Category: Travel

  • My blog now allows me to post videos so I can now share some of the videos I took during my Antarctica trip.  I visited Antarctica with G Adventures on their Antarctica Classic in Depth tour from 8 November to 19 November 2012.  My trip summary is located here. More videos loaded on YouTube –…

  • we must take adventures in order to know where we truly belong So one of the first things you do at the end of an overseas trip, and especially on a nine hour flight home, is start thinking about the next trip.  Now that I don’t take 2-3 month trips every 2-3 years it means…

  • So it’s now over.  I’m finally back home after 31 days exploring 🇮🇳 India and 🇯🇵 Japan.  This trip come about after I cancelled my planned longer trip from October last year to Africa for 2 months (South Africa to Kenya camping) and Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.  I selected this smaller trip based on recommendations…

  • Saturday 16 May 2015 Highlights: Returning home. QANTAS flight 22 (QF22) boarded on time but my plan to have a spare seat next to me failed.  Instead I had a Japanese gentleman on the window seat who throughout the 9 hour flight kept getting up meaning I had to get up to let him out…

  • Tour Title: Japan Express  Tour Company: G Adventures Tour Leader: Tetsuji (Ted) Watanabe  Cities Visited: Osaka, Koyasan (Mt Koya), Hiroshima, Kyoto, Hakone (Mt Fuji), Tokyo Dates: 7 May to 15 May 2015 (Duration 9 days) Tour Type This tour is listed as one of G Adventures Classic tours. In short the hotels you stay at will be good to very good, there will be some included…

  • Friday 15 May 2015 Highlights: Skyscraper District, Akihabara electronic district A nice sleep in on my final day in Japan, using all the possible time until the 10 am check out since I didn’t originally have anything planned but that didn’t stop my roommate Alex from adding me to his plans for the day.  With the…

  • Thursday 14 May 2015 Highlights: Robot Show, Harajuku Takeshita Street, Tsukiji Fish Market, Farewell Dinner. After a relaxing nights sleep in our traditional ryokan room and a Western style included buffet breakfast it was time to say goodbye to Hakone and Mt Fuji and head to Tokyo which at least for me was a return to were…

  • Wednesday 13 May 2015 Highlights: Mt Fuji, Lake Ashino-Ko, Hakone Gore Park, Kaiseki meal, Karaoke. We left Kyoto early to a beautiful morning, it seems we have seen the last of the rain. We gain send our main bags onto Tokyo and packed our day bags for one night’s stay. To get to Hakone we used several forms of…

  • Tuesday 12 may 2015 Highlights: Tea Ceremony, Ninja Show, Golden Pavilion. Well the forecasters were right today was rain with more rain.  Luckily the hotel provided umbrellas for those that needed it otherwise we would have drowned.  First up was a visit to the Golden Pavilion at Kinkaku-ji, also known as Rokuon-ji, which is a Zen…

  • Monday 11 May 2015 Highlights:  Shrine Gates at Fushimi Inari-Taisha, Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, Sushi train. An early morning start leaving our hotel in Hiroshima for Kyoto that include two trains, the first was about 1 hour 30 minutes to Osaka and then another 15 minute bullet train to Kyoto.  Our hotel (Ibis Kyoto) was right across from…