Introduction

This describes the planning and travels of our family adventure - a trip around the world.

We have been dreaming about; always as a future event to undertake when the children got older - but is becoming a reality this year.

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Thoughts on New Zealand

As we depart each country I am going to try to summarize my impressions. New Zealand is a beautiful country with varied features. I have never seen so many shades of green. I can only imagine if it had not been overcast during our entire trip it would be even more striking – especially the coast line. The people we met were not overly friendly, but certainly not rude either. I never heard a New Zealander say thank you, sorry or your welcome. I suppose there are some hints in that fact regarding their attitudes towards life. When I overheard conversations they were often about the economy or politics – we were even asked about our next president. They seem much more world savvy then the typical American. I can see how a true exploration of the country could take months per island – even the travelers we came across seemed to be permanent travelers – they would work for a few months and then travel for a few months – and had been doing that for years – what an interesting lifestyl...
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Day 57 Pisa

Thursday January 31st Up this morning and it is raining – glad we have the umbrellas. We strike out for the train station which is a good hike from our hotel. We catch the train – I even figure out how to use the automated machines. It is 18.6 Euro for all of us one-way - 3 adults and 1 child. A little over an hour later we disembark. A long walk north to the Piazza but we find it without getting lost. At first sight it is more dramatic than I could imagine. The Piazza is huge and there is a lot of grass. The Cathedral with the leaning tower (bell tower) the Baptistery and the cemetery. We first visit the cathedral we think it is free and nobody stops us as we enter. It is very large and beautiful. Many of the paintings are much darker than any we have seen before – a byproduct of not having been restored. After the Cathedral we buy the pass that gets us into all attractions – we also pay extra to climb the leaning tower. We are a little uncertain about this as it is quite expe...
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How to Geo-Locate Pictures

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I spent quite a few hours figuring out how this will be achieved -for those that are interested here is how we are doing it. The Nokia N73 Phones were selected for their quality camera - and will be used for photographs by Aria and Allysha (as well as music and GSM unlocked phones) in addition to 2 Fuji cameras our trusty FinePix Z1 and a newly acquired FinePix Z10fd will be used to capture pictures. Nothing special needs to be done except for ensuring the clocks on all of these devices are synchronized to GPS time - the phones are but the cameras require some work. Next using a GPS receiver which is synced with one of the cell phones we will simply simply start tracking our movement in the morning using a free program from Nokia called Sports Tracker installed on the phones. This program uses the GPS to track speed and distance over time - it was designed as a work-out tracking device but fits our needs as well. At the end of the day we will export the track as GSX (it can also be ...
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