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Big Ben on New Year's Eve 2015

Well, here we are! After many years of talking about it we've decided to finally take the plunge and begin writing about our travels. While our tastes are decidedly haute our budget is not, so we take some effort to maximize value. Time spent doing a little homework before you depart can pay huge dividends down the road. As my kids will tell you, I don't mind spending a dollar, pound, euro, peso, or real - but I absolutely abhor waste. Don't buy a $5 trinket that you'll toss in a year when you'll wear a $15 t-shirt until it falls apart ten years hence.

We've been contributing reviews to Trip Advisor for quite a while, and will continue to participate there as we have found it to be a helpful resource and hope that others continue to find our efforts there of benefit. As great as reviews are, we wanted to provide more of a conversational overview of our travels. Reviews are great for finding a place to stay or eat and helping to figure out if an attraction is suitable for your family of 12, but there is something lost in the objectivity. Then there are the experiences that just don't lend themselves to a review. How do you outline the process that you went through to get tickets for the London New Year's fireworks on the Thames in a review? Where do you tell people that if you have a family traveling with a lot of luggage that the porter service at Heathrow is worth considering? Where do you explain that you should be prepared for a rather direct and thorough security inspection at the Munich airport if your belt buckle sets off the metal detector? There are lots of little things that can make travel much more enjoyable that just don't translate well in a review format. So here we are.

We'll start with the most recent trip and go backwards, while interjecting current trips in the timeline as they happen.

So, without further delay, here we go!