May 2018: Monthly Roundup

Well, I thought last month’s roundup worked well to help me stop and take stock of this trip (and, I guess of this travel blog), and so now we are onto the second monthly roundup, May 2018. Try to hold yourself together and don’t get too excited now.

Where we were

Wow, I get a bit of angina just looking at this list. 9 locations in 30 days. So much fun but never again.

• New York, NY
• Hillsborough, NJ
• Barreirinhas (Lençóis Maranhenses), Brasil
• Parnaiba, Brasil
• Jericoacoara, Brasil
• Praia da Baleia, Brasil
• Natal, Brasil
• Olinda, Brasil
• 2 nights in planes and 1 day in the Lisbon airport (ugh)
• Lefkada, Greece

Highlights and Laughs

Sister sister time. This is of course the top of my list, my sister is, as I said in my wedding speech, my first true life partner. We are super close and have lived within a few miles of each other for the last nine years (and for 6.5 of those years we lived in the same apartment). I miss her dearly and it was so good to see her and just be with her again. Even our phone cases were happy to be reunited!

Dolphin swimming. I know I’ve gushed about this a million times already, but whatever. We got to kayak and swim in the ocean with dolphins, in the wild. Dolphins are my spirit animal, loving the water, always smiling, super friendly, enjoy having fun. Seriously, one of my best travel moments in life.

The TAP lounge at Lisbon airport. Um, as a former heavy traveler for my work, I’ve been to my fair share of lounges, but this one is amazing. Aside from all the pastel de natas we could ever want to eat, it had great internet, good showers, a huge space and a quiet/sleeping area. This was critical to the day we spent at the Lisbon airport between red-eyes. Loved it.

Julio’s crepes. I wrote about our man Julio and his crepes in the piece about Natal, but dang were they good. Two countries and a month later and we are still talking about them.

Lençóis Maranhenses. It was my #1 dream spot in Brazil and it delivered. Big time.

Staying in one place for six (six!) days. So yeah, even in the crazy 9 places in 30 days stretch we were able to stay in Praia da Pipa for six whole days. It was such luxury to be able to unpack, to get laundry done in a leisurely manner, to have days that weren’t planned in front of us. So good. (and yeah, let’s just ignore the fact that that means we did 8 locations in 24 days).

Card games. Growing up, and even today, my family is a card family. Almost every time I see my parents we play some sort of card game. We are dorks that love the numbers and the randomness of it, and it gives us something to do while we catch up and talk about life. When Poops and Liz were in Lefkada, each night we would play judgement (also called oh hell by others) and it was so fun.

Apartment freedom. I haven’t yet written about this in detail, but this month we broke our lease and said goodbye to our New York City apartment. It’s not the right fit for when we go back and it was time to move on. And though it is sad (see below), it actually felt very freeing. When we returned back to the airport for the second half of our Brazil leg, it just felt different. Like we were truly on the road, it was truly just us, and there was nothing holding us down. I’ve never had that feeling before and it was cool to experience it.

Getting to Agiofili. I am still laughing out loud at this mental picture of Poops sprinting into the bushes. It was just too good and the perfect personification of the silly fun the four of us had together.

So. Much. Beach. Time. I love the beach. Like loooove the beach. Even when I’m in NYC for the summer I try to make it to the beach (Jersey shore!) at least one day a week. Spending so much of this month in beach towns was like a dream come true for me. (and, I’d say, for this travel blog. I mean, who ever gets tired of looking at beaches?)

Lowlights

Dealing with VRBO/Homeaway. So, in recent years there have been a number of lodging sites that have come up to compete with the former bigwigs, VRBO and Homeaway. In our travels we most often have been using booking.com, but for our Italian villas we wanted something more home-y. We looked on AirBnB, VRBO and Homeaway. I found something we really liked on VRBO and now I know why we always use AirBnB instead. None of the four credit cards we tried to use would work for payment and they kept claiming it was our cards and offered no help. On our end, there is no way it was our cards since they were working in Brazil and on every other lodging website. After a long morning of frustration we ended up having to cancel that booking on VRBO and look elsewhere. Super sucky to us and to the renter. And for VRBO, you just lost probably about 4 months straight of rental revenue fees from us. Your bad.

Former employment stuff. I know I am vague-blogging here, but since this is my travel blog I feel entitled to do that from time to time. Basically I found out some sad HR stuff from one of my former employers. They are fixing something now that could have been fixed three years ago, preventing at least one (but probably more) person from suffering. It makes me really sad and mad when companies don’t do right by individuals.

Mosquitos. I hate bugs, especially mosquitos. There are lots of them in warm places. End story.

Too much flying. We flew a lot in May. Back to Brazil (which had traffic jam and TSA annoyances), to Lisbon (for a layover on the coldest flight ever; people wore their winter coats the entire way, babies were being bundled in multiple blankets; it literally could not have been more than 60 degrees Fahrenheit on that plane) and to Athens (honestly pretty non-eventful vs. the other two). I detest flying and each flight puts me in a bad mental state for 24-48 hours after. So, I was basically in a bad place for >10% of this month strictly because of flights. Sweet.

Saying goodbye to Apt 6H. And this is the counter to above. While I can’t wait to get back and find another apartment and eventually a new house, it was sad to leave this apartment that was our home as a dating couple, as a broken-up couple (we call that time the “dark ages”), as a re-dating couple, as a living-together couple, as an engaged couple and as a newly-married couple. It will always have a special place in our hearts and saying bye was nostalgic and sad.

Saying goodbye to Brazil. It may sound strange, especially from someone doing an around-the-world trip, but I hate goodbyes. We know we won’t be back to Brazil for at least another five years, and it’s a strange feeling to fly away from somewhere, not knowing when or if you will ever see it again. I actually can’t think about it too much because that kind of finality just makes me too too sad.

What I read

This month was sadly a little light on the books because of a couple of reasons. First, I took on a freelance project, which was great and with a company I always love working with, but it cut into my reading time.  And second, there was a lot of actual traveling this month and on account of motion sickness there was no reading during plan and car time. So, only three books this month!

Here’s what I read this month:

Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or, the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomanical, Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase by Jen Lancaster (2010) – This book was just ok. Essentially it is a book of true short stories about the author, remembered by connecting what she was wearing during the incidents. I felt eh on this book. I think it has less to do with the author and more to do with the fact that I just don’t love these sorts of books. I prefer longer, full-book stories, fiction or non-, that have more of an arc to them. So, unfortunately I probably wouldn’t recommend.

At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe by Tsh Oxenreider (2017) – Oh man, I wanted to like this book so, so bad. And I did. But only for the first 10 pages. This is the story about a woman (Tsh) and her husband, and how they took their three children out of school for a year to travel the world. I loved the first 10 pages, and identified with how she sees herself in the “middle” in travel. She’s not in the Eat, Pray, Love phase of her life, searching for something and unhappy in her current situation. She’s not running away from anything either. She loves travel, but she also loves her home life. And I so feel that way. But then the rest of the book was so disappointing. I feel like she glossed over any depth, whether emotional or about the travel/locale itself, and it made it difficult to connect to her or her family. She also came off, to me, as quite privileged and, yet, not travel-savvy at all. I wish this book had been more awesome, it had such potential.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull (2017) – I really, really loved this book! Ed Catmull is one of the three founders of Pixar, along with John Lasseter and Steve Jobs, and in this book he takes the reader through the founding, struggle and success of Pixar. He talks about the management theories and principles he uses (and used), and I just think he did a great job overall. It is especially interesting for those that love Pixar movies (does anyone not? If there is someone that doesn’t, well, we probably wouldn’t be friends) as he interweaves stories about each of those movies into the narrative. For example, did you know that Toy Story 2 was almost made as a direct-to-video sequel (aka Lion King 2 … remember that quality?). It gets especially interesting when he discusses Disney’s purchase of Pixar and how Pixar and Disney Studios co-exist. There was probably 10% of this book that felt too preachy to me, but otherwise I loved it. Would definitely recommend.

What’s next for this little travel blog?

Well, we headed to Greece to start off the month of June and spent an incredible week in Lefkada with my sister Pooja (Poops) and our friend Liz. Then, we (finally) started slow travel in Italy. We’ll do two weeks in a villa in Tuscany (where we currently are), then a week in Bologna, and then another two weeks in a different villa in Tuscany. It’s going to be awesome!!