17 Sunday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
We glance around to see what time it is, and the clocks are gone. We go out to sit on the balcony, and the chairs are gone. We look for clothes in the drawers, and the clothes are gone. We sit down to watch Jeopardy, and the television is Just. Not. There.
12 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
We’ve collected numerous bars of elegant soap over the years, all destined for future use. You know how it is: you spend a night in a chic hotel, you take home the soap. We’ve visited a few chic hotels in our days; we’ve snitched some pretty elegant soap.
08 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
A red letter day! We put the first boxes in storage. This gave Tom a chance to rent his preferred method of transportation, a pickup truck. (Tom and truck pictured above.) It was a black Nissan Zipcar named Florencia the Frontier. (If you don’t have Zipcars in your ‘hood, it’s an hourly vehicle rental service with cars parked conveniently around the city, and they all have names that go with their species, such as Harry Hundai and Felicia Ford. It’s adorable.)
29 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
If you could see me now, you’d know that I’m staring at my feet as they draw bashful circles in the dust, basking in the flattery that is The Versatile Blogger Award. We were nominated for it yesterday by those maharishis of travel blogging (36 years!), James and Terri Vance of gallivance.net (who have also received the award). Thank you James and Terri!
13 Sunday Jan 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
(We’re gonna hear from the bloggers about this…)
Hooray!!! We bought the plane tickets to Barcelona yesterday. They are one way! That is SO exciting!
01 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in Sentiments
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31 Monday Dec 2012
Posted in Travel
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We had a chance to go to a Rick Steves lecture the other night, though lecture is way too stuffy a word for it. The celebrated travel journalist, broadcaster, and entrepreneur actually has a bit of a stand-up routine that he brings around: part advice, part humor, and part low-pressure sales pitch for his tours and travel products. Rick was in jeans and a sport coat, standing taller than we expected, blondish hair going silvery, and much funnier than one would imagine.
06 Tuesday Nov 2012
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
I was chatting with my son Ted about our adventure, and admitted I was a little scared. (Don’t worry—I have run all the cognitive therapy questions and I know intellectually that leaving home is no scarier than staying home. But I will allow myself to be scared anyway, because it’s a normal reaction to a big forthcoming change.)
05 Monday Nov 2012
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
It was 2002, I believe. Ten years ago. Traveling alone in Italy with five days to spare, I pointed the rental car north and discovered, unwittingly, Lake Como. George Clooney hadn’t purchased Villa Oleandra yet (that came a few months later). They say the lake changed after Clooney’s arrival. I hope it hasn’t changed much, because we’ve just rented an August apartment there.
31 Wednesday Oct 2012
Posted in Sentiments
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We’re “expatriates” (or, more properly, we’re about to be), we’re not “ex-patriots.” We still love our country, but to put “ex” and a hyphen ahead of something implies consummation (or, perhaps, dispatch), like “ex-husband.”
The Expat Almanac 