Dear friends, Before and after the wedding of friends Andree and Denis, we had the chance to look around the environs of Bromont, the town where they live. With just 9,000 inhabitants it is a small town but with skiing and nature trails all around, it welcomes nearly 2 million visitors each year. The main [...]
Dear friends, One of the highlights of my North American trip was to be able to attend the wedding celebrations of a dear colleague and friend Andrée to her charming partner Denis. Together with a few other Red Cross colleagues we spent several days with Andrée and Denis at their home in Bromont, Quebec, and then joined [...]
Dear Friends, A brief visit to the wonderful city of Montreal gave me a chance to shoot a few photos of buildings and graffiti around town and to enjoy a little of the Summer Music Festival. The city is celebrating its 375th anniversary. The mighty St Lawrence River close to Montreal. Approaching the city of [...]
Dear friends, As I mentioned in a previous blog, my friends Pauline and Mark have a Nursery Garden and Landscaping business with an emphasis on unusal and very scented plants, so their company name 'SCENTSATIONAL' is very appropriate. Their garden is full, full of fabulous plants and now in the summer many of the flowers [...]
Dear friends, After our visit to the magnificent Mesa Verde, we drove on for several hours through beautiful forested country with still a number of mesas visible above the trees, with racing streams and small lakes alongside the road and still the snow clad mountains visible beyond. Looks like a lion's head or even a [...]
Dear friends, This week I spent a couple of days at the Canyon of the Ancients Guest Ranch in SW Colorado which is owned and run by Gary Adams and his wife Ming. The ranch is a work in progress with the guest houses being up-graded and new buildings added over time. Since I was [...]
Dear friends, North, south, east, west .... this last post about our great New Zealand Road trip, is to share some highlights, make some observations and thank all my friends and family who made it such a fun, fascinating and fabulous trip. We travelled through both the South and North Islands and covered some 10,000 [...]
Dear Friends, The last destination on our road trip was Auckland where we had three full days to explore and enjoy the city and surrounds. I had thought to just do one blog, but decided that Auckland city deserved its own story as does the wonderful island of Waiheke where we spent a lovely day [...]
Dear friends, You cannot visit New Zealand and not want to learn about the history and culture of the Maori people of New Zealand, and where better to do this than in Rotorua, famous for its geothermal landscape and strong Maori traditions. The first evening we were in Rotorua we visited Tamaki Village, one of [...]
Dear friends, It has been almost perfect weather during our trip, and even the few rain days we've had have all coincided with 'driving days' so we've been lucky. Leaving the capital city, Wellington, we travelled north and after winding through the Rimutakas, stopped for a delicious big breakfast at Greytown on the recommendation of [...]