Enjoy and Beauty the Yushan

Yushan Photo Gallery

Enjoy the Hapuna Beach in Hawai

Hapuna Beach in Hawai is the most wonderful beach in the world. This beach has frequently been voted as the best beach in the US. There is easy access to the water, full facilities, crystal clear water and beautiful scenery.

Grantourismo - 12 months, 24 destinations, countless experiences

Finishing writing projects (books, stories, reviews) and planning our exciting new project called Grantourismo, a contemporary grand tour of sorts, has kept us busy throughout December and January, and once again prevented me from updating this poor neglected little blog. Early this week we left Australia, where we went to spend Christmas and New Year with family and work at my uncle and aunt's beautiful house in Bendigo, for the UAE, our home since 1998, and the base for the intensive globetrotting we've been doing these last 12 years. Today we kick off Grantourismo with a little pre-launch party at a swish villa on The Palm in Dubai, on Monday we fly to London for the official launch of the project, and a week later we head to Marrakech to properly start the project. So what is this project then, you ask? Well, essentially, we're trading hotel rooms for holiday homes for a year (phew!) and partnering with HomeAway Holiday Rentals, who are sending us around the world to stay in their properties and write about the homes, the destinations, and the experiences they enable us to have. The aim is to inspire people to choose holiday homes over hotels when they're planning a trip, because we believe homes enable people to travel in a more enriching and authentic way. You can read more about the project on our pretty Grantourismo blog (which Terry designed) and here on the HomeAway site. And I'll tell you more about how the project came about and what it involves in another post. Because I have a party to prepare for now...

Grantourismo & how we came to be going on a grand tour in 2010

Terry and I have been dreaming about doing a grand tour of sorts for a few years - since way back when we wrote the Grantourismo blog for Charles and Marie. We started to seriously develop the idea of a reincarnation of Grantourismo about a year ago, but we hadn't yet begun to think about how to fund it. Our original plan was to stay in one destination for a month at a time, and to really try to get beneath the skin of the place, to get to know the locals, learn as much of the language as we could, to learn some things unique or special to the place, and to write a book about the project. We were over the moon when we discovered that HomeAway Holiday Rentals had a similar marketing exercise in mind, their idea being to send a couple of travel writers around the world to explore a more enriching and authentic way of travel that was possible through holiday home stays, rather than hotels. It was a godsend that they believed our project would fit, and we were happy to compromise a little (two destinations a month instead of one) to be able to make it work together. I'll tell you a little bit more about Grantourismo in coming posts.

The Rhine Falls in Switzerland

The Rhine Falls (Rheinfall in German) are the largest plain waterfalls in Europe.The falls are located on the High Rhine between the municipalities of Neuhausen am Rheinfall and Laufen-Uhwiesen, near the town of Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland, between the cantons of Schaffhausen and Zürich. They are 150 m (450 ft) wide and 23 m (75 ft) high. In the winter months, the average water flow is 250 m³/s, while in the summer, the average water flow is 700 m³/s. The highest flow ever measured was 1,250 m³/s in 1965; and the lowest, 95 m³/s in 1921.

The falls cannot be climbed by fish, except by eels that are able to worm their way up over the rocks.
source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine_Falls

Wonderful Falls of Iguazu Falls

Iguazu Falls, Iguassu Falls, or Iguaçu Falls is a wonderful and beautiful fall. iguazu is the greatest fall in the world.