+Our Travel Credentials

We travel with the concept that:

If we have no schedule, we aren’t late.
If we don’t care where we are, we aren’t lost.
If we have no itinerary we’re exactly where we ought to be.
If we can’t see IT this trip, we’ll see IT next time.

Our vacation is not a Destination, it’s the Journey.

Turn here, Explore there, Relax and Enjoy.
We have little concern for which country we might visit tonight or tomorrow, but we know it will be a delightful day.

We write only about places we have actually visited, and the information is not time dependent. During nine trips (1970, '79, '80, '83, '85, '88, '89, '91, '95) we visited Europe for nearly 1,000 days; spent time in 32 countries; slept at least one night in 452 spots in over 380 towns, cities, and various other locations. Except for the removal of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain (and the rebuilding of the war damaged city of Dresden, Germany), what we found of interest in Europe in 1970, had not changed in any significant way by the time of our ninth visit in 1995.

Included were 307 nights with 10 of Emmy's cousins in 2 countries — 291 nights in someone’s bedroom, 16 nights in someone’s driveway in our RV; 19 nights at the homes of other friends in 5 countries — 14 nights in someone’s bedroom, 5 nights in someone’s driveway in our RV; 605 nights in 406 sites in 26 countries in our Recreational Vehicle; 23 nights in hotels in 10 countries; 3 nights on ferry boats; and 21 nights on passenger and cruise ships. We drove the RV 87,000 miles in 29 countries, rental cars about 15,000 miles, and crossed international borders 227 times.

In the RV our clothes are on a hanger.
There are goodies in the refrigerator.
We know who used the toilet last.

Years of travel have taken us to dozens of countries on 5 continents, 11 islands in the Pacific, 9 in the Mediterranean, 2 in the Adriatic, and 7 islands in the Caribbean. Included are 49 of the United States, 10 cities in Mexico, and 9 Canadian Provinces, with hundreds of nights in our RV in 45 states and the 9 Provinces. We have extensively visited much of North America and Europe, have at least "touched" South America, and Africa, and several places in Asia.

Cruise ships and ferry boats, with us aboard, have touched at 124 different points on 5 Continents, on about 50 countries or major islands. Included was a 7 week freighter trip to the South Pacific. As Emmy often says, “No wonder I’m tired!”

My years in the computer business (starting in the late 1940s, in sales, consulting, technical writing, training) included about 1,200 airplane flights to 70 cities in 35 of the United States. My Merchant Marine ship spent a few days at Manila and Calcutta, and I was in Singapore’s harbor on my 18th birthday in 1946.

During both personal and business travel, I have “touched’ 85 airports in the United States, and 18 airports in other countries and islands, for a total of 103 airports. Maybe seven times we touched down and left some airport, but never left the plane.

We must agree with these comments: In “Innocents Abroad,” (1867) Mark Twain said, “I … … confess that day by day the mass of my memories of the excursion have grown more and more pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of travel which encumbered them flitted one by one out of my mind.”

In fact, we don’t remember any disagreeable incident.