Travel Mementos

There are many ways to have mementos of your travels. Whether it is photographs or souvenirs like figurines and frig magnets. Companies are producing a variety of other mementos like charms and towels. One of the more extravagant is the wall map.

Enjoy the Wood make a variety of wooden wall maps of the world, and select countries and regions.

Enjoy the Wood map of Switzerland

Enjoy the Wood flag push-pins

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Awesome Maps make towels and posters of maps of various themes: bucket list, dive and surfing are a few.

Awesome Maps bucket list map

Exchange Life and The Wander Club make charms of flags of the world. Lichtbild make 3D models of cities around the world.

Exchange Life charms

The Wander Club charms

Lichtbild 3D cities

Travel Stories

Not Any Port in a Storm

After visiting Morocco for a week, I was in Tangier, planning to take the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain. I was staying at a nice hotel next to the coast in Tangier and from the hotel I could see the Port of Tangier about a kilometer away.  The next morning I was ready to go after breakfast and even though the ferry wasn’t scheduled for another three hours, I thought I might as well get there early.

The hotel ordered a cab for me and I got in and told the young driver to take me to the port. As we headed in the direction of the port, I was surprised that the cab got onto an expressway — for such a short distance. I was sure we were past the port, so I asked him if he was going to the port. Surprised, he said, “I thought you said ‘the airport.’”

“No,” I replied, “The port, for the ferry.” He looked puzzled and asked to see my ticket. “Oh,” he said, “that port near the city is the Port of Tangier which is for shipping. You need to go to Tangier Med Port for the ferry. It is 50 kilometers from here!”

Unbelievable! They have two ports called roughly Tangier Port.

The cab driver said, “I can get you there.” And I said, “Let’s go!”

He quickly turned around and raced along the expressway back toward Tangier. When he turned off the expressway he was heading generally south, away from the coast. I thought that was a little strange so I opened up the map app on my phone to follow our progress to see where he was heading. There were few roads away from the coast and we were now probably 10-15 kilometers south of the coast.

I was about to ask the driver why we were driving away from the coast when the road along the coast was much shorter. I then realized he was taking the faster route. The coast route was through a number of towns so it would have been slower and would have numerous stops. On this road has was going around 100km per hour, making very good time.

We arrived at the port about 10 minutes before the ferry was scheduled to sail. I thanked the driver, gave him a handsome tip, and raced to the ferry terminal and checked in. 

I was then informed that the ferry would be 45 minutes late!

My Travels

A great resources for very large and detailed maps of the world go to Geographic Guide. To create the custom travel maps as seen below go to MapChart.net: select "world" then "simple".

So far I have been to the following countries (56). A number after the country is the number of times I have visited. I try to collect a paper currency from each country I visit. The $ symbol means I have a paper currency from the country ($-n/a means that the country does not have and never has had paper currency of their own, especially prior to the Euro):

1. Andorra ($-n/a)
2. Argentina $
3. Australia $
4. Austria x5 $
5. Belgium x2 $
6. Brazil $
7. Chile $
8. Columbia $
9. Costa Rica $
10. Croatia $
11. Czechia $
12. Denmark $
13. England x5 $
14. Estonia $
15. Finland $
16. France x3 $
17. Georgia $
18. Germany x4
19. Greece $
20. Hungary $
21. Iceland $
22. Ireland x3 $
23. Israel
24. Italy x2 $
25. Japan $
26. Jordan $
27. Kenya $
28. Latvia $
29. Liechtenstein
30. Lithuania $
31. Luxembourg
32. Malaysia $
33. Malta $
34. Monaco
35. Morocco $
36. The Netherlands $
37. New Zealand $
38. Norway $
39. Paraguay $
40. Portugal x4 $
41. San Marino ($-n/a)
42. Scotland x2 $
43. Slovakia $
44. Slovenia $
45. South Korea $
46. Spain $
47. Sweden $
48. Switzerland x2 $
49. Taiwan $
50. Tanzania $
51. Tunisia
52. UAE (Dubai) $
53. United States $
54. Uruguay $
55. Vatican City ($-n/a)
56. Wales x3 $

Countries missing currency: Georgia (lari), Israel (shekel), Liechtenstein (krone), Luxembourg (Luxembourg franc), and Monaco (Monégasque franc). Vatican City and San Marino never had a paper currency, and Andorra never had an official currency before the Euro.

Visited countries

Canadian Provinces

1. British Columbia
2. Ontario
3. Quebec

U.S. States

1. Arizona
2. California
3. Florida
4. Georgia
5. Maryland
6. Nevada
7. New Jersey
8. New York
9. North Carolina
10. Pennsylvania
11. South Carolina
12. Vermont
13. Virginia
14. West Virginia
15. Washington D.C.

Europe 2026

1. Poland
2. Belarus
3. Romania
4. Albania
5. Moldova
6. Austria - Vienna break!
7. Montenegro
8. North Macedonia
9. Serbia
10. Bosnia & Herzegovina
11. Bulgaria

Central Asia 2026

1. Turkey
2. Armenia
3. Azerbaijan
4. Turkmenistan
5. Uzbekistan
6. Kazakhstan
7. Kyrgyzstan
8. Tajikistan
9. Pakistan
10. India
11. Nepal
12. Bhutan
13. Sri Lanka
14. Maldives

Far East TBD

1. Malaysia - base
2. Brunei 
3. Cambodia
4. Hong Kong
5. Indonesia
6. Laos
7. Philippines
8. Singapore 
9. Thailand
10. Vietnam

South America TBD

1. Peru
2. Bolivia
3. Ecuador
4. Suriname
5. Guyana
6. French Guiana
7. Venezuela