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The Isle of Man
Just recently we traveled to a brand new country for us and one that you do not hear a lot about except for the famous TT motorcycle race that occurs on the Island. I can tell you this is a country that should be talk about and visited more as we found the Island to be beautiful with a large variety to do that will take you through thousands of years of history. The island has Neolithic sites, a long Viking history, medieval castles, special steam trains and electric railroads and so much more. The people of the Isle of Man also make this country a special place. The people…
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Mental Healthcare in Texas and the US
Travel can have a lot of great benefits and one includes getting you away and trying something different. That can greatly help someone’s mental health. As of late unfortunately there have been many different meltdowns in the travel world that can effect people’s mental health in a negative way along with all the other stress in life. Mental Health issues are a pandemic in itself in the US today. I personally know many people that struggle with Anxiety, depression, panic attacks and more due to a wide variety of things. The Covid-19 Pandemic increased the issues around Mental Health around the World. While there is so much need for care…
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2022 in Travel
As 2022 come to a close I reflect on a huge year of Travel for Donna and I. In the past year we ultimately traveled over 90,000 miles, to 22 different countries and 8 different states this year. We visited Europe, the Middle East, Central America, The Caribbean and some different parts of the United States. We visited 8 completely new countries for us and with the 22 countries in a year beat are previous record of 14 countries in a year. We for the first time had a Southwest Airlines Companion Pass and A-List Preferred Status so we too advantage of it and tried to travel as much as…
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The People of Our Travels – Shops
When you travel you once again head to local stores to pick up a number of things from souvenirs, to necessities and just to browse. Like anywhere in travel if you take the time you can meet some friendly people willing to talk and you can once again learn a lot about their country and living where you are visiting. We have had the chance to talk with a lot of interesting people at some of the shops we have visited when we have had the time to chat. Here are a few stories from our travels around the world while shopping. A Hobby for Nice People in Vienna, Austria…
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Help Those Through Travel (and everyday life)
As we are now in the holiday season people start to get stressed with finishing things up at work, making sure all the shopping is done, possibly traveling through busy airports and so much more. Aside from just slowing down and making sure you reflect on the reason for the season and take time to spend time with family and do the things most important to you, you can also find ways to try to lift people’s sprits right now. We were talking with some friends we met on our Baltic Cruise and they mentioned that they keep cash on hand and give out small tips to the people who…
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The People of Our Travels – Restaurants
When we travel we do our best to try local food if possible away from the tourist areas so we can get a taste of local life in a country or city we are visiting. If we get a friendly waiter or waitress that is willing to talk we always engage them about their region and about their lives in general. While this doesn’t happen all the time, sometimes it might be too busy to have a conversation, we do have frequent nice conversations. It really helps us learn more and I have to hope it might brighten the servers day a little bit being able to have a conversation…
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The People of Our Travels – Intro
Visiting the sites and ticking off cities, states and countries on your bucket list is definitely an important part of travel. Trying new foods and going to wonderful museums and monuments is another great part of travel. One aspect people do not look at quite a much and is a very important part of our travels are the people you meet a long the way. Through our travels in The States or abroad we run into and talk with many different people from a very diverse cultures. The people we talk with might be the owner of local businesses. We might be on a tour and strike up a conversation…
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How We Travel Like We Do
I get asked from time to time questions like “How are you able to travel like you do?”, “How can you have a job and travel like that?” and “How can you afford it?”. While there are different circumstances in everyone’s life and some that you just can’t control that would hinder the ability to travel but in many cases you can do things that allow you to travel a little more. I’ll explain some of what I have that gives us the time to travel and some tips that could help you travel as well. Things Specific to Our Situation There are a few things that allow us to…
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Aruba
In September of 2022 we visited the nation of Aruba for the very first time on a very quick trip (just a weekend). In that short amount of time we learned a lot about this very diverse Island Nation that is so close to South America you can see Venezuela from the Southern part of the island. It was a great trip and I’ll share what we found about this very interesting country. About Aruba Aruba is one of the four countries that make up the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its kind of like Scotland or England within the United Kingdom. They have their own currency (The Aruban Florin) and…
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Thunderstorms and Staffing
Donna and I recently took a quick trip to Richmond, Virginia. If you have never been there it is a wonderful place full of history. You can visit Jamestown, Yorktown (last major battle of the American Revolution), many Civil war Battlefields and museums. On this trip we changed planes in Atlanta each way as there are no direct flights. On our trip back we ran into a semi-wild situation that we had never ran into ever before. Its another example of some of the situations you might run into in today’s somewhat broken world. Our afternoon flight from Richmond to Atlanta actually left early an all went very well on…
