Ciao for Now

Whenever we talk to people about our trip, the first question that always gets asked is, “So, what’s been your favorite place?”  I’m sure we’ll get this question a ton once we get back (which is just fine with us…we love talking about our trip).  It’s just that it’s such a hard question to answer.  Literally every single place we visited offered up something unique and special which made it worth traveling to.  That said, we tried to rank some of our favorite places in various categories (a fun little exercise to help pass the time on long travel days).  But before our rankings, here are some of our favorite, most memorable experiences from our 320-day, round-the-world adventure (these were too hard to rank, so they’re in chronological order):

• Our first delicious French breakfast with our hosts Yves and Claudine in Dinan
• Paris with Anna’s parents…we must’ve walked the entire City of Lights
• Riding bikes through Burgundy…until Susan’s unfortunate tree accident
• Wine tasting in the Luberon Valley with Francois
• Dancing into the wee hours at Worldwide Festival in Sete
• Gustavo and Sarah’s Tour de Portugal…particularly wine and port tasting in the Duoro Valley, attending a Benfica futbol match and meeting Gustavo’s family
• Arriving via overnight train to San Sebastian just in time for sunrise
• Tapas tasting in Barcelona, Sevilla, Ronda and San Sebastian (and running into our friends Jen and Juan Pablo)
• Seeing La Boheme at the Arena in Verona
• Rowing a boat around beautiful Lake Bled, Slovenia…where we celebrated our two year wedding anniversary
• Island hopping between Korcula, Hvar and Vis in Croatia
• Discovering that Marija, our host in Hvar, is related to our friend Hillary (who later visited us in Thailand) and sharing some homemade wine
• Renting our own boat and driving it to the Pakleni islands off of Hvar followed by an amazing lunch at Dionis
• Watching a lightening storm from the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome
• Cooking class with our good friends Brian and Marisa in Florence followed by a scooter ride through Chianti
• Daily walks around Lucca’s ramparts with Johnny’s parents
• Hiking the trails in between Corniglia and Vernazza in Cinque Terre
• Riding through the canals of Venice on the vaporetto
• Randomly running into Johnny’s old friends Dennis and Robyn in Varenna and meeting up with them again in Sydney
• Watching the sunset over Lake Como at dinner with Johnny’s parents
• Hiking through a landscape like no other in Cappadocia
• A night on the town in Istanbul with our friend Fer
• Driving around the Cape Peninsula, especially Hout Bay, Boulder Beach and the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve
• Making friends and taking in the views at our hostel’s treehouse in Hogsback
• Touring a traditional Xhosa village with Jerry in Coffee Bay
• Hiking in  the incredible Drakensberg mountain range
• Our first of many elephant sightings as we crossed the bridge into Kruger National Park
• Early morning bush walk with Irving in Kruger National Park
• Getting scuba certified with Patrick in Koh Chang and seeing a sea turtle on our very first dive
• Playing Indiana Jones at the Temples of Angkor in Cambodia
• Street food tour with Tu in Hanoi
• Kayaking through Ha Long Bay at sunset
• Touring the Hmong villages and rice paddies around Sapa
• Celebrating Christmans, Anna’s 30^th birthday, and New Years in Luang Prabang
• Going down the river in a longtail boat past water buffalo and fishermen to Muang Ngoi
• Being “elephant owners for a day” with our friends at Patara Elephant Farm in Chiang Mai
• Setting off fireworks and lanterns on the beach on Koh Phangan with all our friends
• Diving in Koh Tao with Peter and Sheryl
• Touring Melbourne and Yarra Valley with Chad, Lisa and baby Julian
• Having drinks at Opera Bar in Sydney followed by dinner and drinks with Katie and Doug
• Driving the Milford Highway and cruising Milford Sound with Anna’s parents
• A home-cooked New Zealand feast at Jay’s cottage in Queenstown
• Picking blueberries at Windsong Orchard and working the Marlborough Farmers’ Market
• Observing ogoh-ogoh and Nyepi in Ubud
• Exploring the undiscovered beaches around Kuta, Lombok and getting caught in a rainstorm on our scooter
• Snorkeling with sea turtles in Gili Air

Without further ado, here are our rankings…or at least as they stand on April 9, 2012 during our 5-hour layover in Seoul, South Korea:

Over the past 10 months we’ve been faced with many daunting travel days. In the end, no matter how bad and exhausting they are, they are always worth the reward of arriving in a new country or at our next destination. We recently had one of our most challenging travel stints yet, from Renwick, New Zealand to Ubud, Bali (obviously not the most popular or often traveled route!). Luckily Johnny has mastered the art of travel planning and figured out how to get us to our final destination, Indonesia.

Day 1 started at Windsong Orchard, where we cleaned up the Blueberry Cottage, said goodbye to Bob and Jennie, and walked down the road to the bus stop. We hopped on the 9:55am bus for a 20 minute ride to Blenheim, where we switched to another bus headed to Christchurch. After another 4-hour ride, we arrived at a makeshift bus station in Christchurch (the original station is in the closed off part of the city that is still in ruins from the earthquake). Since we were lugging around our wheelie beasts and because it was cold and drizzling, we didn’t spend any time in Christchurch and found a cab to the airport. We had a lovely 14 hour wait from 4pm-6am at the airport where we attempted to sleep on the cold, hard ground in the arrivals terminal (sleeping at the airport was not as fun of an adventure as I thought it would be!).

Finally at 6:00am we were on our 3 hour flight to Sydney, Australia. After a 4 hour layover and some breakfast at the Sydney airport, we were on our final 5 1/2 hour flight to Denpasar, Bali. Upon arrival to Denpasar we were picked up by our guesthouse owner’s nephew and because of the rain, ceremonial processions passing by and traffic, it took us another 2 hours to get to Ubud (at least we got to see a little bit of beautiful Bali along the way!). Made, the owner of our guesthouse, met us in Ubud with a big smile and helped us traverse a small path along a river through the rice paddies to get to our new home. The view immediately made our exhausting two days worthwhile!

The moral of my story? Travel isn’t always easy, but (for the most part) it is always rewarding!

If you’re going to be stuck at the airport for 14 hours, you might as well eat nachos!

“Les Mis” trying to sleep at the airport	Fellow sleeping friends

Goodbye Australia!

Hello Bali! (Procession along the road by the airport)	The view from our room made the long trip worth it!