Starting the great adventure to the south
Maybe one year is too long to take to plan a vacation. With so many weeks available to envision the trip, you get ideas like: I will document the entire trip in real-time on our blog. Also, let's make non-refundable hotel bookings because they're cheaper -- when we've planned so far ahead, what could get in the way of the trip?
Almost two weeks into the London Linges' Great Adventure South, and I am writing the introductory entry that probably should have been written before leaving London.
This fall, Christine, Bobby, and I all find ourselves in natural transition points. Christine just graduated from LSE; she's pregnant and unemployed. I agreed to move my consulting practice from London to Minneapolis and am (temporarily) unemployed in the meantime. Bobby, not yet tied down with a mortgage or state-mandated schooling obligations, goes where the trains and planes (and his parents) take him. His employment consists of going on adventures. We're already in Europe, what better time to take a long trip through the Continent?
While we planned for over a year, it seemed most of that time was spent trying to agree a route. Our window of travel time would be about two months -- the time between Christine finishing school and Thanksgiving (where we will give thanks for her finishing school). That window looks so big, let's travel from Istanbul, through Greece, up the Balkans, across northern Italy and southern France, into the Basque Country, Andalucia, Portugal, and Morocco -- a great arc across the northern Mediterranean. Once we started planning the days required for all the stops we wanted to make, we realized it would be no vacation but a Great Race-style wind sprint.
We wanted our ample window to afford us the luxury of staying places longer and visiting destinations a bit further from major international airports. We also wanted to utilize trains as much as possible -- because Baba and Bobby are both fans -- and avoid hopping across Europe in planes and maybe spend more time outside of Europe's biggest cities. Also, three year old in tow, maybe we could travel a bit slower.
We had to make some hard choices (what a life...). Our desired destinations tend to form little pools, and once in a pool, it's easier to jump into some pools than others. Bobby and I bought a European rail atlas at Foyles one fine morning and began plotting a feasible route, making use of high-speed trains when possible. Northern Spain (Galicia and the Basque Country) would be a great trip, and we never got to take our planned honeymoon in San Sebastian. Northern Spain isn't exactly connected by a high-speed rail line like northern Italy. Neither is the entirety of Portugal. International transport links in the Balkans are, well, balkanized. Two months just isn't enough time to take every slow train between every third and fourth-tier city we wanted to visit.
We did, however, find a few convenient rail corridors: northern Italy, Madrid-Andalusia, and west coast Portugal. In the end, we based our route around these. The Basque Country honeymoon would have to wait for another time. We're also not going wine touring -- missing out on Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rioja, Douro, Tuscany, all our favorites -- because it takes too long, usually requires renting a car, becomes very expensive (with all the wine we buy...), plus Christine is pregnant and can't enjoy (although it would reduce the cost if she's not drinking!). Another time.
We had a few themes we wanted to pursue on the trip. We are always on the lookout for chances to explore the cultural, legal, and economic institutions of places -- as the blog title promises, always seeking adventures in legal studies, however partial. These adventures can be had in museums but also just in exploring the local streets and commercial establishments, visiting town centers, observing the order and chaos of local life and the quotidien rituals. While we are proud museum people, Bobby doesn't quite yet have the patience to read every wall plaque (like his baba), so maybe the trip can't be too museum focused. We hoped to visit some old universities, such as those in Bologna, Salamanca, and Coimbra. I want to visit the capitals of old trading empires, especially Venice, Genoa, and Trieste, and I've always wanted to visit Moorish Spain and never have. We want to eat local food and commune with the local physical geography, agriculture, and food traditions.
We wanted to stay in hotels, preferably boutique hotels, not owned by the big corporate groups, and maybe we can learn something of the local, historic culture and tourist traditions. Also, we're sick of Airbnb: apartments are hard to screen for quality, they're not really cheaper in the end, especially when you adjust for quality, and you feel embarrassed and like a criminal when the concept is blamed (rightly or wrongly) across Europe for rising property prices and displacing elderly locals. Hotels take care of you. They make restaurant bookings; they give you breakfast. To check in, all you have to do is show up, rather than liaise over email to find check-in instructions. They clean your room and give you fresh towels every day. Hotel properties don't float in and out of the marketplaces, so they develop brands that can be trusted; Michelin and Lonely Planet make recommendations of places that persist. Boutique hotels hopefully put money in locals' pockets rather than California venture capitalists. Indeed, we're over Airbnb. Stay like a local? Yeah right. More like, stay like a foreign student in an attic with a crappy digital assistant to take care of you. (Beautiful properties can be found, particularly when you have a large group, but you need to search hard and you're going to pay dearly for that beautiful property -- so maybe Airbnb does have a particular place in the world for us.)
Anthony Bourdain said that for the best travel experience, you should just go and explore your way around without plans. Maybe I misunderstand what he meant, but on his shows, he always had local guides taking him on prescribed tours. Back in our more carefree student days, we would make plans on the fly and ask around for local accommodations and restaurants. Now, we are going for a mix of planning and free-form adventure, when the plan allows. We have carefully researched our hotels in Lonely Planet and the Michelin Guide. We have made some restaurant bookings but will also improvise there. We have booked a few flights but the trains and busses we will book on the fly.
We first started making our bookings across northern Italy, where most of our first month would be spent. I was making bookings, under the veto power of Christine, while she finished her dissertation. But then I came down with an untimely case of the shingles. At the time of writing today, we still haven't finished making our bookings for the last leg of the trip, but we do have a flight home: November 23rd from Lisbon to Cedar Rapids. We also had several non-refundable bookings already in the bag upon my getting sick. I was very worried I wouldn't be able to travel. Now, I am not all the way better yet, and I am having a partially paralyzed face and some trouble with balance. But I am grateful to be feeling so much better than I was during September. My doctor in London gave me permission to travel.
The illness made our last month in London an unexpected rush. I missed a few weeks of work. But we still managed to get the hell out of London, by the skin of our teeth, and now here we are in Italy. I'm still filing health insurance claims and winding down various London accounts (banking, electric, magazines) even while on the road. I'm sleeping a lot and usually dehydrated (and not really even able to drink much wine or craft beer, if any! but think of the cost savings...). We accidentally packed the Ergo Baby on the slow boat to Minneapolis, so this is our first international trip without our baby carrier. We are of course travelling without a stroller. Our suitcase is massive -- to the tune of GBP 70 in overweight charges, levied by Easyjet, when leaving London.
Two months on the road with a rambunctious little child, a recovering patient with a nerve disease, and a pregnant lady -- let's go!
Almost two weeks into the London Linges' Great Adventure South, and I am writing the introductory entry that probably should have been written before leaving London.
This fall, Christine, Bobby, and I all find ourselves in natural transition points. Christine just graduated from LSE; she's pregnant and unemployed. I agreed to move my consulting practice from London to Minneapolis and am (temporarily) unemployed in the meantime. Bobby, not yet tied down with a mortgage or state-mandated schooling obligations, goes where the trains and planes (and his parents) take him. His employment consists of going on adventures. We're already in Europe, what better time to take a long trip through the Continent?
While we planned for over a year, it seemed most of that time was spent trying to agree a route. Our window of travel time would be about two months -- the time between Christine finishing school and Thanksgiving (where we will give thanks for her finishing school). That window looks so big, let's travel from Istanbul, through Greece, up the Balkans, across northern Italy and southern France, into the Basque Country, Andalucia, Portugal, and Morocco -- a great arc across the northern Mediterranean. Once we started planning the days required for all the stops we wanted to make, we realized it would be no vacation but a Great Race-style wind sprint.
We wanted our ample window to afford us the luxury of staying places longer and visiting destinations a bit further from major international airports. We also wanted to utilize trains as much as possible -- because Baba and Bobby are both fans -- and avoid hopping across Europe in planes and maybe spend more time outside of Europe's biggest cities. Also, three year old in tow, maybe we could travel a bit slower.
We had to make some hard choices (what a life...). Our desired destinations tend to form little pools, and once in a pool, it's easier to jump into some pools than others. Bobby and I bought a European rail atlas at Foyles one fine morning and began plotting a feasible route, making use of high-speed trains when possible. Northern Spain (Galicia and the Basque Country) would be a great trip, and we never got to take our planned honeymoon in San Sebastian. Northern Spain isn't exactly connected by a high-speed rail line like northern Italy. Neither is the entirety of Portugal. International transport links in the Balkans are, well, balkanized. Two months just isn't enough time to take every slow train between every third and fourth-tier city we wanted to visit.
We did, however, find a few convenient rail corridors: northern Italy, Madrid-Andalusia, and west coast Portugal. In the end, we based our route around these. The Basque Country honeymoon would have to wait for another time. We're also not going wine touring -- missing out on Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rioja, Douro, Tuscany, all our favorites -- because it takes too long, usually requires renting a car, becomes very expensive (with all the wine we buy...), plus Christine is pregnant and can't enjoy (although it would reduce the cost if she's not drinking!). Another time.
We had a few themes we wanted to pursue on the trip. We are always on the lookout for chances to explore the cultural, legal, and economic institutions of places -- as the blog title promises, always seeking adventures in legal studies, however partial. These adventures can be had in museums but also just in exploring the local streets and commercial establishments, visiting town centers, observing the order and chaos of local life and the quotidien rituals. While we are proud museum people, Bobby doesn't quite yet have the patience to read every wall plaque (like his baba), so maybe the trip can't be too museum focused. We hoped to visit some old universities, such as those in Bologna, Salamanca, and Coimbra. I want to visit the capitals of old trading empires, especially Venice, Genoa, and Trieste, and I've always wanted to visit Moorish Spain and never have. We want to eat local food and commune with the local physical geography, agriculture, and food traditions.
We wanted to stay in hotels, preferably boutique hotels, not owned by the big corporate groups, and maybe we can learn something of the local, historic culture and tourist traditions. Also, we're sick of Airbnb: apartments are hard to screen for quality, they're not really cheaper in the end, especially when you adjust for quality, and you feel embarrassed and like a criminal when the concept is blamed (rightly or wrongly) across Europe for rising property prices and displacing elderly locals. Hotels take care of you. They make restaurant bookings; they give you breakfast. To check in, all you have to do is show up, rather than liaise over email to find check-in instructions. They clean your room and give you fresh towels every day. Hotel properties don't float in and out of the marketplaces, so they develop brands that can be trusted; Michelin and Lonely Planet make recommendations of places that persist. Boutique hotels hopefully put money in locals' pockets rather than California venture capitalists. Indeed, we're over Airbnb. Stay like a local? Yeah right. More like, stay like a foreign student in an attic with a crappy digital assistant to take care of you. (Beautiful properties can be found, particularly when you have a large group, but you need to search hard and you're going to pay dearly for that beautiful property -- so maybe Airbnb does have a particular place in the world for us.)
Anthony Bourdain said that for the best travel experience, you should just go and explore your way around without plans. Maybe I misunderstand what he meant, but on his shows, he always had local guides taking him on prescribed tours. Back in our more carefree student days, we would make plans on the fly and ask around for local accommodations and restaurants. Now, we are going for a mix of planning and free-form adventure, when the plan allows. We have carefully researched our hotels in Lonely Planet and the Michelin Guide. We have made some restaurant bookings but will also improvise there. We have booked a few flights but the trains and busses we will book on the fly.
We first started making our bookings across northern Italy, where most of our first month would be spent. I was making bookings, under the veto power of Christine, while she finished her dissertation. But then I came down with an untimely case of the shingles. At the time of writing today, we still haven't finished making our bookings for the last leg of the trip, but we do have a flight home: November 23rd from Lisbon to Cedar Rapids. We also had several non-refundable bookings already in the bag upon my getting sick. I was very worried I wouldn't be able to travel. Now, I am not all the way better yet, and I am having a partially paralyzed face and some trouble with balance. But I am grateful to be feeling so much better than I was during September. My doctor in London gave me permission to travel.
The illness made our last month in London an unexpected rush. I missed a few weeks of work. But we still managed to get the hell out of London, by the skin of our teeth, and now here we are in Italy. I'm still filing health insurance claims and winding down various London accounts (banking, electric, magazines) even while on the road. I'm sleeping a lot and usually dehydrated (and not really even able to drink much wine or craft beer, if any! but think of the cost savings...). We accidentally packed the Ergo Baby on the slow boat to Minneapolis, so this is our first international trip without our baby carrier. We are of course travelling without a stroller. Our suitcase is massive -- to the tune of GBP 70 in overweight charges, levied by Easyjet, when leaving London.
Two months on the road with a rambunctious little child, a recovering patient with a nerve disease, and a pregnant lady -- let's go!
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| Great adventure to Foyle's to buy travel guides. These days, Bobby was jet-lagged, having just returned from Singapore, and we were living our London life super early in the morning -- Foyle's is empty at 10am on Saturday mornings. It was awesome. We even had time to visit a park and have pastries and coffee before being the first ones in the shop. Here's to jet-lagged inspired early morning adventures. |
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| Our last night in London was spent in a smart business hotel in the City, nearby Liverpool Street Station, so we could conveniently catch a train to Stansted Airport. My inability to fully smile, due to my Ramsey-Hunt Syndrome, will be a recurring theme of the trip's photos. The area around Liverpool Street is an old favorite of ours since we spent so much time there procuring our 2017 Thanksgiving turkey. |
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| We look calm aboard our flight to Ljubljana, but we are very excited. |
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