"We haven't been everywhere, but it's on our list!"
Last week we visited Arras in northern France as a base for visiting the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. (See our earlier post.) Our first stop in this picturesque city was the “Le Beffroi d’Arras”, the belfry. Hard to imagine that
As the residents of Marseille kept reminding us, Marseilles is NOT Paris! Marseille is the oldest city in France, with a history going back 2600 years, and they are extremely proud of their history and heritage. With good reason we’d
Côte d’Azur – Antibes to Monaco
When our walking tour guide asked if anyone had been to Barcelona before, we were the only ones who said “Yes”. “So you guys just keep coming back?” “Sure, every 44 years!” We repeated some typical touristy things in Barcelona,
Every year on June 23rd, Catalonians celebrate La Nit de Sant Joan, the evening before the feast day of St. John the Baptist. Of course this Saint’s day is celebrated everywhere in the Catholic world, but the celebrations of the
Celebrating the first anniversary of the end of a war in Canada (a war that nobody even knew about!). Apparently, when we were off in Australia for most of 2022, Canada quietly signed a peace treaty ending a war that
We’ve always meant to visit the Mont, but despite visiting France many times over five decades we’ve never made it that far! That changes in 2023, with our upcoming Barcelona to Berlin trip! We’re going to be in Normandy for
The brown hyenas of Kolmanskop, Namibia We shared a BBC Facebook post about the only remaining inhabitants of the former diamond mining town of Kolmanskop, Namibia. You can also watch that video on the BBC YouTube channel. (Link at the
Not sure whatever happened to KLM’s iFly magazine. It just stopped showing up in our inbox at some point. A victim of COVID? But back in 2017 they published a great story about a 3-week road trip in Namibia, and
Earlier this week, Canada introduced a new passport design which was immediately met with some (OK, a lot of) criticism. Here’s a link to an online article from CTV News. The quote that caught our eyes was from Pierre Poilievre,
Watched this YouTube video to prepare for our next trip to Australia:
(And if there is, who cares?) A quadripoint is a spot on the earth where four countries (or smaller geopolitical areas) meet at one point. When we were on our first trip to southern Africa, on a boat on the
It now appears that our 2024 trip to Japan and Korea won’t be at cherry blossom season. But that may have been impossible to predict in any case since climate change is cited as the reason for the wild swings
It’s always so much fun to be watching a movie or TV show and be able to say “We’ve been there!”. That happened to us the other night as we flicked through Netflix and came upon the series “Midnight at
Australians love their coffee and they don’t have Tim Hortons like we do in Canada, but mostly independent shops doing espresso based drinks. And what’s a coffee without a “slice”? Many Australian cities have a coffee street. The photos above,
April 22nd, 2023 marks the 53rd Earth Day, so we thought we’d share earthday.org’s post on “How to Do Earth Day” and a couple of guidelines for making our post-pandemic travels more sustainable. Thankfully, the Earth Day organization no longer
On our Barcelona to Berlin trip we are looking forward to visiting Berlin’s famous Museum Island, featuring several of not just Germany’s but the world’s best museums. The star attraction of one of these, the Neues Museum, is one of
We’re publishing this post on April 9th, Vimy Ridge Day. In 2003, the Government of Canada declared April 9 to be “Vimy Ridge Day”, to honour and remember the Battle of Vimy Ridge which took place during the First World
Update 2023: We have realized that this trip just isn’t going to happen as we originally envisioned. A greatly modified version will happen in 2023 though! Watch for posts from our Barcelona to Berlin trip. The text below was written
The day after we returned to Vancouver from our Arabian Peninsula visit (2023-1 – Arabian Peninsula – Feb-Mar, 2023) we updated our country count; now at 120 UN countries visited. It was raining in Vancouver when we returned; no surprise