Oita & Beppu pictures, coming Home!

We have had a great week in Oita, visiting our friends Joe & Sayuri. We're looking forward to coming back home tomorrow (the 31st here)! It's been a great week, a mixture of tourism, shopping, and house construction work at Joe's new house south of Oita.

Here's some new pictures to enjoy!
Oita part 1: https://photos.app.goo.gl/eWbF26MX5jmZbvI52

Beppu, and Oita part 2: https://photos.app.goo.gl/atMus8FTnt9dZecA2

We're looking forward to seeing all our friends and family back home! See you soon, state-side! =)

Now in Oita! and Kyoto pictures part 2

We are now down in Oita, Japan, visiting our friend Joe and his wife, Sayuri! Joe is originally from Alaska, but he's lived in Japan for over 20 years. We met him in 2013 through couchsurfing, became good friends, and we've been coming back to visit ever since.

We're having a lovely leisurely time visiting with them, and just doing some shopping and light sight-seeing here. Our first night in Oita, we went to a local Hawaiian-style bar & restaurant for a salsa dance! A very fun evening, and nice to get some dancing in.

Today, Devlin, Joe & a new friend, Carlos, are on a bike ride over to nearby Beppu. I'm off to do a little shopping. =)

The weather has cleared up - a massive typhoon was going by Kyushu when we first arrived last Saturday. It rained and was windy up through Monday morning, and then it was past and moving north, and the weather became much nicer. Today there's sunshine and hardly any wind. We've been really lucky to get mild weather this whole trip! I think we've only had 3 days of heavier rain in all.

Here are some more pictures, from our last couple of days in Kyoto! Enjoy!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NqOZ40RPRzA3rEFk2

Kyoto & Kanazawa

Hello friends and family! We are in Kyoto, Japan, currently, and I am finally updating this blog. We flew into Osaka on October 11th, and then caught a train to Kyoto. After a first few nice and mellow days, we caught a train up north to a smaller town called Kanazawa, on the north coast.

It's been a lovely and pretty relaxing trip so far. We've been enjoying observing Japanese life, trying (or looking at) unusual food, and a change of pace from home.

Here's a photo album from the first part of our Kyoto visit:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/tsSGdzgrl8gmBwC43

And pictures of Kanazawa, a well-preserved Edo town with the famous Kenroku-en garden:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/oElk3POaoycFgi2R2

Photos from 2015!

Hey friends and family!

For those of you who wondered, I finally got the rest of our photos from our 2015 trip uploaded! You can now find them in our Photo Albums link area: Pai Thailand, Chiang Mai part 2, Vietnam, and Japan.

Enjoy, and apologies for the extremely long delay! Wouldja believe me if I said it's been an extremely busy year?

Back Home Again

Phew! It was so busy at the end of our London & England trip, that I am now writing the last post for the trip from Eugene.

We stayed with an absolutely lovely Hungarian couple in Basingstoke. Thank you to Emese and Bence for a super warm welcome and visit, despite the fact that they had just moved to their new apartment in the last 2 weeks! They are amazing people.

From Basingstoke, we drove up to the Cotswolds area on Friday the 25th. The weather was incredibly beautiful - blue sky with not a cloud in sight. We were lucky! We stopped in the lovely little towns of Bibury and Lower Slaughter, then finished our daytrip in Chipping Campden in the north.

One of the things that always is difficult when traveling - it takes forever to get places! We left by about 10:30am from Basingstoke, and we barely reached Chipping Campden before sunset at 4pm. Of course, we did take a nice long walk along a public footpath & bridleway in Bibury. I would love to go back and just do a trip hiking from town to town on the footpaths.

The town of Chipping Campden was particularly lovely. There are still houses with preserved thatched roofs, which I was delighted to see. The town is also the birthplace of the Arts & Crafts movement. One artisan shop is still going strong - Harts Silversmiths, which still lets visitors come right in to the workshop area. It was really amazing to see a working silversmith shop - so many tools and so much work!

From Basingstoke, we drove to return the car back to the Redhill car rental on Saturday the 26th. Then a long series of buses and subways (the train was undergoing strikes - whoops!) up into London, where we had an AirBnB booked near to Heathrow airport. We planned to load our bags down with chocolate and other treats, so a close hop on the subway to get to the airport was perfect.

Monday the 28th, we found our chocolate to take home at a nearby Lidl (after much searching!). And, we also found a whole leg of prosciutto! I am looking forward to slicing that up soon.

That afternoon, we had a last chance to do some sightseeing. We walked past St. Paul's Cathedral, then over the Millenium Bridge to Globe Theatre. And a final stop at a lovely knit and hand-dye shop, before we took the subway back.

All in all, a great trip! London is an incredible, though massive, city. Check out our photo album of the trip! Thanks all for reading. Cheers, and toodle-oo!

Not in London!

Ok, sorry it's been a few days since I updated this. But we've been having so much fun and have been so busy, I haven't had time! Truly.

We spent another great day in London and visited the Tower of London, looked around jewelry stores, fought the Christmas crowds in Soho and on Oxford Circle, and toured the beautiful old department store, the Liberty London. The Tower was really great - I had visited as a child, but I mostly remembered the gigantic jewels and the ravens. It was fun to re-visit as an adult and to really dig into the history. The Royal Mint museum in particular was fascinating.

We are now in Reigate, a lovely town south of London by about an hour. Our hosts here were Karla and Javi, and we had a wonderful time visiting with them. Yesterday we went down to the city of Brighton for the day.

This is way too short, but I'm out of time for now. We're picking up a rental car soon to drive to our next destination, Basingstoke, to visit and stay with a couple there. The next few days we will get a chance to do some countryside touring, which will be fun. Off we go!

In London!

In case you were wondering, we made it to London! Devlin was here for a week before I arrived on Friday, working working working. He picked me up at the airport, and we enjoyed a luxurious cappuccino and pain au chocolat once I had made it out past baggage pickup and passport check (long lines!).

We are now having a great time with a new Couchsurfer friend and host, Kam. It has been a great two days - and only 2 so far!. Yesterday we did some sightseeing at Westminster and Soho, walked through the National Gallery, and saw Buckingham Palace lit up at night with the Queen's flag flying from the central flagpole. (Means she's home in there, somewhere).  And lastly some really delicious Indian food at The Regency Club in Queensbury.

Today we had fun going with Kam and his two friends to a lake with a man-made beach, at Ruislip Lido. It was a lovely walk in the woods, which are so much like Oregon's, and then we warmed up with a cup of hot broth soup. Yum! After, Kam took us to the Sikh Gurdwara temple, which is the largest temple of its type outside of India. It was an incredible experience.

Tonight we've been invited by Kam to a charity benefit. It's a showing of a new short film which tells the story of farmers' suicides in India. I'll have more information to share about that event soon.

More updates and pictures to come! Stay tuned, cheers from London,
Tamara