Passport Living – Travel for Life

Japan Here We Come!

Well, it is official:  we are going to Japan.  Weszt finally got vacation approval so we bought our airline tickets.  Kelley has been monitoring ticket prices for some time now, and so far we have been a bit disappointed.  We figured it would be cheaper to fly from the west coast (Portland) than the east coast (Orlando).  Unfortunately, that has not been the case.  We did discover priceline.com had the flights we wanted for $811 per person, while on delta, expedia, et al they fluctuated from $929 to $1280 any given day.  The flights are on Delta, and they are nonstop!  We are very excited about that.  This flight should be much easier than the previous two to Japan.

Anyways, back to the trip.  It will be just over two weeks and is basically a modified version of the trip we planned to take in 2008 but had to cancel. That trip was three weeks, so we cut the island of Shikoku and are sticking to Kyushu.  Tokyo is a given and Weszt wanted one night in Kyoto since we were there on our honeymoon.   Here is the tentative plan:

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Change of Plans

In the final minutes of preparation, we decided to pass on the Grand Canyon this time so that Kelley could recover from a cold. We’re still traveling, but will be visiting Sedona, Arizona and one other, to-be-determined destination instead. We’re disappointed for certain, but we’re going to make the most of it. Again we’re shown that flexibility and adaptability are important parts of travel plans.

Update: Took 18 hours of airports, flights, and car rides but we’re finally in Sedona. Kelley is feeling better so we’re going to eat some breakfast and figure out what we’re up for today.

Moving to Oregon

Weszt has accepted a job offer with Strands, Inc, and we’re relocated this summer to the West Coast. According to the plan, we’ll live in Corvallis, Oregon for a while, then later move to the San Francisco. We’re a little scared, but increasingly excited and packing has already begun! We intend to make the most of the 3100+ mile drive so expect at least a few photos from the road!

We’re back!

You wouldn’t know it from the lack of updates, but we’ve been attempting for more than a year to refurbish and improve Passport Living. Our original goal was to build a new, from scratch content management system but our schedule (we realized much too late) wouldn’t allow it. Our old CMS, it seemed, was far too primitive and difficult to use, making site updates at best irritating and at worst, a nightmare. Now we’re armed with WordPress along with a slew of modifications and plug-ins and things are better than ever! We’re still in the process of moving everything over to the new web host, so please pardon the dust.

You can expect to see more regular updates now as well as new photos, travel tips, video, RSS feeds, and posts to a slew of new blogs.

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Back from London (belated)

Sorry it took so long to write an update, I have no real excuse.  We had a blast in London, although the five nights was definately too short.  Weszt sampled a lot of beer, Kelley had a few ciders, so it was all good.  Our apartment’s location turned out to be awesome, right in the thick of things and we were able to walk everywhere.  Check out our rating of the apartment along with some photos in the Review section.  Also, the photos are up in the Galleries section, although they’re not all captioned yet.  Which brings us to our next topic…

Changes due for Passport Living.  Our next trip (aside from a possible weekend jaunt) won’t be until fall 2008.  So, we’re going to make some changes to the site.  A lot will be back-end stuff that you can’t see, but will make updating the site much easier (right now doing the captions for the photos in the Galleries is a bitch).  Some minor tweaking on the front end will occur as well, though the general look will stay the same.  We will still work on tips and blogs, so there will still be some things to check out, and Kelley might post her progress as she plans the next trip as well.