I’m traveling again

Its been a couple years since I’ve traveled internationally as I’ve been too scared to book a trip. I’ve done some domestic travel but the fear of the world shutting down again lingered over me so I hesitated to book a trip outside the USA. I eventually worked through that fear and decided to go somewhere, anywhere. I decided to pick a country I have traveled easily to before and book a plane ticket. I’ve been to Spain twice before but felt like there was so much I didn’t have time to see on previous trips therefore decided that was a good choice for my starter trip post-covid-19 (yes I know covid-19 is not over yet). I recently received another booster shot so feel confident I am protected against contracting covid-19 (I was wrong, but more about that in a little while). So I begin creating a spreadsheet with possibly itineraries and start watching airline ticket prices. The tickets are way more than I want to pay and the prices are not coming down; it appears I waited too long to book. I am not giving up on this trip though. I close my eyes and book an airfare that is refundable. Who knows if I’ll be able to travel forever, its just money, right?!? I decide to do an open-jaw flight since there is virtually no price difference in booking a roundtrip from the same airport and I dislike backtracking when I travel. The plan is to start in Madrid then head south and finish up north to fly home from Barcelona.

A couple days after I book my airfare I start feeling under the weather. It is probably allergies I tell myself since 100% of the time up to this point it has been allergies – confirmed by countless negative covid-19 tests. This feels a little different though and I have plans to do a road trip to visit family and some friends in a couple days so I take my home test like I always do proactively. This time it comes up immediately as positive. I confirm it with a PCR test. I get sicker the next day so I cancel the week’s plans. I have had my first case of covid-19. It runs it course like a bad cold that symptoms are treated well by over the counter cold medicine. I don’t believe I even contract a fever. I get slightly worried that this sickness will interfere with my international travel plans. Thank goodness I bought refundable airfare. I test again 5 days in and I’m still testing positive even though I just have some congestion and tiredness lingering. I decide to wait until day 10 to test again so I’m not wasting too many tests. The CDC website says I am good to go in public now but I continue to mask up and avoid social events until I do end up testing negative. Luckily I still have a couple weeks left before my trip so I go full-speed into planning mode.

I’m definitely out of travel practice but I guess its like riding a bike since I am checking off my to-do list quickly once I begin. Many of the activities planned are ones I missed on previous visits so I make sure to book in advance many things. My itinerary is jam-packed and I am moving around way more than I like but its only for a couple weeks so I can handle it, right? (Note: Nonstop travel is a recipe for me getting sick while I travel. Luckily I already got the covid-19 immunity temporarily out of the way). I am packing way too many things since as I get older I need more things to simply survive. At the time of me packing USA still required a negative covid test in order to return to my home country so two of the things packed are two very large covid-19 tests (I pack two in case one fails as we are advised) that I order them off the internet because they have to be the kind that are confirmed online with a nurse. I had no idea how large they would be when I order them. I am super annoyed by how much room they are taking up in my day pack. Other than that I do have a good packing list though that has been developed from years and years of travel. I have 95% of the things I could ever need on that list. I just need to now go through the exercise where I narrow the pile of clothes I am taking to smaller and smaller piles.

I finally reduce things down to a sufficient size and do a test pack before the busy weekend before I leave. The flight is on Monday and the weekend before is busy with plans – I do end up canceling my Sunday plans though due to exhaustion since I don’t want to wear myself out BEFORE my travel.

Oh and I am using my old backpack that is falling apart since I can’t seem to find a new backpack that I like. A little sewing repair before I go gets it to a good enough state to travel ….

Can you see where I did my sewing repairs?

What a difference a year makes

On this day last year I started a long adventure around the world. It seemed sort of irresponsible at the time. I had just taken a buyout at work, my life was falling apart, and I had so many things to take care of. Instead I decide to go on this world-wide trip which ended up being about 7 months (My recent blog posts are documenting those travels).

Me with my whole life for seven months on my body

I returned back to the USA at the end of February of this year. I had wanted to travel some more but I had business to take care of. As luck would have it within weeks of me returning to the USA the world shut down.

One of my last days out traveling is watching futbol in Medellin

Since I’ve been back I’ve taken care of most of my tasks and I really am itching to get back out traveling before I try going back to work, but I see no end in sight to the travel ban, at least for travelers from the USA.

What if I was responsible and decided to delay my trip until I had my life in order?

The trip of my lifetime might have never happened!

I am so grateful for my timing and courage to do this thing even though common sense and society says contrary. Sometimes you gotta just trust your heart and everything will work out.

Meanwhile I am getting my health and life in order as much as I can so as soon as things open back up again I’ll be on the road or up in the sky…..see you out there soon!

My bag is stuffed

I am in the home stretch in planning for my trip. I am leaving soon. I am leaving so soon that I am embarrassingly not really ready to leave yet. I guess all backpackers say that but it is true.

I mostly finalized my packing list this week and attempted my first packing. It was as expected. I have some major reductions to do. I still have so many things to fit in my already overstuffed bag and this is even after I eliminated a pair of pants, pair of shorts, and an undershirt.

All this stuff still needs to fit in here.

I could have gone easier on myself and bought a newer, better, and bigger backpack as I originally planned. However my Kelty that I bought in 2004 is of extremely good quality and I could not justify the upgrade.

So here I am, trying to decide if I can live off of 3 pairs of shorts and 2 pairs of pants for months on end. Thank goodness I have a number of shirts I can still toss.

The big pile of drugs I am bringing? They are staying for now.

Wish me luck.

Arriving on the Rhine

After the delays at JFK we arrive in Frankfurt the next day but closer to the afternoon. While the first day is usually jet lag day, I did have hopes on getting in some adventure that day. A train is the way to go from the Frankfurt airport to the town we booked for the next couple days, Bacharach. I had done some train schedule research but due to our delay we missed the train I wanted to catch. Europe is pretty easy to get around but it is never simple the first couple times you try to figure out the trains. After maybe missing one more train, we finally figure out the ticket purchase booth (Hint: It needs a chip card with a PIN number – that excludes my regular credit card since I never get pins for my traditional credit cards).

The pension was going to pick us up at the train station but due to our late arrival I decided it was too much trouble to try to coordinate the pickup. Pension “Im Malerwinkel” wasn’t too far uphill from the train. After a tiny bit of map confusion we found our cute German home for the next couple days.

We took some time to decompress and then decided to go out and get trail information for the next day and get some bottle waters (since we are always of need of water). We soon find out that this cute town has closing hours and they are at 5-6 pm. Pretty much every store, tourist office, and miscellaneous place is closed by that time. No waters for us! We force ourselves into the tourist office just as it was closing and we didn’t find very helpful service. We decide to let the lady leave and try again the next morning. Fortunately our hotel had a honor bar where we could purchase waters, sodas, wines and beers. We took advantage of that amenity during our stay!

Fortunately the restaurants are open past 6, but don’t remain open too late. We decide to do the fancy dinner the first night since you never know how busy and tired the following evenings will be. I picked the fish menu. It started with a trout consommé soup, followed by a almond crusted trout and finished with a dessert. I was pretty pleased with the first night’s dinner at the Rhein hotel’s Stueber’s Restaurant.

We wandered around the town a bit more because even though it was close to 10 pm and the town was almost a ghost town, it was still so damn light out. Ultimately sleep won against the light and I chose to wind down the night with a view outside our window with a bottle of wine from our hotel honor bar. Time to get a good night’s sleep for some hiking and sightseeing the next day.

Cinque Terre

One of my all time favorite travel locations is in peril. Cinque Terre experienced flash floods a couple of days ago. I hope that Cinque Terre is able to recover from this disaster.
These videos are of two of the towns:
Monterosso
Vernazza
In honor of these 5 lovely towns, I am re-posting my travel journal entries from July 2004 and adding photos taken during that trip.

Cinque Terre
July 08, 2004, 09:30
We just arrived at our lodging in the Cinque Terre. Sorry I haven’t been able to update the journal in a while, we have been in the Amalfi coast where internet and modern technologies are in second place to relaxing and swimming in the ocean. I will write as much as I can for now and I will update my journal for Amalfi Coast later.
We decided to skip Florence and Tuscany for this trip due to lack of time- We did not want to rush through it in 1 1/2 days. I will have to come back and enjoy all of Tuscany on another trip.
We took an overnight train from Salerno to La Spezia. La Spezia has trains that connect you to all of the Cinque Terre villages. We have decided to stay in Riomaggoire, the first and I believe the largest village. We will be doing light walks only today. After the lack of sleep, I don’t think we will have the energy to do the heavier walks.
I must go, there is a nice gentleman waiting to use the only computer here. I promise that I will update more later.

I love Cinque Terre
July 09, 2004, 11:46
Yesterday we arrived here on the morning train. We first took the train from Salerno to La Spezia and then inadvertently got off at the wrong stop because we did not realize that we had reached our stop (We were stuck in a tunnel and could not see the signs). We got off at the next town and stopped at the hostel there and waited until 7 am when it opened. Realizing that the hostel had a lock out time of 1-5 everyday and it looked like it was to rain yesterday, we decided to check out the lodging in the original town that we were supposed to stop at.
We decided to take the path called Via dell’ Amore (path of love). The path was a 15 minute walk. Ah, they had beds for us at Mar Mar. Not only did we have beds, we got a private room! We are staying in a dorm with eight other awesome people. We have a huge functional kitchen that we later use. We soon get along famously with others in the dorm. We a meet a couple of others who are not staying at our dorm but have been hanging around. After our nap, we go to the beach in Monterossa with our new friend Marissa. We sit on the beach and relax and I go for a swim. Floating in the ocean with my eyes closed and seeing where the waves take me is so relaxing. Unfortunately, it started raining so we decide to walk back to the train.
When we get back, it is time to prepare for dinner. Since most shops close at 7 here, the entire group goes shopping to pick up what we need for the meal. One gets wine, another pesto, another pasta, etc. We pop open the wine and begin cooking what I can only describe as an awesome meal. We set up the table on our patio outside which overlooks views of the town and the ocean. Soon the rain begins again. Thinking quickly, we grab all of our towels and lay them over the clothesline above to protect the food from the rain. It made the meal much more charming. After cleaning up from dinner, we hear music in the courtyard and decide to check it out. We arrive and find a charming puppet show. An authentic Italian puppet show. We do not understand a word that the puppets are saying but the tone of voice of the characters and the crazy movements of the characters make us laugh. We then decide it is gelato time. I have not talked about gelato like Nikki has (see her journal entry) but I believe that gelato is the one of the most awesome things in the world. It has become a staple of our diet. We finish the night at a pub that plays American popular music. As the night progresses, our entire group becomes dancing fools (except poor Nikki, I had to walk her home early). Even the owner “Franka”, a woman who I believe is in her fifties, comes out to dance and boogie with us. Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end. The bar closes and we stumble down to the water. It is so refreshing to be by the water at night with the cool breeze. Some guy plays the bongos behind me as Marissa dances. I decide that I am too tired to hold a conversation anymore so I stumble back to my room.
I don’t want to leave this place.
Well it is time to go do the monster 5 hour walk.

Another late start, and back in Rome
July 10, 2004, 18:10
Yesterday, after Thursday nights events, we were on to a late start for our big hike. We decide to start at Monterossa which seems to be the popular thing to do. I think I have never walked up so many steps in my life(Not even in the Amalfi Coast). When we arrive at the top, it is totally worth it. From the top, you can see the most picturesque of villages and it continues that way throughout our walk. Along the way we also witness lemon farms, olive farms, and of course grape vineyards. All I can say is that all of the beautiful pictures that I have seen of Italy, have been proved to be true.
Most of you know that I have been preparing for this trip by walking long distances, well it wasn’t enough. I can walk far distances now but those darn steps (or what I call non-steps – random rocks thrown on the ground to resemble steps) kicked my butt. I survived though, and I am really happy that I did the walk. It was the most spectacular view that I have ever seen – well almost as good as the Amalfi coast. I guess they are about tied in my opinion.
We take only the first and second trails, Monterossa to Vernazza, and Vernazza to Corgnelia. Those two were the best, hardest, and longest trails and we didn’t have time to do the rest.
While stopping for Gelati in Vernazza (I swear they put drugs in the stuff – can’t resist) we stop to watch these insane boys jump into the water off of a ledge that is about 8 feet higher than the water only to be thrown back onto the ledge when a huge wave comes in. It was crazy. After talking to others we discover that they have been doing it since they were real young and it is a daily event for them – for hours a day. It kept us entertained for quite a while. Later on, we saw the boys by the pharmacy patching up their bleeding legs and arms. Nikki and I have pictures of this event if you want to see it.
Returning back to Riomaggoire, we meet up with our roommates/new friends for dinner. New roommates join us later for wine on the terrace. Good conversation. We again return to our bar for a drink. Franka greets us with hugs and kisses. I am tired after one beer and have to leave on early train next morning, I go to bed. While getting ready for bed, hear group of drunken Americans/English speaking nationals singing loudly by the water. I get to sleep despite this.
Today, I am back in Rome after a four hour train ride this morning. I visited the Colosseum and wandered around town before I happened upon this internet cafe. I have already had gelati twice today. I am going to need gelati detox when I get home. I might try to get an authentic Italian meal once more and visit the pub around the corner from my hotel. Maybe I can meet some new people before I leave. Anyway, don’t want to waste any more time indoors, must get ready to see Rome at night.
Be home soon!

Note: Some of the entries were edited for grammar and readability.