While I love Australia and it will be always be my home, I’m not particularly fond of the landscape. Driving from Canberra to Adelaide along the Hay Plains has to be one of the most boring trips ever. Lots of nothingness, although we did try and play a game that a wheat silo was a chateau.

The worst trip I have ever done was Adelaide to Darwin by bus. Over 24 hours and I’m still traumatised thinking about it. I can only put it down to a brain fade thinking it would be ok.

I prefer European trees, and the Alps are truly magnificent, especially when there is snow on the top. I too am missing the Tour d France. I usually buy the magazine, and watch every night with pen and paper so I can jot down areas that look interesting. Only another six weeks before it starts.

Rhon, I'm sending you a PM with a link to the gite we'd have stayed in this spring. I don't dare look at it or I'd start feeling sorry for myself.

To add to what I've learned about travel: I don't do well explaining my travel preferences!

cheska, I missed your response. You made me laugh. We did the same thing close to home--pretended a rock crusher off in the distance was a stone manor house in Normandy. It worked better before I had my eyes checked.

It's not I don't understand your travel preferences, it's only that the places I have lived I have never had to slog through a lot of visual pollution

When we spot a water tower, we point out the Chateau d'Eau. More interesting now as some are painted with murals.

Walking in my home town...




walking with my Dad in Bavaria




walking with “swandav” in Bavaria





walking in Switzerland



Blaunca near Maloja




Nearing Maloja




The Fex Valley



Charming village of St Prex, near Lausanne




I’m done with desert, dust, mining towns and blowflies ......

I’m done with desert, dust, mining towns and blowflies

Me too. I have just watched Monty Dunn’s French Gardens. That is what I go to Europe for. Great photos Adelaidean.

[QUOTE=suze;17130600]*The cops with their guns, the people with their guns
I don't know where you visited, but I've lived in the US all my life (six different states, two different coasts) and have never seen that.

Well South or North (i forget) Carolina and Arizona are two that jump up to mind. Seeing a tiny woman with what looked to my untutored eye as an army weapon entering a mall made me leave, while the waddling cops going (driving between) from hotel to hotel (I was in that hotel for 5 days and watched it every morning) looking for donuts with their hand guns riding high on their muffin tops are two clear images in my mind. Boston was much less scary. You might see that in Europe, but only as a sign of poverty and crime.

It must be equally strange to come to Europe and see far fewer guns, but is it scary?


One thing I do like doing in a new town or city is working out how the public transport system works, how the shops really work and getting under the skin, fascinating and I do miss that a bit, though coronavirus brings its own changes to these basic processes.

Oh Adelaidean - those photos say it all!
I have just read this thread and it expresses in a range of ways how we all manage our changed travel circumstances.
Your photos and comments about walking resonate with us as we love walking in the Dolomites and Switzerland and one of your trip reports inspired us to visit Bavaria and meet Swandav last year.
However we have just had a few days in Clare and the Barossa and in the winter sunshine it was looking particularly beautiful - but unfortunately I am not a good photographer so cannot share this.
Still just at the moment it was lovely to have a short trip with lots of rolling green hills and bare vines.
Cheska15 we have close family in Canberra and driving across the Hay Plain when our children were young was just boring and awful!
(Made even worse one year by a mouse plague...)

Thank you for starting this thread as it has provided me with lots to ponder on given overseas travel is a long time away for us.

We have been fortunate thus far and who knows what we might do in the future.

I do love the Adelaide hills in winter, love travel, and your comment about the mouse plague reminded me of one in Andamooka (as though that wasn’t hell on earth as it was...lol)

#48 - All I can say is I have lived here all my life and never once seen a person (other than a police officer) with a hand gun. Granted I've lived only on the west coast (California and Washington state) and New England (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont).

I was in Blaine last year having lunch in a casual burger place when I glanced over at the next table and a guy there had a big pistol strapped to his belt...I almost fell off my chair as I did not know that Washington was an open carry state now. Previous trips to Seattle or to Bellingham/Blaine I'd never seen this. It made me very uncomfortable so we left. My brother races cars in Washington state and says lots of the racers are gun owners but all the tracks have signs saying you can't bring in your firearms.

Visiting a friend in North Carolina in 2000 I was unnerved when she told me they had a pistol in the nightstand at their house plus she and her husband had carry permits. I could not understand why, they lived in a great neighbourhood, had not been robbed or assaulted or anything. Also one day her contractor came over while we were there and his shirt lifted up a bit and he had a gun on his belt too. Don't know what that was for...to shoot the sub contractor if he messed up? Same as the guy in the restaurant...what? someone might try to steal your fries?
If you live in a place where this is not allowed it is unnerving to see it.

Size makes complete sense I've not seen it in CA or Boston

Suze makes complete sense I've not seen it in CA or Boston

Always know what type of petrol your rental car takes.

suze, it sounds as if you haven’t traveled in Arizona which has open carry. You see guns frequently in all kinds of places. In hip and ankle holsters. I was told by a traffic judge that 80% of drivers are armed. You never engage in road rage! I have never felt comfortable when seeing these guns. I assume it is the same in much of the western U.S.
I have only missed being in two states, ND and Alabama and I have zero interest in visiting Alabama.
The geography, scenery, food, cultures and ways of living are vastly different in every part of the country. Just look at normal dining hours! Their dinner time is closer to my lunch. Nothing right or wrong, just different.
But when I am about to land in Europe, I look down at the little stone or stucco houses below and am in heaven!

Correct. I have never traveled in Arizona. And have spent very little time in the US deep south. None except one drive-by in US mid-west.

Like I said... I've only lived on either coast and always in liberal-leaning areas.

Just saying some of what people are describing sounds more like a TV show to me, than anything I have ever experienced. Not saying it doesn't happen. Just saying I have never seen it, so obviously not ALL of the USA is like that.

I"m with Suze, I've lived in the US my entire life and have never once seen anyone with a gun except on TV, or police I guess (although I'm not sure I've ever even seen a policeman with his gun out except on TV). I guess I've seen a gun in the holster of a policeman somewhere. I was born/raised in Ohio, and have lived in NYC, LA and Washington DC. Now sure people in these places own guns, some of them (espec if you are in rural areas or on a farm, and people who do hunting) but I have never once seen anyone with one out in public, gads, I don't think I'd want to live in a place where that occurred commonly, that would freak me out. My family is not that kind of family that anyone owned or had a gun that I ever knew. My dad sure didn't. If relatives did, I never saw them. Did I ever see a pickup with a gun rack in it? Maybe, I don't remember, but I"ve never seen someone walking down the street with a gun on their hip or on their leg going shopping, not even in Ohio. And I've lived in some pretty lower income or working class neighborhoods, not some expensive area.

I have seen some of that stuff on TV sure (and I don't mean fiction, I mean news or something).

I have spent very little time in the south. I've been in Florida a few times visiting friends and on the beach, never saw guns, thank goodness. I did drive through Arizona once a long time ago. Didn't stay there.

I don't think it's just being open carry, it's obviously a mentality of the people living there who think they need to wear a gun on them all the time. I just researched this and was shocked at how many states ARE open carry. Mine is where i live now in Maryland, and I've never seen anyone in a store or on the street with a gun. Colorado is, I guess, and I've spent a lot of time in Colorado skiing, never seen a gun on people walking around.

this chart was shocking to me
https://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-l...tate-by-state/

So if the above is true, it isn't just being open carry, it's the local culture. Maybe there are more subtleties to those laws, but Oregon is open carry for example. Not to mention Vermont which that chart says allows open carry. I've been there a lot too and never seen a gun. I think my exBIL might have owned one now that I think of it, as he was an outdoorsy kind of guy from a longtime Vermont family but I never saw it when I was there.

it isn't just being open carry, it's the local culture

bingo! If you are seeing people with guns, it's because they want you to see them.

I have family in Oregon and visit often. Still never saw a gun on a person. I lived in Vermont and would hear gun shots during deer season. Oh I have seen a shotgun on a rack in a pickup truck out in the country both places. But that doesn't seem to be what people are talking about here.

I haven't learned anything about travel since I've been at home. But I've learned some things about home. Most importantly, I have learned that you shouldn't delay home renovation projects. There might just be a pandemic and then you're stuck inside for months on end with the grotty bathroom you've been thinking of remodeling for over a year.

Inspired by Adelaidean:

Going for a jog at home:



Going for a jog in Urbino: