For a change we will try to leave the speaking (primarily) to the photographs: White: We were visiting Turkey but had no plan to see whirling dervishes. We thought they would just be cheesy shows put on for tourists. But our guide took us to an evening show at a caravanserai outside Cappadocia. There was nothing cheesy or fake in any way as we watched in fascination as … [Read more...]
Places we’ve loved: The Garden Route, South Africa
This post was going to be about Hermanus, South Africa. But Hermanus is just one of several spots along The Garden Route with eyegasm-inducing scenery, charming cafes and and enough whales and dolphins for an entire season of Mammal Planet. Prior to leaving on our trip to South Africa we announced that we were going to rent a car and drive from Cape Town along The Garden … [Read more...]
Two beautiful, tranquil places in Phuket, Thailand
We do a series on "Places We've Loved" and Phuket won't make it. Did we have fun there? Yes, we had a lot of fun. But if you're trying to decide where to spend limited time and money to go we wouldn't recommend Phuket. The towns are very noisy, crowded, chaotic and filled with fume-spewing traffic. Maybe we didn't get to the right places, but in our experience you couldn't … [Read more...]
The Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi is as advertised – grand!
On a recent trip to Dubai Blonde and Brunette's itinerary included a day trip to Abu Dhabi. This was a guided tour which is generally something we avoid the same way we do Donald Trump and poisonous spiders.But the price was right and Dubai didn't sound like a good place to "wing it" for two very Western sisters, one with a decided tendency to not behave demurely. For several … [Read more...]
Phangna Bay and James Bond Island, Thailand
Back when Roger Moore was James Bond and making the 10th Bond movie, “The Man with the Golden Gun”, it was filmed, in part, on an island near Phuket, Thailand. Even though the film was shot close to 40 years ago, was a critical dud and one of the lowest ranked films of the Bond franchise, the rock is somehow still a major tourism draw. The gun may not have been golden but the … [Read more...]
Weekly Photo Challenge: Lost in the Details
These weekly photo "challenges" are generally a fairly easy way to generate a post. But this week the theme generated ideas for selecting pictures but not much for generating prose. Mulling this existential conundrum (not that it's really either) on a flight from Pittsburgh to Boston this afternoon helped Blonde gain some insight into the difficulty of the assignment. Neither … [Read more...]
Places we’ve loved: Binibeca Vell, Menorca, Spain
Binibeca Vell is Blonde's location version of an ideal date: attractive, well groomed, friendly but not intrusive and doesn't expect you to spend the night after enjoying its pleasures. When Blonde and Brunette went to Spain for the TBEX Travel Bloggers' Conference we managed to turn a three day conference into a three week trip. Five days were spent on Menorca, one of … [Read more...]
Sushi for (some) one in Marco Island, Florida
Many days the thought of coming up with new content for the blog is so taxing that the stress can only be alleviated by consuming chocolate and wine. Today our blog topic was figuratively dropped into our laps and literally dropped into our swimming pool. The way to recognize that good fortune turned out to also be with chocolate and wine but with a celebratory, not consoling, … [Read more...]
Turks and Caicos in the Picture the World photo project
The Departure Board has a project of compiling representative photos of all of the countries in the world. This is ours that we submitted for Turks and Caicos and it was accepted and posted today. This is an interesting project to follow. Here's the url: http://www.thedepartureboard.com/tag/picture-the-world-project Maybe you have a photo to enter for a place not yet … [Read more...]
Places We’ve Loved: Genoa
When Blonde and Brunette planned our trip to the Cinque Terre and the Italian Riviera we scheduled a stopover in Genoa. We expected Genoa to be exactly that - a stopover, not a destination. As is our habit we bumbled into town in a small car strewn about with our possessions hoping we would be able to find the Hotel Bristol Palace where we had reservations. As we were arriving … [Read more...]