Category: Natural Beauty
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Smitten With Australia
We were so smitten with Australia it is hard to write about our time there without sounding like a Chamber of Commerce travelogue. There was Brisbane, a charming city with a marvelous ferry system on its lifeblood, the Brisbane River, that winds its way through the city. It has one of the best outdoor spaces…
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Uluru Is Way More Than Ayers Rock
The idea of Uluru/Ayers Rock genuinely appealed to me. I love rock formations and deserts (in either order), and Uluru is one of the most impressive of them all, with a circumference of 9.4 kilometers, rising 348 meters above a featureless desert — higher than the Eiffel Tower or the Chrysler Building. It is in…
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The Beautiful Side of Tasmania
Most of my life I had no idea where Tasmania was, much less any thoughts about going there. In my ignorance I had thought it was somewhere in, or off the coast of Africa — mostly a jungle full of weird animals. But in late 2009, I ended up with two very smart software developers…
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New Zealand Redux
When we returned to the United States in November, we found a deeply divided nation. As Linda put it,“I never realized how angry people are. This is really sad.” When we left in January, the United States was even more divided. On one side there were the people energized by Trump’s victory and his vows…
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A Mini Adventure in Basque Country
As is often the case, we had two choices on how to get to Guernica — the easy way or the hard way. The easy way was taking the train from Bilbao to Guernica and then back to Bilbao. The hard way was taking four buses and a train. But then again, the hard way…