Welcome to Furry Friday #7, this weeks tale of a furry friend we have met during our travels comes from one of our favorite places in Germany.

It was an almost brisk and beautiful autumn day in Baden-Baden, Germany. We were taking a peaceful stroll through the park, admiring the fall colors and crunching the leaves. I remember thinking to myself how I missed our cats and just then we hear a meowing in the distance and turn around. Up the hill was a wee cat running towards us like a scene out of Baywatch, it’s run turning from a gentle pace into a speedy race. He finally reached us and screamed out:

“Oh my god, I can’t believe I found you guys!”

He acted just like we knew him and it’s been years since we seen him. Full of purrs, desperate need of pets, and wanting to play. We didn’t have the heart to tell him we had no idea who he was.

So we gave him pets..

And played some twig games.

As you can see, he was extremely happy for all this love and attention.

And then the next thing we knew… he vanished back into the forest. Never to be seen again.

Wonder what that was about?

Luckily for once we can announce no total failure! Just lots of changes. Read On:

It’s nice to have some down time to plan things out. With such a busy travel schedule all summer there wasn’t a lot of extra time to do planning ahead of where we’re going to next. So now with a nice break in travel and generous relatives letting us stay at their place until we can easily figured out where to go next. With a strong and free Internet connection, access to a fantastic espresso machine and fresh groceries in the fridge, it was the perfect time to sit down and figure things out.

We had a general route figured out earlier to go through Turkey, Egypt, India and then on to Thailand and the rest of Asia. But we didn’t know the costs of travel and accommodation so it took some time to decide what we’d do next. One thing was we spent more money than expected in Europe, with the Euro to Canadian exchange rate being poor and sticker prices being the same or more as back home. Sandwiches in Ireland were €9, beers were often €5-€7 and so on. Basically, we paid the same money as we do back home on things as we did in Europe, which with anyone’s vacation plans that is not what you expect. One tends to travel to places that are cheaper then home. It wasn’t something that we had prepared for, I thought things would just be a bit cheaper. Apparently I was wrong.

We very much wanted to visit Istanbul and see the open-air markets. And go to the Valley of the Kings and view the inscriptions. See the Taj Mahjal and experience the crazy city of Mumbai. But we had to ask ourselves where we really wanted to go, and SE Asia was an area that we just couldn’t miss since it’s an area of the world we have been dreaming about for years. With a clear direction we could start making a plan of where to go and ensure the costs while traveling. With the great exchange rate the Canadian dollar gets in Asia it was looking to be a very easy place to go to on a now very tight budget.

Dee once again used her magic and managed one awesome surprise. While we were looking for the cheapest airline tickets to Bangkok she somehow found some random site we never used before with her amazing Google search skills and low and behold there was an Egypt Air flight out of Frankfurt that had a layover in Cairo that was cheaper then any other flight option on the net. After some investigation we managed to turn that layover into a 6 day stop over in Cairo! The one thing I had really wanted to see this trip was the Pyramids (especially after I saw the movie Zeitgeist), and when it was scratched off our list due to funds I was quietly disappointed. But now after seeing the chance to stay in Cairo and see the Pyramids we booked the flights right away, with the great bonus of it being the cheapest way for us to get to Bangkok!

I really don’t think we would have found this flight unless we had the time to wind down and do some searching while resting. I’m glad that Dee managed to do some good searching on the net and found it! So now our Itinerary looks something like this:

Cairo – 6 nights
Thailand – 60 – 90 days
Cambodia – 15 – 20 days
Vietnam – 20 – 30 days
Laos – 15 – 30 days

Europe has been great, but really it’s similar to life back home. I’m excited to explore something new in Asia, where both language and cultures are extremely different.

And this ends our tales from Europe!! Hope you can enjoyed them and you can look forward to some upcoming exciting posts from our culture shocking time in Cairo, Egypt!!

Off we go to Cairo!!

Happy New Year everyone! This year has been amazing for both Dee and I. We’ve managed to suspend our jobs (Dee permanently!), got our apartment rented out, possessions all packed and hopped on an airplane to explore the word! We’ve seen and done some pretty frickin awesome things and written about most of it. So here it is, what we think our top 10 things we did this year traveling.

The DVS top 10 of 2009

How could we not include our Tour de France experience in this? While it wasn’t the most enjoyable experience riding 50 km’s, half in the pitch black dark… it was a most memorable experience.


Newgrange was one of the first ancient wonders. that we saw, and they were darn impressive. You could touch the mounds and walk in a wooden henge

Banksy vs Bristol Museum was one of the best museums we’ve been to. Poor Ronald, why are you sitting on the ledge? Feeling guilty of peddling your death fries and enslaving people to crappy food?

AK-47’s and Naughty Squirrels Who doesn’t want to shoot the real thing? The Ak47 we shot was probably held in some scared kids hands during the Cold War.


Thorpe Park This ride is temporarily shut down for an essential clean up.

Oktoberfest The full, Golden liquid cup of beer and friendly Belgium’s.

Guadi and Parc Guelle were amazing. Parc Guelle was probably one of the coolest pieces of art I’ve ever seen.

Roni Size and Get Loaded in the Park. ’nuff said.


Eiffel Tower is on everyone’s list and we drank undercover in front of it. Unfortunately there was one regret.


A week partying on Sardinia with 4 awesome friends and drum’n'bass. What more do you really need in a vacation? Sun and Bass was wicked.

And a special thank you to Dee’s Aunt and Uncle, Barbara and Artur, who live in Baden-Baden  Germany. You welcomed us into your home not once, but twice! Both these times were on short notice and we really appreciate it!