Sailing the South Seas – Final
Island Hopping I’m catching up about 12 days of our trip with this final chapter. Although I had a lot of time aboard the ship, I always found something better to do than writing updates on my blog. I’m writing most of this at our hotel in Fiji, where we’re staying for a few days after finishing our cruise, where…
Sailing the South Seas – Part 3
All Aboard We weren’t always cruising people. For a few decades, we enjoyed planning our own trips, months and years in advance and then travelling to places on our own agenda. Trips to Australia and Italy last year were both self-planned and we loved both of them. So what’s with all the cruising we’ve been doing? We’re on our third…
Sailing the South Seas – Part 2
Sun in the South Seas When we booked our flights to Tahiti some time last year, we knew that we would be connecting through the San Francisco airport. We had memories of this kind of connection through San Francisco when we went to Australia in 2011 and almost missed our flight due to huge lineups through security and immigration. As…
Sailing the South Seas – Part 1
Back to the Beginning While I’ve been writing this travel blog for over 20 years, it wasn’t always the case, and in the early days, it was quite different. I remember in the old days, I used to have to run around trying to find Internet cafes in order to send emails to friends and family, often consuming hours and…
Three of Us in Italy – Final
No Heat for You We arrived at the farmhouse in Tuscany around 6 PM, driving our rental car from a train station on the outskirts of Rome, braving several hundred kilometres of Italian drivers, including many traffic jams on the highway getting here. We were all pretty tired by the time we arrived, and we were met by the manager…
Three of Us in Italy – Part 3
Heading South We had spent four days in Rome and visited many of the major sites, doing a lot of walking in the process. By the time our first Sunday arrived, we were packing our suitcases and heading south to Sorrento, taking our first of four train rides in Italy. We picked up our train at the extremely busy Roma…
Three of Us in Italy – Part 2
The Ride It’s Thursday morning, and we arrived at our hotel in Rome last night. I didn’t sleep very much on the plane, and by the time we got to our hotel, it was almost 10 PM, and after setting up everyone’s Wi-Fi, I needed to sleep and this morning feel much better and well rested. It’s about 6 AM,…
Three of Us in Italy – Part 1
Back After a Long Time After reviewing my notes, we last travelled to Italy 20 years ago. It was one of our earliest trips to Europe and the first time we travelled with family. We returned from Italy with many great memories, and we’ve discussed a return trip for the past few decades. That return trip has finally arrived, after…
Sailing in Scandinavia – Final
The Ship I have to go back several days when we took an Uber from our hotel in Copenhagen to the cruise ship terminal. I’m starting to write this final chapter while we have been on board the ship for a few days already. Although it was just a few kilometres away, it took almost 40 minutes to get there…
Sailing in Scandinavia – Part 2
Getting Here Under normal circumstances, we would have planned a direct flight to European destinations but in this case we connected through Toronto and it added about 5-6 hours to getting to Copenhagen, Denmark where we arrived earlier today. The net effect was that we arrived here much more tired which affected our being able to sleep normally the first…
