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Q: What was your favorite place? A: This is the impossible question! We went to hundreds of amazing places – each was really cool for a different reason. So, here’s my favorites by category |
| Ocean Adventure | Blue water sailing, off Marmaris (Turkey) |
| Best Food | Provence (France) and Rome |
| Blissful Lifestyle | Tuscany & Umbria |
| Never-ending Nightlife | Barcelona |
| Wildest Party Place | Ios, Greek Islands |
| Dangerous Fun | Bolivia |
| Trekking | Inca Trail to Machupicchu |
| National Parks | Arches NP, Utah |
| Biking | Jointly Moab (Utah) & South Georgia single track |
| Coolest Beach | Avellanas, Northwest Costa Rica |
| Skiing | Jointly; Aspen & Jackson Hole |
| Antiquities Museum | National museum, Athens |
| Old Art Museum | Vatican museum |
| Modern Art Museum | Cuenca (central Spain) |
| Boy Museum | Air & Space museum, Washington DC |
| Cheap Excellent Beer | Prague |
| Ancient Ruins | Pompeii and Termessos (southern Turkey) |
| Awesome church | Blue Mosque (Istanbul) |
| Coastal Village | San Jose (southern Spain) |
| Scenic Driving | Northern Scotland |
| Coolest Mountains | Switzerland |
| Best Coffee |
Rome expresso bars |
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Q: What are your favorite cities? A: Rome, Paris, Istanbul, Prague, New York and San Francisco Q: What did you learn while travelling? A: What sort of question is this?!? Well (deep breath) … so many people aren’t totally happy with their jobs or life, but are still working like dogs so that they can earn enough to “retire”. In the process of “saving”, they’re literally squandering their youth, getting really stressed, not really having an enjoyable life and typically not really saving that much anyway. When they finally “retire”, if they ever actually do it, they will have to do “something” – it’s even more soul destroying to do nothing (novelty wears thin after about a week). This “something” hopefully will be something they really enjoy and feel good doing – ie travelling, helping people, pursuing a hobby, setting up a neat but small business, etc etc. So why waste your youth now – instead look at what you really want to do (once you “retire”), and make that your job now. Given a little brains and perseverance you will find a way to make it pay it’s way, and then you’ll be doing something you really enjoy – thus never having to “work” another day again. Of course, if you are fantastically happy with what you do – excellent – please let me know how! Also, we learnt that it’s really cool to travel when you’re young enough to really get into it – able to go extreme mountain biking, climbing through caves, trekking, scrambling through ruins, partying all night…. Q: Did you get robbed? A: No – a bit of common sense (see our travel tips) and a bit of luck got us through unscathed. Most of the people we met who had problems had been careless or let their guard down. Q: Did you get sick? A: Alcohol and partying aside, only once – eating dodgy rice at a bus terminal in Turkey (key lesson – don’t eat rice unless it’s been cooked freshly in the last hour). Apart from that, again common sense and a lot of luck. We did have some meals that we walked out from thinking “oh shit, now we’re in for it!!!” – we got lucky Q: Did you get ripped off often? A: Unfortunately yes – in some parts of the world is just a part of life. Turkey, Portugal and South America were probably the worst places for being scammed – often we’d pay $5 for something only to find out the real price was $2. The actual amounts were very small, but it was more the principle. After a while we got street-savvy and learnt how to negotiate / screw harder and were OK – it’s just a way of life in most countries. The worst people are taxi drivers in any country! It was actually quite fun to let Nika off her leash and watch her go at scammers – at times she would physically hit them! Q: Uhmmm, how much did it, arrhhhh, cost? A: About $A75 per day on average, excluding major shopping (new clothes, souvenirs, mountain bikes, etc). Western Europe and the USA are more expensive ($A100-125 per day), Greece / Turkey / Spain are moderate ($A50-75 per day) and South America is really cheap (around $A30 per day). The above is based on eating out 2-3 times per day, running a car through Europe & USA, seeing all the sites, getting smashed frequently and staying in cheap but tidy pensions. Q: What are you going to do now? A: Stay tuned! Q: Would you do it again? A: Absolutely definitely positively yes! My only regret is that I didn’t do it two or three years ago. It is amazing how much we can remember from one year of our lives – we have had thousands of new experiences and met dozens of really cool people! Can’t say this about a “normal” year at work! |
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