. 1.  Goodreader ($4.99) https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/goodreader-for-ipad/id363448914?mt=8 One of the best PDF readers for the Ipad, Goodreader not only allows you to read the PDF’s, it also allows you to highlight and add notes on the pages.  I loaded this app up with various DK Travel Series and DK Top 10 Travel List books (the best travel guides due to the abundance of pictures and maps) and was particularly helpful in Barcelona, Rome, Paris and London.