toonsarah's VirtualTourist Home Page
| Page Views: 20,804 | Travel with me by toonsarah - last update: Jul 2, 2009  |
| Lisbon: early one morning |
"Photo of the month" for July is of the beautiful view of Lisbon from a miradouro in the Bairro Alto.
I have now finished all four of my pages describing the destinations we visited during the VT Euromeet weekend in and around the city: Belém, Lisbon, Cascais and (the latest) Sintra. There are also lots of photos of the meeting in some travelogues on the Cascais page.
New pages
I've recently completed some "looking back" pages about our trip to Tanzania back in 1999. We went on safari in the Ngorongoro Crater and Tarangire National Park, and also spent a week on Zanzibar.
In March I visited Bath for work and took the opportunity to explore again one of my favourite English cities and capture my impressions for VT.
Another fairly new "looking back" page describes our visit to Goa in 2003.
Updates:
There are recent updates on my London and Newcastle and Ealing pages - check the individual pages for details.
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|  | Welcome to my VT world... ... and thanks for stopping by. I'm looking forward to sharing my photos and travel stories with you, and getting know each other through sharing our stories. If you enjoy my pages (or even if you don't) I'd love to hear from you so please leave a comment when you travel with me.
But can I ask that you get to know me first before adding me to your circle of VT friends? It won't take long and the links between us will be stronger if we've swapped travellers' tales via our pages.
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My travel pages I’ve found it really helpful when visiting other people’s home pages to have an introduction to their VT pages, but I've recently decided that my attempt at the same was getting out of hand! In future, my newest pages will be flagged up above, while I've moved the complete list to an album (below). While this does duplicate the standard VT list, I've included additional info about the date of travel and the main highlight feature(s) of the destination. If you visit any of my pages please do leave a comment!
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| Fresh oranges near Pompeii |
| | Future travel plans Our planned trip to Equador & the Galapagos has had to be postponed for family reasons, and our travels for the next few months are likely to be closer to home. But I was very happy to be able to get to the Euromeet in Portugal, and in July we are planning to visit Italy, to see the Cinque Terre and Pisa. After that, hopefully some more short trips in the Uk and/or Europe, and perhaps Marakesh in the autumn, all being well.
But Ecuador remains very much on the cards for (hopefully) 2010. And also on my wish list list are Chile, Costa Rica, Belize, Honduras, Venezuela, Botswana, Ethiopia, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, ....
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.... :-)
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My love of travel – growing up As a child, growing up in the sixties, family holidays were almost always taken in Britain, usually Cornwall or Wales. A holiday overseas was considered an unaffordable luxury, but there was one exception. My uncle was in the Royal Air Force and spent a couple of years stationed in Germany, so my first ever trip abroad was to visit him and my aunt in Brueggen, near Dusseldorf, when I was 10.
After that my next adventure was the school’s French Exchange when I was 14, which meant ten days in a small French village north of Paris: ten days speaking the language, sampling the food (including horse meat and my first black coffee, now the staple that gets me through the day) and several days out in the capital which made a huge impression on me. To this day I would probably chose Paris as my favourite city in the world.
When I was 17 I was lucky enough to be able to take part in a camping trip arranged by my school – to Canada! This meant scraping together every penny I could from my Saturday job, plus what I could beg from my parents, but the effort was worthwhile, and looking back I think it was this trip that shaped my love of travel. In those days (early seventies) for a teenager from my background to have the opportunity to see Niagara Falls and the wilds of the Algonquin Park and (on our way home) enjoy a day in New York City, was just incredible.
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| | I venture further afield But it was only when I met, and later married, Chris that I found my ideal travel buddy and started to make foreign travel a regular part of my life. Our first holiday together was to Prague and Austria (where Chris had spent a year living and working), and this was followed in 1981 by our honeymoon in France (Paris and Besançon). The next year we chose a trip to New York above the need to install central heating in our new flat, and a pattern began to emerge – from then on holidays were to be high on our list of priorities.
At first our budgets kept us mainly confined to Europe, but gradually other destinations became feasible: Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan. By the nineties we had discovered the delights of driving in the US: exploring the wonderful national parks and indulging our shared fascination with small town America. We also went to China and Australia, and more recently still have started to explore South America, fast becoming perhaps my favourite continent. Many of these trips are too far back for me to have digital photos, or detailed memories, but with the help of a newly acquired slide scanner and old diaries and scrapbooks I am doing my best to work through the personal archives and document them for VT.
Meanwhile Europe is not neglected, and we have many short trips there: to visit friends in Austria or Germany, to follow our beloved football team Newcastle United (see my Toon Army albums below) or just to get away for a few days.
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Me and VT Like most of you I discovered VT while researching a trip (Namibia), and used the website for a while before taking the plunge and joining in.
Since then I’ve had great fun creating pages and tips, and meeting other VT-ers, both virtually and for real. I’ve put some records of VT meetings in a couple of travelogues on my London page. | | |
| Chris on a whale-watching trip in New Jersey |
| | A small plea before I go I should warn you that I'm not here looking for love - if you read just a little bit about my travels you'll soon realise that, as my husband Chris features in all my travels and has contributed some of his great photos to my pages. So please don't email me to tell me how handsome you are!
I'm also not in the least bit naive and I won't be convinced that I'll make my fortune by helping you with dodgy bank account scams, so that's another email you needn't send! |
 toonsarah's Albums | | | |
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 Comments for toonsarah | | | | |
sue_stone Fri Jul 3, 2009 17:04 UTC
Hope you have a wonderful time in Italy - I am very envious! | richiecdisc Thu Jul 2, 2009 19:57 UTC
Thanks Sarah. Love digital photography, B&W with no hassles of film management! Love your new atmospheric intro picture too. The Why have just one was funny but bring some home to the wives was just way over the top! lol | Dabs Thu Jul 2, 2009 04:28 UTC
I definitely have a problem with trying to see too much in a short space of time, I've already got so much packed into Ireland that I'm afraid to tell people what my itinerary is ;-) | LoriPori Wed Jul 1, 2009 09:45 UTC
Hola Sarah: Thanks for checking out my Obidos and Batalha pages. They were great places to visit. xxx Lori |
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