December 22 – Travel. How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would you like to travel next year? (Author: Tara Hunt)Fun question, perhaps better asked as how DIDN'T I travel in 2010! Planes, trains and automobiles were all in play in 2010. Trying to remember if there were any boats in there, but nothing springs to mind. Though we did get to tour a boat, the Vasa, which sank in 1628 and is in a museum in Stockholm.
The highlight of my 2010 travel was our spring trip to Europe, visiting Sweden and Russia. Our spring trip was long, a few weeks, and included time in Pittsburgh, DC, Charlottesville, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Pushkin, and Moscow. Absolutely amazing. I actually posted about one of the highlights, seeing the Amber Room, already. But there were also wonderful visits with family and friends during the rest of the year. I've said it before, we work to travel, we live to travel, we shop to travel, etc. We make lots of our financial and time-management decisions based on our shared love of travel. We love to do that together and wish we could work even less and travel even more, but at a certain point, we both recognize diminishing returns. Right now, about one month of vacation seems to be perfect for us. One long trip over two weeks, a few long weekends, and a week or so home for Christmas.
2011 travel will officially include two new cities for us as a couple, Boston and Paris, though I've been to both before (and don't remind my husband, but with different guys!). Technically, I received a plane ticket for Christmas to Boston, so I can't say we'll definitely make it to Paris, but the return date from Boston is more than two weeks later so I should say that it's likely we'll add Paris to the trip -- as well as Italy! My husband's family lives in Calabria and we love it there. We got engaged there and then got married there a year and a half later. We go visit about every 2 years on average. Hopefully our 2011 trip will provide an opportunity to meet up with another Calabria-loving lawyer blogger, Michelle, and/or another years-of-Texas-living blogger, Cherrye, so that would mean travel to other parts of Calabria, likely that I have never seen before. Despite my inability to understand what his relatives say (at least the older ones) because they consistently speak dialect, we always have such an amazing time and it goes too quickly. We eat like crazy, his aunt shovels more food than can be conceivably consumed onto our plates, and there is no understanding in his house of the concept of being a vegetarian, but the food is so good, it's always worth the weight I gain.
Beyond the big 2011 Spring trip we're planning, Boston, Pittsburgh, Calabria and Paris, we'll have at least a few other little trips during the year. We're going to Detroit in July for my baby brother's wedding. I think we'll go on Wednesday to spend a few extra days with our much-loved neighbors who live there part-time (and next to us the rest of the time). And now we'll also have my middle little brother's wedding sometime next year, place and date to be determined. Likely somewhere near Lake Michigan. And there's another cousin's wedding in Madison in August, but I'm not sure we'll make it there.
And apart from all that travel, which is fairly certain, I'd love to take a weekend road trip somewhere together at least once. Since neither of us is from Texas, there's lots to explore. An amazing running friend who lives in San Antonio that we need to go visit. East Texas, which just sounds like something different.
And it's possible, just possible, I'll get in a trip to Cali in about 11 months. One of my all-time favorite running buddies who moved away almost a year ago now lives in Cali and he is attempting to convince me that we should jointly undertake to run a 50-miler there together. I told him I'm deferring all decisions until after Boston!
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