How many Ukrainians can you fit into a trunk? It wasn’t a joke when we asked the question.Oleksandra shifted her body under the seat and we piled a few blankets over her. That definitely wasn’t going to work. How were we going to get her across the border? She had initially had her Ukrainian passport turned down for a visa by the Indian government, but in the...
“This is the nicest cruise ship I’ve ever been on” said my 85 year old mother as she surveyed the promenade area of Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas. The Navigator is loaded with lots of luxurious light fixtures, bronze statues, beautiful nautical themed areas and a funky sofa that frames the person sitting in it. The main deck is kind of like walking...
Malawi made big news when Madonna adopted kids from there in 2017, but I first heard about this East African country while hitchhiking from Kenya to Botswana on a crazy overland trip through the continent. Over half of Malawi’s eastern border is a massive sea of fresh water, named appropriately enough, Lake Malawi. The lake is beautiful, full of tropical fish and...
all rented an Airbnb that has us scratching our heads of how we ended up there. There’s few things that are as depressing as being stuck in a room with a non-working AC, bare walls, and bedspreads that look like they came from someone’s Grandma’s garage sale. I try not to book such places, but on those occasions where I’ve rented a place that...
The Rise and Fall of Le Chat Noir“What is up with the man holding the umbrella over a cat?”“It’s Banksy. And the large cat on the door is the 19th century logo of Le Chat Noir, a famous night spot in Paris.”The room was full of Pearland residents who had come to oppose my zoning change. Their glazed-over eyes indicated that they’d never heard of this Banksy fellow...
The greatest book ever written! (lately). Do you like to hear about other people's miserable vacations? This might be the book for you.
Visiting Santa Claus's lair while traveling in Finland was one of the highlights of my arctic trip but a refrigerator magnet just didn’t seem like a sufficient memoir for such an amazing stop. I settled on buying a fur of one of Santa’s “former workers” when the opportunity presented itself. For $130, it turns out that one can purchase a full reindeer hide at the...
It was Sunday again. Like in the movie Groundhog day, I had lived an entire day that was being repeated all over again. Such is the paradox of crossing the international date line from New Zealand to Tahiti. I had half expected to find myself in a place that looked like a Gauguin painting, but the area near the international airport didn’t feel like a tropical...
I knew two things about Samoa before my plane landed. “Talofa” means hello and one of American most iconic movie stars, Dwayne Johnson is half Samoan. Oh yeah, Samoa is an island. I knew that too. I’m not alone. There’s not a lot of information for visitors about this gem in the Pacific and what one finds is often hopelessly outdated or just...
Catchy title, huh? Its actually true (in a way) but more on that in a moment.Most of my friends thought I’d lost my mind when I told them I was going to Somalia. Maybe they’ve heard me say that I consider Mogadishu to be the scariest place on the planet. Maybe like me, they’d seen the movie Black Hawk Down with scenes filmed in Africa that were truly terrifying...