After being unceremoniously dumped at one of many Moscow train stations, we managed to track down one of the underground Metro stations. DH saw this as another attempt by me to save a couple of dollars by using the Russian metro (which, admittedly, was only a dollar each), but Moscow is famous for it's decorated underground stations which served as both nuclear bomb shelters during the cold war and propaganda vehicles (this underground communist paradise remi...

The Trans Siberian Express has almost the same mythical allure that the Orient Express has/had and like the Orient Express, there are a number of flavours. The one that most tourists take connects Moscow with Beijing via Mongolia but the 'real' Trans Siberian connects Moscow with Vladivostok and is the longest single train ride in the world. We've already been to both China and Mongolia and since we wanted the bragging rights of surviving 7 days and 6...

In conversations with some folks who don't glaze over when we start talking travel, I'm sure we come across as the quintessential masters of complex logistics. In truth, aimlessly wandering the planet is neither difficult (DH is still convinced that the internet is a fad in the same league as platform shoes & bell bottoms, but it has proven to be a magical travel companion), nor is it particularly logical. Our travels through South & Central America were ...

In Latin America, it would seem that every city & town has at least one central square/plaza, and there is at least one church overlooking all of those squares. These houses of worship certainly don't rival the great churches of Europe and after weeks of travel in South America, there was a 'sameness' to them that saw us zipping through a number of them. It was somewhat surprising then that the primary reason we were visiting Bogota was to see yet ano...

For years Columbia has been something of a no-go zone for travelers. Between armed-to-the-teeth drug cartels, FARC rebels, corrupt police, heavy-handed military, and right wing paramilitary groups there was the potential for the sort of unplanned adventure that made the relative safety of a stroll through Afghanistan, Nigeria, or Scarborough much more appealing (around the dinner table, the only thing Columbian bad guys could agree on was that robbing and/or kidn...