Barb and I had plans to head down south this weekend. Down south being Seattle which is about a 3 hour drive south from Vancouver. We were planning to see some friends in Auburn which is about 30 minutes further south of Seattle and rather…

Late last summer when my friend Kevin and I were out bike riding, we came across this market taking place in the Trout Lake Community Centre parking lot. We later found out that it there is a farmer’s market taking place there from May to…

Two trips, 15911 km apart I think that we’ve gone far enough into the year to spill the beans on our Excellent Adventure travel plans for this year. 2006 will go down in our travel history as a very significant year for several reasons. Perhaps…

I’m sure that you’re all as excited as I am to find out that my blog has finally overtaken my arch-nemesis Captain Bob on the Google web page rankings. For those of you who are not in the loop on this (OK, everyone is out…

New and Improved: with 96% more Blog I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time and due to overwhelming demand, I have increased the size of my blog pictures by 96%. OK, I confess, no one really asked for this change but I think…

As today is February 1st, I’m officially celebrating my ExcellentAdventure.ca blog’s 1st birthday! In the past 12 months you’re travelled with me to Washington D.C., Ottawa and of course the highlight of the year, our Excellent Italian Adventure. By the time you’re reading this we…

Yesterday I changed my web sites to a new web hosting company. As a result of this you may see some things a bit different until I get everything configured properly. My applogies in advance. Baden

You’d think that I was living in a luggage store. Within 10 feet of my computer there are no less than 6 suitcases. For most people (and even for us for that matter), buying luggage is not something that happens very often. Barb and I…

Barb and I were saying just a few weeks ago how it wouldn’t be Christmas without seeing the annual Christmas musical at the Willingdon Church. When our friends Wendy and Kevin contacted us last week to invite us, we of course made ourselves available. Originally…

If you had tried to access my blog over the past two days, you might have been wondering what happened as my site was down. The answer is that my web hosting company suffered a server crash and my entire web site plus email was…

The Pin Ceremony has officially taken place. Just a few steps from my computer in the den are two maps on the walls. On the one closest to me is a large map of Europe which now has 26 yellow pins on it. The yellow…

Update (Nov. 18): After almost a 2 ½ week delay of ignoring my blog to work on my Italy DVD, I hope to spend the next few days trying to clear up the backlog of articles that I had on the go before I started…

This is not a misprint. After only a 10 day break after returning home from our recent Excellent Italian Adventure, Barb has brought home books from the library to start looking into travel plans for next year. Even by our standards, this is fairly early…

Just a quick note to everyone that I plan on doing an upgrade to my blog this weekend so there may be a period of time where it may be out of service. Baden

With all of the things that are going on in the few weeks remaining until our trip, it’s good to get the occasional distraction from it all. So when my friend Kevin emailed me on Friday and asked to go for a bike ride, I…

The Pacific National Exhibition (or just PNE as it is referred to by everyone), has such a diverse list of things to enjoy that it really does have something for everyone. The PNE starts two weeks before Labour Day and signals the end of summer…

With our upcoming Excellent Adventure to Italy now less than two months away, you’d think that I would have more to think about than an email problem. But is was just that kind of problem that I spent about 10 hours on last weekend. The…

While it is always great to depart off to some great new destination on a trip, coming back to reality is always a downer after one has been in vacation mode for several weeks – shed of all of the worries and stresses of our…

Yesterday afternoon I was just relaxing around the house when Barb suggested that we go out for dinner. As it was a since sunny evening, around 6:30 we put the top down on her car and drove south to Steveston for dinner. Located at the…

You wouldn’t be alone if you asked me what us going to the Sea Vancouver Festival today had to do with our upcoming trip to Italy. Quite a bit, I would say. Last weekend Barb suggested that we go see the tall ships at the…

Right next to my computer sits a bookshelf which contain an assortment of travel books from all of the places we have ever been to. Along side the books sit a variety of language dictionaries (English-French, English-Spanish, English-German and so on) but on the bottom…

Update (June 11): I finally took care of getting a new car and hopefully things will be back to normal again starting this weekend. … Baden My apologies for not posting anything new for a while. I was in a car accident last weekend and…

I felt like a tourist in my own city. Here I was riding around downtown last Sunday snapping photos on every corner. It was a beautiful warm, sunny day and a great time to be outside so I took the opportunity to take a bike…

For the record, Barb thinks this is really dumb. After travelling through airports around the world, I began to see these advertisements from a company called SAP that showed many local companies who run their software. It’s not really important that you know what SAP…

Over the past number of years I have been accumulating a number of notes on trip planning and have recently put it all together into a single document: my Excellent Adventure Travel Tips. Baden