“Sherman, set the WABAC Machine for Kyoto, Japan in 2017!“ As the 2026 cherry blossom season winds down, we thought that it would be a great time to dig into the photo archives and show previously unposted images from our
Cherry Blossoms Flashback
10 Types of People Who Shouldn’t Step Foot on a Cruise
The image below links to a PDF reprint of a recent AOL.com article titled “10 Types of People Who Shouldn’t Step Foot on a Cruise”. We are definitely Types #2 “People who want an authentic cultural experience in another country”
The Greek Goddess Protapriliá
In May, we will visit the Mediterranean countries of Greece and Albania. While in Greece we hope to visit the small Greek island where the somewhat unusual statue pictured above was found. It is obvious that this is not a
UN Country #130; Paraguay
Regular followers of our photo blog may have noticed that our country counter was recently updated to 130 UN countries visited. On our recent trip “Uruguay and the Amazon“, we visited Paraguay, a country to which we’d never been before.
Where to Travel in 2026?
Have you been bombarded throughout January with travel suggestions for 2026? The feature image above is from Audley Travel’s post “Top Trip Ideas“. And Tripadvisor has chimed in (as summarized by TravelPulse) with their listing of the “Best of the
Travel Trend – UNESCO World Heritage Sites
As always, the first couple of weeks of January have featured a flood of emails and social media posts hyping “travel trends for 2026”. The predicted trends include: However the emerging trend that most spoke to us is one featured
Newgrange Winter Solstice Lottery
December 21, 2025: The winter solstice was at 7:03 a.m. today in our time zone (PST). The days will now be getting longer every day for the next six months! With the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere quickly approaching,
Fiji Inspiration
Tourism Fiji recently launched a contest to promote travel to Fiji using Wilson from the movie Cast Away as the centrepiece. After recovering from our initial surprise (Cast Away was filmed in Fiji? It’s been 25 years?!?) their promotion made
Home for Homeless Homing Pigeons
When we visit the Amazon rainforest in Brazil next year, we hope to reach the remote village of Loof Lirpa to visit the Home for Homeless Homing Pigeons. The Amazonian subspecies of the common homing pigeon, Columba livia amazonum, nests
Amazon Cruise (ver 2.0)
When we created our trip page, Uruguay and the Amazon, we were planning to cruise the Amazon from its mouth up to Manaus, Brazil and back on a large cruise ship. We have had to pivot, and have cancelled that
Elbows Up Canada!
The feature image above is from the CBC article “‘Elbows up’ rallying cry evokes memories of Mr. Hockey” which provides the origin story for the Elbows Up catchphrase. As mentioned on our Amazon Trip Page, we’ve cancelled our plans to
The Long Road Home
When we disembarked from the ship on Saturday morning, we had an hour or so to look around Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados. Then headed to the airport for our “on time” flight to Toronto. Not sure why we had
Why Canadians are “Snowbirds”
According to Wikipedia: A snowbird is a person who migrates from the colder northern parts of North America to warmer southern locales, typically during the winter. The southern locales include the Sun Belt and Hawaii in the United States, as
Planning for 2025
We follow Audley Travel, not because we travel with them frequently, but because they always have some inspiring destinations. They recently published an article “5 Travel Trends for 2025“. In case you don’t have the time nor the inclination to
Best Travel Camera?
A lot has been written about selecting the perfect camera for travelling. The most recent article is this detailed post from National Geographic: “The 10 best compact cameras“. We have to agree with their selections of of some really great
Being a Tourist at Home
Sometimes it’s good to return to tourist sights close to home. “Home” for us is Vancouver, BC on Canada’s Pacific coast and we spent the day yesterday hosting relatives and showing them just a few of Vancouver’s splendid attractions, made
Ireland Added to Our List
Yes, we do keep track of the number of countries that we have visited! After returning from our “England and Ireland” trip we added the Republic of Ireland to our list of UN countries that we have seen and we
Returning Home; the Good and the Bad
After our 3-flight, 40-hour odyssey to return home on South African Airlines and Lufthansa through Jo’burg and Frankfurt, we settled into our post-trip routine. There’s always both pros and cons to arriving home. Let’s get the bad points over with
Looking forward to Cape Town, South Africa
In our trip planning for our “Namibia and Nearby” trip coming up in 2024, we came across a great article in the Audley Traveller Autumn 2023 edition about Cape Town. We’re looking forward to our first visit to Cape Town,
Country Count Updated to 122
On our Australia VI and More trip in September and October 2024, we visited four countries, but only one was a new destination for us; Timor-Leste. You can read our posts about Atauro Island and Dili for a description of