5 years

Five years ago today, Sean and I got married.  It is hard to believe that five years have gone by since then.  In that timeframe, we bought, renovated, and sold our first house; got new jobs and quit those jobs; and left our lives behind at home to travel the world for a year. Some of our wedding guests are no longer with us, and I miss them all. But just as many have been born in those five years, and our flower girls and ring bearers are all grown up now. Our marriage still obtains strength and support from our relationships with our fantastic friends and family.  And even though we bicker nearly every day on this trip, our relationship is just as strong as it was five years ago.

Every time we celebrate our wedding anniversary, we actually celebrate an even longer relationship. We started dating in June 1998 – 12 whole years ago. I remember sitting on a fishing dock with my friend Scott, who was fond of saying that summer, Look around.  Did you ever picture yourself here, with these people, doing this? They were good times.

You never know where life might take you.  Did I ever think 12 years ago, or even 5 years ago, that we would be celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary in Prague?  Not a chance.  But here we are, with 10 more months of travel and exploration in front of us.

Happy Anniversary, Sean.  I wouldn’t want to do this trip with anyone other than you.  Here’s to celebrating this and future anniversaries – and ordinary days – in exciting places.

You don’t need a museum to find art.

Normally, graffiti everywhere is a bad thing, but there sure are some artistic spray painters in Valencia.  I enjoyed wandering around Barrio del Carmen finding more and more graffiti.  It also makes siesta time less dreary.  During siesta time (anywhere from 1:30 to 5:30, depending on the city and the store), Spanish stores close their metal gates, making the street look a little neglected.  In Barcelona, there was a lot of graffiti on the gates, but all of it was of the dodgey variety.  Spanish cities can be confusing – and interesting – because each time you wander down the street, you find new stores and lose track of ones you’ve previously seen.  So it is nice to have some art to look at while you are trying to find that store you just know you saw yesterday.

Here’s a sampling of the graffiti artists’ work:

From Valencia Graffiti

Two months…and we are back in business!

We left Pittsburgh exactly 60 days ago.  On one hand, it feels like we have been travelling forever, but we are only 2/12 of the way through our trip.

The first two weeks in Spain felt like a vacation: new, different, and fun.  Then the second two weeks in Paris were like a more exciting version of home, with friends and homey apartment comforts.  Then there was Morocco, and, well, you know how that was.  Returning to Spain again felt familiar, and we’ve spent a lot of the time ironing out the kinks of our travel style and getting into a groove.

Some things are obvious: we get pretty cranky without constant internet; we are not a fan of shared bathrooms, but will do it if we absolutely have to; and a car is not always the best way to travel.  It is fun bouncing around, but it is tiring and leaves little time for down time.  So we’ve decided for the Eastern/Central Europe portion of our trip that we are going to try to see less and stay at least a week in each location.  One thing that is pretty clear is that the quality of our accommodations directly affects our happiness, but it is also the biggest component of our budget.  We added up how much we spent on everything so far, and if continue at this pace, we’ll be 50% over our yearly budget.  Yikes.  But that figure is misleading, because we are doing the most expensive part of our trip first.  Or at least it better be.

Some homesickness has kicked in, particularly for me, and so to remedy that, we ended up chilling in an apartment for 10 days in Valencia.  I’ll write more about Valencia later, but the reality is we haven’t been doing a whole lot other than enjoying life like this is our home and it is a perpetual weekend.  (Well, what we imagine a weekend to be like, because Sean and I spent most of our weekends back left were either working at work (me) or working on our house (mostly him).  We really like the idea of having a temporary apartment.  It lets you daydream about living in a foreign land for a while.  We actually have had two apartments in Valencia.  We first booked one at 11 Flats for 3 days, and got a great deal (about $54/night) because it was booked last minute and filled the gap for the rental company.  See – just like home:

Then we decided that maybe we weren’t in such a hurry to move on, and booked another apartment through the same company at 5 flats for 7 days (about $76/night).

Both apartments are in the heart of the Barrio de Carmen neighborhood, feel positively enormous compared to the tiny hotel rooms in which we have stayed, have fast internet, and modern decor.  Our current place even has a washing machine, which is really the holy grail for “backpackers.”  I decided to wash my clothes today just because I could.  The apartments, of course, also have kitchens, which has allowed us to shop at the markets and cook real meals.  (So Matt, tell your Aunt Ceci not to worry, we won’t have to eat out for 365 days straight).

We’ve also been filling our days with running errands, a need that does not disappear when you cross borders.  One big errand we accomplished is re-purchasing our camera.  It looks like our renters insurance is going to cover the camera, minus a $500 deductible.  We’ve been scouring Valencia for a replacement since we arrived last week.  There are not many camera stores in Valencia, and our internet searches turned up nothing.  It took days of scouting to find what we needed, accomplished by a combination of asking the reception desk at the apartment company, asking a random photography studio, and keeping our eyes peeled while we walked around in popular shopping areas.  In the off chance anyone is ever in Valencia and in need of a camera or equipment, check out the El Corte Ingles department store on Colon (think Macys, with electronics), a photo store by the bullring (think independent photo store), FNAC on some street I forget (think Best Buy), and FotoPrix in the Nuevo Centro mall (think Ritz Camera).  Sean entertained himself by re-researching camera options.  He dreamed of going smaller and getting something new to play around with, I dreamed of taking pictures with my SLR again.  We pondered lots of alternatives, such as getting a compact micro four thirds camera, or reducing our zoom capabilities by getting a smaller lens.  In the end, when we stumbled across the same camera and lens we had before as a set for a great price, Sean’s dreams of lightening our load were dashed one more time.  We are now the proud owners of a Canon XSi (450D here in Europe) and 18-200 mm lens once again.  Yippee!