Dear friends and family, We've arrived back in Australia from our tour of the North Island of New Zealand. We spent a couple of days in Auckland, "the city of sails". On our first day we took the ferry out to Devonport and hiked both Mount Victoria and North Head. There were lots of historic fortifications where we could wander through the tunnels and gun emplacements, as well as a dicey section of the trail where we clambered over the rocks to reach the maritime museum. We just had enough time to visit with the penguins at Kelly Tartan's Antarctic Adventure. Riley particularly liked the sharks swimming over our heads in the shark tunnels. We even spotted the elusive Woebegone! The next day, we trekked up to Mount Eden and the Auckland Museum. Our driving tour ... read more

Dear friends and family, Ann, Riley and I have begun our 3 month tour of Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, it's called long service leave for over 10 years at a company. We arrived in Sydney and stayed with my god parents, Les and Rosemary. They took us on several day trips including the Hunter Valley and the Blue Mountains and generally made our vacation in Sydney easy. We walked around the city centre and over several days saw the Rocks, Circular Quay, the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, Botanical Gardens, NSW Art Gallery, Hyde Park, Darling Harbour and much more. My buddy Al led us on the Bondi to Coogee cliff walk before a welcome beer at his local Irish pub. We also saw some of the northern beaches including Mona Vale, Avalon and ... read more

Dear friends and family, It has been a while since my last entry - was Ann and my honeymoon really a year ago? Since our good friend Kevin moved mountains to get his stag party organised for Mexico, it gave me an opportunity (with wifely approval, of course) to spend a couple days with the boys in Puerto Vallarta and then make my own way across Mexico (fondly remembering a similar trip with my father in 1995) to fly out from Cancun. So the original plan fell apart when Kevin became deathly sick and could not make it to Mexico. As vacations were booked, plans made and tickets non-refundable, most of us headed out anyway to celebrate on Kevin´s behalf. As I had points to use, I stopped over in Santa Monica on the way and ... read more

Dear Friends and Family, We arrived in Piraeus the following morning, a couple kilometres from Athens, Greece. The cruise ship charged $60 each for a transfer to the city but we walked 20 minutes from the terminal and found a metro for less than $3. A half hour later, we arrived in the middle of Athens at Monastiraki station, just a couple metres from the Roman Agora. We viewed the remains of Hadrian’s Library and the Tower of the Winds as we headed up the hill to the Acropolis. We managed to beat most of the tourists to the top of the Acropolis and had a rather unimpeded view of the Parthenon, Erechtheum, the entrance Propylaea and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. As we were on our way down, the hordes descended and we barely escaped ... read more

Dear friends and family, We have arrived back safely in Canada so I am completing the next couple blogs in hindsight. From Moscow, we flew back to Warsaw and had a couple restful days in Krakow (which is about 4 hours by train from Warsaw). In our brief stay, we saw the Main Market Square, Wawel Castle, Barbican, and Saint Mary's Basilica. We even found the mouth to the cave of the legendary dragon on Wawel Hill and saw it come out in front of us and breathe fire. We quickly escaped into the night! The next day we flew to Rome from which we were to catch our cruise around the Eastern Mediterranean. We were able to have a couple days in Florence, San Gimignano and Siena before we headed out to sea. We stayed ... read more