Tartu, Estonia May 14, 2006 Shannon: We left Riga (and Latvia) behind yesterday. After experiencing true sticker shock at the lodging prices due to the World Hockey Championship games, it seemed prudent to leave as quickly as possible and head to other (cheaper) pastures. Thus, after dropping my mom off at the airport, we made our arrangements to head into Estonia and our first stop: Tartu. Sean: Tartu is a small college town that made a nice break in the trip from Riga to Tallinn, Estonia. We just had to get out of Latvia. The overwhelming amount of partying [View Full Entry]

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Kaunas, Lithuania May 4, 2006 Sean: And then there were three. After the last three weeks being thronged with family, it’s down to just Shannon, me and her mother. Michele is joining us for about a week while we tour around Lithuania and will be leaving us as we get into Latvia. We landed yesterday here in Lithuania’s second city. No one really wants to go to Kaunas - Vilnius is the World Heritage city and capital of this Baltic country. But this is where the discount airline drops you, a hundred kilometers from our intended target. I’m not really comp [View Full Entry]

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London, England April 22, 2006 Sean: We flew from Ireland yesterday for the next leg of our “Travels with Family” series. For this adventure we invited Shannon’s family on a narrowboat trip along the canals of England. The bucolic countryside beckons as we’ve planned a whole week traveling at the breakneck speed of 4 knots; a very relaxing pace of life, to be sure. With my Dad and step-mom Linda, my Uncle Joe and Aunt Nancy rounding out the crew, we’ve reserved two boats for a total of 12 lucky sailors. Shannon: Before setting sail, [View Full Entry]

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Seán: Last blog’s contest was a tie between Rock N Roll Rich (my brother) and Tamara (a good friend from the Gold Coast in Australia whom we met in Guatemala). The answer to the question of which building is the largest in the world (by square footage or floor area) was - I was led to believe - the Pentagon in Washington, District of Columbia (actually situated across the Potomac River in Virginia). According to the sage wisdom of Wikipedia (Here’s the link to that article), however, this superlative actually [View Full Entry]

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March 26, 2006 (Sofia, Bulgaria) Shannon: With less than 14 days to go before we head to Dublin to meet up with family and 2 countries to cover before our plane takes off from Bucharest (Romania), we’ve realized that we’re going to have to pick up the pace to get there. With that in mind, last night we took a sleeper train to Sofia (Bulgaria). It wasn’t exactly our most comfortable ride. Leaving the station at 10 pm, the Bosfor Expresi crosses the Turkish/Bulgarian border at the insane hour of 2 am, which means a rather bleary-eyed trip through customs. [View Full Entry]

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March 2, 2006 (Antakya, Turkey) Sean: We smuggled cigarettes and liquor across the Turkish border. Well, it wasn’t quite Midnight Express, but Parliament 100’s and Johnny Walker Red aren’t exactly heroin either. Let me back up and tell the story. Leaving Aleppo, Syria this morning, we thought it was going to be a bit of a headache because the travel agency that “invited” us into the country had to escort us out as well. This wasn’t a problem for the company, it’s what they do, but the communications between the boss and our esc [View Full Entry]

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February 22, 2006 (Damascus, Syria) Shannon: From our current location, you can tell that we did eventually make it across to the Promised Land, or the country we call Syria. Who knew getting into this country would be such a hassle? After our failed attempts at the Syrian Embassy in Amman and our “storm the border” back-up plan, we were forced to move on to Plan C. We learned about this option from a fellow American we met at our hostel. Through a friend-of-a-friend sort of deal, he knew about an alternate way to get across the border: be invited. Evidently, [View Full Entry]

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February 4, 2006 (Wadi Musa, Jordan) Shannon: The punctuality of public transportation in Egypt that I had admired in an earlier blog evidently did not apply to private ventures, as we learned when we crossed the Red Sea by ferry to Jordan. The ferry, which was supposed to leave at 2 pm, was still moored to the dock well past 4 pm. Hmmm…not a good start. It was a curious “ferry” anyway, more accurately described as a small cruise ship with a car deck acting in the capacity of a ferry. When we first boarded, leaving our bags down in the [View Full Entry]

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January 20, 2006 (Alexandria, Egypt) Sean: We fast forwarded a few thousand years into the future of Egyptian history and arrived in Alexandria today. This city was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC as the crowning glory of his empire and once rivaled Rome in its wealth and intellectual standing. At the height of its importance, it was home to the famous Pharos, a grand lighthouse built just offshore (and one of the Seven Wonders of the World), and its Library (which housed the most impressive collection of books and information in the world). Even though neither still exists, [View Full Entry]

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January 13, 2006 (Cairo, Egypt) Shannon: Today was our first full day in Cairo, having arrived yesterday afternoon. My first impression: chaotic and loud. Cairo is a huge, sprawling metropolis with 16 million inhabitants. As we tried to navigate our way to our hotel, the streets were choked with people. It didn’t help that we arrived during the holiday of Eid, which made things even more chaotic and crowded than usual. And our first introduction to Egyptian hospitality was certainly interesting… Sean: At the airport we managed to find our way to the stop [View Full Entry]

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