Would you like to hear about our African safari? We stayed at AndBeyond Kichwa Tembo Tented Camp in the Masai Mara tribal owned nature preserve area of Kenya. A truly amazing place and experience! The first surprise comes as soon as you get off your small commercial “puddle jumper” plane, at the camp’s airstrip, where […]
Blog
Garden of the Monsters, Bomarzo, Italy
If you want inspiration to really go wild with your own unique garden ideas, the Garden of the Monsters is a place you should definitely visit! Known in Italian as il Sacro Bosco (Sacred Wood), or Parco di Mostri (Park of the Monsters), this totally unique and unusual garden is located just outside the hill […]
Tropical Fruit World
Can you imagine experiencing the sweet, sour, and spicy taste of exotic fruits, the smells and colors of delicious flowers, and the sound of tropical, colorful birds all in a huge beautiful garden? This is the world that the Brinsmead family has been toiling to create for over forty years on the site of largest […]
Versailles
Our great Paris home exchange location near Versailles gave us a wonderful opportunity to explore and enjoy in detail the amazing 2000 acres of gardens designed by Andre Le Notre for King Louis XIV in the 1600s. Royalty of that time viewed their gardens as a demonstration of man’s conquest of nature, with tightly controlled […]
Giverney: Monet’s Home
Just outside Paris, we spent a day at the wonderful gardens of impressionist painter Claude Monet in Giverny. This lovely spot (designed by the artist in the late 1800s) is a totally different experience from the formality of Versailles. Smaller and more intimate, in perfect relationship to the charming pink and green house, this garden […]
New Zealand
Kea Ora: greetings from New Zealand! What a wonderful country with such a unique set of plants! You are probably familiar with some of their great garden plants: the New Zealand flax (phormium) and New Zealand tea tree (leptospermum) are pretty commonly grown in our area. It is fun to see them in their native […]
Packing Hacks
There are few strategies to make you packing easier. Compressing Things One space saving strategy is rolling your things, but there are other ways you can compress your clothes. Compression bags can be a great way to save space In a pinch giant ziplocks work almost as well. Organizing Your bags. You can split a […]
Travel (Clothes) Shopping list
We travel a lot and have a lot of practice packing for all kinds of adventures from a summer long trip through Europe with only a backpack to a full-on safari. Here are some of our recommendations: Convertible pants Being able to switch from pants to capris/shorts when the day warms up suddenly makes this […]
Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens
Consider spending a wonderful long weekend on the Mendocino Coast: just a couple hours north of San Francisco, it is a great place for relaxing and seeing great gardens! The Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden in Fort Bragg is always the centerpiece of our visits to the coast, with so many rhododendrons, heathers in all shapes, […]
Loire Valley
While visiting the Loire, we enjoyed the hospitality at the delightful B & B Le Clos Rabelais, in the charming little town of Langeais. Clean and quiet, and walking distance to excellent French bakeries and restaurants, we found it the perfect place for us to relax. Check out their details at bedandbreakfast.com We particularly enjoyed […]