On 20th February, Paula and I are heading off to the United States for 7 weeks. The trip is a mix of business and holiday. As we all know, when you are visiting another place you want to see as much as possible. So good walking shoes are an essential item to take.

Ever since we each brought our first pair of Ara shoes in Florence we have been converts to buying this brand.

Ara are known worldwide for their comfortable fit but rather conventional and conservative styling, which doesn’t bother us as comfort more important than fashion when you are travelling.

However, Ara are expanding the range to be a little more fashionable looking in a bid to appeal to younger women. Personally I think the shoes are just fine.

Ara are constantly developing improvements such as the new gel sole, which is said to make you feel as though you are walking on air, the concealed elastic in Ara’s ballerinas or an adjustable solution that involves removing the strap to transform a sandal into an open-toe mule.

What I love about my Ara sandals and shoes is that they are so light that I hardly feel as if I am wearing shoes at all.

Last year I went to Sydney and brought a new pair of sandals and two pair of closed in shoes (pictured, from ’The Shoe Shop’  in Northbridge, in preparation for traveling.
I have given up the sneakers as they are too heavy for walking around in all day sightseeing, and they take up way to much room in my small suitcase.

Here are some of the other great ARA styles available from  Zappos.com

Simply click on the Zappo’s link or the pictures below for more information.

When we where in Florence a couple of years ago, we purchased some great walking sandals. We had done so much walking around Europe in joggers that our feet were ready to drop off.

ARA Sandals are the most comfortable shoes we have ever worn. So naturally when they eventually wore out we set off to buy some more. Easier said than done. They are made in Germany and we were unable to find local stockists when we were first looking for them. So we thought we would buy some when we went to the US for the Affiliate Summit.

Oh my god, we couldn’t find any in New York, the one store that was supposed to stock them didn’t have any, and the only other store we could find online was in Canada.

So much to our dismay we returned home ARA sandal-less.

This is no good I said to Paula, surely someone in Australia must stock these shoes. So onto the internet to the ARA German site which I then translated into English with my new found Google translation tool, and sure enough there was a contact for Australia.

So I emailed the contact and a very nice gentleman responded with a whole list of addresses in Australia and New Zealand. Which is very helpful because I will be going to NZ in September with my hubby on a family visit.

So I contacted a store in Sydney and the stocks that we are after haven’t arrived yet, they are expected next week. So this will mean a trip to Sydney, Oh dear, what a shame.

The sandals we purchased “Korfu” are very similar to these

ara – Malta 36606 (Black)

However there are plenty of great styles available.

So Paula has been checking out accomodation at our favourite Hotel and we will be off to stay at Star City for the night when we go to pick up the shoes. We are hoping to take Demelza, my granddaughter with us and maybe we will go and see “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” yet again. This show is just fantastic and after the dismal showing of Mama Mia on Broadway, we reckon this show should be staged there.