Blogs from Ashburn, Virginia, United States, North America

Geo: 39.0516, -77.4831Editor's NOTE: Normally Glenn proof-read's my blog and does some major editing, however I am not asking him to do this for me, since he needs a break. So bear with me if there are misspelled words and the grammar is incorrect. Thanks for reading. I couldn't believe it, but I slept in til 8:30am this morning. I did get up several times during the night. Glenn said "be sure and take your flash light." Dark here. Glenn covered up the small basement windows, so no sun came through, that is how I got to sleep so well.We were running the hot shower for a bit, which made the alarm go off. Glenn just waved the towel in front of the smoke detector, to turn the high pitched sound down.We had a great visit ... read more

Geo: 39.0516, -77.4831As I noted, we can't recall one specific conversation with our friends the Rieckhoffs, during which we decided to travel together again. Rather, we believe it was an organic decision over time, that was finalized last summer. All of us wanted to visit Portugal -- having collectively never been -- whereas the Rieckhoffs have spent considerable time in the Catalonian wine country of Spain, near Barcelona. We elected to combine the two places, as they wished to return and Katherine has been wanting to visit Barcelona ever since she studied in Madrid, almost 30 years ago.We all wished to use air miles for our tickets, which meant we had to book well in advance. We settled on dates as best we could, so far out, electing to travel over the 4th of July, as ... read more

Geo: 39.0516, -77.4831Truth be told, I can't really recall exactly how we set Ecuador as our Spring Break mecca this year. We've talked in the past of going to South America; that much I remember. I had been to Colombia several times for work, but nothing further south than there, and for Anna and Katherine, it would be a new continent. I do recall looking at trips to Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, and Peru. We were between Peru, to see Machu Pichu, and Ecuador. We already knew that we would not attempt our usual individual style of travel if we did go south, so in looking at various tours, I think we pretty much "stumbled" onto a very interesting -- and surprisingly affordable -- 8-day tour of Ecuador. While we would not have time to visit ... read more

Geo: 39.0437, -77.4875Planning for this trip spanned the better part of a year. Just trying to figure out the logistics of where we wanted to visit and how we'd get there was a feat in itself. We knew we wanted to visit Jordan and Israel, though despite the peace treaty between the two countries, it still is not easy to get between the two. Finding flights that were convenient and wouldn't break the bank was a tall order. In the end, we ended up with good flights routing us through Istanbul on the non-stop Turkish Airlines flight from Dulles. For the trip between Amman and Tel Aviv, we had enough miles left over with British Airways that we were able to book award tickets on Royal Jordanian Airlines, which is one of their partners and which ... read more

Geo: 39.0516, -77.4831The planning for this Spring Break trip had been in the works for nearly a year. I had visited South Africa for work soon after Anna was born, thought it was beautiful, and thought how it would be nice to visit again with the family. A good friend of ours is native South African, and met her husband while he was getting his Masters at the University of Cape Town. They have a daughter exactly Anna's age, and we'd often talked about traveling together. I can't specifically recall how the topic first arose of a joint visit to South Africa, but by spring of 2012 we had already decided to all go together and plans were put into place. Given how far we were going and the diversity of things we wanted to see, ... read more