Continents Challenge

While we were all quarantining at home back during the pandemic, C and I were dreaming about being able to travel again and came up with a plan for where we'd like to go in the coming years. As we mapped out dates and locations, we knew a huge priority would be getting to all seven continents, which we accomplished this past December when we went to Antarctica!

We originally planned to try to do the seven continents over seven years between 2021 and 2027. What we realized is that if we were strategic, we'd be able to get to all of the continents in much less time than seven years!

Back when we were doing all of the 50 states in one year, we really just had to figure out Alaska and Hawaii first, then worry about the other 48 states. For the seven continents, the trickiest one would obviously be Antarctica, so deciding when we'd go there was our first decision, and we slotted in the other continents around that. I knew I wanted to be IN Antarctica for our 31st wedding anniversary since our wedding date is December 31 (and I have a thing about numbers!), so we worked out getting to the other six continents before and after our Antarctica trip and devised a plan to get to all seven continents within a 24-month period.

As with any travel, so many things can go wrong to disrupt the best laid plans, but the travel gods were on our side and everything worked out pretty much how we planned it, with the exception of us flip-flopping the summers we went to Australia and Africa because of safari/hotel availability.

During these 24 months, the three continents that were new to us were Australia in 2024 and Africa and Antarctica in 2025, as we'd already been to North America (obviously!), multiple trips to Europe starting in 2007, Asia in 2017 and 2020, and South America in 2023. We technically went to Asia twice during the 24 months because we added Dubai to our Africa trip in 2025, but as you can see from the signs below, our plan was always for Asia to happen in July 2026. We also went to Europe thrice during these 24 months because in addition to the trip pictured below, we went to Frankfurt and Budapest last summer and Paris this past May!

North America / July 2024

Chicago

Australia / July 2024

Sydney

Europe / December 2024

Vienna

Africa / July 2025

Nairobi

South America / December 2025

Buenos Aires

Antarctica / December 2025

Antarctica

Asia / July 2026

Tokyo

Several years ago, B1 said to me, "You guys really do love a checklist," and yes, we certainly do! We've got two other almost-completed checklists that we'll finish up in a matter of weeks! LOL!

Happy Tails to you!

2025: A Look Back

my once-in-a-lifetime moment of the year

Overall, 2025 was a very good year for us. We rang in 2025 in Vienna, Austria and rang in 2026 on our Antarctica cruise!

As family, friends, and frankly, anyone who has ever read any other post related to our travel knows, C is the travel planner. And by that I mean he is THE TRAVEL PLANNER. He does all of the research, he finds flights, he finds hotels, he finds things for us to do and see, he works out all of the logistics...you name it, he does it.  I usually have very little idea about what's going on...a happy and blissfully ignorant "travel princess" who follows him blindly because I have been so incredibly fortunate to experience beautiful places around the world as a result of his efforts. He is amazing! My contributions are usually limited to two things: providing the parameters of my restrictive schedule so he can select travel dates and sometimes choosing between two or three hotels once he has whittled down the endless options. The only exception to our dynamic is that I typically book the hotels for our Disney trips and purchase any special event tickets; C still handles all of the other details and reservations!

obviously I am Partner 2
LOL

Our two big trips in 2025 were going to Africa over the summer and going to Antarctica over winter break and I am so pleased to share that I played a very active role in the planning! I was the one who researched and booked both our safari and our Antarctica cruise! C did all of the flights and hotels for those two trips outside of what I booked, since they involved traveling to multiple countries before and afterwards. I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about everything working out with the safari and the Antarctica cruise since I was the one who booked them and handled the communication about them for 17 months and 22 months respectively! Fortunately, the two companies we chose handled all logistics, down to the most minute detail, with extreme precision and we were able to visit our sixth and seventh continent and check that off our very lengthy travel bucket list! Having now been to all seven continents, I am even more in awe of my mom, who accomplished this back in 2014, with 3 of the 7 (Europe, Antarctica, and South America) being done with women's travel groups as opposed to family - meaning that for all intents and purposes, she did these three continents on her own. She wanted to go, so she went. She wasn't going to let anything stop her from getting to all seven. She was, and will always be, an inspiration to me. I often feel her presence, and as I wrote about back in July, I felt her acutely when we were in Kenya, but she was definitely with me in Antarctica, too.

In addition to our two big trips (Antarctica offers some of the most beautiful scenery we ever enjoyed and our safari was beyond life-changing!), we went to WDW twice (March and August), Disneyland twice (June and September), on a Disney cruise for spring break, as well as New Jersey, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Tampa, several trips to Canada, and some day trips to visit family! Plus I did a there-and-back-in-one-day trip to WDW with one of my best friends! It was a busy travel year for sure! New countries in 2025 were Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Hungary, and Argentina, and we returned to Germany and Austria (and obviously Canada and the U.S.).

I like to compile our travel data each year and when C and I were going through our 2025 calendars, it was pretty surprising to see our final numbers!

• total of 69 hotel nights (this number includes nights on a cruise ship)
• total of 25 flights (6 of which were red-eye flights)
• total of 9 nights spent in Canada
• 2 nights spent driving through the night to Canada

...which is a total of 86 nights not at home! 86 nights! That's so crazy!

2026 is looking pretty good in terms of upcoming trips! We've got four Disney Cruises scheduled this year, some quick weekend trips planned, and a long trip to Asia mapped out for the summer!

2025 marked 29 years of me being a vegetarian and 30 years of me living in the U.S. I also got my first new car since buying my Honda Pilot in November 2007! Most importantly, we celebrated three full years of having Avalanche in our lives! The joy he's brought to our lives means everything to us!

I was going to try and select a favorite picture from each month of 2025, but some months didn't really have any noteworthy ones and other months had several, so I just chose my favorites from the year!

Here's to a happy and healthy 2026!

Happy Tails to you!

Summer Adventure 2025: The Wrap Up

I decided to compile some stats about our summer trip! I've done this for a few of our other trip as well and it's always fun to be able to look back on these details!

For those interested, previous posts like this can be found here:

2021 - our month-long cross country road trip

2023 - our trip to South America

2024 - our trip to Australia

Here are the Summer 2025 numbers!

• number of countries: 7 (USA, Canada, Germany, Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Hungary, Austria...and I could say the number is 8 because we went to the Kenya-Tanzania border, but I'm not counting it because we didn't really visit Tanzania!)

• number of continents: 4 (North America, Europe, Africa, Asia)

• number of commercial flights: 5

• number of commercial airlines: 3 (Air Canada, Lufthansa, Emirates)

• number of charter flights: 4

• number of commercial hotel nights: 15

• number of commercial hotel chains: 7 (Hilton Garden Inn, Best Western, J.W.Marriott, Four Points by Sheraton, Conrad, Anantara, Novotel)

• number of safari property nights: 7

• number of nights on red-eye flights: 2 (Toronto-Frankfurt, Nairobi-Dubai)

• furthest distance from Avalanche: 6,900 miles

• total commercial flying distance: approximately 16,500 miles (plus about 500 miles between the four safari properties)

• total walking distance: approximately 249,000 steps / 93 miles

and finally...

• I slept in four different countries on the last four nights of summer break (Hungary, Austria, Canada, America) before returning to work last Monday!

This trip was life-changing and I know when I get to the end of my life, the time we spent in Kenya will go down as one of the best adventures we ever experienced!

We're already well into booking next summer's travel, with three of our four major flights purchased and several hotel properties chosen. When I shared this with a colleague at work who also likes to travel, she was surprised to hear we were buying plane tickets for next summer while we were in Kenya because she hadn't yet decided on where to go! I told her C and I have our travel plans mapped out several years ahead of time (just the travel for school breaks, not weekend trips and such!) and thankfully, she did not think we were insane.

This tweet is hilarious because it is so painfully accurate! As someone who travels quite a bit, I always feel like I need an engineering degree to figure out how to operate hotel showers! I'd also extend this sentiment to hotel light switches; the first five minutes in any hotel room are always spent trying to figure out which switch operates which fixture or lamp! Surely it does not need to be so complicated! LOL!

Happy Tails to you!

African Safari FAQ

Over the course of our safari, I got some messages on both facebook and instagram from people asking questions or looking for details. I decided to combine them into a few general categories and share my responses here!

Lots of the comments and questions I received were about the animals. In terms of the success we had on our game drives, I truly believe this can be attributed to both luck (being in the right place at the right time) and skill (our guides and our spotters were highly knowledgeable about location and timing)! However, patience played a large role as well...we spent a lot of time quietly waiting (for example, the leopards are pretty elusive, the lionesses hunted for about 90 minutes, etc.). We had no preconceived notions about what we wanted to see and told each of our guides that we'd be thrilled with whatever they wanted to show us. I think this made a HUGE difference in our experience as compared to some of the other guests we encountered; some of them were very demanding and frankly, I thought that was such absurd behavior because these are animals out in the wild who have zero concern for you and your unrealistic expectations! We saw so many different animals because we took a very go-with-the-flow approach and trusted our guides, and the only notable animal we didn't see was the pangolin, which is apparently not easy to spot when the grasses are tall!

Here are the animals we did see and looking at this list, I'm speechless:

• elephant
• Reticulated giraffe
• Maasai giraffe
• Rothschild's giraffe
• baboon
• lion
• cheetah
• leopard
• serval
• eland
• gazelle
• water buck
• topi
• impala
• wildebeest
• buffalo
• zebra
• black rhino
• southern white rhino
• crocodile
• hippo
• jackal
• hyena
• vulture
• eagle
• oryx
• mongoose
• vervet monkey
• warthog
• dik-dik
• hornbill
• hyrax
• owl (not sure what kind)
• about a zillion species of birds

Another common question I got was about the cost. This was, hands down, the most expensive trip we've ever taken, but we would do it again in a heartbeat. There are undoubtedly less expensive ways to go on a safari, including using a different company, staying in other accommodations, going for fewer days, choosing a less private experience, or opting for something not all-inclusive. We experienced the most elite service every single day, ate the most amazing food at every meal, and saw the most incredible things on every game drive. If you know us, you know we are not fancy in the least and this is certainly not the type of travel we are accustomed to! But it was seriously a life-changing trip and worth every cent! The memories are priceless!

What was included with the cost:

• our hotel the night before safari
• transportation from our hotel to the airport before safari and then back to airport after the safari
• luggage storage during the safari
• four flights between properties
• assistance with bags at all times - we never managed our bags!
• assistance with all of the transitions between properties
• all meals (freshly prepared by chefs who came came to our tables to discuss the menus)
• all drinks (water, coffee, tea, soda, alcohol)
• three incredible breakfasts out in nature
• evening snacks and drinks during game drives
• a welcome back from each game drive with a drink and a cool face towel
• seven nights at four amazing properties
• day room at The Retreat at Giraffe Manor
• around the clock service
• multiple room refreshes a day
• turn down service that included hot water bottles in our bed at Solio and Sala's because it gets cold overnight
• pretty much any toiletries you can think of - our rooms were beyond well stocked with everything we could have possibly needed
• rooms stocked with rain boots, rain ponchos, and umbrellas
• four-wheel drive vehicles specially designed for safari drives (two of them were open air; one was not open air, but there was seating on the roof!)
• game drive vehicles stocked with water, sunscreen, hand sanitizer, tissues, blankets, and fleece ponchos for our use
• laundry service (which we took advantage of twice during our safari, at Solio and at Giraffe Manor)
• security escorts to and from our rooms between dusk and dawn
• all logistics taken care of - we didn't have to figure out a single thing!

how our laundry was returned
so cute!

at Giraffe Manor, it was even
wrapped in giraffe material!

A couple of people asked if there was anything we didn't care for and honestly, I had to think a bit because the following things are nothing more than minor inconveniences!

• Each day, we were on a tight schedule with not a lot of down time. We had a game drive before sunrise that typically lasted until lunch time, then lunch, which took at least an hour and sometimes two, followed by a few hours to rest in the afternoon. We then had an evening game drive starting between 4:00 and 5:00 and lasting until about 8:00, before returning for dinner. We often didn't get back to our room until about 9:30 or so! On Day 2, we opted not to do a drive or anything in the evening and it was so great to have that time just to relax! Our rooms were beautiful and it didn't feel like we really got to enjoy them as much as we would have liked!
• The wifi was not great at any of the properties. Obviously we're not on a safari to be on our devices, but uploading photos/videos, sharing pictures/videos, and writing blog posts takes time under regular circumstances. To put things in perspective, I have deleted over 12,000 photos and C has deleted over 4,000 photos since we arrived in Nairobi on July 6, so managing all of that took tons of time and the slow wifi was not our friend! LOL!
• There was no wandering around or exploring on our own allowed due to safety concerns; there were wild animals at each of the properties, and even in broad daylight, being aware and alert at all times was critical!
• During our game drives at the first property, Sasaab, we shared a vehicle and our guide and spotter with another couple (thankfully, they were completely delightful); we absolutely preferred having a private guide, spotter, and vehicle at the two subsequent properties, Soilo and Sala's!
• Knowing what we know now, we would have packed FAR LESS stuff! Even though I think we did a really great job of packing light (we each only had a backpack and a small duffel bag for the safari), we could have done with so much less because of everything that was provided!

Finally, some people asked me what my favorite thing was about the safari and obviously, there are countless things to love, not the least of which getting to share this incredible adventure with C. However, one moment truly stands out for me.

I could visit zoos and sanctuaries and see these animals in other confined settings.

Would it be the same as having seen them in the wild?

Of course not.

But I COULD see them.

One thing I would never be able to see at a zoo or a sanctuary is a cheetah running effortlessly at full speed across the savanna. That moment, as the cheetah chased a gazelle and covered a mind-boggling and indescribable distance in mere seconds, is forever seared into my mind and my heart. It was absolutely glorious. What a magnificent creature!

Happy Tails to you!

African Safari Day 8: The Retreat at Giraffe Manor

Sadly our safari adventure has drawn to a close, but we made the most of our final day!

"joy" is such a small little word,
yet it conveys such a huge emotion

Before sunrise, the giraffes came over to the manor and we were able to feed them right from our balcony! Is there a better way to start one's day? I don't think so!

The staff had told us the previous day, "no food - no friendship," meaning that as long as we had food, the giraffes would hang around, but they would quickly lose interest in us once we ran out. This was one hundred percent true! As soon as we had no more food to give them, they wandered off, since we clearly no longer served a useful purpose for them!

no food, so she's done with us
LOL

After the giraffes had wandered off, we went to the breakfast room and ate before having yet another cool opportunity to feed them. This time, the staff opened the windows to the breakfast room and the giraffes poked their heads in to be fed! It was adorable!

crying bc I am completely overwhelmed
with happiness

Unfortunately after breakfast, it was time to pack up (we only spent one night at Giraffe Manor), but since our flight out of Nairobi wasn't leaving until almost 10:00 pm, we had booked a day room at The Retreat at Giraffe Manor. The Retreat was about a thirty-second walk from Giraffe Manor and I don't know what I was expecting, but I was blown away. The building and the grounds are impeccable and we had a spectacular room where we could relax, nap, shower, and hang out all day long! There is also a fantastic restaurant on property where we ate lunch!

outside the breakfast room

this is where they poked their
heads in through the windows!

a little Avalanche left behind

The Retreat at Giraffe Manor

our room for the day

Right beside The Retreat is The Giraffe Centre, which is focused on environmental and conservation efforts, particularly those of the Rothschild's giraffes. This particular species numbered only about 130 in the late 1970s / early 1980s, and I was so happy to hear that there are now about 1400 Rothschild's giraffes! School groups who are welcomed with no entry fees because the message of taking care of the earth's creatures and resources is one that the Giraffe Centre wants to share with kids (I loved this because the cost of field trips can be so prohibitive). Guests have the chance to interact with the giraffes and learn about the work that has been done and continues today to support these amazing beings! As guests of Giraffe Manor, our stay included admission to the Giraffe Centre, and we were escorted over there (free roaming giraffes and warthogs means no wandering around the grounds without a staff member!) and then an intern who is studying to become a veterinarian gave us a tour, which was awesome!

I love this picture because C was having
a grand old time with the giraffe,
our tour guide was using my phone to
take pics of the two of them, and I'm
just peppering him with a million questions
about the centre and the giraffes and not
even paying attention to what C is doing
(I was pointing to the large male giraffe)
LOL

We left The Retreat at Giraffe Manor at about 7:15 pm to head to the airport, and enjoyed chatting with our driver along the way. We were feeling sad because both our time in Kenya and our safari were officially over, but we tried to focus on being excited about the next leg of our summer trip!

Happy Tails to you!