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Lockdown in Portugal: The day I bleated at the Butcher
My 3 months of lockdown in Portugal was both challenging and rewarding. The most challenging was the language barrier. Hands down. Full stop. I’ve been traveling abroad as a solo traveler for nearly two decades and my monolingual limitations have never been a barrier. Until Covid-19 happened. I’ve pondered this a lot. Frankly, I had little else to do. I believe what made this experience more challenging was anxiety. Anxiety felt by me as a stranger in a strange land and by those I had to interact with an obvious foreigner during their own personal and collective crisis. Nowhere was this felt more keenly than when I had to make…
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A Stranger in a Strange Land: Lockdown in Portugal during Covid-19 Pandemic
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” J.R.R Tokien, The Fellowship of the Ring Truer words have never been spoken. Yet, like Bilbo, I don’t see these words as a warning – they speak to adventure. Little did I know when I left Florida on March 1, 2020 to cruise for 2 weeks across the Atlantic that I would arrive in Europe with the world having turned upside down. During those 2 weeks, The World Health Association had declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic, most countries…
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Solo cruising and crossing the Atlantic!
*NOTE: I wrote this blog while spending 2 weeks crossing the Atlantic. During that time, the world turned upside down with the COVID-19 pandemic and it wasn’t until we docked in Barcelona, that we knew how serious things had become. I decided to post it anyway and will proceed with how my plans have changed since arriving in Europe. Thanks for joining me This cruise kicks off an 8 month trip around Europe. We will be at sea for nearly 2 weeks before we end up in Barcelona, Spain. I get a lot of questions about solo travel, and cruising solo seems to be up on the list of things…
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First trip to Costa Rica!
What a wonderful week! Special thanks to Cindy & Ron for inviting me to fly down and join them. And to their daughter, Alex and son-in-law-, AJ for making me feel so welcome and driving us around! I flew into San Jose – a simple 3 hour flight out of Miami. The rest of the group arrived late that evening (from frozen Canada) and we spent the night at La Riviera Hotel in San Antonio, which has a free shuttle from the airport. Cindy and Ron had hired a driver to take us across to Jaco which takes about 1 1/2 hours depending on traffic. January – March is heavy…
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Planning the next adventure
Six weeks from today, I leave for my next adventure in Europe. I have some things finalized: a full-day riding a Clydesdale in Cornwall, a theater performance looking out over the sea, a cooking class in Rome. Pretty good stuff. Some minor details…I haven’t booked my flight. Why? Because I am a brat and am pouting over the airfare prices! I always do a pretty comprehensive budget before I travel. I budget $1,000 for airfare. But I am always able to get a flight at around $850 if I watch and wait. Well, I’ve been watching and waiting and it’s not happening. Once I watched and waited too long and…
