Next Adventures Planned

Seven months have passed since we returned from our Saudi Arabia trip. I never quite got around to chronicling our adventures in "the Magic Kingdom", but did manage to put together a pretty decent photo record. While I might be the one with the journalism degree, my spouse ActiveSteve.com is a diligent blogger and managed to record many tales of our trip.

So, it's August now and the big question is "where to next?" I'm pleased to report that there are TWO trips booked -- one in August and one in December :-)

In one week I will be flying from Ottawa to Naples for a 12-day trip to Italy. This will technically be my second time in Italy, but the first time barely counts as I spent only a brief time along the border with Switzerland -- Tirano, Domodossala, Lago Maggiore, etc. -- and didn't see any of the major sites.

I'll be on my own for the first part of the trip and will be spending about 4 days in the area along the Sorrento and Amalfi coasts. Many hours will be logged at Pompeii, Herculeneum and on Mt. Vesuvius. I'll then spend about 1.5 days in and around Rome before meeting up with my friend Alix to tour Florence and Tuscany. We have already made reservations to visit the David and some of the top galleries in Florence. We'll then spend about 4 days in Rome where we will see many of the famous historical sites. We will also be visiting Vatican City for half a day, which is actually the smallest independent country in the world!

There are never any guarantees, but I will do my best to put up some blog posts from the Italy trip. As always, you can expect to see far too many photos of our adventures!

At the start of this post, I mentioned that a second trip has been booked for December. Steve and I will be travelling together, and it will be a trip of a lifetime to Eastern Africa :-) More on that later. For now, I'm going to focus on the Italy trip as there's less than one week to go!

London Calling

December 21, 2008

Steve and I are never sure if we are supposed to go through customs together when we travel because every country has different requirements. Usually we guess wrong, as was the case in London. Steve had wanted to go through separately so he could "joke around with the customs agent", but he was required to join me at the counter. When the woman asked what we were planning to do while in England, Steve provided a short list of items, beginning with Big Ben and ending with "paying a visit to the Queen Mum". The agent asked for him to repeat that last part, and then pointed out that the Queen Mum had in fact passed on quite some time ago. First case of foot-in-mouth for us on this trip, but she was a good sport about it and let us through. Afterwards, Steve explained that he thought Queen Elizabeth II was the Queen Mum because she had kids (but anyone who knows a thing or two about the Royal Family knows that the Queen is just the Queen). Quite an amusing way to begin the London portion of our trip!

Steve and I really enjoyed our 24-hour stopover in London. This was my first stay in London and was happy to have Steve there to take care of our itinerary as he's been there before. We were staying right at Green Park on the Piccadilly line, which is convenient to everything. We packed a lot into one afternoon... Royal Palace, Canada Gate, Big Ben, London Eye, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Millenium Bridge, London Tower, Trafalgar Square, Shopping in Piccadilly Circus, etc. Also enjoyed my first pint in a British Pub (the seasonal "Sleighbell Ale") along with some fish and chips. Delicious! We were quite exhausted as we had flown in on the red eye and packed in a lot of activities, and managed to get in about 9 hours sleep. The next morning was quite relaxed as our flight from London to Riyadh did not depart until 11:30am.

As you have no doubt noticed, I am already quite behind on my blog posts and don't think I'll be providing summaries of each day's activities. Instead, I'll stick to some impressions and interesting events. Steve has been quite diligent about recording our travel; however, and you can check out his reports over at activesteve.com