Thanks for visiting our website! If you’re interested in keeping up with us as we explore the world over the next two years, you’ve come to the right place.

We plan to visit less touristy cities and towns to experience the local culture, cuisine, and character. We want to explore the local museums, parks, and architecture. We want to visit places with natural scenic beauty or unique features. We plan to spend several days in each place, not rush from one place to the next on a tight schedule.

We’ll post pictures, and we’ll also share our impressions of each place and our experiences with longer, slower travel.

We invite you to subscribe to our newsletter (below). We’ll notify you of new content and keep you updated on our progress and plans. We’ll share more information in the newsletter than we’ll post publicly here.

Here’s a quick look at the places we visited in 2025:

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Gran Canaria: Magnificent Mountains, Beautiful Beaches, and More

In May 2026, we spent a month exploring Spain. Our first stop was Gran Canaria, the third-largest and second-most-populous of the Canary Islands. Last year, at the end of our Portugal trip, we visited Tenerife, the largest and most populous Canary Island. We loved it! After hearing about Gran Canaria for many years (especially the gay vacation hotspot, Maspalomas), we were eager to check it out.

We stayed in the capital, Las Palmas. We decided we’d rather stay there to experience a more authentic view of what Gran Canaria is like for the people who live there, rather than stay in Maspalomas or one of the other beach resort towns on the south coast. As it turns out, we made the right choice. 

Our rental apartment was only two blocks from Playa de las Conteras, the beach that runs along the north shore of Las Palmas. While there were some tourists, we got the impression that at least half of the people we saw were locals. Here’s Jeff next to the beach.

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Palmitos Park: A World-class Zoo/Botanical Garden on Gran Canaria

During our stay in Gran Canaria, Spain, we visited Palmitos Park. It’s a zoo/botanical garden located in the southern part of the island, several miles into a wooded canyon. It was well worth the trip! It had an impressive array of exotic birds, exotic fish, butterflies, monkeys, lemurs, tortoises, and many other animals. And… dolphins!

In this post, we’ll share photos of some of the beautiful animals that live in Palmitos Park.

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How (and Why) We Travel the World with Only Carry-on Bags + 15 Items We Pack

If you’ve been following our travels, you know that we have done a lot of traveling over the past year! Since we began our “Two Years of Travel” in May 2025 and including our upcoming trip to Spain, we have taken 30 airplane flights (counting itineraries with connections as one), 28 train or metro rides (counting only the trips with luggage), 33 bus rides, and 5 cab rides. These statistics cover two one-week trips, four four-week trips, and one epic seven-week trip, for a total of 25 weeks.

We have learned some good packing tips along the way, which we would like to share with you in this post. Our single biggest recommendation is…

Pack Light!

At first, Jeff was skeptical that we could take four-week trips with only carry-on luggage. But after our first trip, he was bought in!

We travel with one rolling carry-on bag that will fit in the overhead compartment on almost all planes, and one “personal item” that fits under the seat in front of us. This allows us the luxury of carrying our bags on the plane to avoid lost luggage. Sometimes, if it’s a direct flight and we arrive at the airport early (which we almost always do), and the airline offers one checked bag for free, we might check our carry-on suitcases. Or if we’re carrying a wine bottle or two, we’ll check them. But otherwise, we always have the option of carrying our luggage onto the plane, and we often do. Plus, we don’t risk damage from rough baggage handling and we don’t have to wait at the baggage carousel.

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The Sights of Sydney

We concluded our seven-week trip to New Zealand and Australia with a five-night, four-day stay in Sydney. We toured the iconic Opera House, strolled through the Royal Botanic Garden, and visited three museums. One day, we took a tour to the Blue Mountains National Park and the Featherdale Wildlife Park, which we covered in this post.

In December, 2025, we visited Perth and Adelaide after taking a cruise from Hong Kong to Singapore. On this trip, we visited Hobart, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney to complete our tour of Australia’s six state capitals. All of these cities were interesting, enjoyable, and livable, with plenty of things to see and do. 

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Sydney’s Blue Mountains and Featherdale Wildlife Park

During our visit to Sydney, we took a day tour to the Blue Mountains National Park, which begins at the western edge of Sydney. It’s an expansive mountain range with surrounding canyons that are majestic and beautiful. Its vast scale invites comparisons to the Grand Canyon. While the Grand Canyon is larger and deeper, the Blue Mountains are similarly awe-inspiring.

Terpenoids emitted in large quantities by the abundant eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains cause the blue haze for which the mountains are named.

On the way to the Blue Mountains, we stopped at the Featherdale Wildlife Park. It’s unique among zoos in that it only houses animals that are native to Australia. And there are plenty of them! Featherdale was particularly enjoyable because visitors could get much closer to the animals and, in some cases, feed them. 

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Brisbane: Bursting with Art, Architecture, and Aesthetics

The next-to-last city on our New Zealand-Australia itinerary was Brisbane (“Bris-bn”). We had never been to Brisbane before, but there seemed to be plenty of things to see and do, so we budgeted five nights.

We’re glad we did. Brisbane is beautiful, with plenty of culture, parkland, and spectacular buildings. It’s a walkable, liveable city with an upbeat personality.

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Melbourne: Likeable, Livable, Cool, and Cultured

We spent four nights and three days in Melbourne (pronounced “Mel-bn” by the locals). We’ve been there once before for a two-day cruise stop in 2013, so we had already seen some of the sights. 

We didn’t recall that Melbourne had as many skyscrapers as it has now. Perhaps many have been built during the last 13 years. In any case, we loved the architecture and designs. This has been a common theme among the cities we visited in Australia and the larger cities in New Zealand. We took a lot of pictures of the interesting buildings, and have included some of them in a separate post.

The Southbank Promenade, along the Yarra River, is a focal point for city life and sightseeing.

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Tales from Tassie, where we met Bruny and Mona

The first city on the Australia portion of our trip was Hobart, the capital of Tasmania (“Tassie,” as the locals call it). It’s a smaller city relative to Australia’s other state capitals, but it was beautiful and modern, with a fun, comfortable vibe.

Our main activities in Tasmania were a tour of Bruny Island and a visit to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA).

The bus from the airport dropped us off at the harbor, which was only a couple of blocks from our apartment.

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The Otherworldly Waitomo Glowworm Caves & the Beautiful Hamilton Gardens

Our final stop in New Zealand was Hamilton, the country’s fourth-largest city, located an hour and a half south of Auckland.

Our main reason for including Hamilton in our itinerary was to experience the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, which, along with Milford Sound, is truly a must-see attraction if you visit New Zealand. From Hamilton, the caves are just over an hour away, while tours originating from Auckland involve a two-and-a-half-hour drive.

We weren’t expecting much else from Hamilton, but we were wrong! Hamilton Gardens was absolutely worth visiting, and the Waikato Museum and Gallery was also worthwhile. We’ll cover all three in this post.

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Rotorua: Geothermal Wonders, Maori Culture, and Thrills

We spent three nights and two days in Rotorua, on New Zealand’s North Island. 

In some ways, it’s the North Island’s answer to Queenstown; an attractive town on a beautiful lake with outdoor thrill attractions and plenty for tourists to do. The surrounding mountains aren’t as high, but the views are still spectacular.

Queenstown bills itself as “The Adrenalin Capital of the World.” While Rotorua isn’t quite that, it also offers its share of thrill rides, plus tall redwood trees (imported from California as seedlings) and opportunities to experience Maori culture. And, it’s warmer. So it was a worthwhile stop.

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