On The Road Again

Each and every year, more than one million people visit the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. Which is pretty impressive, when you realize that the population of this small, Atlantic island nation is only about 4.5 million. I guess it's a testament to these spectacular cliffs, which rise up more than 700 feet out of the sea on Ireland's west coast. I'd seen these cliffs before — in movies (like Harry Potter and the Princess Bride) and in plenty of photos. But actually seeing them in person? I was far more impressed than I thought I would be. The October morning of my journey to the Cliffs of Moher dawned chilly, but beautifully clear — a rarity for an autumn day in Ireland. I made my way to one of Paddywagon's pick-up spots in downtown Dublin, and happily climbed aboard a tour bus with a couple dozen others, all of us wiping the sleep out of our eyes. I vowed to stay awake, however — there was too much Irish countryside to enjoy. We set off from Dublin by 8 a.m., hit...

When I booked my flight to the volcanic island of Tenerife, there was one stand-out destination that I knew I needed to visit. It had dominated my bucket-list for years, ever since I saw it plastered over post-cards in tacky souvenir shops. The iconic landscape didn’t make it onto the reverse of Tenerife’s old currency, the 1000 paseta note, for no reason. It looked other-worldly. It was Teide National Park. Named after the towering volcano that lives there, Teide National Park rules the heart of the island. With its summit at a whopping 3,718 metres above sea-level and 7,500 metres if measured from the ocean floor, Teide is the third tallest volcano in the world, only beaten by Hawaiian volcanos. The national park itself extends over an area of 18,900 hectares and is named as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Teide is a stratovolcano that is in fact made up of two separate volcanos: Teide and Pico Viejo (which translates to ‘Old Peak’, even though this peak is in fact younger tha...