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A Day in Auckland
Fremantle’s iconic Container Rainbow
At the playground overlooking Freo’s “Containbow”. Still getting used to the thought that a beautiful day in May is the end of autumn in the southern hemisphere, with winter just a few weeks away. We’d better get used to it
In WA at last!
Finally in Western Australia and reunited with family after more than 3 years apart. Fremantle will be home for the next 6 months. Bizarrely, despite some of the most draconian pandemic measures in the world, the failed exemption requests, the
Through New Zealand on the way to Aus
We passed through Auckland, NZ on the way to Aus. Normally, with a 7-hour layover we’d see a few of the sights, but due to COVID, New Zealand still wasn’t allowing visitors. (We transited on April 29th and the border
Australia V, version 2.0
In March of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded like a car crash in slow motion, so did our travel plans. Our April trip to Korea, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and Australia slowly got whittled down, flight by cancelled flight, to just
Country Count Updated to 115
OK, it’s not much but it’s better than nothing. First new country in almost 2 years, as we added the Bahamas to our list. We’d be lying if we said that we didn’t pick one of the Caribbean islands that
A Week in the Bahamas
First trip out of the country in almost 2 years! Only a week, but the weather, food, and company were a welcome relief from the pandemic monotony.
Through the Eyes of Van Gogh and…..???
This must be the unluckiest trip that we have ever planned! We bought tickets in 2019 only to see the flights cancelled in 2020 when the pandemic hit. Bought another set of tickets in 2021 when things seemed to be
Plans for Spring, 2020
Those cherry blossoms aren’t in Japan, but in South Korea. Although our South Korea plans got scrubbed in 2020 due to the pandemic, we will get there, just no idea when! ORIGINAL POST FROM BACK IN 2019: We’ve got our
It’s official; we’re not going ANYWHERE any time soon
On March 13th, 2020 Canada issued a level 3 travel advisory (“avoid non-essential travel”) for the entire globe. We’re grounded. Our thoughts are with those countries so much harder hit than Canada (so far), and we look forward to resuming
Coronavirus and Travel Plans
The coronavirus, COVID-19, is disrupting travel plans worldwide and ours are being affected too. We were scheduled to visit South Korea but that’s not going to happen now; even if we still wanted to go almost all airlines have cancelled
Country Count Updated to 114
Upon our return from Africa in February we updated our list of UN countries visited; we now stand at 114! That total is composed of 113 of the 193 current member countries of the UN and one former member country
The Sights of Ethiopia
We were quite happy to leave Addis Ababa behind as we jumped on an early morning flight to Bahir Dar. First up was a boat ride on Lake Tana to visit the Ura Kidane Mihret Monastery, one of many on
From Eritrea to Ethiopia
We really enjoyed our visit to Asmara, Eritrea, our first stop after our marathon of flights from YVR. Lovely city with lots of interesting, but run down, Italian architecture. Very friendly people and great Italian food as well. One of
Where to go in 2020: A Globe traveller’s guide
A great article from the Globe & Mail with inspiration for 2020 travels. An especially intriguing destination idea is Expo 2020 Dubai; we’ve never been to the UAE and maybe now is the time! See all their suggestions here: www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article-where-to-go-in-2020-a-globe-travellers-guide/
Upcoming trip to The Horn of Africa
In January, 2020 we will fly to Rome then head to Africa to visit the countries of The Horn of Africa: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somaliland (a quasi-independent, but unrecognized part of Somalia). We’ll finish up in Sudan and then
Country Count Updated to 109!
Upon returning from our fall, 2019 trip our country count stands at 109 UN countries visited. While we enjoy keeping score, we travel primarily to see the sights and meet the people. We almost always spend at least 2 or 3 days in every new country that we visit.
Home from the Caucasus
On our way home. Long day starting at 3am in Tbilisi then Istanbul and Frankfurt. We are back to the land of soft and flushable toilet paper- yeah! Currently at Calgary airport watching it snow. What a welcome home.
The Caucasus (with a few bonus stops!)
In 2018 Facebook responded to the Cambridge Analytica data breach by, in a classic example of locking the barn door after the horse has fled, shutting down third party access to its platform. Suddenly we could no longer cross-post our
Why we escape winter
On our recent January/February trip to South and Central America temperatures were in the 20’s and 30’s every day and we only saw rain 3 times in 34 days. We cleverly thought that we’d escaped all the snow shoveling back