Around the World 2016

Our arrival in Krakow was immediately greeted with evidence of the World Youth Day in progress. Thousands of people crowded bustling sidewalks, many wearing brightly hued backpacks in one of the primary colors, with the letters SDM (the abbreviation for … Read More

While visiting Khao Yai National Park in Thailand, we met a couple, Adam and Ania, with their two young daughters, from Warsaw. After randomly running into them again in a coastal town – a couple weeks later and several hundred … Read More

One of the highest items on my list of things to do during this trip was to visit one of the last swaths of primeval forest in Europe. The Bialowieza Forest consists of 548 square miles of designated UNESCO-protected forest, … Read More

About a month before we packed up our lovely little apartment in Cary, NC and headed out on this great adventure, we met a fellow resident named Vilma at the annual Christmas social. We’d all lived in the apartment community … Read More

Originally, we had planned to travel from Moscow to Istanbul, then work our way north and west as we explored eastern Europe. Unfortunately, a failed military coup and resulting formal declaration of a state of emergency left the country unstable … Read More

The penny enjoyed the lovely scenery in central Mongolia… … before hopping on the intercontinental Trans-Siberian Railway for an epic 4,800-mile journey across southern Russia. After arriving in Moscow, the penny found a perfect spot to sit and admire the … Read More

We pulled into the Moscow train station and set off towards the station entrance with our new Finnish friends. We chatted and walked in the bright sunshine when suddenly, the daughter interjected, “did that say Stone?” I wheeled around and … Read More

WHAT WE DID: Rode the Trans-Siberian railway from Beijing, China to Moscow, Russia: 1 night on Trans-Mongolian line (Beijing to Ulaanbaatar, Chinese train) 6 nights in Central Mongolia 4 nights on Trans-Siberian line (Ulaanbaatar to Moscow, Russian train)   WHAT … Read More

While I was excited to head off on our epic train journey, I don’t think either one of us was pleased to leave Mongolia. Still, the train tickets could not be changed, so we resigned ourselves to departing and made … Read More

As our three months in Asia nears a close, it seems it’s about time for another behind the scenes peek at life on the road. 49 blogs and 6 countries later, the second leg of our trip is about in … Read More