(Excerpted from my book Our Summer in Estonia available at Amazon.com) Mid-week and mid-summer, a perfect time, with few tourists around and most people at work, to leave Tallinn for a day in the country. We decided on a day trip to Lahemma National Park and Land of Bays, which lies about 70 miles (100km) east of Tallinn and halfway to Narva, a major Estonian city that borders Russia. The park spreads about 40 miles along the northern coast and was designated a national park in 1971. It remains mostly unspoiled , very forested, with a few small villages and the [View Full Entry]

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(Excerpt from my book, Our Summer In Carmel, available at Amazon.com) I like history. I begin my photo/travel journal with a brief amateur overview of the Monterey Peninsula. Providing some historical context helps to better understand a place today. This short historical discourse is divided into three phases. Prehistory, Spanish/Mexican governance, and lastly the arrival of the Yankee. For thousands of years, anthropologists don't know exactly how long, but well before the first arrival of "modern" man the Spanish, the Monterey area was inhabited by three native tribes. One tribe, The C [View Full Entry]

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This entry begins a new series of my travels which will get its input from my book Our Summer in Carmel (Amazon.com) The book describes the experiences my wife, Elysee, and I had while renting a summer home in Carmel for three plus months. What the book also does is provide an example of a lifestyle I champion and the reason behind my name no2ndhome. It is my belief that for many persons, especially retiring "Boomers", temporarily renting a second home each summer, preferably in a different place each year, is a superior financial and lifestyle strategy than buying a [View Full Entry]

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(Excerpted from my book Our Summer in Australia & New Zealand at Amazon.com) John Starr, the owner of Telegraph Farm is a man of great imagination and energy. He uses a portion of his farm less suitable for crops or grazing to raise flowers for export, especially to the Japanese market. He plants perennials, providing thereby a renewable product. The Japanese inspect every delivery and if even one insect is found, the entire shipment is denied delivery. In the fading light of the day we gazed over acres of beautiful commercial flower beds. John cut flowers for all the women on [View Full Entry]

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(excerpted from my book: Our Summer in Slovenia, amazon.com) The golfing experience at the Bled Golf and Country Club is highly complemented by the facilities and service. Weather permitting Elysee and I had no finer Sunday than a round of golf beginning at noon followed by drinks and an early dinner on the patio. The menu is extensive, the service attentive but not obsequious. The cost was moderate compared with Western Europe and the wine, beer and after dinner cigars (Elysee passing on the cigar but enjoying the $5 Chivas.) and the dinner laid out in the patio cost us about [View Full Entry]

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(Excerpted from my book Our Summer in Australia and New Zealand/Amazon.com) After leaving Kalgoorlie we headed south towards Esperance a town in the Great Australian Bight of the southern ocean and about as far from everything as one can get. We were scheduled to visit the Recherche Islands which was the site of great whale and seal hunting grounds from the 19th century. The name for islands were taken from two French ships that explored the area in the early part of the 19th century, raising concerns in London about French colonization and causing the British to spur settlement in the [View Full Entry]

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(Excerpted from my book...Our Summer in Estonia...Amazon.com) As Communist Party control began to unravel when Gorbachev loosened the reins, Estonians tested their strength, timidly at first, and then with growing courage. It was a s though the jailor left the door open, but prisoners were unsure of their next move. Should they take a step out and see what happens, then another? Then run, run, run. The Estonian people turned to song to begin testing their new limits. In September 1988, not a festival year and a year before the Berlin Wall came down, some 300,000 people, a quarter of the [View Full Entry]

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(Extracted from Our Summer in Australia and New Zealand Amazon.com) Having left the Indian Pacific cross country train at Kalgoorlie, before its final overnight run to Perth, we began day four of our journey back and forth across Australia, with a closer look at the town that epitomizes Australia's former Wild West. The story begins with an 1892 gold strike in Coolgardie, about 25 miles from present day Kalgoorlie, to which thousands of gold crazed prospectors rushed. Thus when rumors circulated in 1893 that another "find" had been discovered somewhere to the east, about 50 out-of-luck " [View Full Entry]

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When Elysee and I contemplate where in the world we might spend the summer, golf is consideration. Not that we are accomplished golfer, far from that. But we enjoy the pastime, and travel with our clubs. We look for a playable course at a reasonable price, and were delighted to find just such a combination minutes outside the village of Bled, that we were strongly considering for a summer-long stay. Bled Golf and Country Club is the oldest course in Slovenia, est. 1937, and the home of several annual tournaments.Even though it is surrounded by the Karavanke portion of the Alps, [View Full Entry]

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(Excerpted from Our Summer in Estonia Amazon.com) Estonia's association as a singing nation began in the city of Tartu, home of Tartu University, in June, 1869. The inspiration for a national song festival came from Johann Voldemar Jannsen, a leader of a movement known as the National Awakening a mid-19th century period, when Estonia's long suppressed people set about discovering and creating a national identity. Jannsen founded the first Estonian newspaper. His name sounds German, because when serfdom was abolished, many Estonians took their Baltic German master's name. who, in Jannsen's c [View Full Entry]

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