Japan! Third Time's The Charm?

 

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ur trip to Japan was suppose to originally take place in April 2011. Back then I was working full time and didn't really have either the time nor the energy to plan a trip so I reached out to a company called Samurai Tours and worked with them to conceive a two week trip for my brother and I.  We were scheduled to arrive into Tokyo on April 9.  Barely a month earlier, the earthquake that was followed by a devastating tsunami, hit the country and we had to cancel our trip.  I was so incredibly disappointed that we didn't get to go but grateful that the country managed to recover from that unfortunate event.

Faroe Islands and Scotland Travel Map.

 

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t's been ages, (like almost 2 years!) since I've posted up anything on my blog and that's not because I've not done any traveling but it's because I've done TOO much traveling!! I just couldn't keep up with all the posting. But I really do want to get back to doing it, I just have to figure out how to balance blogging with everything else that I want to do these days.

Scotland! Skye.

The Quirang.
(Photo by Luis Ascenso.  Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

If you had asked me, before I began planning this trip, to name an island in Scotland, Skye would have been the first word out of my mouth. I would then hesitate for a few seconds and then utter, "Shetland?" not relaxing that it was not just one island but a cluster. "Orkney?" would have followed in a similar vein. I don't think I was unusual in that I knew of Skye as being a Scottish isle but couldn't identify any of the others without prompting.

Scotland! Outer Hebrides.

That structure, perched on the hillside is Aird Druim an Tolla, the home of Alasdair Leonard and his trusty four legged companion, Ross in Finsbay, Harris, Outer Hebrides.  Alasdair rents out a twin room and for one night, Pat and I will be sleeping there.

After just a few short days roaming through the Scottish Islands, our roadtrip will continue, via ferry, to the Outer Hebrides. Our arrival point will be the town of Stornoway, the capital city of the Isle of Lewis and Harris, the northern most island in the cluster of islands that make up the Outer Hebrides.

From Perth to Ullapool Via Grantown-on-Spey.

Pitlochry
(Screen capture from YouTube Video by SeeScotland)

Tvillage of Ullapool, located along the coast of the northwest highlands is where we need to be to catch the ferry to the Outer Hebrides.  It's about a four hour drive to go to Ullapool from Glasgow, via Inverness, but we're going to be taking a two day journey starting in the city of Perth.   Our drive pretty much takes us along a section of the A9 roadway until we reach Inverness and there we head west on the A835 to Ullapool.  There are not a lot of main roadways in the relatively small country of Scotland!

Faroe Islands & Scotland! On The Road.

Photo from Unicar, the agency we rented our car from for our week in the Faroe Islands.

I 've been driving for almost 40 years and have done my fair share of driving overseas - most recently in Russia.  So I am very comfortable with having to adjust my driving style to match whatever the road or traffic conditions or driving laws are in the country that I am going to be doing a self drive road trip in.  If you really want to get a good sense of what driving in is like in any country, just search for driving videos on YouTube.  I think pretty much every traveler has posted up a video of themselves driving on a trip.  Nothing beats watching a video to get a good sense of road and traffic conditions!

Traipsing Through the Trossachs.

The A82 passing through Glencoe.
(Photo by Stuart MacInnes. Licensed under CC BY 2.0) 

We will be picking up our rental car at the airport and Glasgow and for the next 2.5 weeks will be driving around Scotland, including a route that will take us to the highlands and via a loop through the Outer and Inner Hebrides will bring us back to the highlands and then Glasgow.

Scotland's City of Art and Architecture. Glasgow.

Shadow Hand Puppets, Cowcaddens Underpass. Street Mural by Rogue One (aka Bobby McNamara) in collaboration with Art Pistol.
(Photo from the City Centre Mural Trail website.)

We will arrive into Glasgow by train from Aberdeen after spending a week in Shetland and Orkney.  I started researching Glasgow by looking for Airbnb apartments for us to stay in and noticed that there weren't all that many tourist sites to see that were not either castles or palaces or gardens.  Not that I don't like castles, palaces or gardens but Scotland is so full of these that coming to Glasgow to just see more did not thrill me one bit. 

Scotland! The Shetland and Orkney Islands.

St. Ninian's Isle and the tombolo connecting it to the mainland, Shetland Islands
(Photo by ThomWi. Licensed under Public Domain)

When I first started giving thought to the itinerary for this trip, I turned to the country's official tourism website for ideas.  By the way, that website is so informative that that is pretty much the primary website I used to plan this trip.  Another very useful website is Historic Environment Scotland which provides a lot of information on historic sites (there are lots!) throughout Scotland.

Scotland! Edinburgh.

The Royal Mile, Edinburgh
(Photo by Kim Traynor. Licensed under CC by SA 3.0)

From the Faroe Islands, we will return to Edinburgh for a few days.  August is festival month in Edinburgh and Pat and I will be taking in as much as we can in the 2 short days that we will be in Edinburgh.  Pat and both love the theatre and so our time in the city will focus on going to see performances of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, seeing works of art on display as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival and for one night, attending the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo which I am certifiably obsessed over thanks to the countless YouTube videos that I have seen of the annual event.

Faroe Islands!

Lake Sørvágsvatn, Faroe Islands.  (Photo posted on reddit by u/Sakemeister)

Our grand odyssey through the Faroe Islands and Scotland begins in the Faroe Islands which is a North Atlantic archipelago located 320 kilometers (200 miles) north-northwest of Scotland, and about halfway between Norway and Iceland. Between 1035 and 1814, the Faroes were part of the Hereditary Kingdom of Norway. In 1814, the Treaty of Kiel granted Denmark control over the islands, along with two other Norwegian island possessions: Greenland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands have been a self-governing country within the Kingdom of Denmark since 1948.

Faroe Islands & Scotland! Overview.

Fairy Pools, Isle of Skye, Inner Hebrides, Scotland
(Photo by Drianmcdonald. Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

I have a BIG trip coming up and I am so excited!  I started planning this trip more than two years ago.  It originated with a desire to attend the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, another of my life long dreams.  As so often happens, going to Scotland for the Tattoo was just the tip of the iceberg.  Before long, a short visit to Scotland turned into a five week long odyssey covering the islands and highlands that the country is so famous for.   Not to mention, a side trip to the Faroe Islands which are technically a part of Denmark.  Accompanying me on this trip is my ever intrepid travel partner, Pat, whom I have not traveled with since we explored Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia back in 2015.  She's getting up in the years (85 years young this year) and I don't know how many more trips she can do so I want this one to be a special one for both of us so I've taken more time than usual planning it!

Lebanon!

Lebanon is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus is west across the Mediterranean Sea.  Lebanon's location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland facilitated its rich history and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity.

Five Days in St. Petersburg.

Image from The Telegraph (Telegraph Travel)

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f all the places in Russia that I am looking forward to visiting, St. Petersburg tops the list.  I have been wanting to come visit this historic city for as long as I can remember and believe it or not, I had a chance to come to Saint Petersburg back in 1996 when I came to Moscow for a work assignment.  It would've been very easy for me to extend my stay to include a few days in Saint Petersburg.  But just about a day after arriving into Moscow, I came down with a bad stomach flu and while I was able to fight through it to do my work, it pretty much took all the desire out of me to travel to Saint Petersburg.  I have regretted that decision ever since so the five days that we will be there will be five days of dreams come true for me.  And I'm going to savor every single minute of it!

Packing List. Trans Siberian Railway.

A Richard Limoges porcelain box, a miniature suitcase, from Rochard.  This tiny thing is so beautiful!

Our Russia trip is just a few short weeks away and pretty much all the logistics (accommodations, train tickets, and tours) have been worked out.  Both Chantale and I got our Russia visas last week so we know for sure we are going to Russia!  We can now turn our focus to packing.  This is not an easy trip to pack for!

Three+ Days in Moscow.

Photo by Valerii Tkachenko.  Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The last time I was in Moscow, it was 1996 and I was there on a work assignment. We did have the weekends to explore the city and as long ago as that was, I still remember quite a bit about my time there.  So, planning for our time there on this trip has been relatively easy.  This time around, I will include those sights that I missed visiting in 1996.

Trans Siberian Railway Journey. Updated Itinerary.

It's been several months since I started planning this trip and since then I've learned a lot about the Trans Siberian Railway and several of the towns and cities that it passes through. As a result, what I thought would be our final itinerary back in February turned out to be the second of many iterations.  Planning this train ride has proven to be much more challenging than I had expected but I think it will be worth all the time and effort that went into putting the overall trip together.

Packing List. China 2018.

Photo from Tropenmuseum, part of the National Museum of World Cultures
( Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 license)

Hard to believe but I leave for China in just a few short weeks.  I feel I just got back from India not that long ago and in fact, I've not even done all the blog postings for that trip!

Not to mention that I still have some planning tasks to wrap up for the China trip e.g., buying our train tickets from Beijing to Xi'an, handling whatever needs to be done for my two cousins as they go through the processes of getting their China visas from the UK (a nightmare for poor Sook Kwan) and Australia, put together my travel binder, and offline all my Google maps.

The Land of the Tsars Via the Trans Siberian Railway.

Shamans Rock, Olkhon Island, Lake Baikal
(Photo by amanderson2.  Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)

This year I finally get to fulfill one of my long time travel dreams - to go across Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railway!  I am so excited that every time I think about this truly epic adventure, I literally burst with anticipation of the moment that I board the train.

She's Coming Too!

SK and I in Malacca in 1996...at least I think that was the year.  That was the last time I saw her in person.

When I sent my cousin Yim the itinerary to China, she immediately forwarded it to her sister, SK.  I had originally planned for this trip to be just for Bro and I - our annual trip together but it was beginning to evolve into a family affair.  At first, I wasn't sure I was up for it as my travel style is not everyone else's travel style.  I knew Bro and Yim would be okay but had no clue about SK.