BootsnAll Travel Network
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What's this all about?

We took off for a year (which turned into 15 months) to travel the world. This blog was started as a place to keep family and friends updated on our plans and where we were. Now, we are moving to Europe, so the blog will be about our new experiences, travels, and life as expats for the first time!

I wonder…

January 4th, 2010

We are spending this week chilling out in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.  We have some time on our hands to reminisce over the last 15 months and thought we’d continue with our theme of lists.  For this one, we tried to come up with the seven wonders, but it proved too difficult to narrow down.  It made for some good discussions over a few Singhas, but we finally cheated and came up with the following 2 lists. 

 

The places we picked are sometimes not the best or biggest, but they are the ones that captured us.  They are places that for whatever reason – the weather, our mood, or something intangible – surprised us or made us just want to stay for a while. There are other famous places, like the Taj or the Rhine Valley, that were great, but missing something that set these apart.  Note that these aren’t in any particular order – that would have taken us weeks to rank.

 

Seven Man Made Wonders

 

– Sydney Opera House

– Grand Palace, Bangkok

– Burj Dubai

– Giza Pyramids

– Coliseum, Rome

– Gugenheim, Bilbao

– Mezquita, Cordoba

 

Seven Natural Wonders

 

– Tongariro NP, New Zealand

– Rotorua, New Zealand

– Mt. Blanc/Alps around Chamonix

– Canyons in Utah – the Arches and Bryce in particular, but Canyonlands and Zion too.

– The Olgas, Australia (Uluru should be on the list, but the thousands of tourists snapping photos took away some of the charm.)

– Santorini, Greece

– Cliffs in Ireland – The Cliffs of Moher are the most famous, but the ones at Horn Head and Slieve League are just as dramatic.

 

Here’s an informative sign we saw today that was definitely not one of our “wonders”… 

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Happy 2010 from Bangkok!

January 1st, 2010

Happy New Year to everyone!  I hope you all had a great start to the new year that will continue throughout.  We spent the big night watching the fireworks in Bangkok and reflecting on 2009.  The last year has been filled with so many new experiences and memories.  As we start getting ready to return to the US and “normal” life, we thought we’d make some lists to recap.  We’ll be posting a few more more, but let’s start with food.

 

Top 10 Best Meals

 

What makes a memorable meal?  It’s certainly about the food, but there are all the other elements of atmosphere, service, and sometimes just the surprise of finding the perfect place in an unlikely spot.

 

10. Hay’s – Christchurch, NZ:  With all the sheep in this country, they know how to do lamb right.

9. Ritzy Gritz – Kiama, Australia: I am completely convinced that there is no worthwhile Mexican food outside of California (and you shouldn’t bother ordering it), but this place was the exception that proved the rule.

8. The View Point – Phi Phi Island, Thailand: It’s not much more than a beach hut, but when the owner tells you “I make, you like,” believe her.

7. Quantas First Class Lounge – Sydney Airport:  After 6 weeks of only Asian and Indian food, I had the best cheeseburger ever. 

6. Simos – Santorini, Greece: We went back to this place night after night just to try more things on the menu.

5. Roadside stand – Near the Pyramids, Giza, Egypt: An amazing falafel sandwich and it cost 18 cents.

4. Ganter Brewery – Freiburg, Germany:  A huge helping of roasted beef, pork and sausage with a side of potato dumplings and a frosty beer.  Ahhhh.

3. Typica Quarta Feira – Evora, Portugal:  I panicked a little when the waiter said “here you don’t get to choose.”  I changed my mind after the first course of the daily special arrived at our table.

2. Tapas Bars – Logrono, Spain: It took us a few tries to figure out how to do a tapas crawl properly, but this town convinced me that mushroom weren’t evil.

1. Peshawri – Mumbai, India: Our dinner cost more than double the price of our hotel room for the night, but it was truly a memorable ending to our time in India.

 

Bottom 5 Meals

 

5. Kebab in Luxor, Egypt – Thought it was a steak, but turned out to be liver on a stick.

4. Chicken Sandwich at BK, Phuket Airport, Thailand – When in Thailand, stick to Thai food.

3. Fajitas in Ireland – Should have known better.  See #9 above.

2. Tie: Falafel in Adelaide, Australia or Kebab in Dublin – When done right, these sandwiches can be fantastic.  When done wrong, they are toxic.

1. Raw hamburger in Bordeaux, France – came with a side order of food poisoning.

 

Top and bottom 3 Food Countries

 

We based these decisions on the general quality of food, tastiness of local dishes, level of service, and price throughout the country.  There are exceptions, of course.

 

Best:

 

Italy

Thailand

Greece – this one might be controversial, but what’s not to like about fresh salads, roasted meat, and great yogurt & honey?

 

Worst

 

Croatia – The food isn’t terrible, but just so bland and boring.

England (does not apply to London)

Egypt – The only way I can think to describe it is like bad Turkish food.

 

Hope you are enjoying something yummy for the holiday!

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Tomb Raider

December 30th, 2009

We left the snowy landscape in France for the toasty humidity in Bangkok.  It’s been almost a whole year since we were there, but it felt familiar and we quickly remembered how much we enjoy the inexpensive luxury.  After a few days catching up on jetlag, shopping, and seeing some movies (finally, English! …and Avatar 3D is great), we met up with a friend who joined us for a side trip to Cambodia.

The temple at Angkor Wat has always held a place of exotic mystery for me, so I couldn’t wait to get to Siem Reap and see it.  However, it’s actually just one of many temples and ruins in the area.  We spent the last few days climbing through them pretending to be Lara Croft with a camera.  Each one is very unique and different from the temples we’ve seen before.  We rounded out the trip with a visit to a floating fishing village on Tonle Sap Lake to get peek at what the rest of the countryside here is like.

These smiling faces are from Angkor Thom, my favorite:

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This is my artistic attempt at capturing the beauty of Angkor Wat:

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A Journey of a Thousand Miles…

December 21st, 2009

Well, you know the old saying.  Having just completed that very thing, I might change it to say that it “starts in first gear.”

Our particular 1000 mile route started in southern Spain in La Manga.  We really needed some downtime to catch up on rest, laundry, exercise, and a few self-cooked meals.  While this was a good place to do it, we learned the difference between low season and off season.  Off season is “Sol-less” (no sun) and also “Soul-less” (no other people around. 

We left the empty highrises and cool temperatures behind and headed north to cold weather in Zaragoza and then snow in San Sebastian for our last night in Spain and our final tapas crawl.  From there it was on to frozen slush in Limoges before arriving in a chilly Paris.  

After a final 4 days and 1600 km, we had to say goodbye to our second Peugeot.  (It was a great car and if you are American or Canadian, check out the leasing programs in France.)  Our next stop is Thailand, which should be considerably warmer than the 2 degrees on our dashboard below.

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Bottom Ten

December 17th, 2009

We finished off our whirlwind tour of southern Spain with a stop in Granada to see the Alhambra.  It’s a large complex with a fort, a palace, museum, church, and many other interesting buildings.  It was a great day out, but it will be our last heavy duty sightseeing for a while (see the photo below). 

We realized that we are getting a little burned out on tourist attractions and need a little break, which we have planned for the coast. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything that we’ve seen, but sometimes the little inconveniences build up over the weeks.  With that in mind, we have a little venting to do.  We’ve complained about this stuff to each other enough that it’s time to share the grief with all of you reading this.

Top Ten Travel Gripes

1. Anytime you need something from a store, it’s usually closed (especially in Italy).

2. Poorly designed hotel bathrooms—we’ve seen over 200 of them on this trip and they range from incredibly small sizes, nonexistent shower basins, unexplainable shower heads with H/C water combinations, and the inexorable need to stick a bidet in each one, no matter how small it is.

3. Internet (also on our top 10 “must have” list)—the quality runs the range from slow connections in the hotel room (depending on where in the room you are and which way the computer is facing) to the high speed connections in an internet café where you can get the full experience of instant lung cancer from the smoking, stimulant-hyped-up gamers and pray that your computer doesn’t catch a virus (or for that matter, you personally don’t catch a real virus).

4. Parking—We love having a car and the freedom it provides, but parking in most cities and towns is a nightmare.  There are basically three options: 1) Park at the hotel for 30 Euros/night,  2) Find a pay spot on the street (like hitting the lottery) and keep pumping money into it every 2-4 hours,  or 3)  just do what the locals do and make up spots on the sidewalk, street, bike path, ditch, etc and hope you don’t get towed or booted (having a French license plate makes this option risky).

5. Laundry – Given the exorbitant prices that hotels charge for laundry service (8 Euros for a pair of jeans), the only real choice is to do it yourself.  The exception to this is Asia where you have it done by the kilo for next to nothing and it comes back all wrapped up in plastic like a present.  For the DIY option we have searched endlessly for automatic Laundromats that were rumored to exist in each town, but in reality they are few and far between.  Instead we’ve had to opt for the squish-squish method in the bathroom sink and hope everything dries by morning.

6. Toll Roads – They take the “free” out of freedom.

7. Hunting for Dinner – We don’t want to eat junk food, but need to stay within our budget.  That leaves us with a nightly search for a restaurant with decent food at a decent price, usually within walking distance to our hotel.  One of the most fun things about vacations is usually finding that perfect place, but night after night it can become a drag.  Don’t bother asking the hotel front desk – they will usually just send you to a Michellin-starred place you can’t afford or some dive run by a friend or family member.

8. Electrical outlets—Why does every country feel the need to be different?  Ever since Ben Franklin discovered electricity, someone has been compelled to create different standards and different plugs. Maybe it’s a conspiracy to prop up the billion dollar adapter industry.

9. CNN international and BBC World—the most boring TV channels in the world.  And they repeat every 15 minutes.

10. People who complain about traveling. 🙂 

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