One month into our adventure…

We’ve been on the road for a month today, and we are currently being hosted by a wonderful host in Catalonia, Spain, in a little village about 1.5 hr drive from Barcelona.

So, how did the 31 days pan out? I’d say pretty amazing, small challenges for myself notwithstanding. I’ll give you a hint regarding that, I do not do well in extreme heat. I am perimenopausal (fun times) and have always been a champion sweater, since I was a baby apparently. So, spending one of the hottest summers on record in Europe mostly without A/C has been, let’s say, taxing on my moods. The kids aren’t bothered, it’s just me of course.

A little about our itinerary thus far. We started with three nights in Dublin– I had never been, and because we would end up in Mediterranean Europe on this trip, I thought it would be good to get a feel of a northern piece of the old continent, (even though it is distinctly different from the other Nordic countries) and then proceeded with two weeks in Portugal. After that, we took a little break from farm work and spent five amazing days in France, in Nouvelle-Aquitane to be exact, the most well known city being Bordeaux. We stayed deep in the countryside of this stunningly exquisite region, and in keeping with the farm working theme, we sejourned on a farm.

There we attended the most gorgeous baptism in the devastatingly beautiful small town of Bazas. I have friends “scattered all over the place” as my son stated, and that is a huge plus, because when you travel, you get to experience magnificent events such as this. One of my oldest friends from design school in Milan happened to be baptizing her scrumptious twins at the end of July, so we took the opportunity to go meet them and spend some time with friends that are like family. I and the kids will definitely cherish those wonderful four days.

In terms of logistics, our last flight was from Dublin to Lisbon. Ever since then we’ve been riding buses– for a few reasons.

One is flights across Europe have been mess all summer. Post covid chaos, so people are getting delayed, canceled on, or their luggage is being left behind or getting lost, in I believe about 75% of cases. In other words, your chances of your travels having issues are much higher than not. I was not about to risk our backpacks getting lost, or worse yet, our flight getting canceled and not making it to Irene’s celebration.

The other reasons are, travel by bus is more likely to take you much closer to your destination when you’re traveling between small towns and rural areas. Reason number three is my kids get to see landscapes while riding. We got to drive through the Basque regions of France and Spain. We drove through San Sebastián, and stopped in Bilbao to check out the Guggenheim on the way. This type of experience is only granted to you by driving or bussing. Even rail won’t necessarily give you that more micro perspective.

But, to catch the bus from Portugal to France, we walked about 15 minutes to the bust stop in Guarda at 1 am. Backpacks on backs, and fatigue notwithstanding it was still a very tolerable experience. Not gonna lie, I had some anxiety about missing he bus all day prior.

The drawbacks are, it can be a long ride. At times it gets uncomfortable. But the trade off can be worth it, depending on what type of traveler you are. And obviously it reduces cost of traveling with kids you’re sponsoring financially.

All in all, this trip to date has been exactly the adventure we expected, in good and bad. If I had to go back I wouldn’t change a thing.

Ok, I lied. I’d change our first farm experience, but that’s for another post… :-/