Have you ever visited a foreign country?

Hubby and I were fortunate to have been able to take lots of holidays both in Australia and overseas.
Once bitten by the travel bug we made the most of being teachers, with long Summer holidays and later, with long service accrued.

Our first taste of other countries was a fly drive two weeks in New Zealand with our two kids and Hubby's Mum and Dad, then a Pacific cruise on a ship, the Leonid Sobonov, crewed with Russian sailors and English entertainment staff. Fiji and Vanuatu ports stick in the memory, as well as the most amazing food and wine served on the ship.

Then we saved up for 10 years before the next overseas venture. Dear Daughter was newly married and Dear Son was in first year at university. We took long service leave and spent 5 months on travelling via an around the world airline ticket. We visited US - Hawaii, California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New York city. We hired a car and travelled cheaply, staying in budget motels. The highlights for me were seeing an active volcano on the Big Island (Hawaii) and the Grand Canyon, and the amazing scenery where the terrain alternated between scorching deserts and elevated cold areas subject to snow. Australia is quite flat in comparison.

Leaving US we flew north to Calgary, Canada, hired another car and spent a week driving around the Rocky Mountains. In US I felt very much an alien in a strange land but somehow Canada seemed more like home. It helped that we have a Canadian friend in Sydney who contacted his friends and relatives who greeted us, took us into their homes and showed us around. We spent time in Vancouver, Winnepeg, London Ontario, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec. All in all, we spent 5 weeks in Canada.

More to come...
 

Continuing the travels of Warrigal and Hubby

Leaving Canada we flew to Gatwick and began our stay in the UK. Hubby had become friends with an English teacher who spent a year in Sydney with his wife and family teaching Industrial Arts alongside Hubby. He was actually the reason why we had saved for 10 years for the big trip. We stayed with him in a 400 year old house in Sussex for six weeks. Again we hired a car and took ourselves off exploring England, Scotland, Wales and very briefly took a ferry from Liverpool to Northern Ireland to visit the parents of an old friend in Australia. We must have seen every historic bridge in Britain from an ancient clapper bridge to Roman arched viaducts and aquaducts, the first iron bridge at Coalbrookedale and Brunel bridges built during Victorian times.

Some of our travels included places significant to our family history - Tiverton in Devon and Blair Athol in Scotland. Castles and cathedrals, cities and countryside we filled six weeks staying in country bed and breakfasts absorbing as much history as we could. When we left, I realised that although I am a descendant of people who migrated from the British Isles, I am very different to them in what I cherish and how I think. It made me question what it is to be an Australian and I still have no better answer that to say an Australian, regardless of where they were born, or where their ancestors came from, is anyone who has come to love our homeland and who is happy to lie in its soil after death.

I could go on and on, talking about more travels with Hubby but I must be testing everyone's patience by now.
Thanks, if you are still reading.
 
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I suppose Mexico and Canida don't count but I didn't think either one
would entice me to move there.

Then I choose never again to go to Mexico. I don't want to defend that statement.
Who Cares about Mexico? That's my personal thought. The people basically are OK.
 
Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, Venezuela, Curacao, South Africa, Rhodesia (Now Zimbabwe) Gabon, Cape Verde Islands, Morocco, Gibraltar, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, England, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Burma (Now Myanmar) Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Philippines, and Hong Kong (before it was part of China.)
 
Paco Dennis said:
Being from California south of San Francisco, when we moved to Wichita, Kansas, I experienced environmental and cultural shock. Does that count? :unsure::ROFLMAO:
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I have lived in Wichita twice. The people are nice but the weather is awful. For a big town thereā€™s not much to do. One of my sons lives there and when I visit itā€™s difficult finding anything to do. Itā€™s a really cheap place to live though.
 
Teacher Terry said:
I have lived in Wichita twice. The people are nice but the weather is awful. For a big town thereā€™s not much to do. One of my sons lives there and when I visit itā€™s difficult finding anything to do. Itā€™s a really cheap place to live though.
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Yes, I liked the people. But the layout of the city is forever and then nothing but flat, and I mean flat land everywhere you look. It was like a new planet for me. I grew up in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains. The climate is so hot in the summer, and very cold in the winter. In Calif. it is temperate all year.
 
Paco Dennis said:
Yes, I liked the people. But the layout of the city is forever and then nothing but flat, and I mean flat land everywhere you look. It was like a new planet for me. I grew up in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains. The climate is so hot in the summer, and very cold in the winter. In Calif. it is temperate all year.
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Oh I know as I was just there 2 months ago. Winter doesnā€™t seem bad there when you grow up in Wisconsin. Itā€™s ugly and I prefer some beauty in the landscape. The other thing is that people tend to be very conservative. I was able to find my tribe but it wasnā€™t easy. Also I really hate humidity.
 
Other than a couple brief visits to Tijuana, all my foreign travels were thanks to the US Navy. I spent a day in beautiful Victoria B.C. while we were tied up at Port Angeles, WA. Been to Japan, Okinawa when it was still ours, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Subic bay in the Philippines. Hong Kong was fun, loved Okinawa, was glad to leave Subic Bay.
 
I feel fortunate to have visited 14 nations outside of the US borders, one not voluntarily, and the rest either for business or pleasure. I wanted each of our children to visit a foreign country where living conditions provide a stark comparison to the life we have in our country. I firmly believe you never appreciate the blessings you have until you see what it is like not to have them. That said, I understand why many want to come here, I simply believe that is must be carefully controlled and earned. Until the law is changed it should be fully enforced.
 
Oh yeah, I've been all over.

Of course, I lived in the US for a good amount of time. Australia and Singapore. In Europe: France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, and Greece.

I always loved to be abroad, or rather, distant from the UK. I love to be a "foreigner", I find it exciting and fun.

EDIT: Oops, forgot Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Mind you, blink and you miss Luxembourg.
 
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I have visited 18 countries, plus some places that are not countries, like Gibraltar, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, plus islands in the Caribbean.

I don't know how many times I have been to Canada where I have visited 7 provinces. I have visited 8 states in Mexico, again I don't know how many times I have been south of the border.

Sailed through the Panama Canal when it was still run by the US. Been to 48 states in the US, lived in 4 and served Navy time in 3.

We enjoyed Australia.

A friend who cruised to Antarctica told me that the stench from the penguin rookeries was unbelievable.
 
Over the course of five years, courtesy of the US Navy, in no particular order.
Spain, Portugal, Morocco, France, Germany, Holland, England, Norway, Japan, Greece, Italy, Hong Kong, Turkey, Philippines.
 

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