Blog Travel

The Scottish Highlands have two separate travel components.   One includes castles and distilleries and other touristy sites.   We found these were best enjoyed on a Scottish Highlands road trip.   The second is the natural beauty of the Scottish Highlands.   This second aspect of the Highlands is best enjoyed slowly.   We found that the best way to enjoy the Scottish Highlands was on an active holiday on a Scotland cruise.   We joined a seven-day Caledonian Canal cruise with Caledonian Discovery, a company that runs barge cruises along the Caledonian Canal and through the lochs of the Scottish Highlands, including the famous Loch Ness.  The cruise is kind of like a Scotland river cruise, except you travel through lochs and canals instead of a river.  The following are some of the things we did and saw on our Scotland cruise to give an idea of what it’s like to explore the Scottish Highlands on a barge cruise. Our barge cruise along ...

The Salton Sea is one of those decaying places photographers love to visit.  Nature is reclaiming neighborhoods that have long been abandoned, though some holdouts continue to call the Salton Sea home.  The Salton Sea stinks like sulfur and rotting flesh.  The barnacle shoreline is covered in petrified fish that died gasping for breath.  Streets that appear on the map suddenly end in dirt and sand.  Neighborhoods are ghost towns, full of gutted homes with graffitied walls and decomposing furniture. We both used to visit the Salton Sea as kids.  Rome used to go fishing for tilapia.  I’d tag along with my mom and her friend who loved bird watching at the Salton Sea.  You can check off hundreds of bird species from your bird watching checklist at the Salton Sea.  What we didn’t visit as kids were the Salton Sea ghost towns.  Our trip to the Salton Sea was prompted by my desire to practice some night photography and capture...

Tbilisi, the capital city of the country of Georgia, can be a little intimidating at first.  Tbilisi is a big, sprawling city with a mix of ancient sites, crumbling architecture, colors, both muted and vibrant, and new, modern structures that pop up amongst the old.  The city is long, like a horn, as it is situated in a canyon.  Most of the streets wind and curve, sometimes becoming alleys and occasionally even turning into flights of stairs.  The main streets are wide and the flow of traffic is never-ending.  Tbilisi has a palpable heartbeat and is buzzing with energy.  But once you get acquainted with Tbilisi, it becomes easy and feels familiar, and there are so many things to see and do in Tbilisi to keep travelers occupied for days.   Metekhi Church of Assumption and King Vakhtang I Gorgasali Statue The story of Tbilisi starts with King Vakhtang I Gorgasali , also known as Vakhtang Wolf’s Head because he had a wolf’s head on his h...

Scotland has thousands of castles, so it’s impossible to see all of Scotland’s castles in one road trip.  However, it also means that no matter what route you choose, there are sure to be a number of castles along it to visit.  Our Scotland road trip itinerary took us from Edinburgh and north through the Highlands through Stirling, Perth, Cairngorms National Park, and Elgin.   Part of this route is through Aberdeenshire, which has the most castles per acre than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, and is even home to Scotland’s Castle Trail.  These are 10 of the best castles in Scotland we included in our road trip itinerary. Edinburgh Castle A road trip through Scotland will probably start in one of Scotland’s big cities, and ours started in Edinburgh.  Edinburgh Castle is one of the most popular sites in Edinburgh.  Edinburgh is built next to a volcano and Edinburgh Castle is built on one of the volcano’s vents, so it is perched hig...