Five Months Already! - Our Top Five for 2011

Looking back on 2011

I can’t believe we’ve already been on the road for five consecutive months. We’ve seen and done so much that without this blog I probably wouldn’t remember half of it. Over the last five months we've travelled over 65,000 kilometres, visited 17 different countries across five continents, flown on 27 different air planes and stayed at 59 different hotels. The travelling can be tough at times but we've always had each other to ease that long night on the train, bus or plane.

As we enter our sixth month of travel we wanted to look back and jot down some of our favorite places. Over the holidays the most common question we got from family and friends was “What has been your favorite place so far?”. Below is a list of each of our top five places with the only commonality being #1 with the Maldives. 

Pamela
1. Maldives
2. The Dead Sea
3. Pamukkale, Turkey
4. Playing with the Tigers in Chiang Mai
5. Trekking in Nepal

Dave
1. Maldives
2. Trekking in Nepal
3. Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt - Article Coming Soon
4. Wadi Rum
5. Searching for Tigers

Happy New Year!
We hope everyone reading this as a great 2012 with very safe and fun travels for all of you taking a holiday somewhere. We had a great time over the holidays in Los Angeles with family and friends. The weather was very warm so the hiking was great (at least for me, the sales at the shops were in full force so the shopping was great (at least for Pamela), and we spent many nights relaxing at home just enjoying the fact that we weren’t in a hotel.

Month Number Six
We’re in Banff, Canada now enjoying the snow and a couple days of snowboarding before we head off to Florida and a seven night Caribbean Cruise with stops in Cozumel, Belize, Honduras and Grand Cayman. This is Pamela’s first cruise so she’s pretty excited, I’m just hoping I don’t eat too much…the breakfast buffet always kills me. After the cruise we’ll be heading to one of my favorite spots on the island of St. John for five days of relaxing on the beach. When we’ve had our fill of sun then we’re heading to Reno/Tahoe to catch-up with great friends and hopefully snowboard (please let it snow), then from there we’re off to Park City for some more boarding (again, please let it snow).

We have some articles coming-up about our time in Sharm El-Sheikh, Abu Dhabi and Banff so please stay tuned.

Cheers for Now - 

Pamela and Dave

Our Middle East Adventure - Gift Wrapped

Sunrise over the Red Sea in Egypt

We just concluded an amazing seven weeks in the Middle East. There were some ups and downs to the seven weeks but thankfully there were a lot more ups then downs. We've written a few articles already but have quite a bit more to write about in the near future. We wanted to quickly summarize our experiences and let you know what's next for us.

Checking out the travertines in Pamukkale, Turkey

Turkey
We didn't know what to expect with Turkey, prior to arriving we hadn't done much research on places to go/things to do so we really didn't know what to expect. Everything about Turkey turned out to be great. Pamukkale was Pamela's favourite and I was mesmerized with Cappadocia as soon as we got there. Next time we'll make sure we visit Turkey in warmer months as the coastal towns and sea were stunning but just a bit too cold in November.

Having a great time in Jordan

Jordan
Jordan is great. Our time at the Dead Sea was so much fun especially our Spa Day. We visited the ancient Roman city of Jerash (article coming soon), famous biblical sites including Jesus' Baptism site, Mt. Nebo and Madaba/Moab  (articles also coming soon), Petra and Wadi Rum. Wadi Rum is a place that will live in our hearts forever and someplace we wouldn't hesitate to go back. For anyone wanting to travel to the Middle East but are a bit nervous I'd recommend going to Jordan first. We found travel easy, locals welcoming and many really good tourist sites.

Looking out the airplane window at the reefs of Ras Mohamed near Sharm El Sheikh

Egypt
Egypt for me is a contradiction. Some places we absolutely loved, some places we didn't really like at all. Likes include the Pyramids, Abu Simbel, Dahab, Sharm El Sheikh, Egyptian Museum and the Valley of the Kings. I really-really loved our resort in Sharm El Sheikh on the Sinai Peninsula. I found myself very sad when we had to leave, which was a first for the whole trip. 

Dislikes include Alexandria, central Luxor, Cairo, the overnight trains (hated those) and Mt. Sinai. I personally found areas of Luxor and parts of Aswan to be feral places filled with people who's only purpose in life was to sexually harass women or annoy the crap out of us with stupid comments. No place else in the other 15 countries we've visited so far on this trip was as bad as Egypt when it came to harassing women. Yes, in many countries people stare, we're used to that, and every once in a while you'll hear a comment, but the amount of crap that went on in the Nile area of Egypt was unbelievable. 

Pamela in front of the 7 star Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi

United Arab Emirates - Abu Dhabi
We concluded the Middle East portion of our trip with four days in the beautiful city of Abu Dhabi. We visited some amazing shops, a seven star hotel complete with a gold dispensing vending machine and took part in a super fun desert safari including dune bashing and camel riding (article coming soon).

North America is up Next
We're now in a very warm Los Angeles spending the holidays with family and friends. It's great catching-up with everyone while enjoying home cooked meals and familiar restaurants. Following New Year's we're off to Banff, Canada for snowboarding then to the Caribbean for a seven night cruise followed by a short stay in Miami then five nights on the island of St. John, one of my favourite places. After St. John we're going to head back to the West Coast for some more snowboarding in Mammoth, Tahoe and Park City. Following our fill of snow we'll be off to South America for our sixth and final continent of the trip.

Thank you to everyone who'e following us around the world and checking out our website. We're getting some great feedback and truly hope you're enjoying the posts and pictures.

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave