The best of...

After 48 border crossings through 30 countries and 30 different airports in a year of travel, we have been back in the UK for four months now. It didn’t seem like a whole year since we left but while we were away a lot has happened; Euans sister has got engaged, a friend of mine has been married, 14 friends have had babies and another three are expecting and all this is obviously in addition to people moving houses, starting new jobs and so on.

What I still can’t believe is that during all our travels there were no major trip delays, our luggage arrived at the same time we did and we returned home intact with most of our gear (zip-off trouser bottoms aside - I now have a few pairs of shorts). Someone was clearly looking out for us.

The nature of our route saw us circumnavigate the globe and we’ve not counted the number of flights taken but, oddly enough, the airport we went through most (five times) was Guayaquil in Ecuador. I've roughly mapped out our route on a photo of Mer and Adams shower curtain (the best shower curtain I've ever seen!).



Over the past year, I rediscovered my passion for reading and read a total of 57 books in the time we were away. Euan needs to rediscover his golf talent, having only played two games, in Malawi and New Zealand (and on his first t-shot back at his home club in the UK, sent the ball skipping 50 yards down the fairway and off into the trees!).

How do you close off a whole year of travel? I’ve no idea but during the times when we were walking, waiting for buses, trains or had time to burn, we started to reflect on what we’d done, what we’d do again etc and this ‘best of…’ section was born. This seems an ideal way to close out but first, an explanation as to why the site is called ‘dessert monsters’ (it made sense at the time but its taken some explaining on the road as we gradually lost our sweet tooth and yes, shock horror, even declined desserts offered to us).

Euans mother, Margaret (below), is a gun at making great desserts and, before we left, we were happily sampling our way through her desserts and rating them as we went.



It was tempting-looking desserts like this, a pie with a layer of butterscotch sandwiched in between a buttery crust and fluffy meringue, that got the blog it’s title of 'dessert monsters'.



We've been asked so many questions about what was our favourite country, what would we have done differently etc that we decided to do a 'best of' section. In writing this, I also think back to all the amazing people that we've met over the past 12 months and may even write a section showing those who we spent time with, traveled and are still in touch with.... but for now, here are out best items, countries etc.

Best travel items:

Number 1
Kate: Crocs. They might possibly be the most ugly shoes on the planet but by God they’re functional. They dry in 10 minutes after wearing in water (showers, streams etc), let sand out the holes (when hiking in the desert) and weigh next to nothing. They’ve started conversations with adults and children alike in many countries and, despite the fact I often have no idea what is being said, I’ve managed to understand that is OK for a 30-something year old to wear green plastic shoes with a frog stuck to them.



Euan: King of Shaves oil. A 25ml bottle of shaving oil and it’s only 1/2 empty after a year of use.



Number 2
Kate: Euans sister, Katrina, bought me this dress from ‘White Stuff’ in the UK for my birthday before we left. It dries in about 10 minutes so is brilliant for travelling and I’ve worn it out, literally.



Euan: Flip flops. I started with Teva sandals but by the time we got to the second country (Syria) I had purchased some flip-flops from a street side stall for £0.75 equivalent.

Number 3
Kate: I bought this sarong from Thailand 8 years ago and its still going strong. It’s been a dress, skirt, towel, sheet, shade cloth and scarf and is only just showing signs of wear and tear.



Euan: Foldout wash bags from ‘Kathmandu’.



Best Temple

Baalbek in Lebanon just blew us away. The scale of the place is simply breathtaking (I’m circled in red in both photos to show the scale) and the fact that we had it all to ourselves added to the experience.





Favourite countries

Both: Namibia




Euan: New Zealand
Stunning landscapes, great food, easy-going kiwi attitude, friendly people and very backpacker-friendly.





South Africa



Kate: Tanzania & Uruguay

I don’t remember ever being speechless before, but I was the morning we saw the sun rise over the Ngorogoro Crater.



The Serengeti at dawn was almost as stunning.



and while Brazil had some stunning beaches, I think those in Zanzibar won hands down for tranquility.



The completely uncluttered landscape and the gaucho lifestyle in Uruguay completely grabbed me. It was the only country that I was genuinely upset to leave (apart from NZ but it's my home country and my family are there so of course I didn't want to leave).



Most scary moment….
When we hitched (yes, stupid on hindsight) a ride with some chaps in Jordan one night and they drove faster and faster, wouldn’t stop to let us out and started shouting and waving money at us. I really thought they weren’t going to stop and let us out so was getting ready to throw myself out the door and drag Euan (who was in the middle in the back) with me. Happy to say it didn't come to that but I hadn't ever before felt the chill of real fear, followed by a blast of adrenaline and hope I don't feel it again any time soon!

I have to add my best animal experience also and while it's difficult to choose, this has to be it (yes, not often are horses relegated to second place!):









Things we’d do differently….

• Print out cards with our names, email addresses and blog site to take with us;

• Investigate getting visas issued in foreign countries. I.e. getting an visa for India in South Africa in under 14 days is nigh impossible as we discovered and this forced us to change our route;

• Check up on and plan around national holidays (believe us, you do not want to be in China on a national holiday!);

• Get new passports before we left. We never thought we’d be in and out of Argentina nine times and every time we passed border control there was a whopping great stamp. Euan was pushing it by the time we got to the US but only an over-zealous official in Costa Rica really objected to stamping over other stamps;

• Pay a travel agent who knew what they were doing to sort out the OneWorld flights rather than attempt to do it ourselves.

The below is a fridge magnet that my mother gave me about 19 years ago and it is always with me at wherever is home at the time. I think she probably bought it for me because, at one time, I would have been the wee kid gazing up at a horse, dreaming away.



It might sound stupid but I thought of this fridge magnet while writing this because, over the past year, we have truly lived the dream and I, for one, have just done what I have always wanted to do.

Chicago, USA 27-30 April 2009-05-01

We’re on the last leg of our trip now and flew across the top of the USA to Chicago where we had three nights before flying back to London, to where we started a year ago.

Our stay in Chicago was so much fun and it was made very memorable and enjoyable thanks to two locals, Adam and Meredith, who we met back in February at a restaurant in Buenos Aires. At the time we met, I was polishing off a steak the size of my foot and Euan had just finished eating blood sausage so we were surprised that they invited us to stay! This is Meredith and Adam.



We arrived in Chicago in the pouring rain and found Meredith and Adams apartment where we arrived dripping on their doorstep with plastic bags covering packs, a very sad broken £1 umbrella (that had lasted the downpours in Kuala Lumpur) and feeling a bit scruffy. Mer and Adam have a fantastic top-floor apartment right in the middle of Chicago, in full view of the John Hancock Tower and right in amongst the skyscrapers. This is the view from the balcony of their spare room, albeit on a very moody night!



Chicago, like Seattle seems very orderly and clean after some of the cities we’ve spent time in recently and it’s no secret that we found it a nice change. Things seem very chic here in Chicago and there is a lot of attention to detail, right down to matching flowers in the windows.



We think Chicago has a ‘big city’ feel to it that Seattle didn’t have and the number of high-rise apartment blocks and skyscrapers help add to this.

We did an awful lot of walking in the days we were there but our first trip was straight down Madison Avenue where there are so many amazing buildings. I don’t know where to start!



The Tribune Tower is pretty cool





and there are bits and pieces of other buildings and archaeological sites from all over the world embedded in its walls, from a cannon ball from Pevensey Castle in England



to a stone from Aya Sofia in Turkey and another from Davids Tower in Jerusalem.



This is the Wrigley Building (the Wrigley of Wrigleys chewing gum fame) and behind it is the mammoth newly built Trump Tower.





These guys with their pitchfork were in the square opposite. I wouldn’t mess with them; they didn’t look too happy but didn’t object to Euan holding their pitchfork.



This is the view down the Chicago River



and nearby were the ‘corn cobs’, two towers containing (from what we could see) apartments and car parking.



I spotted a British flag flying from one of the higher apartment verandas.



There are many flat bridges that cross the river and have to be lifted in succession if a boat needs to pass through. It’s a slow process and these bridges were being lifted specially for two very small yachts (the ferry in the photo can pass underneath quite happily).



We were on our way to Millennium Park, home to quite a few architectural works, one of which is the 110 tonne ‘Cloud Gate’ sculpture that looks more like a bean. From a distance it looks like a blob of mercury that’s been suddenly dropped there and because it reflects perfectly it almost looks like an apparition.



Get a bit closer though and it’s just a great big metal thing that provides countless photo opportunities.



From the side you can see why it’s called a bean.



This is looking up into the middle of the bean in the curve



and everyone takes photos of themselves. Novelty value is huge, even though it’s really just a big wonky mirror!



This is a view of Wrigley Fountain (Wrigley features a lot in Chicago).



Also in the park is this concert venue that has a sound system hanging from the overhead beams.



It looks quite cool and the concert shell fits in with the bean



and the BP bridge that winds it’s way over the train tracks beside the park.



We spent time in the amazing Chicago Institute of Art that has one of the best collections of Monet paintings I’ve ever seen, 28 in total (yes, I went back through the gallery to count them all).



I’ve only ever seen prints of the three paintings of the bridges over the Thames in London, one of which is below (amazingly enough, photographs were allowed),



We were amazed to see them change dramatically when you stood back and at a certain angle. Very clever and very stunning.



Chicago has two dramatically different fountains. One is a 50ft high glass block fountain in which video images are seen beneath the cascading water



and the other is one of the largest fountains in the world, Buckingham Fountain. It’s a bit of a monolith and difficult to photograph on a grey day but amazingly enough there was no one else in the area. Lake Michigan is right behind where we were standing.



Right across the road from the Institute of Art is the Cultural Centre, another building with an impressive interior with some sparkling mosaics.



Rooms are modelled on Doge’s Palace in Venice and Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and it has two beautiful stained glass domes. It all looks very new but it was built in the late 1800’s and was originally the city library.







Euan and I spent the evenings trying all sorts of local food with Meredith and Adam but did eat in one night as there was an important basketball game on that was followed up with playing golf and baseball on their PlayStation Wii thing (I’d never seen one but they’re quite strange).



We headed up the John Hancock Tower, 1127 foot/343.5 meters tall and a must-do when in Chicago. Apparently (pre-1973) the blue mirror glass panes were faulty and some detached from the building, falling 100’s of feet to smash on the pavement below. Apparently streets were closed around the building during high winds until the fault was rectified and the glass replaced.



The observation deck is two floors below the bar and costs $15 to visit so we opted to go to the bar and enjoy a drink instead. We found out later that the building had just been auctioned (on 30 March 2009) for less than half it’s purchase price of $1.3 billion in 2006.

This is the view of downtown Chicago



and this is the view down to Adam and Meredith’s apartment (I’ve tried to show where the apartment is).



The fact that there is floor to ceiling glass panels in some areas mean you can look like straight down



and this is the view up the shoreline of Lake Michigan (which is more like a sea it’s so big)



Opposite the tower is the lovely Trinity Church, covered in vines that, disappointingly, didn’t have leaves out yet. It must look gorgeous in the summer.



The surrounding area has loads of shops and is also home to the old Water Tower, the only public building that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.



We definitely didn’t eat here but this is the MacDonalds of the future apparently with flat screen TVs inside and an escalator so you don’t have to walk up the stairs to the second floor…..



and across the road on one corner is the Rainforest Café while on another corner is a place that does great ribs. The eating choices are incredible and we tried (and succeeded quite successfully!) to sample everything that was recommended to us.



Chicago has some lovely old houses nestled in amongst the skyscrapers and we got quite a surprised to see them as they look kind of out of place.



We were on our way to find a good hotdog and who better to ask than a policeman. Euan decided that they would know their hotdogs and he was spot on. They gave him very definite directions to a place that had loads of people queuing up for these hot dogs. The dogs were named after different American cities and are supposed to be typical of the style related to that city. For example, in Chicago, you never have ketchup (tomato sauce) on your hotdog. Never. To ask for sauce is a big no no.



I didn’t realise that chilli in the US meant loads of meaty chilli sauce so was faced with a bit of a mission eating the ‘San Franciso Dog’. Eating it was a messy experience to say the least. Euan sensibly went for the more straightforward ‘Chicago Dog’.



This is the train line that runs straight through downtown Chicago on rails raised above the road. Seems a good solution for cities that can’t (or won’t?) build an underground system (Auckland?!).



During our travels in we’ve met a few folk from Chicago and every time we’ve asked them what we should do while there and the answer has been unanimous every single time: Eat deep dish pizza. Chicagoans are truly passionate about their pizza and in a mini-van in China with about six people from Chicago the debate was fierce about where to go. Adam and Meredith were no exception and we were quite awed by the amount of work that went into deciding where they should take us for dinner. It was narrowed down to three favourites and we resorted to drawing the name out of a mug as the decision was just too difficult. I thought deep-dish pizza was something completely different to what it turned out to be. It’s almost like a deep quiche but without the egg. I took this photo of pizzas we saw at the airport as the one we ate that night looked a bit mangled and gross once half of it had gone from the dish.



but here it is anyway!



I am not a pizza fan but I can honestly say that it was one of the nicest pizzas I’d eaten. What made it special was the buttery crust and the sauce. The sauce was homemade, really flavoursome and had loads of garlic in it. When Euan and I ordered a pizza with sausage, we thought it would be like other pizzas and have bits of sausage sliced on the top but no, this one had seasoned sausage meat pressed in a layer about ¾ inch thick over the entire base, then everything else piled on top. One piece of pizza like this and you’re done. If you’re ever in Chicago go to Pizza Uno’s, Pizza Due’s or Lou Malnatis – these are the best places, as voted by the pizza-passionate Chicagoans.

On our last day in Chicago we visited the beach. Slightly different from the beaches in Brazil but a beach nonetheless and on a nice day it would be lovely to head there during a lunch break (the tall dark building on the right is the John Hancock Tower so its close to the city centre).



One minute it was misty and raining



and then next minute it was clear. This is the view in daytime from Mer and Adams spare bedroom. The talk dark tower is the Hancock Tower.



The weather didn’t deter us from going in search of our final Chicago culinary experience – pancakes. Meredith had told us where to go and we were not disappointed. These were the fluffiest, lightest tastiest pancakes I’ve ever had in my life (and this includes pancakes made by my brother who has always been King of Pancakes for me (sorry Mark)). The restaurant is a family-run place that was started in the 40’s or 50’s. I had bacon pancakes and they were served with whipped butter and maple syrup. Yum!



Astor Street hosts some of the grander houses in the city so we attempted (and failed) to walk off the pancakes. They were terraced and made from different stone. This one was particularly pretty.





A block of apartments had some had pretty flowerpots outside. The vines growing up are alive and were just starting to bud.



They were very effective



Meet Meredith. This photo is Mer through and through, so bubbly and enthusiastic. Her and Adam are some of the most positive, cheerful and friendly people we’ve met on our travels.



Their parting gift to us was another of Chicago’s culinary specialities in the most popular flavour: Bacon chocolate. Euan isn’t into weird chocolate (I’m into any kind of chocolate!), so after Euan tasted one piece and performed some impressive facial contortions, I got the whole bar.



Spending time with Meredith and Adam had helped us forget the inevitable; Chicago to London was the last flight and the end of our trip. We can’t believe it’s been a whole year but Syria and Lebanon seem a long time ago. We’re compiling a ‘best of…’ section to close off this chapter (and hopefully give this a meaningful ending). Watch this space.