"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list."
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
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.
Hoc est quod ait Heraclitus: ‘in idem flumen bis descendimus et non descendimus’. This is what Heraclitus says: “We go down and do not go down into the same river twice.” Well, Rio de Janeiro was certainly not the “same
Piranha fishing on the Amazon! But wait…. we’re jumping ahead too quickly. Our Amazon cruise on Iberostar’s Amazon Grand Expedition was divided into two segments: a 4-night cruise on the Rio Negro, and then a 3-night journey up the Solimoes
From our weekend at Iguazu Falls, we flew to Manaus,capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state. Brazil is a huge country so it took us two flights and all day to cover the ~2,600 km. Incredibly uncomfortable flights too, since LATAM Airlines’
Iguazu Falls is situated just upstream of the Triple Frontier tripoint where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet. Only Brazil and Argentina have national parks with access to the falls and we visited them both. Our post is titled “Return to
When we left Montevideo for the short flight to Asunción, Paraguay, we were initially annoyed because Paranair changed us from a morning flight to a mid-afternoon departure, leaving us very little time to see Paraguay’s capital. As it turned out,
On our final day at Estancia El Ceibo, we did relatively little (well, nothing really!) except enjoy a big farm breakfast and then another meal at lunchtime. Then, it was time to get a ride into the dusty town of
As more fully described in our post about Montevideo, the main event of Carnaval in the city each year is two parades, the Desfile de Llamadas. Our YouTube videos shot at the Desfile de Llamadas on Feb. 7, 2026: For
Our trip to Uruguay and the Amazon began with a relaxing, 3-day stay at an estancia (ranch) just a couple of hours outside Uruguay’s capital of Montevideo. Instead of “relaxing” we might have said “recovery” since the journey to South
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
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,
Our borrowed Lonely Planet guidebook for Japan and websites such as www.japan-guide.com/e/e2001.html devote several paragraphs to “slipper etiquette”. The when, where and how to wear the correct choice of slippers inside and outside a traditional hotel, restaurants, and homes in
After visiting Tokyo and the day after the sumo tournament, we headed for Japan’s second largest city, Osaka. We went on the Shinkansen (bullet train) because on our first trip to Japan we took conventional rail and had a bullet
The much anticipated day for the Tokyo Grand Sumo Tournament finally arrived! We had a relaxing morning with another soak in the natural hot spring onsen in our hotel and then walked through the Sensoji Temple area (photos are in
Our second trip to Japan began with a direct flight from Vancouver, Canada to Tokyo’s huge Narita airport. We flew on JAL (Japan Airlines) and even at YVR we were reminded about just how orderly and efficient just about everything
In less than a week we head off to Japan. Friends who had recently visited Tokyo told us about their tour to see a sumo wrestling practice, so we decided to check out attending a practice. But to our surprise,
After catching a bus from Senlis, then a train from Chantilly, we arrived at Gare du Nord and made our way via the metro to our hotel in Paris. Although we have been to (or through) Paris somewhere between 5
After a month in northern Africa, we finished off our trip with a week in France. We spent most of an entire day flying from Marrakech, through Casablanca, and then on to Paris. It’s always great to fly into Charles
We had already returned home when we finished selecting the last of our images from northern Africa and writing up the text. So, we decided to take a break before adding the photos from a week in France to the