June 2018: Monthly Roundup

Well, these monthly roundups continue to be working well for this little travel blog and so I’m keeping them up! June 2018 was a chiller month on our around-the-world journey, thankfully, and it was much needed for both of us!

Where we were

Now this is a way better list vs. when we went to 9 locations in 30 days in May 2018. Even this seems a bit more hectic than it really was, because we only spent one night in Athens before our flight out and we only spent one night in Emilia-Romagna in June (the rest of our stay is in July). So really, the bulk of the month was spent in just four places. Love that slow(-ish) travel!

• Lefkada, Greece
• Athens, Greece
• Montecarlo, Italy
• Bologna, Italy
• Bossi, Italy (Chianti region)
• Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Highlights

Slow travel. I’ve talked before about how slow travel just sits better with me and we finally got to do it, woohoo! It’s been so nice to be able to get to a place, unpack, have a daily routine and just live life, without the pressure of making sure we see or do everything in the limited time we have in a location. While it doesn’t always make for the most exciting travel blog content it does make us happy and that is the most important.

Agriturismo and villa life. I love life staying in an Italian agriturismo. The cuteness and the hospitality just made daily life so fun.

Lazy days. These were only possible because of the slow travel but I loved them. I am a lazy day girl. I love waking up with no plan and just putzing around doing whatever I feel like in the moment – reading, backgammon, TV, swimming, spinning, etc. It was so nice to be able to have those days on this trip.

Gelato. Um yeah, gelato is the best. I could eat chiardicrema’s Oreo gelato literally everyday for the rest of my life.

Grocery shopping and eating at home. I love Italian grocery stores. I’ve got a post in the works about it specifically, but they are just so smart and so good. And the food is so fresh. We’ve been doing a ton of grocery shopping and eating and cooking at home and it is so delicious.

Realizing we are not screwed, visa-wise. Oh man. I’m not going to say who, but one of the two of us was responsible for making sure we had all our visas, etc. in line for this trip. One day I was reading another travel blog and realized we are only allowed to say in Europe for 90 days during any six month period (unless we get a special visa). Since we are spending the whole summer in Europe, this was not a good realization. Luckily, we realized that the 90 days limit is only for the Schengen region, and Croatia is not in the Schengen region. Because of that, we are only in Schengen region countries (Greece, Italy, Norway and Portugal) for 88 days. Phew.

The World Cup. June was the start of the World Cup, which is always fun to watch and be excited about! It’s especially fun to watch the games with Damian and have a reason to care – go Brazil!

Lowlights

Homesickness. I had some bad bouts of homesickness this month, which isn’t often talked about in the travel blog world. Long-term travel is interesting, because I think many times people do it to escape regular life and/or to ‘reset’ their life. I really like my life at home as well and so I miss it and my people when I’m on the road. This month I felt that especially strongly.

Saying bye to Poops and Liz. Related to the above I was so sad to see Poops and Liz leave us after an awesome time in Lefkada. That day was definitely rough and I even cried a bit.

Down days. Overall there were some more down days during the month of June. At some point I’ll write a deeper post about it all (another topic not discussed much in the travel blog world), but the combination of long travel days (a trigger for me), the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain (difficult for anyone) and a rough round of PMS this month (oh, womanhood) led to some sadder days. Luckily, I had the freedom of being on vacation and the support of Damian to ease the burden of those days a bit.

Travel planning burnout. Oh my gosh. I’ll start by saying I like travel planning, I may even love travel planning. But during the month of June I did a lot of it for our upcoming months and got a bit burnt out. Over the course of four days I made two full country itineraries, nine unique lodging reservations and five flight reservations (and wrote in this travel blog!). There is enough work and research that goes into each piece of those that even I was super burned out by the end!

Um, TMJ? Since when? I’m glad this didn’t turn into something worse, but one night I woke up and opened and closed my jaw, and it literally was like bone grinding on bone. Scary and painful. I called my dentist the next day and he said as long as I baby the joint until I come back it shouldn’t happen again (cause if it does I’m scared my jaw will get stuck open!), but ouch and scary.

The World Cup. The World Cup has been fun but has also monopolized a lot of our time. It’s a lot of commitment to find and watch all these soccer matches (and why does it take so much work to get even one goal?).

What I read

This month had lots of reading, yay! Even though I took on some more freelance work, the big increase in downtime and slow travel gave me lots of time to read (and updated this travel blog), which made me so happy. I read six books in June (excluding basically reading all of Lonely Planet’s Italy and Croatia travel guides).

Here’s what I read this month:

Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny – This book was kind of meh for me. It’s a story about an older man (in his 50s or 60s, I forget) and his life with his second wife and their kid. The problem is that it basically was like reading an entire book about him whining about his life. It kind of reminded me of the movie ‘The Breakup’ in that sense.

Difficult Women by Roxanne Gay – Even though this book was at times difficult to read (as really, any honest and true portrayal about the real struggle of human life is), I enjoyed it. The stories in it showed me perspectives different from my own and kept me interested in what was happening. I’m really looking forward to reading her book Hunger this month.

Prince Harry: The Inside Story by Duncan Larcombe – Ok, I am going to fully admit I enjoyed this book. Of course it’s not high-brow literature but it was a fun and easy read. It’s written by a UK reporter who has been on the Royal beat for a number of years, so he has access and insight that is unique, which was fun too. I just wish there had been more of an update/addition for the Meghan Markle years!

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones – This was a really good book. To not give away too much, it is about a black couple in America, where the husband has been wrongly accused of a crime and put into jail. The couple had been married for a year and he is supposed to be in jail for a decade or longer. The book deals with the complicated question of what the wife is supposed to do in this situation. No easy answers and a unique way to look at the perspective of racial injustice in the United States today.

Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty – This is one of Liane Moriarty’s earliest books (it may be her first?) and I enjoyed it. It is definitely in the chick lit genre, but I strongly believe there is nothing wrong with that. Really, chick lit is just telling the daily life stories of women, from a woman’s perspective. Anyway, this book is about three triplets and how their lives intersect, overlap and affect each other. Super fun and a quicker read!

The Leavers by Lisa Ko – I’m still not sure how I feel about this book. I’ll start by saying it’s a great story – it’s about a Chinese boy and his mother; the mother disappears one day when the boy is ten or eleven and the rest of the book is about how he builds and deals with the rest of his life after that (including if/how to find his mother). The subject matter just made me sad, and the way some of the characters in the book acted made me sad, which I guess is real life. I also didn’t love how the language this well-told story sometimes started flowing into strange, flowery prose at points, which was just incongruous with the rest of the book. I guess I’d say it’s worth reading for the story and emotional impact but not for the amazing writing.

What’s next

July is starting out with about two and a half weeks of more Italy time. It’s hard to believe our time in this country is more than half over, but we still have lots more to see and enjoy (like Florence and Rome!). Then, this little travel blog heads to Croatia, which, from all the pictures and planning, looks so amazing. And we have a friend joining us for 10 days in Italy and another friend joining us for a week in Croatia. So fun!

Travel blog posts from June

And finally, I thought to help us keep track of what’s happening in this little travel blog I’d put in a list of all the posts I published in June here. Enjoy!

• 24 hours in cute Olinda, Brazil
• Brazil recap: What we loved (and didn’t love) during our six weeks of Brazil travel!
• Our 1st three days in one of our new favorite Greek islands – Lefkada!
• Day 4 in one of our new favorite Greek Islands – Lefkada: Swimming tour of private beaches
• May 2018: Monthly Roundup
• Greek Islands: Lefkada Day 5 and 6, and stopping in Delphi Greece!
• We are in Italy! Our itinerary and what we plan to do for the next six weeks
• Exploring Pisa – the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Luminara festival!
• Blended Confessionals: 15 things I learned from going to college at MIT
• Our day in Lucca, Italy!
• Life on an agriturismo in Tuscany, Italy: Part 1 (Montecarlo)