THE NOT SO BLONDE TRAVEL

In today's world, it's kind of hard to know what's reality and what's not. Between Iphone filters, Facebook filters, and Instagram filters, and I am sure a million other apps I don't know about, it is really hard to know if what I see on some Instagram feeds even exists.  So when I flew to Banff to discover Lake Louise, I wasn't holding my breath. I had seen a quick picture of a beautiful turquoise lake, but it had seemed to blue to be true. But my friend Deidre was excited to go there and I figured why not go breath some fresh air in Canada.  So after a long night in Vegas, two hours of sleep, and a three hour flight to Calgary, we found ourself driving away from the airport in our tiny red rental car with a paper map and approximative directions to get to Banff. Our phones didn't work, not even a little, so it was us, the Rocky Mountains and Lake Louise - and a few elks too.  I won't lie. I have been to many wonderful places, but Banff took my...

After years of fighting off my friends, I caved and set up an Instagram profile a few weeks ago. And well let's say I am still #learningthisinstagramthing and #stilllearninghowtohashtag, and it is cool but men ... it is exhausting me! Part of me is having fun looking at other people's pictures and I think I would happily be one of those people that had zero followers and followed a million people a day.  But the whole reason behind having Instagram was to get people to discover my blog, and for them to get to my blog, I have to entice them with pictures they are going to like or heart or whatever it is called on Instagram. Sounds so creepy, doesn't?  Yet part of me is enjoying this and trying to get into it for the sake of my writing. I am just not sure I am going to be able to keep up writing on my blog since I am so busy finding the right picture, the right filter, the right hashtag etc etc ...  Anyone out there also has mixed feelings about #Insta...

Before planning a trip, most of us do two things: Google all possible activities & check the Weather App. I only do the Google thing ... I don't trust the weatherman, and for good reason, he is usually wrong. So while enjoying our last evening in Cape Town, my partner in crime Deidre and I were of course plotting our next stop. We had not come so far for "just" one stamp on our passports. We needed one more before heading back to the U.S. After going through hundreds of possibilities, the last two contenders were Mozambique and Mauritius. On the one hand, Mozambique sounded fantastic, but we only had 3 days left and felt it wasn't enough to explore. On the other hand, three days in Mauritius seemed enough to do most of what we wanted to do - which was drink, eat and tan, but the weather was not promising. It said rain rain and more rain.  We were about to cancel our escapade and "just" got to Dubai when Deidre's genius mind went in...