For anyone who is interested, I finally got around to uploading a bunch of photos from my recent California trip to Flickr. You can see the whole set here.

Unfortunately, I still only have a basic Flickr account, which means some of my older photos from other trips are now no longer visible. I’ve been contemplating upgrading to a Flickr Pro account lately, but it seems a bit expensive for what you get. Does anyone out there recommend Flickr Pro? Are there any worthwhile alternatives?

I do plan to write up some travel logs from the trip, but I realize I still haven’t finished writing up the details of our U.K. trip either. I’ll get around to that as soon as I can. Somehow I need to find more time to write in this blog. Speaking of which, I think it’s also time for a redesign. I’m getting sick of the current look, and I want to reorganize things a bit. I guess that will be another project for the summer. Stay tuned!

Well it’s been almost 5 months since Alicia and I returned from our short little jaunt over to the U.K., and I don’t know if anyone’s actually been waiting for these travel logs or not, but they’re obviously long overdue. It ended up being a bit of work to construct coherent paragraphs from the haphazard notes that I had scribbled during our various train rides in between destinations. Posting this now seems almost irrelevant, but I still wanted to delve back into the details of the trip, if not for the benefit of other would-be travellers, then simply for my own personal enjoyment of reliving the experience.

Our U.K. adventure began with a fairly uneventful flight in to Gatwick Airport. At the time I was a little unsure if it was a good idea to fly to Gatwick, since Heathrow is obviously closer to the center of London, which was where we would be spending the first few nights. However, the Gatwick Express is a train that runs every couple of minutes directly into Victoria Station, and from there it was quite easy to catch The Underground to Russell Square.

A lot of people had warned us beforehand that taking the tube in London was super confusing and a bit overwhelming. In retrospect, I don’t know what these people were smoking because there couldn’t have been an easier or more convenient form of transportation. Not only are the trains fast and punctual, but they also provided access to a good majority of the city. (Toronto’s subway line is somewhat embarassing in comparison.)

We had booked ahead of time with the Hotel Russell in the Bloomsbury district of London. The advantage was that the hotel was located in a nice area, and central to just about everything we wanted to see. That said, it wasn’t necessarily within walking distance of a lot of major attractions, and we ended up relying on The Underground for most of the things we wanted to do. I know a lot of people who prefer to take taxis everywhere when they’re on vacation, but not only is taking the public transit cheaper, it’s also a good way to rub shoulders with the locals, if you will.

After we checked in to the hotel (which was quite nice, by our standards), we wandered across the street to Russell Square, a relaxing park where we were able to grab a quick lunch. There were pigeons and squirrels everywhere, and the pigeons were quite aggressive. There were signs warning people not to leave their food unattended, because as soon as you walked away, they would swarm the table and gulp down anything they could get their beaks on. Yikes.

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I was in NYC earlier in the month as part of a Dwyer family visit with my relatives (who live in New Jersey, just outside of New York). Being the nerd that I am, I noticed that the time of our trip coincided with the annual Wired Magazine technology expo, Nextfest. Needless to say, I talked Alicia and my cousin Simon into checking it out with me. I think they both secretly resent me now, but what can I say? We got to experience the future… TODAY.

I’m not too sure what I expected from this show, but it was a little bit underwhelming in terms of scale. There were still some pretty amazing gadgets though (and some pretty silly ones too).

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And now on to the final chapter of our trip, Crete. Crete is the biggest island in Greece, and one of the most popular tourist destinations. We stayed in Iraklio (Heraklion), which is the capital of Crete and the 5th largest city in all of Greece. This means it was a modern, bustling city rather than a quaint little town like Fira in Santorini.

The ferry to Iraklio was actually pretty painless. For some reason it was unassigned seating so we just sat wherever we wanted. The smoking/non-smoking thing wasn’t an issue as I think we managed to sneak into a non-smoking area. Most people slept during the ride… me, I tried to watch Flubber. I thought it might be better subtitled in Greek but to my surprise it was not. This ferry had nothing on the British Air flights in terms of on board entertainment, that’s for sure.

When we arrived at Iraklio there was a sound coming from outside that sounded like rain — which was simply unthinkable. It turns out it wasn’t raining at all, and we hiked to our hotel rather quickly. The street signs here had no English characters, so it’s a good thing Alicia was able to read Ancient Greek to translate the street names for us. Hotel Mirabello reminded me of a hostel we had stayed at in Geneva, Switzerland a few years back — it was clean and modern, but kind of plain. After showering we set out to find some dinner. The guidebook said that our hotel was on a quiet street… yeah, no kidding! The city seemed like it went completely dead after dark (it was only around 8:00) but once we found our way to the main square with the lion head fountain there were people everywhere.

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What do you do when the cable TV network you work for decides to completely change its programming, and pursue a new direction that just ain’t your bag? Might as well take a nice long vacation — how about, say, 13 months? — and just travel aimlessly around this vast globe we call Earth.

Sarah Lane and Brendan Moran are two former G4TV correspondents who worked on Attack of the Show, and decided to leave the network back in May in order to get married and embark on a year long honeymoon. The honeymoon would see them trekking all across the world, starting with a rather familiar destination… Santorini, Greece!

Staying true to their geek roots, they have launched a video podcast called The Traveling Morans, in order to document the trip using their trademark wit and dry sense of humour.

As jealous as I am of this full year of wandering that they have entitled themselves to, I look forward to living vicariously through their website updates. They’re off to Turkey next… can’t wait to see what these foolish American tourists get out of the Middle East culture.

Visit www.brendanandsarah.com for all the latest episodes.

The flight to Santorini from Athens was a short one. All I remember is closing my eyes, waking up and being offered a drink, and then being forced to chug back said drink and buckle up as the plane went into its final descent. We grabbed the first taxi driver we saw and got a ride into Fira for a lot more money than it was probably worth, but neither of us was in the mood to argue.

After trekking down a few sets of steep stairs with our monstrous backpacks, we located Hotel Keti, where, as promised, we had an amazing caldera view from our cliffside rooms. Santorini is actually a series of islands that formed when an old volcano collapsed in on itself during a massive eruption about 3500 years ago. We arrived just in time to see the sunset over the water, and no matter how cliched a romantic sunset may sound, this was the highlight of the trip for me. A camera cannot possibly capture the beauty of what we saw there. It’s all around you.

That night we wandered through the quaint town and its touristy shops looking for food, finally settling on a rooftop restaurant because it was the only place where a waiter wasn’t planted in the doorway, trying to drag us inside. At the end of the meal they gave us free shots of Ouzo on the house. Clearly it would have been rude to turn it down so we just plugged our noses and gulped it back.

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As promised, here’s the first installment in my travel logs from our trip to Greece. I enjoy reading other people’s accounts of their trips abroad… it’s such a better way to get a feel for the experience than reading any map or guide book. Hopefully someone out there will get something out of this and decide to plan their own trip to Greece (or anywhere else for that matter).

One of the hardest parts about travelling overseas is the flying. I am not a big fan of airplanes — it’s not that they scare me or make me uneasy, it’s just that I can’t stand sitting still in one place for such an extended period of time in close quarters with so many strangers. Maybe the real problem is that I just need to start flying first class. The flight into Athens was not overly long by some people’s standards (Japan is like 14 hours I believe?) but the killer part was a 5 hour layover in Heathrow. What are you supposed to do in an airport for 5 hours? We were able to kill some time exporing the multitude of overpriced stores before attempting to sleep for a couple hours. If you think it’s hard sleeping on a plane, try sleeping at an airport on a lounge chair beside a kids’ play area. Not to mention the announcements that come at 5 minute intervals reminding you not to leave your luggage unattended lest it be “removed and destroyed” (I’d be interested to know how exactly they “destroy” people’s luggage. Dynamite? Garbage compactor? I wonder.).

By the time we finally got to Athens and took a train into Monastiraki it was 6:30 pm or so, but to our bodies it was about 3 am. We still managed to stroll up to the Acropolis (our hotel was less than 10 minutes away) and have dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called Eden. Being vegetarian turned out to be not a big problem for us, despite the whole “Big Fat Greek Wedding” stereotype (”You don’t eat meat? We’ll make lamb!”).

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Well here we are, home again… and we’re simultaneously thrilled and disappointed to be back from Greece after only a week. There are those immediate comforts of sleeping in your own bed and having a shower with actual water pressure, but sometimes you wish you’d never have to come back to the real world and you could just go on exploring new places forever. The trip was wonderful, not just as a honeymoon experience but also as a much needed getaway from the routines of daily life.

Surprisingly, I didn’t go into internet withdrawal over there — it actually felt kind of healthy to be distanced from computers for a bit. About halfway through the trip I did, however, get the urge to start writing down some accounts of our trip, so I’ll be posting some short travel logs over the coming week (along with a plethora of photos for those interested). I also managed to get more reading done than I can remember doing in forever, so expect a post on that to come too.

In the meantime, stay tuned to this Flickr photo set as I continue to unload stuff from our cameras.