36 Hours in Rome

(Location: Rome, Italy) (In 2000, I was commuting from Raleigh to Austin for work most weeks. Due to corporate policies, this meant flying via Dallas or Chicago, and usually home on Thursday nights. Most weeks, flights were overbooked and the airline would ask for volunteers to take another flight in exchange for a voucher. After […]

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Diving in Micronesia (via Hawaii)

If you get married in the Bahamas, that can’t really be your honeymoon at the same time. I think there’s actually a rule against it. For that reason, we planned a three week diving trip to Micronesia. I’ll explain where it is later. Oh – and this was also over “the millennium”. Once we figured […]

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Getting Married in the Bahamas

(Location: Paradise Island, The Bahamas) In 1999 we were married in the Bahamas. Fifty friends and family joined us at the Atlantis Resort in Paradise Island. We chose to get married in the Bahamas because our friends and family are all over the US (and it is much more interesting than Cary, North Carolina – […]

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Bahamas Shark Dive

(Location: New Providence, The Bahamas) Going out of our minds with the stress from building the house, we decided to leave everything behind and spend Christmas in the Bahamas. We stayed at South Ocean Beach Resort, which is on New Providence Island, but far far away from Nassau. The diving was fantastic, but the food […]

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Scuba Diving in Aruba

(Location: Aruba) We used our flight vouchers from Roatan to go to Aruba – it was the only safe place to go during hurricane season. The weather was perfect, but very windy. We stayed at the Sonesta, located in Seaport Village (downtown). There’s a boat that comes right into the lobby and takes you to […]

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Scuba Diving in Grand Cayman

(Location: Grand Cayman) Fired up from our trip to Roatan, we were excited to go scuba diving in Grand Cayman. Unfortunately it was an El Nino year, which made the diving conditions pretty poor. We had fun at stingray city though 🙂 Would the rain ever stop? Luckily we had a cute little condo right […]

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A Dive Trip to Honduras

(Location: Roatan, Honduras) “You’re going to Honduras, why?” That is what people asked when we said where we were spending Thanksgiving. We saw it in a magazine – an ad for Anthony’s Key Resort – “dive with dolphins” it read. We had to do this. Roatan is in the Bay Islands off the coast of […]

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15 Hours in Paris

(Location: Paris, France) We were in London for the weekend, and decided to take the three-hour Chunnel train to Paris. We were literally there for 15 hours. Sleep is for wimps! We stayed at the Paris Hilton (using points), which is practically beneath the Eiffel Tower. As soon as we arrived, we went to the […]

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Weekend in London

(Location: London, England) “Do you want to go to London for the weekend?” This was the call that I received at work on a random Thursday afternoon. American Air had a last minute deal: Raleigh to London, direct, for $150. Why the hell not ! We did a super speedy tour of monuments, then hopped […]

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Bareboating the BVI

(Location: British Virgin Islands, Caribbean) The idea was simple – “why don’t we just charter a sailboat and sail around to different dive spots?” A few months later we were stepping off a plane in St. Thomas and taking the first ferry to the British Virgin Islands – this was an all day adventure. We […]

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