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I’m back!

Well, I’m back from my 6 month trip around the world!  I saved money for 7 years, quit my job, sold or gave away most everything I own, and for the last 2 months trekked nonstop with a backpack and suitcase. The first 4 months I did short trips to Barcelona, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, visited friends and family I haven’t seen in years in some cases, and took my niece to Cedar Point for a weekend, then went to San Diego and Mexico.  After I dropped my cats off with my mom so I could travel nonstop, I went to London (day trip to Stonehenge, Bath, Cotswolds), Edinburgh, Scottish Highlands (including Loch Ness, Isle of Skye, Glencoe), Dublin (day trip to Cliffs of Moher and Galway), Paris, Venice, Rome (day trips to Vatican City, Pompei, Positano), Chiang Mai (including Elephant Nature Park), Krabi (day trip to Phi Phi Islands), Phuket, Bangkok, Tokyo, Kamakura/Enoshi Island, Hakone, Kyoto, Osaka (day trips to Nara, Himeji, Hikone), and Iceland (my mom came with me on that one!) There have been a lot of ups and downs, the more important ones as follows:

Pros:

–  Reconnected with family, old friends that I haven’t seen in years, and met a lot of fun new people.

– Visited places I’ve always dreamed about, and saw things I’ve always wanted to see while they’re still there.

– Tried new food, new desserts, new drinks…and yet, still lost about 5 inches on my waist probably from walking an average of 7-9 miles per day almost every day.  Usually uphill, which I still haven’t figured out the logistics in that.  If you go up you’d think you’d have to go down but it always seemed to be uphill!

– Saw new cultures and learned a TON of history including doing some ancestry research in England/Scotland/Ireland.

– Worked things out on my own whenever there was a problem and learned not to have a meltdown about the little things even if I wasn’t happy about it.

– Learned how to walk slower. Everyone in my family power walks everywhere and are masters at weaving through crowds, we also usually inhale our food rather than eat and enjoy it, it’s just the way it has always been.  I was walking around Chicago today and for the first time everyone was pushing past ME and I was seeing things I haven’t acknowledge in the 8 years that I’ve lived here.  Like, was that restaurant always there?  It looks neat, I never noticed it before…

Cons:

– I missed my pets so bad, I can’t wait to see them when I go to my mom’s for the holidays this weekend!

– The sheer volume of tourists is crazy!  I’m not complaining, since I am also one of those tourists and I think it’s amazing that the world has gotten to a point where so many people can enjoy it, it was just really surprising.  I used to live in Japan 15 years ago so a lot of my stops there were for nostalgia purposes and the number of people in places that had previously been practically unknown was shocking. The main concern I had was about safety, a lot of these places weren’t designed to hold that many people and those mega-tour buses are way too big in a lot of cases (I almost got squished by one!) I used to work at construction sites and we have OSHA in the United States and I think I got a few new gray hairs just from some of the safety related things I’ve seen.  I’m also an environmental scientist, so seeing some of the unhygienic things people were doing in some locations made me cringe. Bring a hand towel and hand sanitizer everywhere with you, for real! I would need an entire separate post to explain all of the people, behaviors, and safety issues though.  I’m putting this under “cons” but honestly this was one of the most interesting parts of the trip given my profession.

– I get why it’s hard for some people to understand how bad climate change is especially if they don’t travel.  It was really sad to see some of the locations because of all the trash and pollution, irregular weather patterns, damaged ecosystems, and changing behaviors of the animals. I already knew a lot about the impacts of the climate crisis, but some places really opened my eyes to how bad it’s truly becoming.

– Blisters.  So. Many. Blisters.  Even with broken in boots and moleskin and bandages.  I’m fairly convinced it’s inevitable.

– The scammers.  I managed to avoid them mostly, but one got me in Venice and it was so obvious I had to laugh after I realized it.  Rookie mistake!
Anywho, now that I’m back I’m going to spend the holidays with family then decide if I want to be a responsible adult and get back to work, or buy an RV and do an epic 6 month National Park road trip with my cats…

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Vatican City

I woke up super early yet again to walk over to Vatican City and meet my before opening tour group. My sore throat has turned into a flow blown cold, which sucks, but it was a nice day and an easy walk so I dealt with it. Our tour guide was great, and power walked us through the line straight over to the Sistine Chapel. They forbid photos there now, but I probably could have taken 100 of them with just how beautiful that place is (I admit…me and pretty much everyone else in there still snuck a photo or two). Since they cleaned it in the 1980s the colors are so vibrant and lively and light. Michelangelo may have been an asshole but he was one hell of a painter.

After the chapel we made our way through the museums to see the highlight exhibits, including Rafaello’s rooms and some recently opened chambers. Then we made our way to St. Peter’s Basilica and it was starting to get pretty crowded by this point. Honestly I was a little let down by the basilica, for all it touts to be, and despite its size, I’ve seen far more elaborate churches in my travels. That being said, it is HUGE and artifacts are everywhere. You can even go down into the catacombs to see the graves of past Popes and even (supposedly) St. Peter’s tomb. They were doing a little mass off to the side so I sat and watched for a while, then grabbed some souvenirs and caught a couple guards in the original uniforms on alert outside. Then I walked through the main entrance to the city back out to Rome. It was almost 1pm by that point, and my cold really was getting worse, so I decided to grab some ravioli then head back to the hotel for some R&R and to pack for my Thailand flight tomorrow.

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Pompeii and Positano

I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn and hiked over to the meeting point for my trip to Pompei and Positano. The trip out to Pompei was pretty cool, since you got to see Mount Vesuvius and pass by some great views of Naples on the way down. It was honestly a perfect day. It was sunny, warm, relatively low humidity, with a light breeze. And yet, when we arrived in Pompei it wasn’t busy at all like we were expecting. We were able to walk right in and hit all of the highlights right on time. We visited a small house that had a lot of the original frescos intact, a nobleperson’s big house with cool floor tiling, a bathhouse, the famous brothel with their more R-rated frescos still in place, the main shopping street, and the main courtyard. We also got to see the casts of some of the people who died there, and we were guided by an active site archaeologist who works on the modern excavations so she was able to tell us about some cool things they’ve found just in the past few years. For example, all the old books say Vesuvius erupted in August, but now they’re sure it must have been at least October from the fruits they’re finding and some new graffiti they found on a wall where the person dated it to what would translate as October of 79 A.D. That’s the cool thing about science, you can always adjust based on new information.

After we left the ruins I pet a cat, and ran back to the bus. We drove over to Sorrento, with gorgeous views down into the bay and of Sorrento itself, and continued under the mountains and to the Amalfi Coast. We drove along the coast, which is pretty dang gorgeous, all the way over to Positano. At which point, we were given a couple hours to just hang out and wander around. I went down to the black beach first and stuck my hand in the lukewarm water, which surprised me, I thought it would be cold. Then I went to a pizza place that had a wood burning oven and ate probably the BEST Margherita pizza I’ve ever had before. Then I wandered back up to the top of the houses along the shop roads and got a lemon slushie, since lemons are a big crop in this area. Afterwards, we all hopped back on the bus and made the long trek back to Rome. I’m going to the Vatican tomorrow so maybe I can get someone to bless this cold I’m developing away…that’s how that works, right?