"There are only two kinds of people in the world, the Irish and those who wish they were."I was starting to get very comfortable with Spud (so named because, in just the right light, our sewing machine on wheels looks like a large peeled Irish potato), so it was time to get out on some of the winding coastal roads that surround the Emerald Isle. Rental cars in Ireland are often times returned with missing mirrors and scrapped up side panels, and it was easy to se...

With DH going through a significant amount of exhausting emotional and physical turmoil, I thought we needed to temporarily shut down our traveling in order to repair and regenerate however, she-who-must-be-obeyed decided that the best healing solution would be to reconnect with the trip we had recently abandoned. So within a couple of weeks we had flown from Barcelona to Nanaimo B.C., and then jumped on multiple planes to make our return to Europe (Dublin, Irela...

It's probably not fair to lump the beautiful Spanish cruise stops of Malaga, Alicante, and Mallorca together into one blog but for a couple of different reasons it ends up as our reality. Before detailing the first reason, our friend Hal G needs to stop reading (Hal’s name used to be John but after some great experiences on the cruise line Holland America Line aka HAL, he officially changed it). We’re serious… stop reading Hal.One of the few...

When you mention "The Rock" to any North American and you will normally conjure up images of Alcatraz Prison- do the same thing in Europe and I suspect that the immediate image is that of Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory that was ceded to Britain "in perpetuity" by Spain in 1713 and although Spain continues to try and regain the land, the overtures have been soundly rejected in two recent referendums (and unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Brit...

I'm not sure that our stop in Horta is blog worthy but given that it's the first time in days that we've seen dry land it's probably worth a pin in the map. It's a clear sign that you're travelling too much when you opt to take a 26 day trans-Atlantic cruise to Europe rather than put up with the miseries involved in flying. To be fair we had a good time on our last, somewhat accidental cruise so we thought we'd jump on one that, in add...