http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/S-and-S/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from S and S en-us Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:24:58 +0000 Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:24:58 +0000 Hi everyone.After a long summer of rest in New Zealand we are finally settled and have signed a lease on a property in Bondi Junction Sydney. Thanks to all the friends and family that put us up during this time Simon has started work already with a Sydney based patent attorney practice while Sandra has been doing the logistics for us house hunting and finding out where all the essential s http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Sydney/Bondi-Junction/blog-387774.html Hi everyone from Cape Town at the end of the road for our year of traveling.Over the last week and a bit we have been steadily heading south with our last stop after Swakopmund in Namibia being the Namib desert. We took a dune walk with a local bushman guide into the dune fields where the Tsauchab River is blocked by the world's largest sand dunes. The dunes are progressively marching inwards t http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/South-Africa/Western-Cape/Cape-Town/blog-349918.html Hi everyone from Swakopmund Namibia.Since leaving Victoria Falls a couple of weeks ago we have now finished the westward leg of our journey and are on the Atlantic coast in the old German colony town of Swakopmund. On our way here we initially had a brief stop at Botswana's Chobe national park Thebe river. Here we had an evening cruise up the river into the national park this stop was unfortu http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Namibia/Swakopmund/blog-346838.html Hi everyone from Livingstone and Victoria Falls Zambia.Since leaving Zanzibar we have been steadily traveling south by west encountering Malawi first after leaving Tanzania. We have been doing quite a bit of driving over the last couple of weeks but along the way in Malawi we had the opportunity to stop at a number of local villages. At one place in particular we were able to consult with the http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Zambia/Livingstone/blog-341849.html Hi everyone from Zanzibar Tanzania. As expected internet connections are few and far between in East Africa and when you get your hands on one it is usually rather slow We have been going at a real breakneck speed for the last two weeks since our tour with Absolute Africa started. This is the only leg of our world tour that we are doing via package and we are still getting to grips with g http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/Zanzibar/Zanzibar-City/blog-334483.html Hi everybody we have now come to the end of our time in Egypt. Since our last post we grabbed an overnight bus from Luxor to the Sinai peninsular stopping initially at Sharm ElSheikh to look into some diving options for Simon. We heard that Sharm was a bit of a strange place being the Russian package tourists beach resort of choice. We were certainly not disappointed in this as we found ev http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Egypt/Sinai/Dahab/blog-327794.html Hi everyone. We are about half way through our stop in Egypt having just completed a felucca trip down the Nile and taken in the sights of Luxor. Fairly exhausted after being deposited in Aswan by a very late sleeper train at lunchtime we grabbed an afternoon tour of the local sights including the main draw card Philae Temple. This was the first temple on our Egyptian tour which impress http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Egypt/Upper-Egypt/Luxor/blog-324566.html Hello from Egypt.We have now fled the drizzle of northern Europe to arrive to 35 degree temperatures and cloudless blue skies.Since we last posted we had a good week trotting around London picking up the last bits and pieces we need for Africa as well as enjoying the welcome hospitality of friends and family in the city. Suitably refreshed after some time sitting inside on a couch and binging http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Egypt/Upper-Egypt/Aswan/blog-322279.html Hi everyone we have now pretty much finished the third leg of our tour with our return to London.From Berlin we zoomed straight across the industrialised north of Europe stopping for some well earned R R in Amsterdam. We chilled out wandering the canals for a few days taking in the Rijksmuseum while soaking up the atmosphere of the Red Light district and bingeing on street servings of fries http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Greater-London/Clapham/blog-318136.html Hi since our last posting we have continued our travels through eastern and central Europe in particular taking in Vienna in Austria Krakow in Poland Prague in the Czech Republic finally finishing up in Berlin.Vienna had on display all the monumental buildings from the Hapsburg's dynasty's time in power in Europe. We wandered around the Hoffberg palace complex and unfortunately learnt that t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/District-of-Berlin/Berlin/blog-310821.html Hi everyone we have now completed another good chunk of our travels in Eastern Europe. From Bulgaria we headed straight into Bucharest the capital of Romania. The main thing to see here was the monolithic Presidential Palace which was only completed after the dictator Ceausescu was removed from office. This place was immense being second only to the Pentagon in terms of the world's largest b http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Hungary/Central-Hungary/Budapest/Buda/blog-303966.html Hi everyone we are pleased to report that Bert our 30 year old Bedford camper van has now made it past Istanbul Since our last post in Greece we did a big push east and including one last day on the med we rolled into Istanbul to look for a camping ground. The Turkish driving skills were similar to the Greeks except a lot more angry and aggressive. In particular Sandra had both a driver http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Romania/Muntenia/Bucharest/blog-300936.html Hi everyone we are now at the end of our travels in Greece. Since leaving the South we have had our holiday within a holiday traipsing around the Cyclades islands before heading north out of Athens over the last couple of days.From Athens we grabbed an overnight ferry which arrived in Santorini first thing in the morning. This ferry gave us our first taste of real beds and air conditioning for http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Greece/Thessaly/Meteora/blog-297437.html Hi everybody we have now reached the sunny shores of Greece. Our overnight ferry from Bari in Italy went off without a hitch and we got a cheaper price by getting camping on board tickets. This meant that we were sleeping in the van again up on deck with Bert sandwiched in amongst fifty large trucks. We still had the run of the boat upstairs and 'private' showers and toilets which we only http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Greece/Attica/Athens/blog-292719.html Hi everyone from Southern Italy.We are presently in Bari on the southeast coast waiting for our ferry to Greece Patras tonight.Since our last post we headed out of Tuscany and down to Rome. The drive from Siena down was a little interesting as the van developed a bit of an electrical problem which wiped out our 5th gearoverdrive windscreen wipers indicators and other ancillary electrics. W http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Puglie/Bari/blog-289848.html Hey everyone we have now taken a bit out of our Italian tour. From Nice we kept heading east through rather challenging coastal roads which were pretty hard to make any distance on. Just across the border we got stuck behind a guy moving a house at 11am..... This was pretty frustrating travelling so we bit the bullet and took on the pay motorways for the first time letting us soar above each of http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Tuscany/Siena/blog-285114.html Hi everyone from the south of France. We have now made it up from Spain and over the last two weeks or so have been moving steadily east. From Madrid we headed straight down to Valencia to cruise around the city and take in some of the sights being the usual collection of Churches walls and gates. This time however we did manage to come across the actual Holy Grail from the last supper well a http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Provence-Alpes-C-te-d-Azur/Nice/blog-281438.html Hi everyone we have made our way down to Spain since the last time we posted. We are about to start heading back north again after today hopefully to more blue skys and warm weather. From the Loire we headed to a little place just outside of Bordeaux city called St. Emilion httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiSaintC389milion famous both for the local wine production and subterrainian religious http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Spain/District-of-Madrid/Madrid/blog-277809.html Bonjour chacun We are now touring through France and are presently making our way through a few vineyards towards Spain.We started this leg of the trip with a ferry from Cork to Roscoff in Brittany which dropped us off early Sunday morning with very little other traffic around to see our first go at driving on the wrong side of the road. Supprisingly this is not accually as hard as you would fi http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/blog-273430.html Hello from Ireland.We have been touring around the Emerald Island for the last couple of weeks knocking a bit of rust off our van Bert due to the very bumpy roads. We dropped in on some more of Sandra's relations Hugh Peter and Clodagh for some welcome home cooking before sailing out of Holyhead north Wales.We landed staight into rush hour traffic in Dublin and immediately got very lost and http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ireland/County-Cork/Blarney/blog-270166.html