While planning for our year, both in advance and on-the-go, TripAdvisor became our sixth family member. We poured over reviews and suggestions of restaurants, apartments, hikes, hotels, trains, and self-guided tours. As a school writing assignment, we even studied what makes a good review and published some of our own.

Because it was so useful to hear from those who have gone before, we want to share some of our recommendations for YOUR trips abroad. This is by no means an exhaustive list, just many of the great things that come to mind when we look back on our year.

Sorry there are no helpful comments here, but we wholeheartedly recommend all of these places and activities linked below (we DID have some disasters and some less-than-ideals, we just left them off the list). If you want the full story, feel free to email us and we will talk your ear off!

GENERAL TRAVEL

AirTreks Round-the-World Airfare

Renault Eurodrive Lease/Buyback Program

TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor CityGuides App

HomeAway Rentals

Holiday Lettings Rentals

AirBnB Apartment Rentals

Rick Steves Audio Europe

ICELAND

Iceland Camping Card

Hotel Keilir, Keflavik

Northsailing Whale Watching, Husavik

FRANCE

Hotel Esmeralda, Paris

Le Manoir Quinquis, Bannalec

Cro Bique, rental in Beynac-et-Cazenac

Font-de-Gaume Cave Paintings, Les Eyzies

Beynac Castle, Beynac-et-Cazenac

Transmanche Ferries

ENGLAND

Broadhembury Campground, Kent

Dover Castle, Kent

Farriers Arms Pub, Kent

London Eye

Tower of London

Blenheim Palace, Oxford

Helm Lune Cottage Rental, Bowness

Holiday Inn Maidstone, Seven Oaks

Car train through the Chunnel

BELGIUM

Maison Antoine Frites, Brussels

European Union Visitors Centre

SWITZERLAND

Chalet Im Batzenboden, Wengen

Trummelbach Falls, Lauterbrunnen

CROATIA

Montona Gallery Pizza, Motovun

Perfectly Charming House, Viganj

Antony Boy Camping and Windsurfing, Viganj

Jadrolinja Ferries

ITALY

L’Arcobaleno Apartment, Rome

Il Sorpasso Ristorante, Rome

MOROCCO

Riad Safir, Meknes

Rough Tours Company, Sahara

TUNISIA

Novotel, Tunis

GREECE

Hotel Phaedra

TURKEY

Villa Blanca Rental, Davutlar

Ephesus Archaeological Site, Izmir

Perge Archaeological Site, Antalya

Flintstones Cave Hotel, Cappadocia

Red and Rose Valley Trails, Goreme

Sedef Restaurant, Goreme

Hitchhiker ATV Rental, Goreme

Sahkulu Place Apartment, Istanbul

TANZANIA

Nomad Tanzania Safaris

RWANDA

Solace Guesthouse, Kigali

Kigali Memorial Centre, Kigali

Meze Fresh Burritos, Kigali

MALAYSIA

Petrosains Science Museum, Kuala Lumpur

Novotel City Centre, Kuala Lumpur

THAILAND

Thailand Elephant Conservation Center

Sojos Cafe, Chiang Mai

Khaomao Khaofang Restaurant, Chiang Mai

Free Burma Rangers

Medici Restaurant, Bangkok

Navalai River Resort, Bangkok

Bumrungrad Hospital, Bangkok

VIETNAM

V’Spirit Cruise, Ha Long Bay

Hanoi Charming 2 Hotel, Hanoi

CHINA

New Day Foster Home Guesthouse, near Beijing

Huanghua Great Wall of China

Olympic Water Cube Water Park, Beijing

Xian HQ Apartments, Xian

Mt Huashan Hike, Xian

Terra Cotta Warriors, Xian

JAPAN

Japan Railpass

Sakara Kyoto Guesthouse, Kyoto

Sakara Gion Machiya Rental, Kyoto

Musashi Sushi, Kyoto

Hiroshima Memorial Park, Hiroshima

Andersen Kitchen, Hiroshima

Toyota Plant Tour, Toyota City

Pepper Lunch, Tokyo

KOREA

Cozy Residence Apartment, Seoul

… AND SOME ORGANIZATIONS WE HAVE GROWN TO LOVE

St. James Muswell Hill, London

Friends of the Lakes District, Kendal, UK

Lakes Christian Centre, Bowness, UK

St. Paul’s Cultural Center, Antalya, Turkey

World Relief Rwanda

Sonrise School, Musanze, Rwanda

Akiba School, Nairobi, Kenya

Light and Power Centre, Nairobi, Kenya

The Ocean Church, Tanzania

Kenya Connection, Kenya

Dave and Lucy Chaves, Nairobi, Kenya

Christ Church Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya

International Justice Mission Thailand, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Grace International School, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Free Burma Rangers, Chiang Mai, Thailand

New Day Foster Home, China

HAPPY ADVENTURES TO YOU ALL!

I had the most beautiful ice cream cone the other day. The rain was just stopping, and the Kyoto street colors were accentuated by the wet. Red lanterns, dark wood, carefully arranged potted plants, flocks of bright umbrellas.

As I savored both the green tea color AND flavor, I remembered other brilliant and meaningful colors from our year. Each of these colors is packed with memories and emotion — of growth, joy, loss, wonder, hope, friendship — that Benjamin Moore would covet to create.

Here are just a few of my ColorFull encounters (clicking on any thumbnail will launch a larger gallery):

So thankful to have these ColorFull memories added to my palette for my NEXT year.

New friends for a new year!  We are so thankful to get to know several sets of amazing people who have shared their meals, their homes, their time, and their STORIES with us over the past month or so during our travels.

Click on the “Faces” link to meet some terrific people who hold a new place in our hearts.

St. Paul Union Church white elephant gift exchange.  Check out E’s sweet new fuzzy hot water bottle!

With apologies to those YouTube sensation guys who do amazing things with frisbees and basketballs … here is a healthy share of video sandboard dudeness, straight from the sweet sands of the Sahara:

Please humor us for a moment — we want to share a goodly amount of photos from a two-and-a-half-day journey in to the heart of Morocco. As Ismail our translator unspooled the country’s people and places, we drank it in — the faces, the language, the smells, the colors, the weather, extreme poverty, extreme wealth … and the experience was deeply moving.

The men in this picture are singing Gnaoua music. Their ancestors were West African slaves, taken from an area once known as Ancient Ghana. They created their music to heal their pain, to exalt the memory of their ancestors — and to simply live in a hard place far home.

Here is a song they sang for us inside a tent in Merzouga, Morocco — they sang it twice, by request. It’s called “Soudani” from their album “Gnaoua: Music Khamlia”:

I’m told this is a heartbreaking and deeply passionate song — about HOME.

There’s an obvious tie-in, of course, to our journey … to our home here AND our home back home. Our song, so to speak, is now telling the story of our world adventure home and our Virginia home — even our greater Home — a little bit of all these things at the same time.

We don’t look as cool as the Moroccan musicians in these pictures, but we are singing a song of our own on this journey. It’s a song of healing, of deep memories, and of life in homes far away from Home.

Letting it go in Morocco’s Sahara desert.

Morocco. Morocco. Morocco. This country now has a place — a deep place — in our hearts.

We leave in the next few hours (too soon!) after cris-crossing the country, soaking in the people, their languages, and their story. We leave you with a few images from our journey … and a promise-ish to return in to this space with more words about Morocco and its new place in our lives.

Sunrise at Merzouga, at the edge of the Sahara.

Our first glimpse of the Sahara, Friday afternoon near Merzouga, Morocco.