On the Way to Grand Manan

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Atlantic Canada

On the Way to Grand Manan

One nice thing about living overseas is being a tourist, when you visit your own home town. While spending the summer on the East coast of Canada, with family and friends, we had the opportunity to take in some of the sights we hadn’t bothered to see when we actually lived there. My favourite of these was Grand Manan.

Grand Manan is the largest Canadian island in the Bay of Fundy. It is technically part of my home province of New Brunswick but it is actually closer to the coast of Maine. The island has a population of about 2500 residents and besides summer tourism, the main industries remain fishing and aquaculture.

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Expat life can leave you feeling lost.

Recently I’ve been getting quite a few comments and emails from new expats in Belgium who are struggling with adjusting to life here. Expats in Belgium tend to be pretty transient; with terms of 2-3 years before moving on to a new posting. I wanted to find a way to answer some of these common issues and also demonstrate how we all go through rough patches in the beginning.

For that reason, I’ve decided to repost some of my older CheeseWeb posts as a Flashback series. Because there are over 500 posts on CheeseWeb now (wow! Did I really write all of that?) many of the old posts get buried and lost to the internet ether. I’ll be re-posting these with the original comments section, but adding my updated thoughts.

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Arcen Castle Gardens near Venlo in the Netherlands

This spring I discovered a new gorgeous garden in the Netherlands called Kasteeltuinen Arcen (The Castle Gardens of Arcen). Although my visit was a bit early in the season to see the gardens at their best, Arcen has quickly become my new favourite garden destination.

A few months ago I ordered a book called The Garden Lover’s Guide to the Netherlands and Belgium (Buy on Amazon US, UK). While flipping through, I was blown away by the illustration of Kasteeltuinen Arcen. Andrew and I decided we would visit Arcen gardens the day after our Keukenhof tour.

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UNESCO-Listed Kew Gardens in London England

Although I’ve made several trips across the channel to London, England, Friday was the first time I visited Kew Gardens. Although I had been looking forward to it, Kew was even better than I expected.

For starters, it’s enormous; 132 hectares to be exact. There was no way I’d be able to see everything in the few hours I had to spend, so I decided to focus on several attractions and take the time to enjoy exploring and photographing them.

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This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Sardinia, Italy

Searching for wildlife in Sardinia

Our final day in Sardinia, we wanted to escape to nature. The sun was shining, but it was cool and windy, so it wasn’t a day for lying on the beach.

Instead, we headed to Lago di Baratz, a lake and nature preserve north of Alghero. It looked perfect in our guidebook – hiking trails through the woods, a peaceful lake and plenty of birds and wildlife to photograph.

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This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Sardinia, Italy

Worth waiting for the rain to stop

Onto every parade a little rain must fall and, on day four, our Sardinian adventure got soggy.

Normally I don’t mind a bit of rain when I’m travelling. I just head inside to a museum, gallery or shop and wait out the weather. This was a bit of a problem for us however, as it was Easter Sunday and absolutely everything was closed.

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This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Sardinia, Italy

Bosa Beach

The sun smiled on us again on day three of our Sardinian adventure. We decided to head south and check out the city and beaches of Bosa. As often happens when travelling, the journey was even more beautiful than the destination.

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This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Sardinia, Italy

Nuraghe Palmavera

Day two in Sardinia was my favourite of the five. We learned a bit of history, saw some fantastic beaches, made beautiful flower find and even did a tad of rock climbing.

We were up and on the road early to visit the Nuraghe Palmavera. Sardinia is dotted with over 8000 nuraghe but despite their prevalence on the countryside, little is known about these megalithic structures.

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Alghero Sardinia Italy tropical islands in europe

This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Sardinia, Italy

Sunset over Alghero

I am a huge fan of spur of the moment travel. While it’s great to tick destinations off the ‘Life List’ of travel, visiting somewhere you never considered travelling to can offer some wonderful surprises. My trip to Sardinia last weekend was one such surprise.

The trip was instigated by a friend and fellow photographer. “Want to go somewhere warm for Easter where we can photograph and escape Belgium?” Yes please! Our criteria were simple – affordable, sunny, and picturesque.

So, long before the sun came up, on Thursday morning, we found ourselves waiting for our Ryanair flight to Alghero.

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