We knew we were leaving Gozo when our lease was up at the beginning of September and had planned to head off to Australia for a few months, then likely coming home to the US to recuperate a bit from the travel life.

What we weren’t exactly expecting was to find out in early August that Sarah is, well, expecting, which in the end caused us to scrap the Aussie plans and go ahead and return to the US.

We didn’t really want to add morning sickness and no real permanent home to the other standard stress of traveling, so we packed up, closed up house in Gozo, and headed off to Amsterdam for a mini-vacation before catching a direct flight to Oakland.

We spent five days in Amsterdam and booked an apartment via Wimdu (much like AirBnB but with more listings for European cities) and couldn’t have been happier with the experience.

We stayed right on the edge of the city center so everything was within easy walking distance plus we had a full kitchen to use and a supermarket on the corner, which was a lifesaver as far as providing food for a pregnant wife whose appetite was all over the place.

Amsterdam is one of those cities that I’ve always dreamed of living in, even though I can’t quite convince Sarah that life on a houseboat there would rock.

I waffle back and forth on the idea of reincarnation and old souls, but Amsterdam is just one of those places where I feel like I’ve lived before and am returning home to, even though we’ve only been there twice for fairly brief stays.

I was a little nervous about our flight, as I booked one way flights via Skyscanner on ArkeFly direct from Amsterdam to Oakland (nearly a 13 hour flight) for a grand total of 250 euros per person.

That was over 1,000 euros cheaper per person than anything else I could find so I was half-expecting that we’d share a row with chickens or cows or freight being shipped but the flight was fine, especially after we upgraded to the Premium seats for just 30 euros more each (it was supposed to be 60 euros but for some reason they charged us half that at the counter).

We spent a night in Oakland before heading down to Monterey, where we’ll be staying for a month or two — maybe longer depending on how my job search goes.

As far as our wandering ways, well, we still plan on getting out and about, especially since we have the whole state of California to explore, as well as the Western half of the US in general.

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Rubble was actually the very first place I ate when first coming to Gozo when house hunting and the things that appealed to me then are why we keep going back, as far as very friendly service from Audrey (who is always there running the show) and very good, reasonably priced food and drinks in a laid-back casual atmosphere.

There are five or six restaurants on the town square in Xaghra to choose from on both ends of the dining spectrum with Rubble Bar settling comfortably in the middle, offering a menu that tilts a little to the English side but also plenty of local dishes including rabbit and spaghetti, quail, and meals that incorporate the cheeses that Gozo is known for.

Rubble Bar in Xaghra

They do take reservations but it’s typically not necessary, with a lot of outdoor seating on the patio during the warmer months and the tourist crowd tapering off dramatically in the winter, when the six or seven tables inside are usually more than sufficient.

Clientele is a mix of locals and tourists — always a good sign as far as the food and drinks on tap — and Rubble has a full bar, open most days for breakfast/lunch, usually closing for much of the afternoon before re-opening again for dinner around 6:00 PM.

Like a lot of restaurants in Gozo, you have to go with the flow sometimes as far as operating hours which can be flexible and if the cook is late or needs to go run some errands, well, enjoy another Cisk or a glass of wine and try not to stress about it too much.

Rubble Bar
26 Pjazza Vittorja
Xaghra
XRA 1010
Tel: 2156 3758

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Sesriem Canyon is about a 5 km drive from the campground, with good roads leading to and from it. Due to the tourist traffic in the Sossusvlei area the Namibian government has invested plenty of money in roads in the area, so most cars will have no issue seeing the major sights.

Sesriem Canyon remains wet year-round, making it an important stop for various travelers for thousands of years. It’s name supposedly derives from a by-product of that, with the leather ties used to secure various draft animals called a “riem” in Afrikaans and the fact that it took six of them tied together to pull up a bucket of water from the bottom of Sesriem Canyon leading to the name “Sesriem”.

Sesriem Canyon in Namibia

The Tsauchab River created Sesriem Canyon, carving its way through the sedimentary layers of rock — largely sandstone — that run through the area.

The entrance to the canyon is visible from the car park area but take care when scrambling around, as the footing can be loose at times with few guard rails or other modern conveniences.

Depending on the water level you’ll find pools of various size at the bottom, with cooing doves a constant sound coming from the cliff walls.

The canyon is about 1 km long and up to 100 meters deep. It varies widely in width, as wide as 50 meters at some spots but also narrowing to just two meters wide in others.

Like a lot of other areas in the Namib Desert, the views at Sesriem Canyon are spectacular at sunset, both of the canyon itself but also the neighboring mountains and stunning panoramas, with all sorts of deep reds, oranges, purpcles, and blues leaping out at you.

Sesriem Canyon Photos

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Pretty much any visit to Deadvlei is part of a larger excursion to the general Sossusvlei area of southern Namibia, where the signature towering red sand dunes are in full effect as well as amazing panoramic views of mountains and plains.

Deadvlei literally means “dead marsh” but there’s scant evidence of any marsh in the dusty arid salt pan, with the blackened dead acacia trees the only hint that water ever flowed through the area.

Those trees are what make Deadvlei so striking, as they all died about one thousand years ago when the enormous dunes shifted and blocked their water source. The area gets so little rainfall that the trees had no chance to decompose; they’re not petrified in a proper sense but instead are scorched bone dry.

Deadvlei, Namibia

They’re surprisingly stout if you touch them or sit on them, so they’re not exactly teetering on the brink of collapsing into dust.

Various films have used the location, as it has almost a sci-fi, otherworldly feeling to it, as you snake your way through the dunes to the salt pan and dead trees which sits in a bowl surrounding by dunes and the brilliant blue sky.

Pegging exactly what sand dune is the largest is difficult and shooting at a moving target — quite literally many of the dunes do shift over the years — but some of the largest dunes in both Namibia and the world are near Deadvlei, with the largest 300-400 meters high.

“Big Daddy” or “Crazy Dune” or “Dune 7″ is the one of the biggest dunes near Deadvlei and claimed by some to be the largest sand dune in the world.

Deadvlei is located in the Namib-Naukluft National Park, which at close to 50,000 sq. km — about the size of Switzerland — is Namibia’s largest game park and the fourth largest in the world.

As far as the game you’ll find, remember that this is the Namib desert and not Etosha to the north of the country, so animal spotting involves seeing ostriches, gemsboks, jackals, hyenas, birds, and snakes.

Terminology gets a little confusing as Deadvlei is very close to Sossusvlei (“dead end marsh” or “no return marsh”), which is an adjacent pan that does fill with water every 5-10 years when it’s particularly wet; Sossusvlei is also a general, generic term that’s used to describe the larger area encompassing the Deadvlei and Sossusvlei pans as well as surrounding environs.

Access to Deadvlei and Sossusvlie is through the park gate at Sesriem (where camping facilities are located), with decent roads getting you to within 6 km of Deadvlei and Sossuvlei.

You can either hike in that remaining distance — a difficult and hot task during the summer — or pay a nominal fee to several companies that offer 4WD jeep rides to within easy walking distance of both pans.

Deadvlei Namibia Photos

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We knew we’d be in for some temperature shock coming from Wales to Malta but it’s been pushing 100 F (40 C) for the last few days, which can get miserable when living in a 200 year old stone house with no air conditioning.

A lot of homes in Gozo are similar to what you’ll find in various parts of California, as the year-round temperate weather means that a lot of homes and businesses simply don’t have central air or heat, making do with portable heaters and fans when the weather slides to either extreme.

That definitely takes some getting used to, especially for Texans that are accustomed to be able to ratchet up the AC when things really start to boil.

The neighbor situation also evolved while we were gone, with construction finally done on two adjacent tall buildings with flats now available for rent/sale. We’ve suddenly got new neighbors that can not only see through our bedroom and master bathroom window is so inclined but they also aren’t shy about having loud pool parties at 1 or 2 AM.

Combine that with the fact that our lease is up in September and we’re planning to pick up and head for Australia and you end up with our happy little Gozo home that we left in May being a lot less comfortable than it once was.

Looking on the bright side, it’s definitely adding fuel to the get-things-sorted-and-packed-and-cleaned push so we can head off to the Land Down Under, and this heat wave should break a bit in coming days.

Once we’re packed and all the loose ends are tied up, there’s also the option of heading off a little early and just paying the remainder of what we owe on the lease, although we are hoping to hang around Gozo a bit and explore some of the nooks and crannies we haven’t gotten to yet.

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If you’re looking for a creaky old castle with ruins to explore, Cardiff Castle ain’t it, as it was massively restored and rebuilt in the late 19th century; that’s also responsible for a lot of it’s charm, as it’s one of the best examples of a fantasy castle created in the Victorian era.

Like many castles, it’s height and sightlines over the surrounding era meant that it’s been fortified and maintained by all sorts of folks over thousands of years, with the first Roman fort built around 50 AD and a Norman keep erected around 1100 AD.

The keep at Cardiff Castle

In the 18th century the castle became the property of John Crichton-Stuart, the 3rd Marquees of Bute (and also the richest man in the world due to inheriting massive amounts of land and mineral rights in and around Cardiff, which his father had the foresight to build into a major port and exporter of coal and iron).

Bute met architect William Burges in 1865 and the two would pair together Bute’s limitless money and Burges’ limitless imagination to transform Cardiff Castle (as well as nearby Castell Coch) into amazing examples of Victorian art, architecture, and decadence.

Visitors to Cardiff Castle today have two tours to choose from, a basic £11 tour that includes the castle grounds and several rooms in the main living area where Burges worked his magic and a premium £14 option that includes a 45 minute guided tour of more rooms in the living area.

As far as the castle grounds, while it’s interesting to check out the view from the battlements and make your way up to the inner keep (which has its own small moat and is steeply elevated) the real heart of the tour is the living area designed by Burges.

The banquet hall at Cardiff Castle

Construction of the living quarters straddled Bute’s life as a bachelor before he married in 1872, with some of the apartments obviously much more “manly” as compared to the nursery and rooms added later. Burges died in 1881, with some of the work at Cardiff Castle completed after his death.

Both Bute and Burges were fascinated with other cultures and traveled widely, with various Moorish influences and other cultures represented in Burges’ designs. Most of the rooms in the living quarters are furnished with period furniture, letting you get a real sense of how the rooms would have looked and been used.

The Bute family eventually left Cardiff Castle to the city of Cardiff in 1950, with the castle grounds used frequently for festivals and picnics and weddings and other events held in the huge banquet hall.

Cardiff Castle Photos

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If there’s one thing that people enjoy more than talking it’s talking about themselves, so it’s no small wonder that blogs of all sorts — travel blogs, cooking blogs, mommy blogs, you name it, there’s a blog — keep popping up, as they’re the perfect medium to tell and show the world all sorts of things about all sorts of topics.

Travel blogs are a bit unique as they can straddle all sorts of worlds, serving as personal journals and narratives of one’s own journeys around the world, a way to keep in touch and share news with family members back home, or driven by more mercenary goals, with some travel bloggers making enough money from their blogs to make it a lucrative, full-time job.

Regardless of your motivations, below are some quick tips to get started with a travel blog of your very own:

Invest in yourself: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with starting up a free blog at Tumblr or Blogspot or any other free service. That’s how plenty of bloggers got their start before eventually setting up their own websites and those free services provide everything you’ll need to post content, share photos, and get comments and feedback from visitors.

Moving your blog over from a free service to a paid hosting account can be a real pain in the butt, though, and hosting costs have dropped dramatically to the point where I always recommend that people start with a paid hosting plan at GoDaddy or a similar company.

Even the most basic plans — such as the $1.99/month plan at GoDaddy — provide all the bandwidth and features you’ll need, plus you’ll be able to register domain names and manage them from the same account.

WordPress is Your Best Friend: Once you have a domain name picked out and a hosting plan ready to roll, you’ll need to set up a way to publish and maintain your content, whether you’re posting simple text updates or uploading photos.

That’s where WordPress comes in, which is free open-source software that’s a godsend to bloggers around the world. It’s incredibly simple to set up and use (with many web hosts installing it for you or offering it pre-installed with hosting packages) and even non-technical users can sort it out as far as installing it and using it.

This isn’t meant to be a step-by-step guide to getting your travel blog up and running so you’ll need to be willing to invest a little time learning the ropes, but basic paid Web hosting + WordPress is the best foundation as far as the technical underpinnings you’ll need for your new travel blog.

Pick a Niche: There are thousands of travel blogs out there, so the ship has sailed a bit on the whole “I’ll start a travel blog and millions of people will flock to read about my adventures while traveling” idea.

If you’re simply keeping a journal for personal reasons, I suppose you can ignore this but pen and paper would suffice for that, so most people who’ve gotten this far are at least partially motivated by having an audience and sharing their exploits with the world.

It’s always easier to attract readers and praise and adulation (and yes, advertising dollars) if you can narrow your focus slightly and carve out a slice of the travel blogging universe for your own.

Don’t go too narrow as there’s a limited appeal for “Traveling Mongolia in Search of the Perfect Goat Cheese” but put a little thought into what unique take you bring to the blogging table, whether it’s for retirees embarking on a solo around the world tour, backpackers on a gap year before starting college, or a corporate refugee who’s given up cubicles and TPS reports for tracking lions in Tanzania.

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day: Don’t get discouraged when you slave away on building your travel blog and no one but your great aunt Matilda reads your site.

Getting traffic and readers is a slow, gradual process and more often than not that’s a good thing, as it gives you time to fiddle and tweak your blog and find your own rhythm and style as a travel blogger.

There are lots of shortcuts to trying to quickly build an audience but the best solution is also the easiest; post unique, interesting content on a regular basis and readers and traffic will inevitably follow.

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The Internet tubes are awash with all sorts of how-to travel advice, top ten lists, and other information designed to help you pull off the perfect trip. A lot of it is great advice, but the cumulative effect can be a little misleading as far as planting the seed that there’s a “right” way of traveling and having a great time, and that any less-than-stellar experience you have is your own fault for not doing enough research or planning ahead.

Everyone is different and everyone travels differently; your path to an amazing trip might — and should — look very different from mine, so don’t be afraid to blaze your own trail.

One big way that I think a lot of travel advice misses the mark is by adopting the baseline assumption that you’re racing the clock, trying to cram in as much awesomeness as you can in a limited amount of time.

Top ten lists are great (such as “10 Great Things to Do in Vienna”) but the implied message is that unless you race through and check off all ten you’ve missed something amazing.

And that’s what many people do, rushing pell-mell from point to point, completely changing up their basic daily routine in an effort to see and do everything.

That works for some folks but for many it turns their vacation into an exhausting race against time, with the breathing of a huge sigh of relief when finally back home with time to recover from their holidays.

I like to think we’ve gotten a little smarter as we’ve traveled more, and while some of that is functional stuff — such as learning what to pack or not pack or being smart about what airlines we fly based on luggage restrictions — a lot of it is recognizing what we need to stay relaxed and happy and get the most out of our trips.

For us that means making sure to fit in some decompression time when we laze around the hotel room and watch bad television (cough, “Pretty Little Liars”, cough), catch up on Facebook, and order a pizza or grab some Subway sandwiches for dinner.

Some of you are likely cringing at the idea of wasting one of your precious days in amazing cities like Vienna, London, Paris, or Rome in that fashion but it’s what works for us, and it’s time well-spent as far as making sure we’re fresh and excited for all the other adventures during trips.

If you take a nap every day, take a nap; if cooking dinner every night gives you great pleasure then book accommodations that provide a kitchen or area to prepare meals; if you spend time reading every day then carve out time with a book during your vacation.

In the end it’s YOUR trip, with the only real goal being to enjoy yourself. That can take many different forms but don’t be afraid to be yourself, as far as not straying from the sorts of things you can do each and every day to add a little relaxation and/or fun into your world.

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Some travel junkies thumb their noses at the idea of doing guided tours — preferring to get a more hands-on, realistic experience by winging it and striking out boldly amongst the natives — but we’ve been really happy with the guided tours we’ve done, especially in places where we have just a few days.

Aside from the ease of not having to worry with hiring a car and driving on the “wrong” side of the road, I enjoy the photography side of things a lot more when I can just focus on being a tourist and don’t have the extra responsibility of paying attention to where we’re going, what turn we need to make, and so on.

The "leaning tower" at Caerphilly Castle

The tour made for a long day, meeting the group at the steps of the National Museum at 9 AM and jetting around southern Wales for much of the day, getting back to Cardiff at just after 5 PM.

We got to see two more castles — Castell Coch and Caerphilly Castle — and then spent much of the day in the Brecon Beacons National Park, which is a little misleading as there are several small villages within the confines of the park so it wasn’t completely a nature trip.

Caerphilly Castle is one of the largest castles in the United Kingdom and was fun to visit as it hasn’t been completely restored (like Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch) so it had that ruined, spooky castle vibe going on at times, especially the leaning tower that seemed ready to topple over at any instant.

It was also interesting to see a lot of art projects incorporated into the castle grounds, including several aimed at getting school kids to contribute to various art projects installed throughout the castle.

Brecon Beacons was very beautiful, with the narrow winding road getting there providing a real sense of the Wales countryside and a nice change of pace from the hustle and bustle of Cardiff.

Sheep in Brecon Beacons National Park

We stopped for lunch in the town of Brecon — the largest town in the park — and had time for a little shopping and wandering around before visiting Brecon Cathedral.

With over one million sheep wandering around the park, we saw plenty of them, including one that Sarah befriended towards the end of the tour, aided by Chex Mix and a banana.

We were dragging a bit towards the end of the tour but definitely enjoyed it and Jan did a great job of keeping us on track and on schedule for a lot of stops — no mean feat given we had a group of ten or so to herd on and off the bus at probably a dozen or so different stops throughout the day.

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The train ride from Salisbury wasn’t quite the peaceful journey through the rolling countryside hills that we hoped for, as another earlier train had broken down so it was very Lord of the Flies as way too many people crammed onto the train, but it finally cleared out a few stops from Cardiff.

We checked into our hotel and hopped over the the city library, hoping to dig up a little genealogical information on Sarah’s great-great-great-grandfather James Pryce.

The library in Cardiff

She’s done a ton of work digging up family info but sadly all we knew about him was that he was born in 1822 somewhere in Wales, so our quest hit a slight brick wall there as the office with the city census data for Cardiff was closed and James Pryce is unfortunately a very common Welsh name.

We’d expected that so we weren’t too crushed, hoping to return someday in the future when we’re armed with more info as far as a town or county that he or other ancestors lived in.

We explored the city center a bit more that day, then spent the entire next day checking out Cardiff Castle, Bote Park, and the National Museum.

That’s a little out of order, as I’m still jet-lagged and waking up ridiculously early every morning, so I struck out solo at about 6 AM to wander around and take some photos and check out where we needed to be later on.

Everything was obviously closed but Bote Park was open, and I basically had the entire place to myself — except for a few bums sleeping on park benches — to wander around in for a few hours.

One of the things we’ve really enjoyed about both Salisbury and Cardiff is just the sense of history, as far as traipsing around areas that our ancestors lived in, sitting by the same scenic rivers that people have sat by and pondered big and small things for thousands and thousands of years.

Bote Park next to Cardiff Castle

For me it’s not so much the big monuments in Europe that do that for me but more the everyday ones, like sitting a bit by a stream in Bote Park as the sun came up, imagining how many times that cycle and setting has been repeated over the years, with a lot of things obviously changing elsewhere but that little nook essentially remaining the same all that time.

Our tour of Cardiff Castle was a little unique as they were having a big children’s picnic of some sort on the castle grounds, so a little more hoopla than would have normally been the case.

We did the premium tour (£14 instead of the usual £11 entry price) and had an hour to explore before the tour started, which was about the right amount of time to walk along the battlements and see the castle keep, with nice views at the very top of all of Cardiff.

The tour mainly consisted of seeing the lavish private apartments and rooms built later during the Victorian period, with a very rich dude (John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute) owning the castle at the time and basically giving architect William Burges a blank check to let his imagination run wild and build the fantasy castle of his dreams — which were reportedly heavily influenced by his love of opium.

Some of Burges' handiwork in Cardiff Castle

The results are pretty impressive, with the assorted rooms on the tour much as they were back in the day, with a hodge-podge of styles used in decorating the various areas of what was essentially used as a vacation home for the Bute family.

After Cardiff Castle we popped over to the National Museum, which is just down the street and a great way to spend a few hours. It’s a combination of a natural history museum and an art gallery, with a lot of contemporary art as well as some Vang Goghs, Monets, and loads of other art.

We were pretty worn out after a long day and ended up relaxing in the sunshine in the park just outside the National Museum, as we lucked out again with pretty amazing weather for the few days we had to spend in Cardiff.

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