I woke up on the floor this morning, geez it's been a while since that happened. Africa I think. I had a lovely sleep in our traditional Ryokan. We had a great breakfast this morning provided by the hotel; salad, boiled egg, toast and jam with tea and orange juice. We headed out into the cold and headed straight for the O-torii gate, the famous orange arch which is the main attraction here. It was spectacular, rising out of the sea with its orange hues r...

Darren could hardly contain himself this morning and was up really early for our visit to the Mazda Museum. We had a lovely breakfast, bought from 7/11 the night before. I had an egg sandwich and pancakes, which already had butter and maple syrup on them and an orange juice….these had set me back about 400 yen. ($4.00AUD) We ate at our table in our room overlooking the Peace Dome and watching it snow lightly. We hopped in a cab and I told the driver "Maz...

Well this is very unusual, I'm traveling with someone. His name is Darren, he is my boyfriend and it does seem a miracle has occurred. We are currently in Hiroshima, Japan and loving every minute of it. We arrived here yesterday after our night flight and then had to take three trains, two of them Japan's famous bullet trains. We were very impressed by how fast, clean and most importantly on time the transport here is and although that way of getting here s...

So here I am…randomly in Los Angeles. I got offered this trip two weeks ago, two weeks that subsequently became the longest two weeks of my life….not having left the country for 6 months does that to me now. I got to the airport and as usual I felt right as rain. Mum came to see me off and I went through to departures an hour and a half early. It was lucky I did because the queue for customs nearly took me that long to get through it, then security…...

For my next destination I chose to bypass Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia in favour of making a short stop on the way back to Dubrovnik. I chose the long trek to Belgrade in Serbia on an overnight bus. It was indeed a long and arduous bus ride, however, nothing like anything I had experienced in Africa. We pulled out of the virtually deserted bus station in Mostar and drove through the mountains with the sun setting. It was beautiful and although my predica...