A while ago an acquaintance asked me who was the trip planner in our family, me or Peter.  The question had never occurred to me, but when I thought about it, I realized Peter does the heavy lifting for our big trips.   It was my idea to go to Sicily on our next trip, although Peter thought I made the suggestion just to distract him from an issue that had him in a stew.  Not true, but it did work.

But once the destination is chosen, he pours over the books — we always figure buying a couple of books in the cheapest part of the trip — searches the internet and reads the magazines articles.    I add requests, suggestions and have veto power.  “Let’s do a food tour” or  “I want to be there on market day”  and “Let’s stay at least two nights in each place.”  Rarely do we disagree, at least at this stage of the trip, but we do discuss the options endlessly.

There was a time when we traveled spontaneously, booking rooms only after we had arrived in an interesting spot.  But that was when we could pick up a charming  room with breakfast for $15 just outside of Budapest.  No longer.

Airbnb’s and Homeaway’s have become our default lodging.  We like being in a real neighborhood and attempting, however feebly, to blend in with the locals.  “Our” coffee place and “our” cheese store.  Having a kitchen means breakfast isn’t a restaurant meal and when we get laundry facilities that’s a real bonus over washing out the undies in the bathroom sink.  And we recognize these rental units have become controversial, and acknowledge there are issues to be addressed.  But for now they work for us.

 

As we packed for our next departure just a week away, we decided to count up all the trips we have taken outside of North America.  29, or maybe 31, depending upon how we count trips — he went to the Republic of Georgia and I went to Armenia; does that count as one or two trips?  I went to Japan in October and he went in November, but on the same teacher program; one or two?  Bottom line: our trips together add up to about 30 trips in 37 years.  And with this blog, we intend to reflect on our next trips, because we are not done traveling yet!

As teachers for a couple decades, we had summers free for travel, albeit cheap travel mostly.  Plus we used all the opportunities we could find to travel on some one else’s dime –teacher study programs abroad, taking students, and various university programs — all in the name of finding adventure, in the big world outside the US.

Now retired after spending the last eight or so years of our careers in jobs that didn’t allow us to travel much.  A week here or there, usually with sun, sand and a couple good books. But now we have the time and luckily the health and resources to feed our desire for more.  Bags packed!