Jim and I are an American married couple who have had the opportunity to live all over the world thanks to our work. We are both teachers, and currently we’re working in Ankara, Turkey where we plan to stay for the next few years.
We met in Bitburg, Germany in 1984, and married the next year. Our first trip together was to Copenhagen for a weekend tour, and we haven’t stopped since. Together we’ve traveled to over 40 countries, and individually more than that. We’ve been doing this our entire married life of over 26 years, and during that time we’ve raised two daughters which we took everywhere, and they still accompany us whenever work and time allows. To see a list of countries we’ve been you can click here.
We have some off-the-wall travel aspirations. In addition to going to as many countries that will allow us in, stepping foot on every continent, and eating a traditional dish along the way, we also have the curious goal of riding all modes of transportation on earth from camels in Mongolia, mules in Turkey, and elephants in Thailand to rickshaws in Vietnam, electric bikes in Cambodia, and ferries in Botswana, let alone driving on autobahns, the other side of the road, and every cow path that we come across.
Travel is about adventure and experience, and we want to do it all!
About Jim (written by Corinne):
Outwardly a little quiet when he first meets you, Jim is sneaky! If there is a closed door, barrier, gate, wall, that’s an invitation for him to try and get in. He will disappear in a heartbeat. I have often been worried that our next stop would be a jail cell, when we are in third-world countries where door guards routinely carry semi-automatic weapons. Of course, his response is always, “If we weren’t meant to enter, there would be a sign!” Either we’ve just been lucky, or my nagging has finally gotten through, because so far we’ve not been arrested and we’ve always had a great time.
Jim is the technical brains of this outfit. He configures, codes, and tweaks on a regular basis. He is also the driver on all of our adventures, patiently stopping, parking, turning around whenever we ask him to. Occasionally, he also will write a post or take some photos.
Jim loves to read, eat, cook, collect everything from snake skins to fossils, stomp in the woods, ski in the mountains, body surf, and have a great conversation over a steaming cup of coffee.
About Corinne (written by Jim):
Corinne is, in many ways, my alter ego. Where I am quiet and resourceful, she is “full steam ahead” and “damn the torpedoes!” While most people wouldn’t consider her a high maintenance traveler she does have some rather demanding criteria. Number one, clean bathrooms! Or don’t even bother stopping for a break. Well that is, unless there is a man riding a donkey down the side of the road and then it’s all about “STOP!” and out the door she leaps before the car has even slowed down, camera in hand, and 10 or 20 pictures shot before I even realize she has out of the car.
Corinne he is the extravert to my introvert. If it were up to her, we’d still be on the side of that road chatting up that man on the donkey in snippets of whatever language she always manages to pull out of her reperatoire to get to know the people we meet on our travels.
Corinne is the writer in this team, pulling out details from our adventures that might be lost in my own travel fog. In addition to her passion of photography, she loves to walk in the woods, commune with the animals, enjoy a sun-downer, play poker, and talk to everyone she meets and find out about their lives whether it be on the street, in a taxi, or at the local cay or coffee house.
How we travel:
Seeing the Sights- We consider ourselves to be middle-of-the-roaders when it comes to hitting the sights. We certainly like to see the major tourist attractions in any country we visit, but we also don’t want to overdo it. For us, the best part of traveling is getting to know the people and just being there. We do try to hit as many World Heritage Sites as much as possible as well as a fair number of religious, political, and human interest types of things. For the most part, we find that if we stick to just checking off the guidebook recommendations, though, we are too tired to appreciate them…so we take our time and just try to have fun, and more importantly try to get to know some people, because that’s where the real experience begins.
Food- To us, eating is not only sustenance, it’s a passion! One of the best things about traveling is sampling the different food of the country. We are not so die-hard as to stop at the corner cricket vendor and get a bagful to eat in front of the TV, but we do give new things a try. One thing we’ve tried to do, and hope to expand on, is start collecting some recipes that we’ve enjoyed, and hopefully can replicate in our own kitchen at home. In our blog, we will happily recount those unusual tidbits that we’ve had the chance to sample, so keep checking that as well.
Accommodations- Travel is not a cheap pastime. So, we try to make the best out of it by not trying to scrimp, but also not going overboard with spending all our money on a comfortable bed. Once in awhile we’ll splurge, but for the most part we try to stay in guest houses. We feel we get to know the people who run the houses better than any hotel staff, and we don’t spend two-thirds of our budget on our sleep time. We have put some of the places we’ve stayed on our site and given our opinions of them, but if you like to really have the creature comforts of home, you probably won’t want to stay in the majority of the places we’ve stayed.
Entertainment- We definitely try to go to as many cultural shows that we come across. That means we may end up going to one or two touristy dance shows, but we try not to overdo it. We like to check out the pubs, even though we’re not big partiers, and we’re not much on “catching rays”, so we don’t really do the beach thing, but other than that, we try to seek out as many events that will give us just one more glimpse into the society as we can. We’ll try to tell you the ones we like and recommend, and also let you know which ones we feel are complete wastes of money!
Shopping- We aren’t big shoppers and even though we seem to spend, spend, spend, we never seem to have much to show for it, so you won’t find too much about that here.
About the Blog:
We’ve tried chronicling our adventures by going the traditional journaling and the postcard route, but honestly, we find those to be a chore. However, since we started this blog, it has been a lot more fun. Now, we take notes and photos, which doesn’t take up much time while we’re on the road, and then we come home and write them up. It’s been the most successful way to remember and cherish our memories as well as share them with our friends and family.
OUr stories include the places and sights that we’ve experienced, as well as some restaurant and accommodation reviews. Please note, we haven’t been paid or comped by anyone to write these reviews. (If that changes, we’ll certainly let you know.) If we write it, it’s because we think it’s worth telling you about. When we’re reading travel blogs, especially when researching our next destination, it’s great when they tell me the great places they stayed or eaten.
Since we started this blog well after we first began traveling, we have many stories and countries that we can write about, but the information may not be current. Therefore, we try to post a “Time-lapse” about once a month to accomplish just that. One goal it to put a few more recipes on the website as well.
As we are working five days a week during the majority of the year, our travel comes in spurts. We try to take advantage of every three-day weekend and school break to fit in as much adventuring as possible, as well as get as far as we can on a normal weekend. So, we don’t have something to post every day. Our goal is to post a couple times a week. YOu will notice there are some gaps. What can I say, life gets in the way sometimes. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please sign up via email or RSS. We’d appreciate it.
Meet Up:
If you happen to be coming through Ankara on your travels, let us know. We’d love to meet you and swap travel tales.
