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Travel
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Descriptions of sites about walking tours in: | |||||
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Although Mark and I did a certain amount of traveling before we moved to Pasadena—a cross-country rail trip, for instance—we decided in early 2004 that we should get some serious travel done. I had had a health scare a year or so earlier, and we agreed that we should get as much travel in while I was still capable of it. Mark had been on the mailing list of Country Walkers for a while, and we started looking seriously at their brochures then, in 2004.
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In our first trip, we left Halloween night of 2004 for a long triple of flights to Puerto Montt, Chile, and from there we went walking for six days in the Lakes District, already farther south than any of the world’s cities, except for Christchurch and Dunedin. Then an 800-mile flight southwards took us to Punta Arenas, from which we bussed to the Torres del Paine National Park. Both Mark and I have web pages, each showing only a fraction of the pictures we took in this spectacular country. |
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In August of 2005, we went on a nice long driving trip, ultimate target being the Country Walkers tour in the Olympic National Park, both the rain-forest and the shore sections. Again, you can see the web pages for my pictures, and for Mark’s. |
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Mark thought that I should use a picture of the Grand Mosque of Córdoba as representative of the glories of Andalucía, but I think this picture from the Lion Court in the Alhambra does just as well, maybe even better. But no matter: in October of 2006, we flew to Paris and took an overnight train from there to Madrid, thence to Granada, where we picked up the Country Walkers tour of Southern Spain. It was truly wonderful. As with the other trips, Mark has a web page devoted to pictures and I do, too. |
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In November of 2007, our walking trip was to the South Island of New Zealand, and as I’ve reviewed the pictures I took during this marvelous excursion, I don’t think I’ve found a better one than this snap of Mark walking along the shore of Lake Wakatipu, to serve as a hint of what lovely countryside we walked through. Naturally, Mark has his pages, too. From his central page you will be able to get to his day-by-day descriptions of the trip. |
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Our original idea of a walking tour was “Classic Tuscany”, one of the first that Country Walkers ever set up. But in 2004, the Chile trip was so attractive that we put Tuscany off. And put it off again and again. In late 2007, though, we decided to stop delaying. Venice and Ravenna would be two of our other travel targets, since Mark had never been to Venice, and both of us were eager to see the famous mosaics of Ravenna. Mark’s page, with his pictures and narrative, is now up on the web in the formative stages, and so is mine. |