Orlando FL

 

We met some of our family in Orlando for Halloween during R&R. It was an intense week of amusement parks and so much fun!

Carlsbad Caverns & Roswell NM

 

We used our last R&R trip from Algiers to visit home. We made a shortish road trip to New Mexico to visit Carlsbad Caverns and Roswell. We may as well stop by Roswell if we're driving all the way to Carlsbad so that's what we did. Here's some interesting things we saw on this little trip.

Iceland - 2 Weeks of Fire & Ice

We're vaccinated! This means travel is more of an option. We're still cautious and mindful of the pandemic, so our first travel choice had that consideration. Iceland is on everyone's good list for COVID-19, so it was a win-win scenario for us wanting to travel and them wanting tourists.

Austin Museums

We visited two good museums in Austin. One was the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas which had a good amount of contemporary art which I liked and a dash of some other stuff. The pic above and below is a fountain on the vast university grounds and the somewhat infamous UT Tower. Google for UT Tower shooting if you don't know why.

The other museum was the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. We caught it an hour before closing and it was just enough time to see it all. If it wasn't so hot and muggy then I would have liked to spend some more time there because it's a great garden setting for the sculptures. It'd be a nice relaxing place to hang out in a more favorable temperature. I guess I need to acclimate again to the Texas heat.

Austin Texas

I've been a Texan since I was 12 but I finally visited the Texas Capitol Building during an R&R from Latvia. Austin has a slogan of "Keep Austin Weird" but it really isn't any weirder than any other city I've seen. We looked for the weird and didn't find very much of it except on souvenirs in the shops. I did see one red hat for sale saying "Make Austin Weird Again" which would be more appropriate now. Here's some pics around town and the Capitol.

R&R Cost-Construct

Cost-construct doesn't follow common sense. It follows government negotiated rates for some routes, perhaps some influence from consumer demand, and apparently a bit of good fortune when the cost-construct gods smile on you. I've learned it pays to at least ask.

The R&R point for Caracas, Venezuela is Miami. There's heavy demand for those flights, so prices are generally high. We wanted to cost-construct R&R to Stockholm, Sweden. I asked. The surprising answer was that a flight to Stockholm via Paris on Air France was a little cheaper than going to Miami. Who would think?!? No money out of pocket! Yep, R&R is in Stockholm. :-)