Before going to Kruger, we had heard that game viewing could be a bit hit and miss because you are required to stay on the roads and the park can be overgrown. Our Kruger experience turned out to be fabulous and we saw much more than we had hoped for but we had already hedged our bets by booking a few days in one of the more famous private game reserves adjacent to Kruger - Sabi Sands. These reserves are home to some of the most luxurious and expensive lodges in ...

She-who-must-be-obeyed decided that we had gone far too long between safaris, and given that we hadn't yet visited the country (South Africa) that is home to one of the most famous national parks in the world (Kruger), it was time to figure out how to make that happen. At a size roughly the same as the entire country of Israel, Kruger is not to be taken lightly so we made arrangements for a guide to chauffeur the Princess and myself around for the days we wer...

Dubai is one strange city. Good strange or bad strange seems to depend on your mood and what you're looking at. Because of oil revenues, a large modern city exists where none should exist- on the edge of an Arabian desert. And because Dubai is the one city state within the UAE that is actually running out of oil, it is rapidly trying to diversify into a financial centre, airline hub, tech centre, and just about anything else it thinks might guarantee the fut...

As a final stop, our boat with it's very non-Russian, Russian crew (ie smiling & friendly) pulled into port and effectively became a floating hotel for the four days we were going to be in St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). I don't know if St Petes is the most heavily renovated city in world history but it has to be close. The tragic siege of the city by Nazi Germany during World War II left the place pulverized- it is clear that Hitler's intention w...

When trying to cobble together the logistics for the trip to Russia, I was left with the challenge of connecting two must-see places, Moscow and St Petersburg, and, although there are quite a few options, the one that stood out on Google was a river cruise between the two cities. River cruising seems to be a bit of thing these days but it does appeal to an older crowd so we weren't sure what we were getting into (the company we booked with prided itself on pu...