August is inching closer and closer and I can hardly stand the wait!
I want to extend a BIG thank you to Icelandair. Tommy and I were hoping to stopover in Reykjavik for 2 nights on our way to Europe, but our flight went straight through with only a 45-minute layover in Iceland…yikes. After Expedia told me I couldn’t change the flights, I hit the Twitter/Facebook team (like any good social media strategist knows to do…).
“STOP THE BUS! That girl stole my shoes!”
The bus driver lurched to a stop and I dashed down the stairs. I ran over to the shoe thief and after an animated conversation and a deer-in-headlights blank gaze, the girl took the shoes off her feet and gave them to me. Shoes: check.
We had stayed in the same hostel room in Galway, Ireland two nights prior. When I woke up the 2nd morning, my shoes were gone. I had considered them a loss until I was riding a 4-hour bus ride across Ireland to Dublin. The bus stopped every 5 minutes it seemed. At a tiny stop in the smack dab center of Ireland, I happened to gaze out the window to see my pink pumas walking down the street. I recognized the girl wearing my shoes from the hostel. After I left her dazed wearing only socks in the middle of the street, I began to think about how strange it was that we happened to cross paths in this tiny Irish town at that very moment when she was crossing the street, when we had left Galway hours apart headed to different destinations.
Earlier that week at the Cliffs of Moher, I ran into two men I had met months before in Greece. I happened to run into an old friend in Rome I had no idea was traveling there just weeks before. My friend began to date a man who she saw on a train once in Italy, who she somehow ran into again in Salzburg months later.
It seems that the more you travel, the smaller the world becomes.
How do the stars align in such a way that these strange, unlikely coincidences occur? Is it meant to be that I found my shoes? Are these serendipitous moments omens from the universe that we are supposed to form relationships with the people we see again and again?
Next year as I’m galavanting through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, I can only imagine the sweet serendipity that will find me there. Bring it on, universe.
Few other sounds were audible over the grumble of my hungry stomach. Where do people eat in this town? Why is there only one table in this restaurant? Where are the people…?
My two best friends in I found ourselves in a tiny rural village about two hours outside of Hangzhou, China. A long bus ride that introduced us to a number of interesting yet repulsive new smells, followed by a near death experience in the care of a crazed taxi driver, landed us in a village that we still have yet to learn the name..
Our hostel came with a bonus puppy.
After an action-packed week in Shanghai and Beijing, lots of mystery animal mouthfuls and plenty of Buddhist temples, we were anxious to see the quieter, less populated side of China. Continue reading
Red. The brightest, most luscious carmine red was staring back at me from across the field. These cherries were far too good to be true. Like little crimson beads of perfectly ripe temptation, I couldn’t help but creep my way across the grass, attempting to look innocent in my sly, cherry-sneaking mission. I managed to refrain from this debauchery the first few days my family and I stayed in a quaint B&B tucked in the bountiful wine-terraced hills of Eger, Hungary, next door to a cherry-infested Garden of Eden. The abundant branch hung tantalizingly over the fence, and by day three, it was all over for me. The minute I popped one in my mouth, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know flavors like that existed. Hand over hand, I picked the branch bare. Oops.
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The time has come, the walrus said, to move to Thailand to teach English. What? It’s true. It’s happening! My dream is finally coming alive. In August, my boyfriend and I will leave our jobs, our little apartment in Southeast … Continue reading
