Thoughts from working and travelling outside the USA
Our big trip was to Albany and I flew to the Ningaloo Reef on my own (which were separate posts) – but we did have a couple of short over night and day trips which were focused on finding good places to snorkel. Snorkeling this far from the equator with colder water has much less... Continue Reading →
In our short time in Perth, we will only have one holiday weekend with both Sharon and I in town and we wanted to visit some of the coast on the Great Southern Ocean – the “best” beaches on the Great Southern Ocean at about 7 hours from Perth at Esperance, so we plotted out... Continue Reading →
When visiting Auckland, Waitheke Island is always listed as a top place to visit and it Is known for beaches and wineries. The recommended day trip is to take a 45 minute ferry from Auckland and rent bikes and ride to various wineries. We had saved our trip to Waitheke Island to our one full... Continue Reading →
The Margaret River region is pretty large – we only visited the top half which included the furthersmost western point in Australia, the wine region, and Busselton (summer beach town). When we were on the west coast, it is the furthest I have ever been from Washington DC (or Oklahoma) and literally almost halfway around... Continue Reading →
AFL Finals Returned to Melbourne at the start of spring – mostly gray days with spectacular sunny days mixed in. The main activity in Melbourne in September is the AFL finals – start with 8 teams and then a weekly playoffs until the Grand Final and with 8 teams in metro Melbourne, usually a lot... Continue Reading →
Adelaide wasn’t originally on our list to visit, but when we found out that the best wineries were in South Australia (the state) not southern Australia (the direction) and we got a positive recommendation from the mother of our future son-in-law who lived here a couple of years, we decided to make a weekend trip... Continue Reading →
We have made it to the Mornington Peninsula 3 times, once coming back from the Great Ocean Road via ferry, a day trip, and a long weekend. The Mornington Peninsula almost encloses the bay on which Melbourne is located with Port Phillip Bay on one side and the Bass Strait (part of the Great Southern... Continue Reading →
Tasmania Part 2 - We headed up from Hobart to a town called Mole Creek. We choose this location as it was the closest AirBNB to Cradle Mountain national park – still 1.5 hrs from the assumed start point of our hike. We took the longer scenic route through the lake country – wasn’t what... Continue Reading →
We had a short weekend trip to western Victoria which was something that I needed to do for work anyway. We visited the Grampians National Park and Ballarat. The Grampians is a mountain range that literally pops up in an otherwise flat area and has a lot of natural beauty with lakes and waterfalls and... Continue Reading →
We had mixed views of Porto – I liked Lisbon better but acknowledge that the Praca da Riberia area by the Dom Luis bridge is the best site of both towns. Sharon and Annelise both liked Porto better. We didn’t have as much time in Porto as Lisbon either. Classic blog below → Click Here... Continue Reading →
The winelands are about an hour inland from Cape Town – the South African version of Napa Valley. In our original trip, we were going to spend the night in the winelands but with the additional days in Victoria Falls, we made it a long day trip. Classic blog below → Click Here for Upgraded... Continue Reading →
We went to visit our friends from London who had moved to the country in southwest France - it was definitely off the grid but near a lot of great places to visit. We were able to see a lot of different places while we were there over a couple of weeks and it was... Continue Reading →