A little bit of background📝 This post is a little different to the travel posts on my blog. It's less a "travel" post and more a celebration in pictures of Australia, the big brown land that I have called home for 30+ years. I was born and grew up in Aotearoa New Zealand. This post pays homage to my homeland. Australia is the count (ry of my adulthood, a place that has been good to me since I made a permanent move across the Tasman in 1989. Bottom left: Our son and daughter

A little bit of background📝 This post pays homage to the stunning beauty of my homeland, Aotearoa New Zealand. I was born in the country to an Australian mother and a New Zealand father, a descendant of British settlers. New Zealand is the land of my origins and of my childhood. It is also the place where I first ventured out on my own after finishing high school, transitioning into early adulthood after my family migrated to Australia. As I write this post I have lived in A

A little bit of background 📝 Our Portuguese winter wanderings took place in February 2025, building on our first expedition the previous May. Portugal is a country in which we are thinking about spending blocks of time in the next chapter of our lives. We’d fallen in love with Portugal almost immediately during our first trip. It’s such a beautiful place, with an air of authenticity and warmth that we related to from the outset. We planned our second trip for winter so we co

A little bit of background 📝 This post documents our second experience of Spain as two bookends to our Portugal wanderings. The bookends again took the form of a Brisbane-Madrid flight and a hire car journey into Portugal from Spain and back again. Why fly into Madrid again as a gateway to Portugal? We wanted to take advantage of Qatar Airways membership and our air miles, however the airline doesn’t fly directly from Brisbane to Lisbon. My experience of Qatar Airways over m

A little bit of background 📝 Our first experience of Spain was a feat of happenstance. The focus of our wanderings that year was Portugal, and Spain ended up being the bookends of that trip. We flew in and out of Madrid, hired a car, and drove into Portugal from there. The below map charts our journey in May of 2024, beginning and ending in Madrid. You can read all about our Portugal adventure in between the Spanish bookends. Why fly in and out of Madrid? I had joined the Qa

Exploring Portugal: Our first expedition 🔍 This post is the first of a series on our Portugal wanderings. Portugal is a country we have grown to love after multiple opportunities to experience its natural beauty, warm people, and whitewashed and stone buildings. Our first trip was in May 2024, the subject of this post. I've included some background below to give context to our experiences to date. A little bit of background 📝 Why Portugal? I'm something of a Europhile. The

The Second Great Girls' Adventure series This post is part two of a series of five that document the Second Great Girls' Adventure, a trip my daughter E and I took in October 2022. Our adventure included Amsterdam , Paris [this post], Nice , Cinque Terre and Milan [in that order]. Each place in this incredible list has its own post. I had been to Amsterdam and Paris previously, but was keen to experience both cities again, this time in more depth. Our other three destinatio

The Second Great Girls' Adventure series This post on our Milano meanderings is number 5 and the final one in the series on the Second Great Girls' Adventure that my daughter [referred to as E in my posts] and I experienced in 2022. Our adventure included Amsterdam , Paris, Nice , Cinque Terre and Milan [in that order]. Each place in this incredible list has its own post. A little bit of background📝 Our first Great Girls' Adventure took place in 2015, when E was turning 15

The Second Great Girls' Adventure series This post is number 3 in the series on the Second Great Girls' Adventure, a trip that my daughter E and I took in October 2022. Our adventure included Amsterdam, Paris, Nice, Cinque Terre and Milan [in that order]. Each place in this incredible list has its own post. I had been to Amsterdam and Paris previously, but Nice was to be a whole new experience. Exciting! A little bit of background📝 Our first Great Girls' Adventure took plac

The Second Great Girls' Adventure series This post is number 4 in the series on the Second Great Girls' Adventure with my daughter, referred to throughout my posts as E. Our adventure included Amsterdam, Paris , Nice, Cinque Terre and Milan [in that order]. Each place in this incredible list has its own post. I had been to Amsterdam and Paris previously, but not to Cinque Terre. I'd seen so many beautiful images of the five villages on social media, so I was excited to vis

The Second Great Girls' Adventure series T his post is the first in a series on the Second Great Girls' Adventure, a trip we took in October 2022. The "girls" of the title are my daughter [whom I will refer to throughout the series as E] and me! Our adventure included Amsterdam [this post], Paris , Nice , Cinque Terre , and Milan [in that order]. Each place in this incredible list has its own post. Going into the adventure, I was excited to experience all five places and to

A little bit of background📝 I spent three weeks in Toronto in July-August 2022 as part of my role as the Global Education Manager for an international travel assistance company. The organisation assists travellers in emergency situations from the help number listed in their travel insurance policies. The organisation I worked for is owned by a large insurance firm and it provides travel assistance to a number of other insurers and organisations. After almost 25 years in acad

A little bit of background📝 The subtitle of this post could be "part 2" as it documents my second trip to London in 2022 as part of the job I was in at the time as the Global Education Manager for an international travel assistance company. When I mean by travel assistance is helping travellers with insurance policies in emergency situations when they call the number in their policy for help. The organisation I worked for is owned by a large insurance firm and it provides tr

A gap in my travel experience resume🚫 There is a gap of almost three years between the London trip of this post and my last travel experience, to present my PhD research at a conference at Southern Utah University in June 2019. Of course I had no idea when I travelled to Utah that a global pandemic was coming. How could anyone have conceived of such a thing? I've called my month-long stint in London in 2022 "post-pandemic", but I'm not sure whether 2022 could be considered

A little bit of background📝 This post documents the six weeks I spent in London in 2023 during my time as the Global Education Manager for an international travel assistance company. The organisation I worked for is owned by a large insurance firm. The team provides travel assistance to policyholders from the parent company and a number of other insurers and organisations. I had left academia in May 2021 and worked in the newly-created role until August 2023. What a wild rid

A little bit of background📝 This post documents my travels to Cedar City in Southern Utah in June 2019 to present my PhD research at a conference whose focus aligned with the topic of my thesis on experiential learning. I presented at the conference when I was in the final stages of writing up my thesis before submission the following year. Little did I know then that this trip would be my last chance to travel before the global pandemic hit some six months later... All doct

A little bit of background📝 Back in London! This post explores my sixth opportunity to wander the iconic city. My four previous visits to London in the two-thousands had been part of conference and work projects. I’d be fortunate to use available downtime to immerse myself in all London has to offer during those trips. This London trip was a family experience, to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in April of 2018. Our daughter, referred to as E in my posts, who was 17 a

A little bit of background📝 This post documents our Northern Ireland wanderings as part of a two-week 25th wedding anniversary trip in 2018. We spent Easter in London then flew to Dublin to explore a little of Northern Ireland before spending a week in the Republic of Ireland . To start at the beginning of our journey, read my post on our London wanderings here. We [husband W and 17-year-old daughter, E] flew into Dublin with Ryanair from Stansted Airport, relatively free

A little bit of background📝 This post documents our week-long self-drive around the Republic of Ireland in April 2018. Our wanderings were part of a two-week trip to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, with our 17-year-old daughter, E, along for the ride. We started with Easter in London then flew to Dublin. From there we hired a car and headed north, for two and a half days in Northern Ireland, staying in Belfast and driving up to the Giant's Causeway before exploring s

A little bit of background📝 This post documents the few days that I spent in Los Angeles with our son, D, in 2012 for a period of downtime on the way back to Australia. I'd been with D on a Colorado baseball tour in which D played for an invitational team in a tri-state tournament. This was my third visit to Los Angeles after our initial stopover on the way to London in 1996 and our layover on the way back from Orlando in 2008. Since the Colorado trip, I've been again to