I’m up arse early tomorrow for a flight to Spain for 2.5 weeks exploring. I’ve been to Madrid and Barcelona for a week each, but I would hardly say that I’ve had a real taste of the country. There are three of us, and we have a general idea of where we could like to go, plus places to stay over Christmas, but all told this is the least planned group trip I’ve done – and I’m excited. I really like stopping to smell the roses and wandering where my mood takes me. Of course there are many more tensions doing this with a group, but I think we’ve got a good pack of adventurers willing to just roam around the country and see what we see.

I’ll have up plenty of posts chronicling the journey when I return home, but until then, enjoy the holidays and have a happy new year.

There are a couple of sets of pictures that have come out recently that set my mind wandering around the world.

First up is a post on Simon Seeks listing out some of the most dangerous roads in the world. Some of the are obviously roads I won’t be travelling any time soon (like Kandahar to Kabul), but there are some (like Perdikaki Road, Greece) that would be well worth a trip if you happen to be nearby.

The second set of photos are the contestants for the annual National Geographic photo contest. They’ve shown up a couple of places, but the places to check out the best ones are on The Big Picture and of course on the collection of winners on the National Geographic site.

Nothing like an amazing picture to make you want to see where the picture came from.

I was buying some tea with my flatmates, and we ended up buying the flavours “wanderlust” and “adventure”. It’s like a bad habit, wherever I go I just can’t help but take the option that sounds like roaming around and having fun. Even if it is just a bunch of dried leaves given a silly name.

I love maps, and this is just about as cool as maps get: tracking global air traffic. Pretty crazy to see how many of us are going different places. Only a week until I’m a dot on that map again!