While the boys were in high school, we hosted several (15) students in the back two bedrooms. Many of them stayed with us for extended periods - two months to a year - and we promised that someday, we would come to Japan to visit them. In late October 2009 we finally made good on our promise, and visited several cities and students.

There are some tips and tricks we learned:

• Bring a handkerchief to wipe your hands on. Many of the bathrooms don't have paper towels. If you don't plan ahead, you'll be shaking your hands dry.
• Wireless is not as pervasive as you might think. Check out freespot for locations of public wifi
• If you are visiting several cities, get a JR Rail Pass. It seems expensive, but check how much you'll spend anyways. Plus- this is like a VIP pass in the terminals, you just go to the ticket window, and they wave you through. You'll also find yourself more likely to travel to places you might not have, since it's to your advantage to use it as much as possible.

Janell and I took a week trip to La Paz, Mexico (actually California Sur). We took a trip through BOA down the west coast of Isla Espiritu Santo. These pictures are linked to google maps - if you click on the slide show, you can see a map of where they were taken.

Yes! MNR SCORES!

Last summer, Janell and I were traveling in Italy. As part of the trip, we rented a van to drive from Tuscany to Florence. The car rental drop-off location, as well as our hotel, were apparently located inside of the city of Florence. For those of you driving in Italy, you'll want to know that there are locations where cars are excluded, and if you drive in those areas, you will be fined. Florence is one of those cities. These are called ZTL (Zona a Traffico Limitato - Limited Traffic Zones). It will cost you 82 Euros if you get caught in these zones - and you WILL get caught.

You'll first hear about this a couple of months after you return, via a ticket mailed to your home address. It points to a website where you can see pictures of you driving in the zone, your license plate, an english version of the citation, and other fascinating information. Oh joy!

But panic not. There is a way to resolve this. If you happen to have proof that you were driving to your hotel, then you have (short term) permission to be in the ZTL. I contacted our hotel (Florence Old Bridge) via email and explained my situation. They promptly responded with a note explaining that we were their guests, and to excuse the ticket. I printed out all the forms, filled them out to the best of my ability, stapled the Florence Old Bridge letter on top, and sent the stack back via certified mail.

Today, I received a letter from European Municipality Outsourcing telling me that my fine was canceled and my fine is settled.

I suppose the moral of the story is to notify your hotel that you will be driving, and that you'll need to notify the police station that you are in transit to get to your hotel. It will be cheaper and easier if you do it while you are still there.

This one takes a minute to load. Position your cursor towards the left or right to scroll the picture.



(by the way - this image was created using the Photomerge tool in Photoshop CS3, and the image scroller is a flash-based script written by Alar Pastarus. You can download the image scroller here. )

This one takes a minute to load. Position your cursor towards the left or right to scroll the picture.



(by the way - this image was created using the Photomerge tool in Photoshop CS3, and the image scroller is a flash-based script written by Alar Pastarus. You can download the image scroller here. )

Position your cursor towards the left or right to scroll the picture.



Yep - I dressed up while we were traveling in Rome!

In 1985, Janell and I took a trip to Glacier Bay with friends Mic Smuk, Kas Kinkead and Lyria Palas.

I'm going to hunt down my journal and include some interesting excerpts - but for now, here are some slides of that trip.