once in awhile, i’m offered the opportunity to go on an international trip for work. the last one was to Beijing, China and previously it was Tokyo, Japan.

even though these were work related travels, they were both a blast! my colleagues in our regional offices took some time to show me around. i didn’t have a lot of time for sightseeing, so it was wonderful having someone show me some key points in each area.

Beijing has wonderful sights like the Summer Place, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and Tiananmen Square. so much good food i can’t even begin to tell you. the best meal i had was with my friend and her husband in a little restaurant close to where he grew up. no idea the name of it, or where it was, but it was super tasty!

Tokyo offered up more group entertainment as there were a couple of us on that trip, and we traveled together. Motown for many a drink, Bic Camera & Akihabara for electronics shopping, street performances in the evening, and starting each day with Western breakfast + an extra bowl of corn flakes. people watching at the Ginz and Shinjuku, a tea ceremony in a stunning garden and watching a wedding ceremony from afar.

i’m really thankful i had the chance to see both places, and was able to spend some wonderful times with my friends from work!

i have mixed feelings about my trip to Italy. the trip itself was really nice, and i would love to go back and see more of the country. but, the reason for the trip was for my honeymoon, and the marriage didn’t last much past the honeymoon. but that is not Italy’s fault by any means, and looking back, the honeymoon really was the best part of the marriage, so let’s just focus on the trip itself!

my friend SB put together the itinerary for the trip, as she had been to all of these places, and had a wonderful time. i started off in San Gimignano and then drove to Portovenere and ended the trip in Venice.

San Gimignano was wonderful. i stayed at a family owned B&B and out my hotel window i had a view of the town, or rather the walls that surrounded the town and some of the pillars & steeples. it was a short walk to town, and one i did daily while there. i also took some day trips and went to Pisa, Lucca and Firenze. the to Portovenere, along the coast.

i loved being by the water and having the chance to see the Cinque Terra. i wasn’t there for very long, but exploring the town was a lot of fun and i had some of the best pesto i’ve ever had in my life there. they even had pesto vending machines, how awesome is that?!

the last stop was Venice. although everything on the trip was beautiful, i think i liked Venice the best. i loved the canals, the air of mystery of the city itself. the pink glass lamps, the gondolas, the atmosphere, it was all as i imagined it to be.

i was attempting to create these blog posts in chronological order, but i have failed. i was putting together my Shutterfly.com album page to go along with my blog, and i realized that i had completely forgotten about Roatan.

Roatan, Honduras was where i learned to scuba dive, got eaten by sand fleas, and drank a lot of $1 beers. it was a really fun trip, and if i had an overwhelming urge to scuba dive again, i might consider going back, as it was pretty economical once you got there.

in all honesty i didn’t have a strong desire to learn to scuba dive, but a friend from work is an avid diver, and made it sound like fun. since i live in Northern California, getting certified at home can be a very cold experience. you can take classes in a pool, but the final is held in Monterey Bay. cold water and low visibility doesn’t sound like fun to me.

my friend suggested i go with on a vacation to Roatan, and i could get dive certified while they enjoyed multiple dive excursions. worked for me. i took classes from Native Sons and was certified in three days and went on a few dives before it was time to go home. i didn’t do anything fancy like a cave dive, night dive or shipwreck dive, but i was pretty decent at the basics.

unless you are into scuba, i wouldn’t suggest just vacationing in Roatan, there isn’t a whole lot to do besides diving. the people are nice, food is great, beers are cheap and monkeys steal your belongings. when it rains the internet and phone lines go out, but who needs internet anyway?!

sand flea note……a mixture of suntan oil (oil, not lotion) and Deet, seem to keep them at bay.

while my friends and i were on the Turkey trip, we decided it would be fun if we could go on a big trip like that every other year. every year would be ideal, but the reality is you do need to save up money and vacation days.

the next time we all got together (we live in different states) we figured out the best time for all of us to travel, and determined our top three choices were South Africa, New Zealand and Thailand. one of us had been to New Zealand before and that was the most expensive, so we ruled that one out. Thailand, although really interesting just didn’t have the same appeal as South Africa, so we decided that would be our next adventure. one of had been to parts of South Africa before, but we thought that would be ok, as it wasn’t an extensive trip going where we wanted to on this trip.

i love a good planning session, so i volunteered to put a trip together. i didn’t do it all on my own, for the first time i used a travel agency. i found a terrific place online called Travel Butlers, and worked with a wonderful woman named Susan. i told her the sites of interest we’d like to see, the budget we had in mind and the time frame we had to work with. after a couple of rounds of revisions, we had an itinerary. easy as 1-2-3.

i shared it with the rest of the team and it all looked promising. i was using miles for the airline portion of the trip, and since i was traveling from a different state i went ahead and booked my airfare, just to be safe. it then turned out that two of the four couldn’t go on the trip, sadness struck, but we, the other two, decided to go ahead with the vacation. it wasn’t the same without them, but it was a great trip. with the exception of the last hotel, the last night of the trip, i’d go on the exact same trip all over again.

we flew into Cape Town and stayed there for three nights, and got acclimated. two night

s would have been enough for us, but it all worked out fine. the rental car was brought to us the day after we arrived, which was a nice service. this was the first time i had driven on the opposite side of the road, very exciting. i’m happy to report the car didn’t incur any damage, all mirrors and hubcaps remained intact. while in Cape Town we saw Table Mountain and we went for a shark cage dive. not quite Jaws, but it felt that way. we drove to Cape Point, and went to Boulders to see the penguins (my second penguin experience).

then started the drive along the Garden Route. we stayed in Franschhoek and checked out a few wineries, and then headed to Wilderness and saw the Cango Caves in Little Karoo. next stop was in Knysna at the Mitchell Brewery (if there is a local brewery a stop must be made), and we spent the night next in Plettenberg Bay. Monkey Land, Birds of Eden and Tsitsikamma National Park. one night near the Addo Elephant Park, and then off to safari.

we stayed at the Pumba Reserve, and it was fantastic. we could see, and hear, hippos from our deck, and occasionaly saw lions just wandering down the path by the guest rooms. the food was wonderful, the staff amazing, Brad our safari guide was the best. there were two drives a

day, once in the morning and once in the evening. you were in a vehicle with 2-6 people depending on the day and time. we saw, elephants, giraffes, lions, lion cubs, cheetah, zebras, white rhino and a lot of kudu and other elk like animals. it was truly an amazing experience to see those animals in their natural habitat and not a man-made cement environment with one grassy hill.

that was the last part of the trip, and i was sad to see it end. after the safari we spent one last night in Port Elizabeth (total let down after the safari), then got on a flight to Johannesburg and headed our separate ways back to the states. Johannesburg has the best gift shops i have ever seen btw. again, i’d do this same trip all over again, it was just a great time spent with a great friend.

that trip to London and France was the first of many trips i have made with my friends.

the second trip was to Turkey. my friends have a colleague originally from Turkey, and he and his family go every summer for a visit. he mentioned it would be fun if my friends went to Turkey while they were there, and he could show them around. enough said, a group was formed, and off to Istanbul we went.

we started and ended the trip in Istanbul, and we went to Cappadocia and Bodrum as well. We took a tour of Ephesus, went on a long hike and saw many old churches and homes built into hillsides. fairy chimneys, a hot air balloon ride, and a 3-night trip on the Aegean Sea. a very long bus ride, a lot of bartering, amazing tile work, the Aya Sophia, a Turkish bath and the Grand Bazaar. lazy mornings starting with strong coffee, cheese, cucumbers and tomatoes. afternoons spent enjoying Efes Pilsen with my friends.

this was a wonderful trip, and far too short, i think i could have easily stayed a month. i’m very thankful that i was extended the opportunity to go on this trip, and that we had a local with us to show us the world where he grew up. Istanbul, very different than the Bay Area.

everyone was having a great time and enjoying being in London. Westminster Abbey, London Tower, Buckingham Palace and just wandering through the streets seeing what there was to see. in addition to my quick jaunt to France, i also went to Wales. a colleague of mine from work lives there, so i took the opportunity to visit.

lots of rolling hills, sheep and castles. oh, and some very long words with a lot of vowels. araf. not a long word, but one of the few i remember. i had a great visit and got to see my friends studio in addition to the countryside. i was introduced to Ali G (not literally) and McVitties Digestives, it really doesn’t get much better than that. i was only there for one evening, and then headed back to London the next day.

since we were celebrating a 30th birthday in addition to New Year’s Eve, we decided to go big and went to dinner at Mr. Chows. what a party that was, they really did it up and we did it up on top of that, and it was an evening to remember.

a good time, a good trip, had by all.

after my cruise there was a lull for a couple of years before i went on another international trip. but the next one was a lot of fun…….

a friend of mine said, “hey a group of us are going to London for a 30th birthday celebration do you want to come with?” there opportunity was, knocking on my door again. hell yes i want to go. there were five of us traveling together, and we rented a flat for the week. we were going to be there for New Year’s as that is when the actual birthday was and that was the reason for the trip. if your birthday falls on any holiday you tend to get overlooked a bit, so a 30th birthday blow-out in London was one way to make the event special.

little did i realize that two other friends were also going on the trip with us, but it was a surprise for me, so i didn’t know they were coming until they knocked on the flat door. crazy! even crazier was that they were only in London for an hour before they had to be at the train station to take the Chunnel to France. “we’ll buy you a ticket and you can come with if you want”….ok, really? who is going to pass up a trip to France, so off i went goodbye London, hello Paris.

we were in Paris for less than 48 hours…….we had our trusty Michelin guide and went on the full walking tour and saw famous peoples homes (or at least the doorways), Montmartre, Lapin Agile, the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame to name a few. we stayed at a funny little hotel Notre Dame something in a room that was barely big enough for a bed and night stand and maybe you could get the bathroom door all the way open if you were standing in the right spot (on the bed). the wall paper matched the bed cover, which matched the curtains…..something to be said for over coordination. we also popped into to a few cafe’s, one of which was the Cluny.

ah the Cluny…… new friends were made and a lot of beer was consumed. my two friends were there earlier in the evening, while i was resting at the hotel. they showed up at about midnight and said they were at this great place and i should go. well alrighty then, let me put on some clothes and let’s go. so off we went to start the night, again. we hung out there for awhile, then moved off to a jazz club, and then my friends left, but i remained with some new friends. i spoke no French, they spoke no English, so we settle on communication via a very poor version of Spanish. we must have been entertaining to say the least.

post jazz club at about 4 AM i get the idea i really want to visit Jim Morrison’s grave site. i REALLY need to see it while i’m there. i’m not even that big of a Door’s fan, so it’s amazing how one little mention of something can become the biggest thing ever after a multitude of alcoholic beverages. the cemetery didn’t open till 6 AM, so we killed time at a cafe and then at the hospital. no, no one was injured, one of the people i was with worked there, and though it would be nice to give me a tour of where they worked. they had very clean bathrooms.

off to Pere Lachaise. i received my map of the cemetery and we made our way through. i gave my best to Jim and Oscar Wilde as well, and then decided it was time to make my way back to the hotel as we had to leave that afternoon to go back to London……..

phone box photo courtesy of venere.com
Jim Morrison grave photo courtesy of rankopedia.com