After we got back from our trip, things slowed down quite a bit.

We celebrated several holidays, hung out with friends, went down to central California, and had a great send off for 2016. Instead of posting a picture or two for each event, I find myself less and less behind the lens. I think that given how adult life makes us busy, it my posts will become more and more sparottic. I know that 2017 will bring new adventures, and I’ll pick up my camera for those.

Paris was the last stop on our trip, and it’s always nice to be back.

After nearly three weeks of exploring three new countries, we made it back to Paris. We went to a few of our favorite restaurants, visited a few museums, and felt like experienced tourists given our previous visits to the lovely city.

After driving through Volubilis and Meknes, we made to Fez.

Our dar was in the medina, and we had a very fun time trying to get through all of the people in the tiny streets. Once we got there, we were stunned at how beautiful our Dar Seffarine was. The owner did an amazing job restoring the multi-floor building. Best of all, given that the master suite was not used, we got a free upgrade.

Over the next day or so we spent some time exploring Fez, going through the Ifrane Provence with friendly driver & guide, and enjoying the evenings in Fez. We got to see a lot of the history of the local area and the city, interact with the local monkeys, ride horses without any safety gear, bought gifts in the various little shops, and ate amazing home cooked meals at our dar.

This was a fantastic way to end our trip in Morocco. However, we had a terrible time with leaving the country. Needless to say Royal Air Moroc was not the best experience. I captured our struggles in a twitter storm here. Anyway, I hope to be back to Morocco sometime in the future.

We were picked up from Chefchaouen and made our way to Fez from Chefchaouen making a few stops on the way.

On our trip we stopped by the Romain ruins in Volubilis and then–after getting a nice tan–went to explore and eat in Meknes. The Roman ruins were pretty amazing. Seeing the ruins across three continents now really puts Rome’s power in perspective. The ruins in Volubilis very fascinating. There were not a lot of tourists nor any measures to prevent further destruction of the ruins. Anyway, in Meknes we explored the old royal stables, the open market, and tried to buy food with our non-existant Arabic. We did not stick around as we really wanted to get to Fez before it got dark.

On our third day we went from Asilah to the blue city of Chefchaouen.

Our driver picked us up at our hotel in the morning and then drove us around Asilah to find the police officer to bribe. It seems free travel from city to city in Morocco is limited, and some have to get government approval to do so. Doing so requires a bribe, or finding a police official who is not as corrupted. According to our driver, this is difficult.
In any case, we drove through the countryside and saw a lot of little towns and farms. The King of Morocco was coming through and whole stretches of the road where we traveled were outlined with the police officers. It was a bit of a bizarre experience seeing so many cops.
We finally made it to Chefchaouen and were amazed by all the blue walls, confusing small streets in the Medina, and all of the kittens and cats. We soon found out that Google Maps is truly useless and had to resort to Open Street Maps to find our way around. There are no guides, street signs, or maps, but it was fun getting lost and exploring the Medina.

After driving all over southern Spain, we took a ferry to Morocco.

We drove down to Algeciras and dropped off our car. We found out that we could not make the ferry we reserved via the free shuttle, so we hopped into a Taxi and told him to step on it. We took the ferry from Puerto De Tarifa to Tangier, met our driver, and had a wonderful scenic tour of the city, and the country side on our way to Asilah. In Asilah we took a few days to relax, swim, and see the medina. A lot of the restaurants were closed due to the holidays, but we managed to get some decent eats and enjoy the scenery.

After visiting Alhambra, we spent the next few days relaxing around Andalucia.

We went to different beaches, different white walled towns, and drove up and down the highway in our diesel BMW. Each different little town had a similar charm and its own local products. This made it easy to get gifts for everyone back home.

Today we went to Granada and spent most of our time exploring Alhambra fortress.

Alhambra itself was an amazing place. It was filled with tourists, but we opted for a guided tour with an English speaking guide. Having a guide helped us understand the history, the complexity of the place, and all of the little details throughout its usage. Overall, it was one of of the most beautiful places on our trip so far. After our tour, we walked down to the city of Granada until it was time to go back to our AirBnB in Cutar.

After spending some time in Northern France, we went down to Southern Spain.

Andalusia is a was a very fascinating part of our trip as we have never been to Spain before. We drove all over visiting endless white walled towns, beaches, and tourist towns. We stayed in a village called Cútar which took 45 minutes to get to due to the twisty roads that lead up to it. Each day was something different. We visited Malaga, the Picasso museum, and sweated up to Castillo de Gibralfaro to see the amazing views. The following day we went exploring some local beaches, got lost in Torrox, and ate our way across the region.

For our next stop, we went to northern France.

We flew to Paris from Reykjavik, and took our rental to Normandy. There we stayed at a very cute BnB. During our short stay, we explored the town of Vernon, Omaha Beach, American Cemetery & Memorial, Cricqueville-en-Bessin, and Mont Saint-Michel. Our stay was short, but rather relaxing as there were not as many tourists here then there were in Iceland.

For day two, we did another road trip through southern Iceland.

Reading the recommendation from I Heart Reykjavik, we did the South Coast Tour. We started in Reykjavik, went to see Seljalandsfoss waterfall, were amazed at the views from Dyrhólaey, battled tourists to see all the rocks at Reynisdrangar, looked at the cute houses at Drangshlíð, battled tourists and film crews at the Skógafoss waterfall, ate in Vik, and then headed back to our AirBnB.

We began our 2016 adeventure by having a layover through Iceland.

This was made possible by dirt cheap tickets from Wow Air flying from San Francisco. To make the best of the 48 hours in Iceland, we rented a car, got an AirB&B, and read everything on I Heart Reykjavik to plan our road trips around the countryside. During our first day, we did the Golden Circle Tour. We went started from Reykjavík, headed up to Þingvellir, Strokkur geysir, Gullfoss Waterfalls, saw the Langjökull Glacier, ate at an Ethiopian place, and then headed back to Reykjavik.

This was my first time at a LEGO convention, so I took a few photos.

A friend who works at LEGO gave me a ticket, so I had no excuse not to go. The line to get into the 7th annual Bricks by the Bay was very long but I passed the time playing Pokemon Go. When I got in, it seemed that things were slowing down as the excitement from the builders was fairly low and it seemed like they wanted to go home.

We were back in Atlanta for yet another wedding.

This time, our two friends tied the knot in Decatur. Monica had the opportunity to be a matron of honor. The ceremony was short and we had a great time dancing. I passed my camera to a new acquaintance who took some of the pictures.

We received our fourth litter of kittens and these guys were amongst the cutest.

This litter was composed of two brothers and a sister. The brother and sister got adopted fairly quickly, while the little orange one stayed with us for a few more weeks. While we bonded with the little Orange Julius, our big cat, Iggy, was not happy with the situation. Luckily, OJ was found a new home.

We headed up to Mendocino for the weekend to see the sights and pick up some wine.

My favorite winery was having their release party, so we made a weekend trip out of it. We stayed around Mendocino, and between picking up wine, we explored Mendocino Headlands and Glass Beach.

For Monica’s birthday this year, we went to the Death Valley.

We were able to rent a house near Weldon, CA so taking a trip to Death Valley was fairly convenient. The wildflower bloom this year was spectacular. While Monica was taking pictures of the flowers, I was taking long exposures of the landscape.

We headed to Monterey to a see a friend and go down the coast to see the sights.

The weather was not in our favor since it was constantly windy and overcast. Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park was really busy, and it was hard to get any decent shots without people in the way. Rocky Point, on the other hand was empty, but the weather could have been a bit nicer. I made due with my ND 3.0 filter to get these long exposures.

Monica and I went to Fitzgerald JV Marine Reserve and had explored the tidepools.

We touched all sorts of weird creatures, ooohed and aaahed at all sorts of things, and I took some neat pictures.

Monica had a conference in San Diego, so I decided to tag along.

The weather was outstanding. The beers were amazing. The town was fantastic. A+++ would visit again!