June 28, 2016

Fabulous Butchart Gardens

Follow us on Facebook! We first visited the Butchart Gardens on our honeymoon in August of 1981, almost 35 years ago. We have been back once or twice since, but it has been quite a while. This past weekend we visited once more. And it is as gorgeous as ever with many new amenities added. Robert Pim Butchart and his wife Jennie bought the site in 1903, moving there in 1904 so Robert could build a cement plant. The area had natural limestone, an essential ingredient for Portland cement, so Butchart both mined the limestone from quarries on the property and built a factory to process the mineral. Jennie started the gardens…

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January 21, 2016

One Million Years BC – A Visit to Mt. Teide

Follow us on Facebook! In 2009 we took a repositioning cruise with our friends Chris and Sheila. The ship, the Navigator of the Seas, left from Fort Lauderdale and was at sea for seven days before finally reaching our first port of call, Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. As with all ports of call on cruises, there was a variety of shore excursions we could take. Or we could just wander around the town of Santa Cruz. We opted to take the trip up Mount Teide, the island’s volcano. Mount Teide last erupted in 1909 and is considered dormant. It could erupt again in the future. At…

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January 20, 2016

Sandsurfing in Lancelin

129 kilometers north of Perth lies the seaside town of Lancelin (about an hour and a half drive).  It’s a sleepy little town of 600 whose population swells to 2500 in the summer months (December, January and February in Australia). We took a day trip out from our daughter’s place in Ocean Reef in early January. It was very pleasant drive along the Indian Ocean Highway. The scenery was constantly changing from forested to scrub land to farm land and sheep grazing land. Along the way we spotted some emus in a field but we were going too fast for me to get my camera out in time to snap a…

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January 20, 2016

Welcome to The Destinations Guru!

My wife and I love to travel. Currently we are on a three month sojourn to Australia. In a few days we are taking a side trip to Singapore where we will be taking a cruise with stops in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Langkawi and Phuket before returning to Singapore for a two day stay. We have never been to this exotic part of the world before and are looking forward to it. We’ll be reporting on our trip, of course, but may not get around to it until we return. Our ship is the Mariner of the Seas, a Voyager class ship from Royal Caribbean. She is identical to her sister ship,…

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