After a long, wet day at Petra, chest cold worsening and exhaustion setting in, we made the only logical decision there was, and booked a trip out to the desert. We headed down to the Wadi Rum with our two other tour members- The German and The Spanish. We spent an hour driving then got shuffled from our car to an open jeep and started touring around Lawrence's desert. We had mint tea with the Bedouins and climbed some rocks. We saw Lawrence of Arabia's house...

Brian learned two new things about me today. First that my whining has a whole other level beyond what he's experienced, and second that I can push myself to do things that no one thought I was capable of when I'm really determined! We crossed the border relatively easily though not only did they stamp our passports on the Israeli side, but they did it without a date, so we had to go back and get a second stamp. There's no mistaking where we've been traveling!...

And I mean that both in the way the kids of today (or more likely 7 years ago) use the term, and in the most literal sense. We're currently on a bus heading to Beer Sheva, trying to make our way down to Eilat. One ear has popped while the other is stuffed up and ready take over my entire brain in a haze of mountain roads. We're surrounded by soldiers, asleep with guns on their laps, and intermittent bouts of desert and greenery. Brian is snoring quietly besid...

We're sitting at the Dublin departure lounge waiting for our very delayed flight, so this seems like a good time to get caught up. Once again I'm finding it odd how little they notice who comes in and out of this airport. The woman at the Air Canada check-in actually seemed so confused by our passports that she asked if we were twins! We spent four nights here and had a fantastic time. We did a lot of the big tourist things- a day wandering aimlessly, the Gui...

Not surprisingly, I really didn't want to wake up this morning, but we had a date with the Connemara, and this time we knew exactly where to find our morning caffeine fix. Our tour started with us being told that everything would be done in reverse as result of the snow and difficult driving conditions; weather luck has not been on our side so far! We drove through the Inagh Valley en route to Kylemore Abbey. The terrain was entirely different from yesterday's...