Another update from our friends Volkan and Heather

It's been a while since we've had a guest post from our friends Volkan and Heather. They had sent us an update on their travels while we were away in Europe, but we never got around to publishing it for you.

They recently spent some time in New Zealand and wrote to tell us about it...

What does it cost for five months of travel in Europe?

Well, it's not as much as you might think.

We spent $14,000 CAD ($10,800 USD) for the six month period between November 1st and now. An average of $2,333 ($1,800 USD) per month. That includes all flights as well as our return trip back to Canada at Christmas time.

That total also includes all of our expenses, because that's the only way that it's meaningful to anybody. It even includes our new Samsung smartphone. Yep. Everything.

Too many rules!

We've just been spending time with our daughter's family these last few days. Grandson Cameron (6) is in grade one, so he's gone to school all day. So granddaughter Sadie gets a lot of our time.

She sure is a character!

Could we live there?

Well, we sure did have an interesting winter, didn't we?

Certainly not a "normal" winter for us. Sherman the motorhome remains parked up here at our daughter's house where he has been since last October. And he'll be sitting here for a while yet because we have no plans to move him until October of this year!

And, we have now visited 33 different countries. We've been in 12 different countries in the last six months alone! Wow!

Body Bark

A company we had never heard of sent us a couple of t-shirts last Christmas. They simply asked us to try them out, and write about them if we liked them.

We're always willing to offer our opinion, especially on a product that can be related to our travels. And most of you know that we travel very light. So when we did some research about this lightweight, comfortable, easy to wash and dry clothing, we took them up on the idea!

Not a bad deal on a Canadian SIM card...

On the way up to Ruth's dad's place yesterday, we stopped at the off leash dog park. This is a really popular place for dogs to be running around loose and playing with other dogs. I'm pretty sure that many people come here every day to give themselves and their pups some exercise.

It was a little chilly, but after all it is only mid April...and we are in Canada!

Introducing...Chester!

A bit late getting started this morning! We wanted to come up to Ruth's dad's place fairly early for Easter Monday, so today's blog post had to wait until we got up here.

Our daughter Lindsey and son in law Justin had a spa gift card from his work that they wanted to use up, so they took advantage of the fact that Grandma and Grandpa are now here visiting. And that was fine with us, so we spent the day looking after Cameron (6) and Sadie (3 1/2), Boy, they sure are growing!

Back in the motorhome!

Yes, we slept in our motorhome last night! Felt great to be back in our own bed again, even if it's only for a few nights.

It was a long travel day yesterday as we flew from Barcelona, Spain to Montreal, Canada and then Montreal to Ottawa.

Here's the whole story...

One night in Barcelona

We were up at 5:00am Friday morning! Probably could have slept until 5:30am, but this way we didn't have to feel rushed. We were outside at the corner waiting for our pre arranged taxi driver at exactly 6:30am.

But he wasn't there!

Getting ready to go home...

Writing this Thursday evening because we will be up at 5:30am Friday to get on our 8:30am flight from Tangier to Barcelona. Then one night in Barcelona, and Saturday we fly back to Canada!

We had booked the overseas flight a long time ago...back in early September of last year! So I wasn't really paying attention at the time that April 15th was in the middle of Easter weekend. And that Easter holidays are a big deal in Spain.

We had a very successful day!

We planned an afternoon trip from Tangier to Tetouan, a small city near the east coast here in northern Morocco. But first, we had to figure out how to get there. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a whole lot of detail online, so I'm going to include those details here for the benefit of future travelers.

Unless you hire an expensive guide and private driver, there are only two choices of transportation... the bus, or what they call a "grand" taxi"!

A good hike, but with some obstacles...

Another beautiful day here in Tangier, Morocco. So we decided to go for a hike. We had wanted to take a coastal trail all the way to the Cap Spartel lighthouse that looks out over the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of about 12 kms (7.5 miles), and then take a taxi back home.

But we encountered a few obstacles!

I'll bet not many Americans know about this...

We had planned to do a couple of day trips during our four full days here in Tangier. But so far, we haven't got any ambition to sit on a bus for any length of time. One of the day trips we had planned is to the popular "blue town" of Chefchaouen, or simply "Chaouen" as the locals call it. But it's 3 hours each way by bus! Apparently it's slightly quicker in a collectivo van, but we're still not ambitious.

Another is to the beach town of Asilah. It's only an hour bus ride away, so we may still do that.

Anyhow, yesterday we just wandered around Tangier. There are a few interesting things to see here, and we managed to (almost) match up a couple of my dad's photos from his visit here in 1954.

Made it to Tangier, Morocco!

We didn't have to rush yesterday morning because our train wasn't scheduled to leave until 12:30pm. And so we finally got caught up on our blog posting and photo editing from our three days away in the desert without internet.

We said goodbye to our AirBnb hosts Jamila and Mohammed. They were really good hosts and we're glad we found a common ground communicating in Spanish. That wouldn't be the case with our next host!

Exploring Rabat, the capital city of Morocco

We planned a long walking tour of Rabat, leaving from our AirBnb apartment at just before noon. Clear blue sky all day, with a high around 28C (82F).

First stop was the nearby train station where we bought two more rail tickets for Sunday. We fly out of Tangier next Friday, so we decided to head directly there for five nights and do some day trips from Tangier.