Marvelling at a magical Year of Travel, and having the Pictures to Prove It

I think it's fair to say - nay, proclaim to all!, that twenty twelve was my bitch! In fact, it might have been the best year of my life, albeit a difficult one. Despite it's challenges I can truly say it was overall a MAGICAL year, the main reason being the absurd amount of travel I got to do with my hubby. That and the fact that only a small margin of it was wasted on fighting with him. (Yes we have our rows, but this year, I can only recall one that ended in screaming with tears and snot gushing from my face, while blindly marching into the seedy night-life of Amsterdam.)*

*To put it into perspective, 2011 started out great with a two week trip to Thailand, but the rest was a never ending flow of shattered dreams and disillusionment; which of course spilled over into waves of constant arguments with my husband. To put it mildly: F#CK YOU 2011!

Airplanes - The modern day torture device

There's a reason why this blog is called "like.love.travel"...and it has nothing to do with the speech formations of a Californian "valley girl".
For all the wonderful horizon broadening, frame of reference stretching (and bank account shrinking) effects that travel has in my life; there's one part about it that I don't quite love so much... Travelling.

The actual "getting there" part is just sucky! People say "it's not the destination, it's about the journey" (and I want to agree with them), but these people obviously don't suffer from motion sickness! As a baby I threw up on my mother EVERY TIME we got in the car; being young and uneducated in the ways of babies she thought this was normal. Poor young fool. (This was in the days when adults felt it was okay for children to be transported in moving vehicles without being strapped into a car seat.)  It hasn't gotten any better with age... the motion sickness, my mother has gotten wise and not much older-looking. (I hope you're reading this Mom.)

10 Compelling reasons why I could never be a Vegetarian

Before anyone gets all self-righteous about animals being cute and fluffy and how wrong it is to eat them, I would like to start by stating: I love animals...I think they're delicious! Some may even be more delicious than others...

Exhibit A: Our fluffy fat-hobbit kitty! We rescued her from a flooding drain pipe when she was 5 weeks old and now she thinks she owns me. She spends her days following me around the house, insisting on every drop of my attention. And watching me pee. Due to her cuteness and soft jelly-belly, I'm pretty sure she would be delicious baked into a cupcake!

She thinks she's people!

Number one for "number one"

For my very first blog post I was going to write about my favourite trip to date, and it was going well and I had really good intentions. Then I came off the high of proverbial digital ink, that's why this post has nothing to do with my travel experiences and more to do with life experience...

Don't forget the white gold!

Bush-pee like a boss!

Men have it so easy when it comes to this specific topic for obvious reasons, regardless of the fact that you now get a device that allows for women to stand up and pee(what?!). By no means am I claiming to be a pro but if you grew up in Africa like I did, somewhere at some random time and place you would have had to do your business in the wild... more times than you would like to disclose. Whether it's the actual “wild” where you could encounter any number of dangerous animals; the side of the road on an infinitely long stretch between civilisation; or any public toilet anywhere, ever. It's a basic survival skill a girl must learn at some point, mainly because you don't have a choice and hopefully before it's too late!