Smiling Kodiak Circles the Globe

Smiling Kodiak Circles the Globe brings you along on his most recent dash around the planet –kicking and screaming, laughing and crying. He attacks sixteen cities – Shanghai, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amboise, Blois, Paris, New York, Montreal, Kingston (Ontario), Toronto, Boston, Bar Harbor (Maine), Raleigh, Vancouver, before getting a wisp of Los Angeles and retreating back home to Melbourne. None of them will ever be the same — and neither will you.

It’s a small world with a plenty of interesting places, some wonderful, some truly awful. Smiling Kodiak, an American living in Australia, views each of them as a unique piece to our global puzzle. Smiling Kodiak Circles the Globe brings you along on his most recent dash around the planet –kicking and screaming, laughing and crying. He attacks sixteen cities – Shanghai, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amboise, Blois, Paris, New York, Montreal, Kingston (Ontario), Toronto, Boston, Bar Harbor (Maine), Raleigh, Vancouver, before getting a wisp of Los Angeles and retreating back home to Melbourne. None of them will ever be the same — and neither will you. Smiling Kodiak Circles the Globe is no guidebook. It provides insights and anecdotes that you may find hilarious, shocking, offensive, poignant, bizarre – perhaps all of the above. But travel isn’t about where you go or how you get there, it’s about what unfolds.

A blogging pioneer, Drew Grant began sharing his travelogues electronically in 1995, using the nascent web to shrink the world, keeping one foot on each continent as he migrated from the USA to Australia. Born and raised in Boston, Drew Grant was the youngest of a large and loud Catholic family. His unorthodox tendencies were recognized early when at the age of four he was named “Best All-Around Camper” at St Agnes despite never having been molested by a priest. His Catholicism lapsed at age eight in favor of Sunday morning candlepin bowling. An award-winning marching band Sousaphonist, Drew was a self-taught professional jazz pianist by the time he entered Boston College. There the Jesuits introduced him to the dark arts of accounting on which he would depend for decades to support his travel habits. An unconventional but highly effective management and advisory professional, Drew has a healthy disrespect for all professionals, noting that the essence of professionalism is to get paid. Drew now lives with his partner of 30 years at St Kilda Beach outside Melbourne, Australia.