Sleeping in the same bed for more than five nights hasn’t happened to us in quite some time. It was nice not to be constantly moving, but after a week of relaxing with family it was time to get out of the house and do something interesting again. Although we are sort of back home, we still have plenty of free time and might as well take advantage of all of our vacation time.
This trip takes us back to the desert, two different ones actually. We visited Joshua Tree National …

The train arrived at the station in Marrakech, we said goodbye to the Libyans we met on the way, and wandered off into the night to find our hotel. The next morning we had a chance to explore the city and another busy medina. Compared to Fez, the old city of Marrakech is a little more active and a little more manageable. It’s not as big, the streets are a bit wider, and there are several large open squares – the largest hosts an enormous collection of street cafes that …

The town of Hvar was a great place to relax for a few days. The tourist season was waning for the island, which made it a good time to come and enjoy the place with fewer crowds. Our apartment was conveniently located just off the main square, giving us easy access to the beach, coffee shops, the old fort, and the shops on the narrow streets of the old town.
After a bit of confusion finding our apartment, we got settled in and set out to explore the town. At …

Two days before our second visitor arrived we landed in Amman. Luck would have it that we actually knew someone who lives there. Janelle, who graciously provided four college kids a free place to stay in Manhattan for New Years Eve ten years ago, invited us to stay in her upstairs studio apartment for as long as we could make use of it in Amman too! Janelle and Mark and their two cute kids, Alexandra and Paul were very helpful giving us the ins and outs of the city and …

With one week left in China, we had several places we still wanted to see. It seems that everywhere we look there is a city here with more than a million people, and we still wanted to find something a bit quieter. We decided to go west from Xi’an to higher, and cooler, ground. This is the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and we thought we’d find something different here out. It took another overnight train to get to Xining, another place home to over a million.
We had hoped …

After the commotion of Beijing, we were looking forward to spending a few days somewhere quieter. A sacred mountain and the home town of Confucius were on the way to Shanghai and that sounded like the perfect stop. The town of Tai’an still had plenty of energy and the mountain is a pilgrimage for Chinese people so we didn’t really find the peaceful spot we were looking for. We did get to climb up about 7,000 steps, so it was still a productive day.
We arrived on the bullet train from …

Mike’s birthday, we easily memorized our first full day in China months ago. Without a lot of research and given the convenience from our hostel, we hit up some of the most well known attractions on the first day out. We visited Tiananmen Square and the final resting place of Chairman Mao. Interesting that he is covered with red blanket with the Soviet hammer and sickle. Most of our afternoon was spent inside the Forbidden City. We quickly learned that everything is set up along the cardinal directions, with north …

After spending a week in two big, modern cities, we went to see some of the history of Japan. To do that, we went to another huge city, but this one was different. Kyoto is one of the only major cities to have been spared massive damage during the war; it was also the capital of Japan for about a thousand years. This means the city has an enormous number of old, in tact, and very impressive buildings. The amount of temples and shrines is overwhelming.
Speaking of very old …

Almost 30 years after Heather’s dad visited the Philippines, we ended up staying with the same lovely Puray family in Davao City. We welcomed the change of pace, having real local guidance and an entire house complete with all of it’s amenities.
One of the most interesting things to us was the various different forms of transport. On our first full day out, we rode in four different kinds of vehicles. First, a motorcycle with an attached frame big enough to squeeze in 10 people, plus the driver and usually …

The main destination in New South Wales was Sydney, but the first stop was the Blue Mountains.

Feeling that the name was a bit familiar, we looked into it and found out there are at least ten mountain ranges in the world known as the Blue Mountains. This one was probably unique in that it had a city named Katoomba, which is where we spent the night. The town was quite pleasant, we even found several places serving high tea with all the traditional items. We were mostly there to see …