Athens, Greece

We were up before our alarm rang at 8:30, the first time this trip. Maybe we’re starting to get over our jet lag? It was just as well, as the bells on the orthodox church next door started chiming at 9am for Sunday mass. I think the bells are literally right outside our window! At least, it sounds like they are. The singer (?) had an excellent voice. The incantations reminded us of call to prayers at mosques where it’s broadcast over speakers.

The Athens half marathon was today, with a few road closures. I had looked up the full marathon when planning to make sure we didn’t hit it (that’s a busier time here) but not every event. I suppose in a city as big as Athens there’s always some event or the other.

We walked over to the National Archaeological Museum, in the Exarcheia neighbourhood. It’s another up-and-coming neighbourhood. The recent opening of new subway stops has kicked-started the gentrification.

The museum is large. We spent about three hours visiting, and could probably return to see the remaining. It was pretty interesting and well-labelled in Greek and English.

I had read up about a sandwich place, The Black Salami, about ten minutes from the museum. It was excellent! It had a very local vibe to it. We had an espresso and a miso cookie after our sandwiches. Mmm good.

That was it for the day. We got home, did some laundry at the laundromat (we don’t trust hotels to not shrink our clothes), picked out a restaurant for dinner with indoor seating. We ate at Athinaikon near the Holy Metropolitan Cathedral. It was mostly tourists but had pretty good food.

Athens, Greece

Today was a couple standing itinerary items we have in big cities - visiting the market, and the museum of contemporary art.

Varvakios Central Municipal Market is a short ten minute walk north of our hotel. It’s one of the cleanest markets we’ve seen. First we walked through the meat market, took some pics of the butchers with their giant cleavers, almost as big as A4 paper. The fish market is in the middle, and had no fishy smell at all, pretty impressive given its size. The fishmongers were very artistic about n their fish displays, some even adding vegetables for colour.

There’s a fruit and vegetable market nearby which we missed seeing. Later I also read that there’s a spice market too! It’s close by our hotel so we can return to see it another day.

We then walked through the Monastiraki and Plaka neighbourhoods on our way to the National Museum of Contemporary Art (ΕΜΣΤ). The neighbourhoods are more gentrified than Psiri (where our hotel is) and are filled with pedestrian streets, cool cafés and restaurants, and clothing stores. We prefer our location for a hotel as it’s a little less touristy.

We wound our way through the non-grid streets using Google Maps. There were very few other visitors at ΕΜΣΤ, we had most of the exhibits to ourselves.

The theme of the current exhibition is about respect for animals, which was ironic given that we started our day at the fish and meat market. The exhibition was well-curated.

The bonus was the restaurant on the 5th floor of ΕΜΣΤ, with great views of the Acropolis. We split a club sandwich and a salad which was okay, but you’re really here for the view.

Our route home took us past Philopappos Hill, so we took the ten minute detour to walk up to the top. It’s a cobblestone road all the way up. The pic of the Acropolis from the viewpoint is the best one in my opinion, as you get the Parthenon, Propylaea and Odeon of Herodes Atticus all in the frame. We had the viewpoint to ourselves for part of the time we were up there!

Walked back home along the familiar route around the south side of the Acropolis.

We ate at Aesop Fables, very close to the hotel. It was okay, we much preferred the other places we had tried.

Athens, Greece

Panathenaic Stadium is built entirely out of marble, and was used for the first modern Olympics in 1896. It’s possible to tour the stadium so that’s where we headed this morning, about a 25 minute walk from our hotel.

On the way there, we passed by the Holy Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, so stopped to check it out. It’s the preeminent church in Athens, used for state funerals and the like. It’s worth a stop to check out.

Carried on along the pedestrian street to the National Garden. We walked through the well-maintained park to reach the stadium. We could see the marble seating as we approached, it looked pretty cool.

Today was Melina Mercouri Day, where a lot of national sites are free. Unfortunately the stadium was not one of these :( We started by climbing up to the top of the stands. There’s a great view of the Acropolis from the midpoint of the stands. It was a bit breezy today so the flag was flying too. (Yesterday Heather waited a few minutes for the flag to show for her pic but there was no wind).

The marble bleachers made for great pics. There was a group of school kids on the field participating in relay races, they looked like they were having lots of fun.

We circled around the stands to the other side (it’s horseshoe-shaped, open on one end). Then we descended to field level, and explored the access tunnel, I guess this is where athletes would enter from. At the other end of the tunnel is a mini-museum of The Olympics, including relay torches and posters from every Olympics. It was pretty cool, and we didn’t even know it was there!

Next we walked over to the Arch of Hadrian. It’s close to the Acropolis Museum, and gets lots of spillover guided tour traffic. Right around the corner is the Temple of Olympian Zeus. It’s mostly under scaffolding, and right now not worth the 20 EUR entrance fee, except it was free today (see Melina Mercouri Day above). So we got our free tickets and entered. It will look nice once it’s restored.

We crossed over the street into Plaka, a trendy neighborhood, in search of a lunch place. Tried the souvlaki and gyros at The Greco’s Project, it was good. We get great Greek food at home in Toronto so maybe that’s why we’re not as excited :) it hit the spot though.

We got back to our hotel and relaxed until dinner. It was chillier this evening so preferred a restaurant with indoor seating (lots have only patio seating). Our hotel suggested Via Maris, about 100m around the corner from the hotel. It was a Friday night and a lot busier than the previous two nights, luckily we still got seated. We shared a number of small plates, they were all excellent. Our favourites included a Moroccan-inspired ceviche, a coppa dish and a sashimi dish.

After dinner we walked around Psiri (our neighbourhood). It was really hopping on a Friday night!

Athens, Greece

I had just planned for us to see the Acropolis this afternoon, in case we were jet lagged and just wanting to relax. We had timed entry tickets to the Acropolis for 3pm, which according to the internet was the best time to beat the crowds.

We had breakfast and felt energized, so decided to head out in the morning to see Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the amphitheater on the south slope of the Acropolis.

The Acropolis sits about 70m above the city, a bit of an uphill walk. It was pleasant as the weather was perfect again, 17C and sunny.

It wasn’t clear where the entrance was to the amphitheater. We first walked to back of the stage, peering through the gates at the theatre seating inside. Walked back up to the ticket booth. Turns out the amphitheater is only open for performances in the offseason :(

So instead we walked along Apostolou Pavlou, the pedestrian street south of the Acropolis, to the Ancient Agora of Athens. We had seen the Agora yesterday from the outside on our random walks; today we bought tickets (20 EUR each) and entered the ruins.

First we checked out the Temple of Hephaestus, one of the better preserved temples in Athens. It’s not that big, about 14m x 32m, so that took us about five minutes.

We then went wandered through the agora, strewn with unrestored marble blocks. The ruins are impressive from their vastness. Probably they are super interesting if you’re into archaeology.

The ticket also includes entry into the Stoa of Attalos museum. It contains artefacts from every day life, arranged in chronological order from the Neolithic to the Post-byzantine and Ottoman periods. Probably super interesting if you’re into archaeology.

It was time for lunch, so we looked up a place on google maps. It was okay, they did have excellent espressos.

Walked back uphill to the Acropolis. The internet said we could enter up to 30 minutes before our timed entry, but the ticket folks were having none of me doing my own research. So we sat in the shade and people watched for a few minutes.

It wasn’t busy at all today at the Acropolis; if we hadn’t pre-booked, we could have just walked right up to the ticket booth, bought our tickets, and entered. Oh well.

Finally we were allowed to enter using our timed-entry tickets. We walked up through the Propylaea (monumental gateway). The limestone floor and steps are really slippery from the thousands of visitors. The main attraction, the Parthenon, is under scaffolding so my pics are all just partial views.

We spent about 30 minutes atop the Acropolis. It wasn’t crowded at all - it was even possible to get tourist-less pics!

We took care walking back down the steps towards the South Slope. There’s some stuff to see on the slopes, nothing to write home about.

Overall we were underwhelmed by the Acropolis and Parthenon. If you’re in Athens, you have to visit here, but I wouldn’t suggest planning a trip around it.

We walked back to our hotel, had a shower, and headed out for dinner. It was still early but we thought our jet lag would catch up to us if we didn’t keep going.

We tried Tavern Klimataria for dinner, another recommendation from the hotel. It was really busy. We had a Greek salad, a roasted red pepper dish, slow cooked leg of lamb, and baked halloumi. It was quite good.

We were both pretty tired so just got back to the hotel and crashed.

Athens, Greece

Every trip has a point at which it feels like ‘okay, now I’m on vacation’. On this trip for me it was when we boarded the plane to Athens after our four hour layover in Cairo. We took a Cobus from the terminal, and it was 17C as we walked on the tarmac to board the plane. After one of the longest winters in Toronto, the warm breeze made it feel like our vacation had officially started.

A bonus was the ride on a Cobus, which long-time readers will recognize as my favourite brand of specialized transport. I find it funny at how they overly-brand their buses.

It took about 30 minutes to get through immigration in Athens. While waiting in line, we tracked our AirTags and saw that our bags had made it safely here as well.

We took a local taxi from the airport to our hotel. Our driver was familiar with Toronto and had visited Greektown on The Danforth! Although I’m suspecting many folks here have some connection to Toronto.

We arrived around 2pm at our hotel in Psyri, a gentrified neighbourhood near the historical sites in Athens. We unpacked and cleaned up, and then headed out to explore, trying to ward off our jet lag.

It was a perfect day for traveling - 18C and sunny. We walked around the narrow streets and alleys in Psyri, overflowing with cafés and restaurants. It felt like a movie set for a European street scene. It also didn’t feel overtaken by tourists, although I’m sure it’s different in peak season.

Scouted out a restaurant for dinner for later (Εστιατόριο Αυλή) that our hotel had recommended. The entrance is just a metal graffiti’d door to an alley, so not easy to recognize.

We then walked towards the Acropolis and other ruins. Every turn we took was another lively street scene with some ruin on a hill in the background. We have tickets to see the ruins in detail over the next few days (and also learn the names of each of the ruins), but as a first view, it was quite impressive. The relative lack of tourists was cool too. Heather said it reminded her of Kotor and Dubrovnik after the cruise ship passengers departed.

Anyways we spent a couple hours randomly wandering around. The Acropolis is high on a hill and made it easy for us to keep our bearings, so our wandering was just random and not aimless.

Around 6pm, we got back to our hotel, washed up and headed back out for dinner. Our homework paid off as we looked like we knew what we were doing as we opened the door to the restaurant. It was a really atmospheric place. We split a bunch of dishes, including the two specials, lima beans in tomato sauce, and an eggplant dish. It was all very tasty. They also had a very good 0% beer.

We were stuffed, so walked around a bit after dinner. The Acropolis and other ruins are all lit up at night and it’s really beautiful. It hardly seemed like we had just arrived this afternoon.

Toronto, Canada

We’re off on an extended trip again! We have about two months in Türkiye, Athens, Armenia, Tbilisi, Egypt, Malta and the Azores.

It’s a bittersweet trip for us, as Heather’s Dad, Kevin, recently passed away. He’s always been really keen on the details of our travels, with all sorts of questions about the history or the food we ate or about the uniqueness of places. Years ago, after my Mom had passed away, we had a trip through Bhutan where we raised prayer flags on a trek in honour of my Mom. I’m hoping we’ll come across some local custom on this trip where we can commemorate Kevin.

It was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle planning the trip, trying to avoid religious and cultural observances such as Lunar New Year, Tet, Ramadan, Easter, Orthodox Easter and Holi. The resulting itinerary isn’t optimized from a weather standpoint (for example it would have been better to go to Egypt before Armenia and Georgia) but it’ll still be better than the -10C that we left behind in Toronto.

There’s a lot of ruins to see on this trip: the Acropolis in Athens; Tatev Monastery in Armenia; Abu Simbel in Egypt; and Ephesus Ancient City, Ishak Pasha Palace, Ani ruins, and Sümela Monastery in Türkiye.

We’ll soon touch down in Athens to start our adventures!

Georgetown, Guyana

There was the same white noise machine in the room that we have at home, so we had a good sleep even though we were facing the rather noisy Rupert Craig Highway.

We had breakfast (they had excellent pancakes!) and then organized our taxi rides for the rest of our stay. For today, we booked a taxi and driver/guide for a couple hours to tour around Georgetown.

First stop was along the seawall. It’s recently been restored, with mangroves planted to protect from erosion. Our driver said the seawall gets pretty busy on the weekend, with families and friends out for a stroll.

Next we drove to St George’s Cathedral, which at 43.5m is one of the tallest wooden churches in the world. ^{[citation needed]} Walked around the perimeter and took our pics. Unfortunately it wasn’t open, as the interior is supposedly just as stunning, with the sun streaming through the stained glass windows. My friend Ram (who’s from Guyana) said he’s never see it open.

Drove by city hall, another example Gothic Revival architecture. There’s some really beautiful buildings in the centre of Georgetown. Parked outside Stabroek market, took a pic of the famous clock tower, and then wandered around the bustling market for a bit.

Our last stop was Bourda Market, a fruit and vegetable market. Took a million pics - the markets are really photogenic. I think it’s cause the vendors take a lot of care to arrange their fruits and vegetables in colourful baskets.

Ram had suggested we try guinep, which is a bit like a lychee. It wasn’t in season, so instead had a coconut. Our driver walked us over to a popular coconut vendor. He asked if we wanted it with jelly. We weren’t sure what that meant, but gave it a go. The vendor used his machete to slice off the top of the coconut and we sipped the coconut water. Then he split the shell into thirds, carved out a small triangle piece, which we used to scoop out the coconut flesh, aka jelly. We hadn’t seen that step in other parts of the world! It might depend on the type of coconut and how scoopable the flesh is, I guess. It was really refreshing, for 300 GYD each (about 1.50 CAD).

We walked back to the car, and drove back to the hotel. Along the way we stopped at a roadside stall to pick up some doubles for lunch. Grabbed a coke at the bar, and then ate in our room. It hit the spot.

We then got a WhatsApp from the agency about our Kaieteur excursion - the Kaieteur airpspace was being closed to all flights on Saturday and so all the excursions were cancelled :( We figured it was for some VIP - later we read in the paper that France had just opened their embassy, and it was probably closed for the French delegation to visit. Our agency people suspected the same. Oh well, at least we were able to get a good tour of downtown Georgetown today.

Looked at other things to do on Saturday, but we were feeling a bit lazy, plus the Jays had their first ALDS game scheduled.

Just relaxed the rest of the afternoon. Went down to the bar and had a virgin mojito which was excellent. (We had read good things about the bar staff here). Later we had dinner - it was pretty busy in the restaurant, our hotel is a local hotspot.

Georgetown, Guyana

Today was a transit day, flying from St Lucia (UVF) to Georgetown (GEO). Our flight wasn’t until 4pm so we had lots of time to have a leisurely breakfast. We packed up, which was a bit more complicated than our flight to St Lucia as we were allowed only one checked bag, and the rest had to be carry-on safe.

Drove through the cute village of Choiseul one last time, and continued past Vieux Fort. Filled up at the Rubis just outside the airport. Didn’t need the gas receipt per the attendant - the rental folks just looked to make sure the tank showed as full.

We had trouble finding the car return entrance, so stopped outside arrivals and asked the Sixt folks. They just processed the return there, which worked out great for us as we didn’t have to haul our luggage from the rental lot.

Heather had checked earlier that the airport was air conditioned. We’ve previously been stuck waiting outside terminals in some hot countries, so wanted to know before showing up three hours before our flight. It was nice in the terminal, however we had to wait 30 minutes for the British Airways counter to open. Used the time to catch up a bit on my blog.

Once through security, the departure area was super crowded. The departure boards showed all five flights for the day leaving between 2:15pm and 2:43pm. (It was similar for arrivals - five flights in the day, landing within 30 minutes of each other). You’d think they would try to spread it out, even just a little.

Had a roti in the food court upstairs, it was pretty good. Figured that would tide us over until we got to our hotel in Georgetown.

It was slim pickings for souvenir shops, there were only three, outnumbered by liquor shops. For our souvenir case, we bought a mini hot sauce by Baron, (the brand I really liked, it’s served in most restaurants) and a little St Lucia parrot.

Our flight was the last of the five to depart, so we waited upstairs in the food court, which has a nice view of the runway and surrounding hills. Watched our British Airways plane land. The flight originates in LHR and most of the passengers stayed onboard, continuing on to Guyana. There were only ten or so of us that boarded in St Lucia. The flight was about 75% full, so we had no issues finding space for our carry-on, albeit a couple rows behind our seats.

The flight was 20 minutes quicker than advertised - we landed at GEO after 1h15. I was too engrossed in watching the start of John Wick / The Ballerina that I didn’t even realize we were approaching until the wheels touched down.

We were amongst the first passengers in line for immigration. Unfortunately we hadn’t filled out the online arrival form (I hadn’t found that during my research), so we had to go back in line. Awkwardly completed the rather lengthy form on our phones while moving forward in the line with our carry-on.

It was mostly automated once we submitted the form. Scanned our passport, had a pic taken, the doors opened, and then a final review (and stamp) by a human, and we were in! Actually it was just me that had the automation - there were no VIPs so Heather and few other passengers got routed through the VIP line, which is a fully human process.

We waited about 30 minutes for our luggage. We could see in the app that it was here in Georgetown, so weren’t panicked. Finally we realized our luggage had brought in separately, not around the conveyor, probably all the St Lucia baggage was the same. Oh well.

It was quick through customs (they just asked how long we were staying and then waved us through). We exited the arrivals area and found our driver with our name on a sign.

We completely forgot about our plans to get cash (Guyanese dollars) in our eagerness to get on the road. Fortunately we didn’t need any this evening.

It was a long drive to the hotel, over 90 minutes. The oil boom in Guyana has fueled a huge infrastructure build-out in the country. In a few years there will be highway all the way from Georgetown to GEO. Currently though, the first half from the airport towards town is a big construction area. Felt like home in Toronto. Once we got to the highway, it was smooth sailing. Our taxi driver was excellent, really friendly and informative.

We arrived at the Grand Coastal Hotel around 8:30pm. Checked in, quickly freshened up and then went down for dinner. From what we had read, the kitchen here is excellent. Both our dishes were tasty - Heather had the house fried rice, and I tried the grilled trout.

It felt like a long transit day, maybe cause both the drive to the airport in St Lucia and the drive to our hotel here in Georgetown were longer than the actual flight.

For those counting, (Gerry and Tanya), it’s country 107 for me and 67 for Heather.

Anse L’Ivrogne, St Lucia

We were debating what to do our last full day here in St Lucia, whether to go on a hike, snorkel, or take a chocolate-making class. It was a quick decision once we stepped outside for breakfast and felt the heat and humidity - snorkeling it was.

We got our snorkeling gear together after breakfast and sorted out directions to Anse L’Ivrogne, about a five minute drive from the hotel. We had read that the access road to the beach was in terrible shape, but it wasn’t bad at all. There’s a resort under construction near the beach, so we had to park about 200m away and then walk in.

It’s the first time we’ve gone out snorkeling on our own - I had bought a small dry bag to hold our car key and other valuables. I had to google earlier on how to close it properly.

Anse L’Ivrogne was a bit choppier than the sites we snorkelled on Sunday, as the beach is less sheltered from the Caribbean. We snorkelled for about 30 minutes parallel to the beach. Saw lots of fishies, similar to what had seen previously. There was minimal amount of coral though.

We returned back to our hotel, quickly showered and rinsed out our gear, and then drove into Soufriére for lunch. It was one of our last chances to try a couple local dishes, Green Figs and Saltfish, and fish cakes.

We parked in town and walked over to Belle Vue and ordered. ‘Green Figs’ is actually green bananas, served with a mixture of shredded salted cod, lentils and cooked diced vegetables. Both dishes were excellent, the best fish cakes we’ve had traveling. The fish cakes reminded me of a battered eggplant dish my Mom used to make. It was well worth the 20 minute drive into town. Did some quick sightseeing about town after lunch - it’s a cute little place with a vibe to it.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in at Project Chocolate for a coffee and dessert. We saw the chocolate making class in progress. It looked like hard work grinding beans in the heat. We were glad we went snorkeling instead. We had an iced coffee from local beans, and some dessert. It was tasty.

Drove the rest of the way back to the hotel and called it a day. It turned out to be a pretty fun day considering we weren’t sure what we wanted to do at the start.

Cap Moule-à-Chique, St Lucia

It was nice to sleep in after our early start for birdwatching yesterday.

We had a leisurely breakfast. It looked to be another sunny day on the island. There was less haze than previous days - we could see St Vincent, about 45km to the south.

We planned out a little day trip to Cap Moule-à-Chique, the southernmost tip of St Lucia, just south of the airport in Vieux Fort.

Vieux Fort has been anglicized into ‘View Fort’ by both locals and tourists, which confused me at first. I thought there was a fort somewhere with a nice view, which sounded like a cool thing to see.

Anyways headed down to Vieux Fort, the same route we took to meet our bird guide. We turned south at the airport, and wound our way up to the lighthouse. Sitting at an elevation of 225m, it's supposedly the 2nd highest lighthouse in the world. ^{[citation needed]}

St Lucia (and most of the Caribbean countries) have only officially adopted the metric system since the 2000s. The latest push in St Lucia came in 2010 from a EU deadline to secure funding and trading. The Brussels effect in action :) Currently this means a mix of both imperial and metric signage. Speed limits are posted in km/h and mph, although some are mph only. Directions from locals are in miles and yards, like the restaurant is about 300 yards down the street.

We had read reviews of the lighthouse that said the road was in bad condition on the last stretch, so we parked before we got to the top and walked the rest. Looks like the road was recently paved as it was in great shape. We wanted to walk anyways so it didn’t matter.

There’s a good view from the top. The pitons aren’t as recognizable from this angle but they are visible. Took some pics, trying to avoid all the communication towers also at the top.

The lighthouse is in need of restoration, with boarded up windows and doors. The weather vane was sitting on the ground, I’m not sure if removed to restore it or if it was knocked off by a hurricane. Most pics show it sitting on top of the lighthouse, so it’s a recent decapitation. The weather vane is pretty photogenic, with varying shades of yellow, orange, and red.

Walked back down to our car, and drove down to the fishing pier. Took some pics of the boats. The fishing folk were wrapping up their day, washing out the fish market.

We were hoping for a nice seafood restaurant nearby, but didn’t see anything. We asked a shopkeeper and they directed us to a Chinese restaurant. It wasn’t what we were looking for, so looked up places on Google maps.

Ended up at Tones Front Yard, a very local place just outside the centre of Vieux Fort. We had to ask directions to find the entrance - the former sign is no more, and it’s down an alley between houses. The person we asked for help first thought about trying to give us directions, and then ended up just walking us there.

It was exactly the kind of local place we were looking for. The food was delicious, as was their local juice.

That was it for our day. Drove back to our hotel (about 45 minutes) and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon.

It was a beautiful sunset, with a clear horizon. It's the first time in years that I've seen the sun disappear into the ocean. We were still somewhat full from lunch, so ordered a lighter meal for dinner. Heather went off-menu and had the tuna ceviche as a main; I had the tuna catch-of-the-day.

Quilesse Forest Reserve, St Lucia

We were meeting our bird watching guide at 6am in Vieux Fort, so set our alarms for 5am. It was still dark when we woke, but had lightened enough for me to drive by 5:30.

It’s a beautiful drive along the coast from our hotel. Our first time in after arriving I was too focused on adapting to the new car, and couldn’t take in the view. There were quite a few locals waiting roadside for buses to get to work.

We met up with our guide, Nestor, in the Massy parking lot in Vieux Fort (Massy is main grocery chain in St Lucia). We joined him in his vehicle and drove north along the east coast towards Dennery. The water is much rougher on the Atlantic side than the Caribbean side we’d seen thus far in St Lucia.

There’s seven birds endemic to St Lucia (five species and two sub-species). On our excursion we were hoping to see six; with the highlight hopefully being the St Lucia parrot.

We made a couple stops at seemingly random places along the highway, but were actually access paths for workers to maintain electrical towers. We managed to spot four of the endemics, so a good start to the day!

The second stop was also the habitat of the St Lucia pit viper, a poisonous snake. Our guide had a long stick to beat the grass before we got through to the access path. We were glad to be done with that part.

Finally we drove 30 minutes inland towards Quilesse Forest Reserve, over roads in pretty bad shape. We would have turned around (not that there was anywhere to turn) if we had tried to do this independently.

We got to the park gates and the start of the trail through the rainforest. The trail goes through the heart of the rainforest to the west coast; we were only going in about 2km. The mosquitoes were bad, but our bug spray worked fine. It’s the only time we’ve had to use bug spray on this trip - in the evenings at dinner, it’s been mostly bug-free.

We enjoyed the walk through the rainforest, over a roughly maintained path. It was a nice temperature under all the trees, we were also at about 500m. After about 30 minutes we arrived at the lookout with a view across the valley.

Less than a minute after arriving, we saw a St Lucia parrot! It’s a really colourful bird, with blue, black, white and splashes of red, yellow, and green. Nestor hadn’t even set up his scope yet :) It's the national bird of St Lucia, and its flag also incorporates its colours.

We watched for another 45 minutes or so, and saw around 8-9 parrots in total. You hear the parrots squawking as the fly through the valley, waiting for them to appear and then hopefully track them until they land. It was too far across the valley to see their colour without binoculars or a zoom lens, we were lucky to track a few. I got a very blurry pic of one.

Finally we started the trek back to the vehicle, and then drove back to Vieux Fort to our car. Overall it was cool to see the St Lucia parrot and walk through the rainforest.

We had planned to have lunch at Mamma Tilly’s, a popular St Lucia seafood place, but it was closed Mondays. So picked a random place from Google maps and had a local lunch, which was okay.

Our dinner was excellent, we both had the catch of the day which was tuna today. (In some other places, the ‘catch-of-the-day’ is the same every day, like the wahoo in Fiji). It was super fresh and was served with the usual assortment of vegetable sides. Very yummy :)

Anse Chastenet & Sugar Beach, St Lucia

We had arranged through our hotel for a snorkeling excursion today. We were meeting the boat at the dock in Soufriere at 10am, so had plenty of time for breakfast and getting our snorkeling gear together.

Had the same breakfast as yesterday, it’s really good. I think we had read in the reviews where someone complained about the lack of variety at breakfast. We don’t actually vary our breakfast much, even at home, so that didn’t matter to us. I’ll have fresh fruit, freshly baked bread, eggs and bacon, and coffee every day, thank you very much.

We changed into our snorkel gear and then drove into town. The hotel had shown us on google maps exactly where to park (at the bus station) and airdropped a pic of the boat, so it was pretty easy to find our way.

It was just the two us on the excursion. We chatted with the boat guy about what we wanted to do, and then we were off. The waters were really calm - no bumping at all.

First stopped off at a crevice in the rock cliff where bats make their home. We could see some of them flitting about, even though it was day.

Our first snorkel site was off Anse Chastenet, about five minutes by boat north of Soufriere. We were the only snorkelers which was cool. The water was super clear, and very still, which made for great pics. On other trips there’s slight bobbing about which makes it harder to focus the camera, especially zoomed in. Saw lots of trumpet fish and fan coral. Supposedly it’s a good place to see turtles, although we didn’t see any.

Next was Sugar Beach, one of the most popular snorkeling sites in the south end of St Lucia. It’s at the base of Petit Piton, and we actually saw the activity from our little trek yesterday. There’s a snorkeling area marked out with buoys.

We docked at the beach, which is surrounded by resorts. We were glad we hadn’t booked into any of these, it was really busy with tourists. Dodged our way through the tourists on the beach to the snorkeling area, put on our fins and away we went.

It wasn’t too busy once we got away from shore. The visibility was excellent, even better than Anse Chastenet. Saw lots of parrotfish and eels, as well as schools of Seargeant Majors. Our boat guy said that tourists feed the fish, and that’s why they are so tame here. We snorkeled out to the far end of the buoys and back, about 800m round trip.

Our last stop was around the ocean side of Petit Piton. My camera battery had died (I think our first two snorkels were 30m and 45m) so just left it on the boat. There was a bit of a current, and we were getting tired, so called it a day after about 20 minutes. It was a good site for snorkeling, not much coral but lots of boulders and crevices for fishies to swim in and about.

Overall it was great snorkeling excursion. It’s possible to drive to these and snorkel out from the beach (no need for a boat) but we had nice views of the pitons and of Soufriere from the ocean. The water temperature was the warmest we’ve been in. Great for snorkeling, although maybe not as good for the environment.

Our boat guy suggested Stone Yard for lunch, and called ahead to reserve a table for us. It’s geared to tourists, with lots of other groups ending their excursions here. It fit the bill though, as we weren’t out of place in our wet snorkel gear, and they had a good bathroom. The food was okay, we liked Belle Vue better.

Drove back to our hotel, the road now familiar to us the 4th time through. Rinsed and hung to dry our snorkel gear, and then relaxed the rest of the afternoon.

The temperature has been consistent every day, high of 30C and low of 27C. It felt cooler this evening at dinner, so maybe we’re adjusting to the heat and humidity.

Tomorrow we’re on a birding excursion, we have to meet our guide at 6am :( I guess it’s like safari time. We’re hoping to see the elusive St Lucia parrot!

Têt Paul Nature Trail, St Lucia

We fell asleep last night to the sounds of frogs croaking and other creatures of the night. It’s a natural white noise machine here :)

We were up for breakfast pretty early (for vacation) at 7:30, partly cause we were in bed by 7pm last night, and also cause the large transoms in the room let in the morning light.

Had an excellent breakfast, local (homemade) lemonade, scrambled eggs with herbs and crispy bacon, fresh bread and seasonal fruit (mango, melon, watermelon).

Planned out our next couple days with the hotel staff. Today we planned a short one-hike along the Têt Paul Nature Trail and lunch at a local restaurant in Soufriere. We also booked a snorkeling excursion for tomorrow.

Sorted ourselves out in the room (we hadn’t done much reorganizing from airplane mode yesterday), and then headed out.

Now that we were familiar with the road conditions we had more confidence in determining if Google maps was taking us on a ‘shortcut’ or if it was indeed the normal state of the road.

The trailhead for Têt Paul Nature Trail was about 20 minutes from our hotel. We got there around 10:30am, there was just a trickle of other tourist groups. A friendly driver for another group helped us pointing out the best road-side place to park to get the future shade.

Paid our 15 CAD each at the trail ticket booth (they took ApplePay!), which included a guide. A guide’s not really needed, and it would have meant joining other folks, so we just went on our own.

The path is well-maintained, with stairs and boardwalks over possible muddy areas. We took our time admiring the lookouts along the way. At the top are great views of the pitons, two volcanic plugs which are the symbols of St Lucia (they appear on the flag), and are also a UNESCO world heritage site. There’s a couple side trails near the top for alternate views. Took our pics and then headed back down; round trip was about 35 minutes.

We had expected a longer walk (we were told 60-90 minutes), it was still too early for lunch, as most places only open at noon. So decided to stop in at Project Chocolate along the way. They only did scheduled tours, so chatted with the friendly security guard about the schedule for later in the week.

Carried on towards the sulphur springs. We’re not keen on mud baths or hot springs, but figured to check out the bubbling mud. At the entrance, and enterprising guy (Tim) asked if we preferred a short walk to see Superman Falls. That sounded more picturesque than a dull grey mud puddle, so we were in :)

Followed Tim down a dirt road for about five minutes, and then walked down a rustic path to get to falls. These were really cool to see, with the contrast of the sulphur-tinged rocks behind the falls and the ash-coloured pool at the bottom from the lava granules. Plus we were the only ones there. It’s possible to swim under the falls, and there’s mud and ash buckets for skin cleansing, but we were just there for the view. The falls featured in Superman II, thus the nickname, and also in Romancing the Stone. It was well worth the side trip.

We asked Tim about our lunch plans at Martha’s Tables. He thought they might be closed for lunch and suggested Belle Vue Restaurant as a backup.

Tim was right on both counts - Martha’s Tables were closed, and Belle Vue was an excellent spot. It was in the centre of Soufriere, with a nice view of the harbour, as its name suggests.

Had a local juice to start which was refreshing. We had the jerk chicken and Creole chicken. Both came with an assortment of the usual provisions, banana pie (sort of like a potato dish my Mom used to make, but with plantains), baked mac and cheese, coleslaw, mmm good. It was exactly what we were looking for.

We had ideas to walk around town but it was midday sun and probably not recommended. So headed back home to relax for the rest of the afternoon.

Dinner was again excellent at our hotel. It’s Saturday night so a few locals were gathered at the bar adding to the ambience.

Choiseul, St Lucia

We’re off for 6 days in St Lucia and then 3 days in Guyana, the Guyana part is mostly to see Kaiteur Falls. We booked back in March, based on it being just after rainy season in Guyana, so that in theory the falls will be full, but we’ll have good weather. We also planned the trip around direct flights from Toronto-St Lucia and St Lucia-Georgetown.

We were up at 4:45am to catch the flight to St Lucia. For some reason we both had viewed anything in the Caribbean as a ‘short’ flight, even though it’s 5.5 hours to St Lucia. We actually took off 20 minutes early!

Unfortunately most of the North American flights arrive in UVF around 2pm, so there’s a big spike in tourists and line ups for all the arrival stuff. We got through immigration really quickly cause we had filled out the online form earlier in the week. But then we waited about an hour for our luggage. Felt like we were at Pearson!

Picked up our car rental, a Suzuki Jimny from Sixt. Yet another country with left-hand drive where we’ve rented a car (now 10 out of 13). Set up my phone mount and then we were off on our adventure!

The main ring road in St Lucia is nicely paved. The secondary roads aren’t too bad, single width in some stretches, but least without sharp drop-offs like in Dominica. Our hotel was 45 minutes from the airport, in the SW corner of St Lucia, just south of the pitons.

We’re staying at Tet Rouge, a small place with 8 chalets. There’s only one other couple here right now so the hotel was expecting us as we drove up. Checked in, and then arranged for dinner in an hour, at 6:30pm. We hadn’t had lunch and were on very little sleep, so an early dinner suited us just fine.

Cleaned up and cooled down in our air conditioned room. The hotel has a cute little outdoor restaurant, with an excellent kitchen. We ordered a bit too much, although it was all delicious. My favourite was the tuna ceviche appetizer. We were in bed very early, the heat and lack of sleep getting to us.

Toronto, Canada

Heather's friend Fed once said that the enjoyment of a trip was directly related to the weather. This was true of our trip to Iceland. The weather in February is hit-and-miss, and we had a miss. We were prepared for rain and cold, but not 80km/h winds! Our main reason for choosing Iceland in the winter was to see the Northern Lights. We had only one cloudless evening, but the Northern Lights didn't appear that night :( We haven't had much luck with celestial events, having a very cloudy day for the recent solar eclipse in Apr 2024, and a hazy night for the lunar eclipse in Nov 2022. I think technically the Northern Lights aren't a celestial event, but it's in the sky and seeing them is dependent on lack of clouds.

The tourist-local ratio in Iceland is much higher than we usually prefer. I couldn't believe the volume of traffic on the road from Laugarvatn to Reykjavík. It was a continuous stream of cars, campervans and buses, in low season. We did do the most popular things in Iceland, which contributed to us running into high number of tourists. The Golden Circle is visited by over 2 million people per year. The sites are popular for a reason though — they are prety cool to see. It's on our list to see the sites around the Diamond Circle in the northeast (like Dettifoss and Goðafoss), but this is pretty busy too — 360,000 people visited in 2019, compared to Akureyri's population of about 20,000.

There is beautiful scenery in Iceland, and I'm sure even nicer when things are green. The drive along the shoreline to Vík was gorgeous, up there with some of the best road trips we've taken. The food was excellent too. It's possible to hike slightly past the main sites and get away from the crowds.

Overall I found Iceland a beautiful place to visit, but probably a bit over-touristed for my liking (given the small population), even in low season. Probably we will head to other places on our list before going back to see the rest of Iceland in the summer.