We have been taking our time leaving these towns but we hit the road quick in Egilsstadir as we had a long road trip in front of us. The road trip was once again scenic and other worldly; at times you could have convinced us we were driving on the surface of the moon. Our first stop was Dettifoss waterfalls. The road to Dettifoss was unpaved, barren and a little bumpy. We were wondering how they managed to locate their most powerful waterfall in a dry, barren, rock-like desert, but locate it they did! Dettifoss was spectacular. If you've ever seen the movie "Prometheus" these are the falls that were used in the opening scene and seeing them in real life was no less epic. After Dettifoss we made our way to Asbyrgi which is a ... read more

We experienced a lot of water today. Some glacial and falling over cliffs, some hot and bubbling up from the ground and even a bit from the sky. It was a good day. We started in Thingvellir National park which is a UNESCO world heritage site. This is the location of Iceland's first parliament (~900AD) and it drew the chiefs from each of the clans across the country. It has high cliffs created from the separation of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. These geo-historical shifts have resulted in a beautiful landscape filled with striking rock walls, mossy fields, a waterfall and some crystal clear streams; it's not hard to see why the first settlers picked this place to meet. After Thingvellir we moved on to Geysir where we saw steam and water bubbling from ... read more

New York City; if we can make it here we can make it anywhere… it really wasn’t that hard, Air Canada has direct flights from Ottawa daily. We arrived in New York City in the early afternoon and took a cab from LaGuardia to the Pod39 Hotel in mid-town Manhattan; a 25 minute drive that only cost us a measly $24… Lesson #1: Cabs are cheap in New York City, don’t be afraid to use them! We got to our hotel and discovered where the “Pod” name comes from; our room was clean and new, but it was also about 9 feet by 10 feet with a big ol bed taking up about 90% of that space… we did also have a 4 foot by 4 foot bathroom (roomie). We popped our bags under the bed ... read more

It's 11:30 AM on a Tuesday....have you had your first Lumumba of the day yet? Then you must not be in Jamaica, Mon! We spent 7 days at The Riu Ocho Rios with family and friends and had such a good time. We can highly recommend it if you think you will go. Almost a kilometre of palm tree lined beach (read: no fighting for beach chairs), great buffets, a Jerk Chicken hut, pools, gardens and fantastic staff. There was a coral reef 50 feet off shore (you could stand on a sandy bottom and look down at it) that we spent hours every day exploring with our snorkels. We only did one off-resort excursion. It started with a catamaran ride to a reef to do some snorkeling (snorkeling was actually better at our resort). Then ... read more

So our cruise has come to an end and we've arrived in our final port of Barcelona... although our sea days are behind us (at least for now), the vacation is not yet over. We still have one final day in Barcelona before our flight home. If you've been following our blog, then you might remember our earlier visit here when we took the hop on hop off bus tour; that was a cold day in Barcelona, but we were much luckier on this visit. The temperature was about 18C and it was bright and sunny. Since we knew a little about the city we bought a full day metro (sub-way) pass and started meandering our way around. Our first stop was Parc Guell. The park is a public park (yay! Free), and it encompasses 15 ... read more