Back in 2014, after eight years of Nomad Journeys, South Africa was still on our list to explore! Except for Egypt, the vast expanses of this great continent were still unknown to us and offered plenty of opportunities for adventure!

Naturally, our primary goal was to have close encounters with charismatic critters in their homeland. We feature three safaris where we were able to accomplish this to an amazing extent with visits to:

As we explored the cities of the world, we observed the phenomenon of city planning everywhere. Many cities have their own special story about their City Plan. Modernization, Redevelopment, or Expansion often motivated these plans. We have selected three of these special stories to illustrate how some of our favorite cities are planned.

After our delightful summer in Germany in 2011 we returned to the USA and began to consider our next Nomad Journey - Through Egypt!

Then, in 2011, the Arab Spring had begun, President Hosni Mubarak resigned, we debated whether an Egyptian Journey was safe.   By January, 2012, we decided to go.

Our indie journey of two months was safe and amazing!   Egyptians completed a three phase parliamentary election and looked forward to presidential elections.   Now, more than a dozen years have passed and Egyptians still struggle to sort out all of the issues to reach good governance.   To compound their struggles, in 2024, the Middle Eastern countries face upheavals and violence.

While Egypt greatly needs international visitors to restore vitality to their tourist economy and create more jobs to put people back to work, we urge caution!   Be sure to check  travel.state.gov  for alerts about Egyptian travel.   If you plan to travel independently as we did, use a good guide book to plan your journey.   We prefer the Rough Guides!

The Nomads decided that it was time to escape Paris and head to Normandy and Bretagne to explore the sites of the 1944 Normandie invasion. Simultaneously, we would be able to explore four cities that each felt the destructive impacts of that invasion. The centres of Caen and Le Havre were completely bombed to rubble, while Rouen lost every bridge and the waterfront industrial quarter, and Rennes suffered extensive bombing as well.

What conclusions have we reached about these four French cities?

- Each has recovered prosperously from the ravages of war, having regained their economic vitality and their architectural heritage, but in different ways.

- Each has remained true to the Celtic and Norman roots of this region with unique culture, cuisine and music, while celebrating the landscapes that inspired the impressionist painters.

- In Rouen, Caen and Rennes, the student populations bring a youthful vitality while Le Havre is focused on it's Port City heritage.

- Each city offers mobility alternatives to automobile travel through well planned and executed public transport systems.

In our quest for warmer places to spend our winters, we have visited South America many times. We offer links to our stories of the truly amazing scenic places we were fortunate to visit. Click on each of the following stories to read about what we saw, but remember to use your Back Button to come back here.

If you would first like to visit another amazing site, view the Flickr album of our visit to Perito Moreno Glacier in southern Argentina. It's one of the few glaciers in the world that is actually growing. To view our album, Click here