And So It Begins…

When I think back a few years, pre COVID and during our full-time-work lives, many winter Sundays were spent thinking about what we do now. When we aren’t working a project, we live overseas, we study foreign languages and we research, prep and prepare to travel.

Those many Sundays, which seem so distant now, were filled with computers, iPads and iPhones in hand looking at Google Maps, Rome2Rio and pictures of places on the internet as we plotted and mapped out future adventures on a wall sized map with little colored pins. And then, we’d learn something new. We’d learn about a visa requirement which would threaten the plan. We would read something about a village in Peru or talk to someone who had just visited Cape Town or read a blog post about a town in Norway. We’d find a new train or interesting cruise and rip out pins and start anew or at least modify a prior version.

I guess that all should have been a practice run for the adaptability we would need to learn. Those many versions never accounted for a global pandemic which would lock down travel, close borders and put the world through this topsy turvy state of seemingly constant change, shifting rules and the need for adaptation. I mean, who woulda thought, right?!

So now, two years late, we are preparing to embark on our first “long trip” outside of the USA or Portugal. This trip was “scheduled” to happen a year ago and will take us through parts of France and much of Italy over a couple of months. We are excited. We are anxious. We are booked.

We are anxious that another COVID surge or tighter measures could render our planning and booking back into the rubbish bin of the early part of this decade. We are anxious about the length of the trip. We are anxious that the project work we do will not be there for us when we return. But most of all, we are excited. We are excited to return to two countries we’ve previously visited more than 10 years ago for two weeks apiece and return to places we loved and explore new things and have new experiences. So as we pack and prepare to fly off we will keep with our theme for the year: optimism for a better year, hope that the COVID corner may have been turned and excitement that 2022 will bring more good than bad. Don’t worry, we will keep you posted.