The First Glimpse of Someplace New

When traveling to someplace new, the first glimpse of that location is often out of the window of a plane. There is nothing like the excitement that you feel when you hear the plane going into the final approach of your destination. As the ground gets closer and the various sights come closer into view, it becomes a reality that you are about to see a new place that you haven’t visited before. Often the landscape looks the same as other places you may have gone to before, but there is always something different about this new city or country as it comes into view. For this week’s Cee’s Which Way Photo Challenge, we are sharing some photos from recent flights and our first views of cities.

Landing in Frankfurt, Germany
Flying over La Paz, Bolivia
Flying over the Mountains of Northern Italy
Getting Ready to Land in Vienna, Austria
Our First Glimpse of Greece
Flying into Cochabamba, Bolivia

Everyone Needs a Diversion

Like everyone else, our days are quite hectic with work and family life. If we didn’t find something to divert ourselves from the day-to-day doldrums, we would likely find ourselves battling depression. We use planning travel as our way to escape the daily routines. We have finalized our travel plans for our trip to Ecuador, so what do we do now? Start thinking about our next trip of course. Even though we are still three weeks away from boarding the plane to South America, we have started to consider where we want to go next. We can’t afford to constantly travel, although we wish that we could, so our next trip will likely be in November. For that trip, we are contemplating something completely relaxing, vacationing as opposed to travel. A trip to the beaches of Mexico and escaping the cold of Colorado seems like an ideal break, so that is what is on our minds at the moment. For this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge, Ooh, Shiny!, we are sharing a few photos from previous trips to Mexico. The thought of sitting on a beach with a cold drink is definitely enough to take our minds off of the tasks at hand.

Boats on the Water in Cabo
The Arch at Cabo San Lucas
Ship Sailing into the Sunset in Puerto Vallarta

Shopping in Europe is Different

The Apothecary on Our Street

When we moved into our apartment in Frankfurt, one of the things that we had to get used to was where to go to buy certain things. In the United States, we are used to large chain stores that carry anything and everything that you need. That isn’t necessarily the same in Europe, at least where we were staying. If you need medicine, you went to the apothecary. If you want fresh meat, you went to the local deli. If you want fresh baked goods, you went to the bakery. During our last few days in Germany, we took some photos of the walk along the sidewalk from our apartment to our favorite restaurant.

Our Apartment Building in Frankfurt
Apothecary Entrance
Our Deli

Another thing that we got used to during our time in Frankfurt was having an aperitif after our meals, something that we don’t see too many people doing here in the States. This week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge is photos of things that start with the letters AP. Here are some pictures of our apartment building, the apothecary on the corner of our street, and the aperitifs that accompanied our meals.

Aperitifs
Sidewalk Leading to the Opera House
Another Aperitif