Voodoo
Leslie McDonnell Joined: April 2nd 2008
Logged in: June 7th 2011
Logged in: June 7th 2011
In my entries you will find fun and adventure. I have travelled around the world in a global scavenger hunt, travelled to South America doing development work and alligator hunting, safari in Africa, living life in Paris and just being bold and daring in this wonderful world.
Thanks and enjoy!!!!!
Leslie
Travel Blog Posts
Camille putting her game face on!
Well, I have just returned from my first all inclusive Mexico holiday. Wow, what a treat! Camille and I decided to celebrate her upcoming divorce in the best way we knew how - fun and sun! Se we headed to Cancun/Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Before we left, we spent about a month looking at different all inclusive sites. We knew we wanted to have a place that had 24 room service, all inclusive, and waiter service on the beach. A week before leaving, we found the Valentin Imperial Maya resort that met all of our requirements and then some. It was an adult only place, which suited us more than fine to not have children running everywhere. It was a bit of a couples style resort, but we did not mind, because the cliente were more ... read more
Mandy and I waiting in the freezing cold to see the Eiffel Tower
I have mentioned before that the biggest thing I am taking from my Paris experience is the friends that I made. I did not anticipate to make true friends that I will always cherish and keep in touch with for the rest of my life, and I feel so fortunate to have made not one, but many. I wanted to create a blog entry to share pictures of good times with many of them.... read more
Soweto
So those of you who don’t know, I decided to head to South Africa for the weekend, lol. Ok, so I was there for five days. Thierry and I had been talking about going to South Africa for a couple of months and when March rolled around and we hadn’t gone yet, we decided we had better get our butts in gear. By the way, having a fantastically nice roommate who works for Air France is wonderful! A couple of days before we were supposed to leave, something came up and Thierry was not going to be able to leave with me. Luckily, he was able to arrive two days after me. I have two friends from UNESCO, Rovani and Diana though, who have friends and family who live in South Africa, plus, Lizzy, who shared ... read more
Road trip to Normandy
It has been a very long time since I have written. I have been holding off, waiting for some good news of a job. Well, I have lots of leads for jobs, but nothing has come through yet, but I am hopeful. I did manage to get a short consulting contract with UNESCO though and there are talks about another. Having said that, I have not seen the contract yet, and my ticket home came up first. The plan from the trip all along was to come home on April 1st, and here I sit, April 1st on a United Airlines flight headed for Vancouver. My 6 months spent in Paris were absolutely amazing and I was able to experience things that I did not anticipate. The biggest thing I am going to take away from ... read more
Fountainebleu
So, now that I can say I lived in Paris for 6 months, I am often asked, what was your favorite thing. One of my favorite things to do in Paris is go to the Marais, walk around and eat at my favorite falafel restaurant, L’as du Fallafel. Mmmmm, they are soooo good. The Marais is the Jewish and gay district of Paris and there are a number of really cute shops and most of the streets are cobble stone. There are a number of vintage stores in this area and you can see where all the fur goes to become moth food. It is also very close to Hotel de Ville, which is the very impressive main city hall building of Paris. Another thing that I like to do is go and hang out in ... read more
Brazilian Raccoon (guaximin)
Foz de Iguazu The falls in Iguazu were breath-taking! We decided since we were so close, we could manage the 5-6 hour drive to the east coast of the country, head into Brazil and visit the Falls. It was so amazing and gorgeous. We had heard about taking a boat and getting dipped by the falls, so we decided that we were going to do it. We thought it was going to cost us about $40, but we were wrong - more like $75! Oh well, it was so worth it. We traveled through a protected forest and were taken to an area where the company we were with had a bunch of speed boats. We put on our life jackets and boarded the boat. We started by driving through the rapids and stopped to take ... read more
Paraguayan Swamp lands
Hello blog readers, lol. In the summer of 2007 I travelled to Paraguay on a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) project dealing with sustainable tourism and private sector development. I wrote an entry for the trip a long time ago, but had not started this blog yet. I have decided to post it, to keep all of my travel blogs in one place. I don't have many pictures of Asuncion (the capital city) on this computer, but I will post some of my favorites from other parts of the country. Wow, Paraguay is great. The people in this country are so nice. I have managed to travel to the southern and eastern tips of the country and in every community I have visited, I have come across warm and generous people. To give a little background…my ... read more
Museum D'Orsay
So, like every first Sunday of the month, I headed out to a museum - I love free museum day, hehe. I decided that I would finally go to Museum D’Orsay because I keep talking about it and never do it. It was really nice. It was a good mix of sculptures and paintings and not as overwhelming as the Louvre. I arrived a little after ten and the line up to get in was just over ½ an hour long. Once in, I started by checking out the mask exhibit (no pictures, sorry) and wandered around some of the sculptures. Then I decided to check out the Picasso/Manet exhibit “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.” There was a line up to get in this exhibit, but because it was free, it went fairly fast - I think ... read more
ND at xmas time
Another holiday season has come and gone. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and Happy New Year to everyone! Even though I was not able to spend the holiday season with my family, I was able to make is special. My friend Emilie, who I work with at UNESCO, is from Canada and did not go home for the holidays either. Additionally, her high school friend Kieran, who currently lives in Ireland, decided to come to Paris to spend the holidays. On Christmas eve, the three of us decided to go shopping for stocking stuffers for eachother. Then we came to my house and had a xmas eve dinner of guacamole, hummus, salsa and bread. We wrapped our presents, watched Elf and had a sleep over. The next morning we started the day with Champagne and orange juice ... read more
Almudena Catherdral
So I finally left Paris for a weekend! My friend Mandy had her friend, Daniel, visiting from Canada and the three of us decided to go to Madrid for the weekend. It was really nice to get out of Paris for a bit. I was shocked, however, at how polluted Madrid was. I felt that I could taste the pollution in the air. After that, and coming back to Paris, I am really starting to miss the clean BC air. The first day in Madrid we didn’t get out to the city until the evening. When we did get downtown, we walked down Gran Via street and saw some great things. Then we went for tapas dinner and decided to catch a movie. We decided to go see Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Wow, what a great movie. ... read more
