Sabbatical!

The long-awaited day has arrived.  As of about 3:30 this afternoon, I am on sabbatical. It's still kind of surprising, and I'm not totally sure what to do next, but I think it will be an adventure. And as evidence, we found ourselves out for dinner eating our pre-adventure meal. 

I have a history with this soup.  I've eaten it the nights before going to camp, taking youth on a service trip (twice), and trips to far away places (several times).

Thank you, tom kha gha, for nourishing me for so many adventures.  May this one be just as awesome!  

Resurrection!

I believe in resurrection!  For example, I haven't touched this blog in <GASP> well over six years, and yet here it is, breathing once more.

What has happened in the last six years since my visit to Cinque Terra you might ask?  A lot!  I have a new (well not new but less than six year old job), a husband(!), and apparently a habit of using parentheses that I might need to examine.

But the really important thing is that I am less than 24 hours from embarking on a three-month sabbatical.  Tomorrow afternoon, my work will quite suddenly come to a stop and I will set off on a new adventure of not being driven by what is going to happen next Sunday.

 My plan, you ask?  Rest, pursue personal projects, and of course my favorite activity, travel.  Some of that travel will be to visit family in February, and then in March I am taking my hubby, five of our six adult kids, and two of their partners to New Zealand!  

As part of the "pursuing personal projects" thing, I plan to keep breathing life into this blog.  Will I? Your guess is as good as mine!

Welcome to my next adventure. 

Cinque Terre

Well it seems that I am running two cities behind, which tells me that if I am going to blog my travels I need to travel with a keyboard. Blogger doesn't work well on a phone but I wanted to travel very light, so here I am blogging on my phone. That is a first world problem if there ever was one, but I digress...

Cinque Terre is more beautiful than advertised. I spent my time there wandering through the towns. Each has a slightly different character and a different story to tell.  The towns are built into steep hillsides which plunge into the Ligurian Sea.  It has access to the rest of Italy by railroad cut through the cliffs, and there must be a road because there are a few cars. Life is very vertical there. Here are the stairs to our apartment:

As with all the places we have been, the people have been friendly and the food had been amazing. Hint: eat local. The local food is fresh and tasty.  Food from far away is less tasty. So in Cinque Terre order anchovies, not tuna, and it might be a good idea to ask if vegetables are fresh or frozen.

Speaking of taste, here is a taste of the visual splendor that is Cinque Terre.

 

Venice

Time flies when you're having fun. It's been a whirlwind of exploring and activities and food, sooooo much food in Venice and Cinque Terre.

We began our time in Venice with a newbie mistake. After sitting on a plane and then a bus, I was itching to walk, so instead of following the apartment manager's very clear instructions to take the Vaporetto to the apartment, I suggested we walk and Google maps said it would take 20 minutes. Google did not seem to realize that we couldn't walk on water.  Oops. For future reference, the Vaporetto works as advertised...

We had a glorious, if rainy, couple of days wandering around on foot and by boat. Murano and Burano were amazing.

 

Lido was fun too, and we saw many of the main sites in Venice, especially around San Marco.

 

Venice was challenging in one unexpected way. My sense of direction, usually fairly good when outside, was not up to the task of efficient navigation. One evening after hours of wandering, Laurie and I decided we should find a place to eat close to our apartment. For the sake of expediency, we used Google Maps...I know, I know, we checked for mysterious water crossings...and it turned out we were only three minutes away.

Next post will be all about Cinque Terre.

The swing

There's something about a swing that I love. The motion is soothing but a little bit exciting at the same time. You are in control of how high you go but you have to go with the flow on speed and direction. So you can imagine my excitement when 2/3 of the way up a hill Laurie made me climb I found a swing just hanging from a tree begging to be ridden.

And so I got to swing for a few minutes and feel inspired by the motion while looking over Barcelona from high above the city.

Then we got back on the trail to the top of the hill, which was totally worth the climb. We could see all of Barcelona from the hills to the Mediterranean Sea. What a beautiful day.

         

Barcelona wandering

We made it! We are in Barcelona with three days of sightseeing in front of us. After checking into our hostel (Casa Gracía, in case you are heading this way) Laurie and I decided to take a walk to shake off the long cramped plane ride and try to stay awake until nighttime. That little walk became about five miles as we walked up and down alleys and through Plaça de Catalunya.

 

We wrapped up our walk with a lovely late (for us, not for Barcelona) dinner around 9:30 and fell into bed. Wednesday we will explore some of Gaudi's works, but here is a taste.

Vacation!

Wow, I have not written anything here for eight years!  I mean I have half-written a handful of drafts, but nothing worth publishing.  In some of them I apparently drifted off midsentence.  I would like to pretend that this isn't like me, but...

So after debating cutting ties with this blog and starting a new one, I decided to stick with this one.  My path still takes strange and interesting twists, so it seems worthwhile to stick with the twisting path.  So here we go.

I am heading off on vacation tomorrow, the longest vacation of my adult life.  Three whole weeks!  My friend Laurie and I have loaded up our backpacks with less than the 10 kg we are allowed, and tomorrow we fly to Barcelona.  When we have had our fill we head to Italy to go all the places.  Okay not *all* the places, but as many as we can reasonably see in 15 days.

In other news, I handled my shopping at Chavez Market completely in Spanish this week, so clearly I'm ready for Spain.  Italy on the other hand...the only words I know in Italian are "pizza" and "gelato."  Of course maybe that's all I need :-)

I will try to post pictures and travel stories as we come across connection to the internet.

Here we go!