by Jeff Drake | Apr 4, 2022 | Travel
This is a placeholder for my upcoming 2022 Italy travel blog. Read the rest
by Jeff Drake | Feb 3, 2022 | Travel
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by Jeff Drake | Sep 17, 2021 | Travel
I swear, I’m going to figure this out! These are unedited, unordered, warts and all.. Read the rest
by Jeff Drake | Sep 17, 2021 | Travel
2021 Utah Road Trip Days 4-8 Sorry for anyone hoping to hear much more about our trip as it is happening and of course, the photos(!), but between technical difficulties (which I am still learning to overcome) and being too exhausted to blog at night after a long day,...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 13, 2021 | Travel
2021-09-12 UTAH ROAD TRIP DAYS 2 AND 3 Day 2 was a marathon, as it turned out. We had a 7 hour drive and I drove the entire time. This couldn’t be helped as we both thought there would be mountains to drive throough and Lisa does not like to drive those hills...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 11, 2021 | Travel
2021-09-10 Nampa, Idaho DAY ONE It was a long drive today, uneventful, which is what you want when you haven’t reached your target destination yet. Our destination, BTW, is Moab, Utah, where we’ll spend a week. Lisa and I traded off driving, which made the...
by Jeff Drake | Aug 20, 2019 | Travel
We just returned from a cruise to Alaska, a trip I undertook with some trepidation, given the rather not-so-good experience we had with a cruise to Mexico in 2013. For Alaska, we went with Celebrity, Mexico was the Princess cruise line. Our itinerary for Alaska: 08-02...
by Jeff Drake | May 15, 2019 | Travel
A number of factors caused my wife and I to recently take a rather (for us) sudden trip to Utah. We usually spend more time planning for an upcoming trip, but both of us felt the need to “get away” for a few weeks. Our house was becoming somewhat of a weight on our...
by Jeff Drake | May 15, 2019 | Travel
The name “Capitol Reef” is kind of misnomer. I first thought that it might be some kind of ancient primeval coral reef that had been exposed due to erosion, but I was wrong. It turns out that there is a relation to the ancient sea, but only in the sense that the rock...
by Jeff Drake | May 15, 2019 | Travel
The good times continued in and around our next stop, Bryce National Park. This park contains one of this country’s most spectacular geologic sights, the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument (more on this below). We’d been hearing and reading about a...
by Jeff Drake | May 15, 2019 | Travel
The last leg of our trip takes us to Big Water, Utah. This town is near Page, Arizona, which is home base for all things that are Antelope Canyon. And this was our primary target! As I mentioned previously, Antelope Canyon is on Navajo land, which means the Indians...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 29, 2018 | Travel
During our tour of Japan we got to meet with two different Buddhist monks, each representing different branches of Buddhism within Japan. These meetings were interesting on several different levels. I studied Eastern philosophies and religions a lot when I was in...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 25, 2018 | Travel
I have been pondering our recent experiences in Japan to try and put my finger on exactly what bothered me about our Japan trip. Generally, we had a good trip, but it didn’t really live up to our expectations and left us feeling that our next trip will be on our own...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 17, 2018 | Travel
Our tour was supposed to avoid cities and focus on “culture”, etc., but Japan is not some third world country. Everywhere you go you see a bustling atmosphere, lots of office buildings, stores and restaurants. Let me tell you, the Japanese are apparently huge...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 17, 2018 | Travel
One thing that was interesting in Kanazawa is when we got to meet with a Fukushima refugee couple. They currently live in Kanazawa and have a restaurant where we had lunch. (It was a vegan restaurant. I’m probably the only one who wasn’t thrilled with our lunch. Every...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 17, 2018 | Travel
Wow, the time has flown by! Too busy doing the tour to take time to blog. It can’t be helped. It seems to be that every time we travel, I am forced to blog about the trip mostly after we return to the states, rather than during the trip itself. That’s okay, actually....
by Jeff Drake | Nov 12, 2018 | Travel
It’s hard to believe that we’ve already experienced half of our tour of Japan! I tried to approach this trip with an open mind. Although I had been to Japan some years ago on business, I didn’t really see anything outside of Shinjuku near my hotel, so I didn’t think...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 11, 2018 | Travel
That’s Japanese for “sorry!” I left my PC in my bag while we went to the mountains and then had issues posting via my smartphone. Pilot error, of course. I’ll write more later. We’re off to see the garden again, this time lit up at night....
by Jeff Drake | Nov 6, 2018 | Travel
We arrived yesterday afternoon with a – thankfully – rather uninteresting flight. Actually, the one thing interesting about this United flight is that we experienced some of the worst airplane food we’ve had in some years. The food was almost unbelievably bad! It was...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 4, 2018 | Travel
Only a few hours to go until we leave for Japan! I tried to schedule a Lyft for 4:45am, but didn’t get any takes, so we’re going to the airport by ordinary taxi. Oh, well. My last post left on in Kanazawa. On day 9 of our trip, after tea with a local Kanazawa family,...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 1, 2018 | Travel
We’re getting down to the finer details for our upcoming trip to Japan – making sure our camera SD cards are empty and the camera lenses are clean; charging all our electronic devices; making sure we have the proper cables; printing out important documents (to go with...
by Jeff Drake | Oct 29, 2018 | Travel
Wow, time is flying! Par for the course for all our other Overseas Adventure (OAT) Tours, as the date for our trip grows closer we’ve now had a chance to talk to our country guide, Hiroshi Ninigawa, and have received a list of our fellow travelers. It looks like this...
by Jeff Drake | Oct 14, 2018 | Travel
My wife and I haven’t been out of the country since June and we were getting restless. So many places to see and so little time! Where to go? Our wish list of travel places to visit is long, so we went through a number of choices before making a final decision. We...
by Jeff Drake | Jul 5, 2018 | Travel
Hi folks! We arrived yesterday without any travel hassles, which was very nice! I only got about 45 minutes sleep on the plane and Lisa didn’t get much either, so by the time we hit the ack last night, we were both exhausted. As good fortune would have it, last...
by Jeff Drake | Jul 5, 2018 | Travel
The old science fiction book, Dune, has a saying that goes, “He who controls the spice, controls the universe.” This could hold true for Portugal, for its history is full of hard-fought battles, royal family strife, subterfuge and local stuggle, all over...
by Jeff Drake | Jul 5, 2018 | Travel
On the bus for overland trip to Evora and our first pousada! Last night I had a wonderful grilled octopus and an excellent red wine. Most of the wine here is blended. This is because many years ago they planted all kinds of grape varieties just to see which would...
by Jeff Drake | Jul 5, 2018 | Travel
The city has an ancient wall and reminds us of Tuscany. Read the rest
by Jeff Drake | Jul 5, 2018 | Travel
Had a great visit to Portugal! Just spent a couple hours at the Roman ruins at Merida. A very nice town! Enjoyed a wonderful gazpacho. The olives were outstanding! Read the rest
by Jeff Drake | Jul 5, 2018 | Travel
We have arrived at our 14th century paradise. It is beautiful! Read the rest
by Jeff Drake | Jul 5, 2018 | Travel
Yep, that’s Duke d’Alba. Yum! Read the rest
by Jeff Drake | Jul 5, 2018 | Travel
Our home till tomorrow. I have never been to a place before where you can see olive trees in every direction, from horizon to horizon! Read the rest
by Jeff Drake | Nov 19, 2017 | Travel
It seems silly now to repeat the refrain about how much I love Italy, but I can’t seem to help it. I really do… love Italy, that is. I could find reasons not to love Italy, if I looked hard enough, In 2009, for example, our first visit to Tuscany resulted...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 19, 2017 | Travel
Our last full-day in Sestri Levante! Thanks to the advice of our hotel manager, Santos, we adjusted our plans today to take a boat ride from the southernmost Cinque Terre town, Riomaggiore, to Portovenere. This spot is only reachable from the north by boat or a 4+hour...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 19, 2017 | Travel
Just a tidbit… We’ve managed to dodge a couple of bullets during our journey so far! First, like Italy-rookies (ugh), we forgot to validate our train tickets before boarding the train in Sestri Levante! Validating is required for any non-reservation train...
by Jeff Drake | Nov 19, 2017 | Travel
Today we visited Florence, Italy. For Lisa and I this was a “revisit”, as we were here in 2009. At that time, Florence threw me for a loop. It was my own fault, as I had serious misperceptions as to what I would find in Florence. In 2009, I had just...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 28, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
Wow, my wife and I haven’t taken a foreign trip in… months! LOL! Somehow, our last trip, Cuba, seems so distant, but it was actually just last March. Given the current situation with Cuba and Hurricane Irma, we’re grateful we got to see it before the storm. Once...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 27, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
We will be traveling to Switzerland and Italy for a period of three weeks. We will spend one week based in Wengen, Switzerland. This is a beautiful, tucked away town high in the Swiss alps. Here we will have fairly easy access to other points within Switzerland that...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 26, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
Woo hoo! Only 10 days to go! I am starting to feel like the clock is spinning faster and faster! Today Lisa and I nailed the train schedules (finally, yes!) and I even purchased a couple of tickets for all 4 of us for specific legs of our journey which other travelers...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 25, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
Lisa has been extremely busy gathering last minute details that need to be captured in our group travel document (will be shared soon with Mike and Denise). I try to provide as much support as I can, which primarily is editing, as I have probably forgotten more about...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 25, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
Wow, busy times! Lisa is appreciating more and more the benefits of having someone else handle all the itinerary details. Personally, I think Lisa missed her calling. She is so meticulous! She’d have made a great travel agent. One of the Italian cities we’ll be...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 25, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
It’s time. We leave tomorrow morning. We feel very much in sync with our traveling partners, Mike and Denise and are looking forward to seeing them again in the Zurich airport train station. We were fortunate and got good seating in the aircraft. It’s a Delta...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 25, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
We’re outta here! Mike and Denise have made it to the airport and are boarding as I write this. We’re just doing some last minute checks, taking care of the cats (who are NOT happy about us leaving again – they started getting antsy as soon as we...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 25, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
Well, we made it! The Delta plane ride to Zurich went without a hitch. We decided after that we will always choose the “comfort plus” seats for the extra room. Catching the train in Zurich was a bit of a learning curve. Getting the tickets was easy,...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 24, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
[We have been so busy, I haven’t had time or energy to write much. Well, I’m writing, just unable to finish it and post it.] Today, our first full-day in Wengen, Switzerland, was an adventure and included hiking… lots of hiking. We started out in...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 24, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
Sunday, for us, was a day of rest! We thought we would treat ourselves to a quiet day in town and check the place out. Lisa and I had one of those enjoyable travel “discovery moments”, when you decide to go look at something on the spur of the moment and...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 24, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
I Left My Heart in Lauderbrunnen Valley Yep, I know, I skipped Monday, the 25th. I’ll cover it in a future post. Right now, I just want to capture today before I forget it. What a wonderful day! Our plan today was simple and gratefully, carried out to near...
by Jeff Drake | Sep 24, 2017 | 2017 Switzerland
It’s hard to believe we’re packing up to go already, but we are! It’s been a great visit! I now can see why my friend, Mike, fell in love with this place. If you’re going to Switzerland, be sure to visit Wengen! Tomorrow morning is a 6:40am...
