After a few days in Istanbul, we started out our cruise with the first port of call in Kusadasi, Turkey. We’d been looking forward to this stop having read about the great ruins of Ephesus in the nearby hills.

The ruins first started out as one of the twelve ancient Greek cities that made up the Ionian League in the 11th century BCE, and would later become a major Roman city on the west coast of Asia Minor boasting a population of more than a quarter million in the 1st …

Once I was asked if Turkey would be considered part of Europe or Asia, and the answer I gave at the time was yes. In fact, the county sits amidst eight countries, separating East from West. And has actively sought to foster close relations with both communities.
A true gateway between the two, Istanbul is in fact a small microcosm of the larger whole that Turkey is. Historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople, it’s the largest city in the entire country with over thirteen million inhabitants and is its busiest port …

Okay, maybe not exactly. But lifeClipper3 by Swiss design research Jan Torpus brings us one step closer.
Through the Institute for Research in Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland, he has been able to turn the Sankt Johanns Park on the banks of the Rhine into a primitive holodeck. The result is a film-like experience that draws from both the real world and virtual reality.
Thanks to a sophisticated software suite they’ve designed, they can take the information returned to them by an array of sensors to change the experience based …

Having the opportunity to escape the winter greys for a few days in sunny Florida, we again hopped the border and flew out of Niagara Falls International Airport. The still little known airport is a hub for the smaller charter airlines, however getting direct transportation from Toronto continues to prove elusive.
With a mid-morning flight our options for getting there on time meant a 7AM Megabus out of Toronto, and a relatively quick border crossing on the 23rd, or staying overnight at one of the hotels in Niagara Falls, and cabbing …

In our ongoing efforts to get places in the cheapest way possible, we went down to Florida in February via Niagara Falls (US) International Airport.  Not a lot of people actually know that this airport exists – when we mentioned it to people, they often said ‘Oh, you mean Buffalo.’  Though Buffalo does have a rather nice airport that we’ve had the opportunity to spend a fair amount of time in – there is actually an airport in Niagara Falls.  One would be forgiven for not knowing this given the …

Despite how much Nicole and I have always liked visiting Niagara Falls, I’ve never been able to reconcile the place as the “Honeymoon Capital of the World.” While the Falls themselves do hold a certain romance to them, the city itself just doesn’t embody the type of intimacy expected of a place holding that claim.

We certainly had a hell of time finding anything that would offer a decent meal other than a major chain. And something to take your significant other to? Good luck. Outside of the Red Chateau, there …

The “Sunken Palace” is the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city of Istanbul, Turkey. Located just southwest of the Hagia Sophia, the cistern was built by Byzantine Emperor Justinian between 527 and 566 CE.

While the majority of the columns supporting the cistern ceiling are of either Corinthian or Ionic style, at the back of the cistern two columns can be found which instead have Medusa heads for their bases.

The decision to use the heads does raise an interesting question of why?
Traditionally pictures and sculptures …

Interview: Cruise Director Simeon Baker, Royal Caribbean from Nicole Winchester on Vimeo.
During our stay aboard the Vision of the Seas in November, Cruise Director Simeon Baker was nice enough to take time out of his schedule to sit down with us, and tell us about his job as a cruise director.
The video’s about twenty minutes long, and covers what his typical work day is like, as well as how he ended up working for Royal Caribbean, and how he balances the time commitment with the rest of his life. If …

While we were abroad – after passing through five different security checks – it struck me that I wasn’t seeing the familiar scanners ever so prevalent in American airports. And it seems with good reason.
The European Union that month had officially prohibited their use, leaving the United States and only a handful of other countries continuing to employ such technologies.
The Commission’s decision was reached as they felt even the chance that a small number of passengers could contract cancer as a result of their use, violated their mandate to …

More commonly known as the Blue Mosque due to the blue tiles that adorn its interior walls – over 21’000 of which were used – a keen eye might even notice the differences in the colours and arrangements, indicating the date and workshop they were manufactured in.
To heighten the sense of spaciousness felt inside, a total of 260 windows were cut, which also serve to create the illusion that the domes are suspended in air.

Constructed between 1609 and 1616 at the behest of Sultan Ahmet I, the Sultanahmet …