As we did last year, and what will continue to be a tradition for our family, we spent Christmas in the Palm Springs area staying with my parents, and flew our boys down from Calgary to join us. We stayed on after Christmas and enjoyed the month of January in sunny California – well perhaps…
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We left Canada at the end of July 2022. Now, 16 months later, we’re heading back for a short visit with family and friends by way of a 14-night transatlantic cruise onboard Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment of the Seas. We’ve done thirteen cruises in the past but never more than seven days in length, and this…
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After 38 days of fairly quick travel through Northern Europe and the Baltic states we finished our time in Europe this year with a quiet month on the coast of Spain, capped by a few nights in Barcelona. We quite like Spain, particularly in autumn, and have spent a bit of time in that country…
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We continue to wend our way through Northern Europe, moving south from Estonia into Latvia to explore its capital city, Riga. Despite its close proximity to Estonia, the people of Latvia belong to a different ethnic group, the Balts. In antiquity there were roughly eleven Baltic tribes, who survived as farmers and amber gatherers; today…
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Winding cobblestone streets, pastel-coloured houses, fortified walls with gates and turrets – walking through the Old Quarter of Tallinn feels like you’ve been transported directly into the pages of a fairy tale. We loved Tallinn, though I have to say if we thought the people of Helsinki were stoic, the Estonians border on surly. I…
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For the sixth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report, Finland is the happiest country in the world. Their joy must be internal because, to the casual observer, they are amongst the most stoic people we’ve ever met. Although the Finnish tribes traded extensively with their neighbours to the west, they were…
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We had originally planned to spend all of 2023 in Asia, primarily SE Asia. By early May we realized that our Canadian bodies, particularly my well-insulated physique, were not designed for heat and humidity; we were finding the temperatures quite unbearable. There were still places we wanted to see in the region, but decided to…
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After seven months in Asia we decided to make central Thailand our final destination, with stops in Bangkok and Hua Hin (Wha Hen), in particular because Bangkok is an airline hub, plus who doesn’t like a bit of beach time! Bangkok and Hua Hin are located in the area that was once part of the…
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Similar to neighbouring Laos, the area of northern Thailand was settled by Tai immigrants from China. In the mid-13th century CE several smaller kingdoms, scattered throughout the region that would later become Burma (Myanmar), Laos and the Thai highlands, were unified as the Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields, the Lan Na Kingdom. The royal…
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As we plotted out our travels through SE Asia, we decided to make Thailand our last destination. Cost-wise it wasn’t ideal to throw a few days in Laos in between our time in Bali and Thailand, but we’d heard it was a beautiful country and logistically it worked nicely to fly to Luang Prabang and…
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