September 2018: Monthly Roundup

So, we’re only three weeks into October and I’m already writing the September 2018 monthly recap for this little travel blog, not too bad right? 😉 Well, better late than never.

Where we were

Well, we did a little better than August 2018 when we went wild and were in eleven places in one month, as in September of 2018 we were only in nine places! It still is a lot and I ended the month a bit tired and behind on blogging and life stuff, but at least we were moving in the right direction. And, to be fair, we spent ten days in the first two locations so at least that part was relatively slower paced!

• Arco de Valdevez, Portugal
• Sesimbra, Portugal
• Hillsborough, New Jersey, USA
• King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, USA
• New York City, New York, USA
• Antananarivo, Madagascar
• Tulear (Toliara), Madagascar
• Isalo National Park, Madagascar
• Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar

Highlights

Watching the US Open. We had so much fun watching the US Open. I have always said it is my favorite sporting event to go to (and in New York City, it’s second only to going to a Broadway show), so it was super fun to watch most of the matches live on TV or on our computers. The time difference did make for some late nights though!

Lots of downtime. As I mentioned above, we started out the month with a bunch of downtime, which was really nice. We had a full five days in Arco de Valdevez, which is way up north in Portugal, and spent most of it being silly in the pool and playing games and then another five days or so in Sesimbra, to just chill on the beach and do whatever. The chill time was much needed and much enjoyed!

A dear friends wedding. We headed back to the US northeast at the end of September to attend the wedding of Marisa and Jake. Marisa and I met through an ex-boyfriend of mine, but quickly hit it off and have been close since (and have gone to Florida and Mexico together on trips as well). Like when we came back for my friend Jen’s wedding, it was so special to share this event with my friend and I’m so grateful we made the trip back for it. Oh, and the wedding itself was so beautiful and so fun.

Hanging with PJ and playing board games. I met PJ six years ago through a training we both were trainers for at Bain. PJ and his family live in Lisbon and we got to see them not once, but twice, and played board games and hung out with the kids and just had fun. It was so nice to feel a sense of familiarity again and, not going to lie, it was pretty fun to bamboozle everyone in Settlers of Catan and win at the last minute 😉

Logic puzzles! We discovered this website for mental puzzles (that can be found here) when we went to Australia a few years ago and have loved doing them since – especially the logic ones and the numbergrids. Because of the downtime we were able to spend lots of lazy time doing a bunch of these and it was so fun.

Helping Poops move. While we were in New York City we also helped my sister move apartments. Her building is being renovated so she moved to a different floor for while the renovations on her floor are being done. It was a fun job to do with Damian and Poops, and it felt really nice to be able to help out my sister (who has been super busy because she’s been such a baller running this launch as part of her job at Birchbox). My favorite might have been how we moved her board games, haha, it still gets me every time.

Spending time with friends and fam. As part of our trip back to the US for Marisa and Jake’s wedding we stuck around for an extra week to see family and friends and it was so nice. I miss my people and it was such a joy to see them again.

NYC love! It was also so fun to be back in New York City. While I didn’t see any Broadway shows this time we still enjoyed the city and some of our old local haunts. Poops and I also went to a temporary museum/exhibit called The Color Factory, which had a bunch of different exhibits about color and they were all interactive. It was so fun!

Volunteering again. And finally, we ended the month in Madagascar, spending two days with the UNFPA in Antananarivo and Tulear (aka Toliara). I have to say we haven’t been able to volunteer as much as we would have liked on this trip (it’s really hard to find opportunities that are only a couple days long, which I’ll get into eventually on a different post), and we loved our time with Project Favela in Rio, and it felt so good to be back in that groove again.

Lowlights

Planning Madagascar. Guys, maybe this isn’t a surprise for you, but it is for me … planning a trip to Madagascar is really hard. I posted questions in a number of Facebook travel groups I am in (maybe 4 or 5 of them) and, crickets. I searched the travel blogs online and nada. There was a little in some tripadvisor forums but that was about it. In the end we decided to go with a tour company for a private tour and it was totally the right decision, but getting to it was annoying.

Not going to the US Open. My favorite sporting event of the year, and one where I have a yearly tradition to attend with my friend Patrick. Missing it was not awesome.

24 straight hours of travel. It took us almost 24 hours to get to Madagascar. We flew to Paris, then had a layover and then had a long flight to Antananarivo. I think I’ve well-documented how much I hate the actual process of travel, and this was a tough journey for me. I slept quite a bit, but you can see how weary I was looking at the end of it in the picture below.

Mandolin injury. When I was home in New Jersey I decided to get all fancy and make some pan-fried zucchini for the fam. I usually use a knife to cut thin slices but decided to use a mandolin instead. Let’s just say I’m lucky that I didn’t fully lose the tip of my middle finger, but damn that cut hurt like a b* and took a long time to heal.

Newark does not equal JFK. This was just dumb-ness on my part. After staying with my sister in NYC we were supposed to go back to my parents’ place in NJ on a Friday morning, pick up some stuff and then have them drop us off to Newark airport for a ~6pm-ish flight. I didn’t realize until Friday morning that our flight was out of JFK, not Newark, which is way far from central NJ. So, in addition to the long 24-hour journey as per above, we had to drive down to NJ (1.5 hours), do a super quick turn there, then drive back up to JFK (2.5 hours) for our flight. It was less than relaxing, to say the least.

What I read

I read five books this month, woohoo! It felt really good to get back on the pace of ~one book per week and, on tope of that, I enjoyed most of the books too. Talk about a win-win! Trying to keep up the pace of reading in October but it’s been a bit tough with all the cool places to go to and neat things to see.

Here’s what I read this month:

The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner – I really, really enjoyed this book. It reminded me a lot of Uneducated by Tara Westover and is an autobiography about a woman (Ruth) who is raised in a fundamentalist family. She goes through her childhood, the abuse and lack of opportunities and how she ended up where she is today. There is an absolute shock about three-quarters of the way through the book that was so emotional it literally left me reeling for hours after. Really, really good.

This is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare by Gabourey Sidibe – This is Gabourey Sidibe’s autobiography (she is an actress who got her big break starring in Precious) and I really loved it as well. She is brutally honest about herself and her journey and it was so interesting to read about the twists and turns that got her to where she is today. She is super funny too!

The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve – I’ll start with the fact that I love Anita Shreve’s writing. She writes books that are complicated, sad and unexpected. And The Stars are Fire was just that. I really was very interested in the story throughout, and thought it was really neat that even though it is fiction it is based around the true story of the Maine fires in 1947. The story is about a woman, Grace, whose house catches on fire and she has to run to the ocean to escape. Her husband doesn’t return in the aftermath (he was out fighting the fires) and she has to figure out how to rebuild a life. Super interesting and I would definitely recommend.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout – This was a painful book for me. I had seen it on a lot of reading lists and the story sounded interesting – Lucy is recovering from an operation and her estranged mother comes to visit her. As the mother sits bedside they reconnect and reminisce about the past. Well, it was very awkwardly written and difficult to follow, and I couldn’t get emotionally invested into it at all. Sad, because I had been looking forward to it!

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan – This is the second book in the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, and since I loved Crazy Rich Asians so much I was super stoked to read this. The story is about Rachel, the “heroine” returning to China to try to find her birth father and what ensues in that journey. I really enjoyed it, especially being familiar with the characters and their stories (and having just seen the movie when we were back in the US!), but it’s hard to beat the original. So I’d say it’s really good but not necessarily great.

What’s next

October signals the start of the last quarter of our around-the-world adventure. I can’t believe how quickly it has gone by and I’m sure the last segment of it will go even quicker. We start the month by continuing our adventures in Madagascar, then head off to Cape Town, South Africa for two weeks and then onto the last country on our tour (and one of my favorite places on earth) – New Zealand. As sad as it is that this trip will be coming to a close, I think we are going to have a pretty epic ending to it.

Travel blog posts from September 2018

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 from September here. Enjoy!

• Italy – Our three days in Rome
• Italy RECAP – What we loved (and didn’t love) in our six weeks there
• Croatia – Our four days in Dubrovnik
• Croatia – Our week in Hvar
• Croatia – Hiking Kra National Park and Canyoning in the Cetina River
• July 2018 Monthly Roundup
• Croatia – Hiking in Plitvice Lakes National Park
• Croatia – Visiting Zadar and Zagreb
• Norway – All the hiking (Glacier, Trolltunga, 4 Waterfalls, Steindalsfossen)