A Home Free Global Life
Franschhoek is Afrikaans for ‘French Corner’ and is one of the oldest towns in South Africa. In the late 17th century French Huguenots, a religious group of French Protestants, were forced to flee from persecution in their Catholic-ruled country. In 1688 almost 300 Huguenots arrived at the Cape of Good Hope. Read more
Wine, glorious wine!!!! We have always enjoyed South African wines and after leaving Cape Town we spent two weeks visiting some of the vineyards in the Western Cape region of South Africa. We have toured wine regions around the world and take great delight in finding small vineyards producing wonderful wines that you cannot buy anywhere else. Read more
Welcome to Cape Town, the capital of South Africa and commonly referred to as the ‘Mother City’ because it was the site of the first European settlement in South Africa. The city had its origin in 1652 when the Dutch East India Company established a supply station Read more
We had a long travel day beginning with a 4:45am flight out of Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania. We landed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at 7:25am and after clearing immigration caught the 8:30am flight to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe arriving at noon. Our immigration experience did not go smoothly ☹️ The Zimbabwe visa website clearly indicates that as Canadians Read more
Tanzania is a land of breathtaking beauty and untamed wilderness, home to the iconic Serengeti, the wildlife rich Ngorongoro Crater and National Park and of course the Great Wildebeest Migration. We could not have picked a better place for our very first African Safari.
That’s a wrap on our latest leased car, a 2024 Renault Captur, the same model we drove around Italy in 2022 and Ireland in 2023. This was our 7th lease with Auto TT Renault Eurodrive and we are always really happy with their service, their delivery options and their prices, compared to rental car companies. Of our 7 leases with Renault we have had 3 Megane’s, 3 Captur’s and 1 Dacia Sandero (we did not like this vehicle). Our favorite is the Captur for the luggage space, we sit higher, and its a couple of inches narrower than the Megane which is important on those narrow European roads.
Cascais was an unplanned stop in our itinerary but we could no longer bear the cigarette smoke smell in our apartment in Estoril, so we moved 15 minutes away to an apartment with a bit of an ocean view from our patio. We chose the location for proximity to sights we wanted to see, and we are walking distance to the ocean and downtown Cascais. Read more
Estoril is an upscale residential town 30 minutes west of Lisbon, quieter than the big city but close to Lisbon and other interesting areas we wanted to visit. We didn’t spend any time looking around Estoril, just used it as our base to explore the surrounding area.