Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Happy Holidays and New Years!

Happy Holidays from Jordan! 

This year, instead of sending holiday cards, we wanted to do something different. Given our nomadic lifestyle change, we decided to film ourselves while traveling so you could get a glimpse into our day-to-day happenings.  Below you will see a link showcasing our camel ride during our stay in a Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum, Jordan.  In case you're wondering, the sunset was stunning.

Camel Ride in Wadi Rum, Jordan

New Year's Resolutions:

It's December 25th, we've been traveling for just over 2 months and we've only posted a few entries.  When we first started traveling, we thought we would have tons of time for reading, writing, meditating, yoga, etc.  Think idyllic Eat, Pray, Love.  Turns out things are busier than we thought they were going to be. 

When you plan a 2-3 week vacation you book everything in advance through hours of research and planning.  This can't be done on a multi-month trip.  The research and planning happens as you go and you need to consider things like:  budget, cheapest flight routes, political stability or lack thereof, visas, transport, meeting two people's interests, timing (e.g. annual migration of animals on safari), scheduling, and safety.  On top of that you need to keep up with touring:  navigating, checking in and out, packing and unpacking bags, doing laundry, banking, groceries or restaurants, and downloading and backing up photos. 

Needless to say, the blog often took a backseat to sleeping.  This is not a complaint so much as an important life-lesson and perhaps a bit of an apology to friends and family for our lack of postings. 

What can we learn from this?  Take a page out of Simon and Garfunkel's The 59th Street Bridge Song:  Slow down you move to fast, you got to make the morning last.  Our resolution for the new year:  slow down the travel and you'll be able to enjoy the journey, not just the destination. 

That's our New Year's Resolution.  Of course, as typical Type A-ers, this will be extremely difficult, but we'll try. We might even post our blog entries a little more frequently to help with the adjustment. 

Friday, November 23, 2012

A Wee Bit of the Emerald Isle



How cool is this?  We are writing to you from The Elephant House in Edinburgh, the place where J.K. Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books.  (Editor’s Note – We were writing from there. Because Adam is slow, it’s now a month later.  We will try to be better in future.) 

By writing from a Scottish location about somewhere else entirely, we have placed ourselves in good company.  Consider J.K. Rowling.  Though she has never publicly acknowledged the fact, she wrote most of the first two Harry Potter books from this very cafe.  They keep a photo on the wall to prove it.  It improves business. 

The bathrooms are full of graffiti: letters addressed “Dear Ms. Rowling,” magical spells, fan mail to Harry, fan mail to Snape, and even a prayer in Spanish from a struggling author begging for that one big break.  Blasphemously but charmingly, the prayer is addressed to J.K. Rowling. 

Of course despite all the hype in Scotland about Harry’s Scottish origins, J.K. Rowling set the whole series in England.  Alas, poor Scotland!  Always a bridesmaid… 

Clearly however, we have digressed.  Harry Potter has nothing to do with Ireland.  He has very little even to do with Scotland.  He is, however, a great hook for gaining a reader’s attention. 

So, about Ireland:

What a green place!  The beautiful irony of travel is discovering how often stereotypes hold true.  For instance, Irish grass is green enough to be a bit unsettling.  Irish bushes and trees compete for a still more vivid shade of green.  Embarrassed at their lack of green-ness, even the gray stone walls blush green moss.  The green is so inescapable that one wonders if the Irish have a dozen words for it like the Inuit supposedly have for snow; or if they have none, like fish do for water. 

We tried asking the fish but all of them were too beer-battered and fried, not to mention delicious, to answer.  See above about how stereotypes are often true. 

Killarney Park Waterfall (note the greenery trying to overtake the waterfall)


Speaking of fish and chips, between the potatoes, beer, and deep-fried everything, burning calories in Ireland is a must.  Luckily, this was easy for us thanks to Irish roads’ incessant triggering of Aislinn’s fight-or-flight response, and Adam’s please-stop-gasping-already-it-makes-an-accident-way-more-likely-and-my-nerves-are-already-shot response. 

The pictures below should hopefully speak for themselves.  Needless to say the views were spectacular:  the Cliffs of Moher, better known as the Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride, neolithic citadels, traffic jams composed entirely of sheep, and winding beaches bordered by grassy fields.  The routes we took in our rental car usually consisted of two lane highways narrower than most Toronto alleyways.  Every new sight was hidden behind the next hill, a hill that also obscured any oncoming traffic or indeed the fact that the road wasn’t about to end in a sudden cliff.  The practical upshot was just enough terror to make the whole experience really memorable.   
The Cliffs of Moher
 “Hey, this is really quaint.”

“Yeah, and that’s despite the fact that I currently fear for my life.  How long before we can pull over?”

“I don’t know.  I’m not even sure if this road has one or two lanes and there’s no end in sight.  You know what this is?”

“An opportunity to realise this was a bad idea?”

“No, it’s Squaint.  Scary but quaint.”

“Squaint!  We may both love a good portmanteau but this is no time for jokes.  Also, that is far too cute for what this is.  I’d go with Terrifeautiful instead.”
Irish Traffic Jam
Speaking of segues, Ireland’s history may be less beautiful than its roadways but it compensates by being more terrifying.  Arriving in Dublin on the first day of our round-the-world trip, bleary-eyed after an overnight flight, we decided a walking tour would be a great way to keep ourselves awake.  As an added bonus, the tour was free. 

Our guide looked like an Irish Seth Rogen.  He called himself “Fluffy.”  On a free tour, you get your money’s worth.  
First impressions aside, having to live entirely on tips meant that “Fluffy” was a consummate professional, capable of compacting one thousand years of Irish history into a three hour tour.  Compacting it still further into one protracted sentence, the narrative is heartbreaking: centuries of oppression, then famine caused by oppression, military uprisings, massacres, terrorist uprisings, and finally a civil war between those who were willing to accept an oath to the English monarch as a condition of otherwise near-total independence and those who simply couldn’t stomach any hint of England on Irish soil no matter what the cost.  This was followed at long last by independence.

This all assumes that you ignore Northern Ireland entirely.  If you don’t, things get really complicated as Adam discovered four hours into his battle to conquer Wikipedia’s articles on the subject.  There are more factions, historical minutiae, and plot twists to absorb than an Umberto Eco novel.  To simplify matters, people today refer to anything involving Northern Ireland after the partition as “The Troubles.” This conveys the basic premise that Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants were not fond of each other and expressed this sentiment through sporadic explosions and gunfire.  It’s euphemistic, sounds smart, and saves tourists like us the bother of understanding.

Or, as Aislinn pointed out at 2am as Adam was conceding defeat, “Turn off the light and stop already!  Haven’t you learned anything from your brother Dave?  You don’t need to read things when there’s already a movie!”  Adam still has no idea if she meant Michael Collins, In the Name of the Father, or something else entirely, but he has since admitted she was probably right.     
In addition to Irish history, Fluffy made some excellent recommendations on local pubs.  In a nutshell, these are the two great themes of Irish tourism: an endless stream of sights relating to tragedies and deaths, and an endless stream of pubs in which to drink because of them. 

See again the comment about stereotypes above. 

The modern Irish state was born from the Easter Uprising of 1916.  The Irish lost.  There was tragedy.   There were deaths.  There may also have been much drinking in pubs afterwards.  The latter isn’t well-documented.  What is well-documented is the timing and manner in which most of the leaders of the uprising were incarcerated and executed over the next several days in Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol (Jail), sparking public sympathy and a huge surge in popular support for Irish independence, also a string of movies three quarters of a century later.  Both Michael Collins and In the Name of the Father were filmed there. 

To pay tribute to these two great themes in Irish tourism, we ended a visit to the Kilmainham Gaol with a trip to the Guinness Brewery.  Halfway there, Adam realised his wallet was missing.  He ran back to the jail to ask if they’d found it.  Aislinn scoured the streets.  It remained stubbornly lost.  Great luck!  We now had a reason to drink. 

The tour was phenomenal.  The pint of Guinness included with the tour was perfectly poured, exact in temperature, and delightful in flavour.  Adam left unsatisfied, neither because of the tour nor the recent loss of his wallet.  He had forgotten to ask a question that would trouble him afterwards. 
Aislinn and Adam Enjoying a Pint at the Guinness Tour
The tour featured Arthur Guinness’ original lease for the land on which the brewery stands.  It provides for a 9000 year term at 45 pounds per year.  This begs the question: Who still collects that 45 pounds each year? Does the family still collect it?  Do they use it to buy a few rounds at the local pub?  Or do they curse their ancestors’ poor financial sense, awaiting a distant day in which their descendants can finally reclaim the land and get some real cash for it?  There must be a good idea for a novel in this somewhere. 

We may not have mentioned the bit about the Irish and literature, but see the part above about stereotypes.  For those who are really interested, consider reading some Jonathan Swift, or George Bernard Shaw.  Don’t bother with Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot is the literary equivalent of a Woody Allen movie, tons of anticipation and never quite satisfying.  (Editor’s Note – Sorry to the Woody Allen fans out there.)

So, after drinking away our sorrows, we reported the lost wallet to the police.  We then had another pint, this time at The Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin.  No drunk has incinerated this one in nearly 1000 years.  Just think, in only 8000 years more, the original owner’s descendants might even be able to re-negotiate the lease. 

They had Wi-Fi – being old doesn’t always mean you’re technologically out of touch.  Net result: Adam checked his e-mail, learning not only that he’d passed his Emergency Medicine exam in Toronto but also that they’d found his lost wallet at the Kilmainham Gaol after all.  Adam bought two more rounds.  It seemed appropriate.  Pardon the redundancy, but see the part about stereotypes above.  

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

First Official Post

This the first post of many on our round the world trip.  With only 5 days until our first flight to Dublin, we can't believe how quickly time has flown.  We've spent a lot of time prepping for this trip including researching leaves of absence, applying for leaves, shots and more shots, documents, bookings, travel insurance, camera insurance, budgets, learning how to pack, seasonal considerations, RTW tickets vs. individual flights, routes, financial notifications, cancelling benefits, prepping for the listing of our house for rental, showing our house, signing house rental agreements, moving our house into my parent's basement (thanks mom and dad!), taking photography classes,  donating blood before we can't for 2 years upon returning, buying travel meds, and backpacks, and hiking shoes, and travel clothes, and first aid kits, and camera equipment, and more camera equipment, and a netbook, and a kobo (wait, that was a gift, thanks Adina!), and much more but that's just a little taste.  So much time, so much MONEY, will it all be worth it?

Here's the plan as it goes:
Fly to Dublin, Ireland.  (Only flight booked thus far!).  From there we tour Ireland and Scotland, then off to Switzerland, Turkey (if all goes well with Syria), Israel, Jordan, not Egypt (stupid violence), Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, maybe Uganda or Zimbabwe, India, maybe Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, China, Japan, Micronesia, and New Zealand.  We have friends along the way that we plan on visiting and friends and family that plan on visiting us!  We invite all who are interested in meeting up with us to let us know and we will try to make it work.
How do we feel before we go on this adventure?


Aislinn
Well, I feel extremely excited and nervous.  I think it's obvious why I'm excited, but why am I nervous?  You see, as a teacher, I've always believed in predictable environments.  Predictable environments are wonderful for children to make them feel safe and secure and repetition helps build brain connections.  Not only is this environment good for kids, it has been good for me!  This has been my life for the last 8 years...prior to that I was in school for 21 years, so, all told, school has been my life for almost 30 YEARS.  So I'm a bit scared of losing my "scheduling" security blanket.
Despite living in a predictable environment, I've always been pretty easy-going and flexible and love the rush of flying by the seat of my pants.  I guess that's why I've always wanted to go on a trip like this.  But, true to form for the last 30 years, when my travel agent suggested that I only book the first flight and not do the RTW ticket, my first thought was, "That wasn't in the plan.  That's for those hippy travellers who just let the wind take them where it will."  I hadn't even considered NOT booking a RTW ticket because I needed to feel like I had a final destination, a place I was going to, an end to the means.  But, as we say in school, it's not about the destination, it's the journey.  Then I started to do some research on 'how' to travel on a trip like ours.
After reading several very helpful blogs, I learned that if you plan everything, you will not enjoy yourself as much because you're so focussed on your next stop that you don't enjoy what is right in front of you.  It's best just to create a shell of the plan and be open to changes as they go.  Hey wait!  That's what I do as a teacher too...  Hmmm, then what really is the big difference?  I guess I'll find out...


Adam
 
I won't lie.  It's hard for me write this entry.  I have no one to blame but myself.  Aislinn wrote the rest of this post 11 days ago.  Since then we've finished our packing, said our goodbyes, and flown overseas to Ireland.  It's already hard to remember how I felt just before I left.  
In a nutshell, I was stressed and ready for a break, with just a hint of frantic.  Just a hint of course.  I am still clearly unflappable.
That being said, I may be foolish.  Circling the globe for the better part of a year without booking ahead for so much as a place to stay more than a day or two ahead won't improve any of the above feelings.  It will however be a wonderful way to find adventure.  It might even be a good way to seek a new perspective.   At the least, it's already been an excellent way to become acquainted with Irish Whiskey.  For now, that's more than enough for me.
So, how do I feel?  Proud of all we accomplished in getting to this point, overjoyed and relieved to have passed my final exam in Emergency Medicine -- I found out over drinks in the oldest pub in Dublin and subsequently bought us both a few more -- and just a wee bit apprehensive about the rest of our journey.  Mostly though, I'm looking forward to a few days of quiet strolls over the moorlands in the Orkney Islands north of Scotland later this week.