Planes, trains, buses, ferries, grand taxis and subways. It's been a whirlwind of public transportation on two continents. Yes, the schedule has been quite ambitious for the first few days of this trip. However, a visit to southern Spain afforded us short jaunts to Gibraltar, which is owned by England, the Spanish enclave of CeutaRead more
Excuse me, pardon me. Do you speak French. Or maybe German. Or Spanish. You English? Please let me show you special exhibition. Today only. I take you there. No problem. The touts in Tetouan, Morocco, are relentless, especially since we seem to be the only tourists in this town. They say the want to practiceRead more
In a few weeks time, I will be going abroad once again. Chris will be attending a conference in Madrid, and then we will travel together to Portugal. After I got laid off in February, I extended my travels on either side of his conference, which means I’ll be out and about for a totalRead more
Should a 13-year-old be allowed to sail around the world by him or herself? That was the question posed on yesterday’s “World Have Your Say” on BBC Radio. Laura Dekker, 13, wants to do a solo voyage around the world, but The Dutch Council for Child Protection has asked a court to intervene in orderRead more
I’m having a difficult time adjusting to Eastern Standard Time again. Yesterday, I fell alseep watching TV at 11 a.m. and again at 8 p.m. Then I woke up this morning well before the sun rose, but it gave me time to put together the following memories from the trip. Here are a few things thatRead more
I got a kick from watching videos from other Competitours teams. Here are some of my favorites from the trip: Day 1:Sean is clearly a skilled impersonator. He adopted a few other voices during the course of the trip, too. Way to pull out “Little Town” from the music cache. It really does exemplify thisRead more
Say what you will, but here are some our our personal favorite videos from our Competitours’ adventure. Day 2, Salzburg, Austria:Part of the movie “Sound of Music” — specifically the song ’16 Going On Seventeen’ — was filmed at the Baroque Gazebo at Hellbrunn Palace. One of the challenges there was to conjure up andRead more
On Thursday morning, the scoreboard reflected what Sheila and I already suspected. We finished second in the race across Europe with Competitours. But “As Seen on TV” (Lanthy and Rad) brought their A-game and it paid off. We’re very happy for them. “We fell short of first place by 21 points, but in our mindsRead more
I can’t believe this is the last day of our trip to Europe. It’s flown by. To recap, we’ve been to Switzerland, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and the long lost country of Moresnet. In Day 7, we slipped to second place, but the challengers, “As Seen on TV” are only 10 points ahead ofRead more
After 6 days of being on our own and occasionally running into other teams, Day 7 was the four-country, all-inclusive team challenge. We didn’t need to record any videos; instead, we were pitted against all the other teams in several objective challenges. When Steve, our “tour dude,” asked if we knew what four countries weRead more