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Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 1
Welcome to Our Excellent Italian Adventure! Since there are a lot of new people reading our Adventures this year, I should probably give you some background as to how all of this started. In 1999 Barb and I travelled to New Zealand and the Cook…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 11
This post by Liz will be the last of the “Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005” series. Part 1 of Our Excellent Italian Adventure begins tomorrow. …Baden It’s the day before departure as I reflect on the last couple of weeks. The panic didn’t set…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 10
Of all the things that we have on our list to worry about when we get this close to our vacation, getting sick has to be pretty close to the top of that list. Today Barb was home from work, sick. By all indications, it’s…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 9
I knew that all of this problem free trip planning was just too good to last. The first significant issue has arisen that has caused us to have some concerns about our travel plans. As we normally do when travelling to another country, we usually…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 8
The lists are out. What list you may ask? Well it’s our travel preparation lists and we usually start using them a few weeks before we travel – a very visual sign that we’ll be going somewhere very soon. Our travel lists serve three functions:…
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Checking out Airport Beach
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…
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The Nostalgic Charm of the PNE
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…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 7
Vorrei avere un trattore per il pranzo. Translation (from Italian): I would like a tractor for dinner. Yes, these fine Italian phrases and many more like them will be spoken by us as we travel throughout Italy in a few short weeks. A few weeks…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 6
I’m thinking that the term travelling light needs to be updated. For those of you who have been following along with our trip planning, you know that I’ve been planning on taking along some extra electronic equipment. For most of our previous trips, I’ve had…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 5
Almost 6 weeks and counting. I can now admit that the whole Italy trip is beginning to become more and more of what we’re thinking about and talking about. After Labour Day (Sept. 5th), it will be the only thing that we’ll be thinking about.…
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Temporary Technical Difficulties
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…
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The Big Return
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…
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Historic Steveston Village
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…
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A Dress Rehearsal for Italy?
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…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 4
I have managed to convince my sister-in-law Liz to write an article for the blog to share her perspectives on the planning aspects of the trip. Hopefully she will be a regular contributor all the way through our trip to Italy. …Baden Baden’s comment that…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 3
With less than three months left before our next Excellent Adventure trip to Italy, you’d think that it would be occupying most of our thoughts these days. Sadly, Barb and I hardly even talk about it. Maybe we’re just jaded but this has been pretty…
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A Map for Every Direction
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…
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Yaletown by Bike
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…
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The Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005 – Part 2
As they say in the film industry: “it’s in the can”. As of a few weeks ago, we have received all of our confirmations for the destinations that the four of us will be staying on our fall trip to Italy. Of course when I…
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My SAP Collection
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…
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Excellent Adventure Travel Tips
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
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The Making of My Blog – Part 4
Other than being in Ottawa now on my cooking class, this trip is significant in another way. It is important because it will be the first field test of using my Dell Axim Pocket PC to post to my blog – exactly the way that…
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Adventure Begins at Home
Wherever we’ve travelled throughout the world, when we’ve told people that we are from Vancouver, we’re often told how lucky we are to live here and how beautiful they have heard our city is. To be true, we feel particularly blessed living here and having…
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JetsGo? How About Jets Stop?
I suppose it could be a lot worse. I found out this morning that my flights to Ottawa next weekend to attend the Cordon Bleu cooking class are cancelled. Cancelled due to the fact that the discount airline JetsGo decided to declare bankruptcy yesterday. I…
