galmc2Report

It’s the penultimate day of our 6-week stay here, and the culmination of the vision of seeing what it would be like to “live” in a foreign city for an extended period (ok, I may have started this post in Paris but it’s being finished poolside in Naxos Island in Greece). We have reconnected with…

In January 1991 while on my inaugural backpacking adventure in Australia (I had “fled” Canada after my first marriage went under) I found myself in Melbourne at the same time as the Australian Open was taking place. At the time I was a fairly big tennis fan, and followed all the tennis major championships and…

I’ve had the good fortune to visit France on four previous occasions. I’ve been in many different areas (Alsace, west coast, Riviera, Provence) and seen much. But for whatever the reason, visiting the Normandy area and seeing the D-Day beaches and memorials is something that I have not experienced. When putting this trip together Heather…

For a long time seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in concert was tops on my list of shows I wanted to see. When we were in France for RTW1 in 2012 I saw he was touring, and finally had the chance to see him and the band perform in Montpellier. I’ve been…

Paris is the best place to just wander! Sometimes we pick a goal of where we’d like to end up and other days we just start walking and see where we end up. We regularly share many of our daily wanderings on instagram but I thought I’d just add a few more photos of our…

I’m pretty sure being here in Paris for 6 weeks constitutes the longest my travelling self has stayed in one place. In 2016 when we were here for the Euros I was here for a bit with Chloe, then off for a visit in Nantes, then back for a few days with Heather. As we…

I’ve long had a desire to immerse myself somewhere where I’d have to adapt to a different language. When we decided on this trip, my thought (thankfully supported by Heather), was to stay in Paris for an extended period. Not that I was a whiz in high school French, but I thought it at least…

I don’t know why it happens or what exactly prompts it… feeling grateful? Overwhelmed? Amazed? In awe? Older? In pain? Far away? Every now and again as I’m walking along a street, sitting in a park, or even hanging out in our apartment, I start tearing up. Just a little and then it passes. Here…

People often ask us how we plan for a 9 month trip. The most common questions are: Do you plan it all in advance? How do you decide where to go? How do you get time off work? How do you afford it? I’m not going to answer all the questions now but I will…

A special galmc2report shout-out to the lovely woman on our train ride today. We left Santiago and got to Ourense without issue, but we knew we had a quick transfer to get our train to Madrid (about 7 minutes). We handled the transfer like the travel pros we are (literally the new train was directly…