This time last year as I was walking home with Fausto, a thought hit me. So I turned to him and said “I’ve decided to give up shopping for a year, starting tomorrow”. I am pretty sure he thought I was just joking.
Rug shopping in Fez, Morocco
Photo Credits: Aaron Hockley [via flickr]
Me on a sand dune in the Arabian desert
I am one half of the dynamic duo that’s lifeafter9to5. The other half is my husband Fausto, check out and see what he has to say about himself here. I am a full-time actuary and part-time traveler. I travel on the holidays, weekends, vacation time, basically whenever I have a chance. Check out this map of all the places we’ve been. The map will be continuously updated as we see more of the world. When I am not traveling, I think about it, I plan for it and I dream about it.
Great advice Bill Murray gave to a bunch of guys at a bachelor party. “If you have someone that you think is The One..Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all around the world, and go to places that are hard to go to and hard to get out of. And if when you come back to JFK, when you land in JFK, and you’re still in love with that person, get married at the airport.“
A great travel companion is the basis of a great life partner. Traveling together, you get to see how your partner reacts under stressful situations in an unfamiliar environment. We certainly had many travel horror stories, like getting stranded in the Atlas mountain in the middle of a snow storm or getting stranded in Thailand in the middle of the 2008 civil mayhem. In both cases, I am glad I had Fausto with me. I knew he was The One after we came back from Greece, our first trip together.
Yikes! Just saw my Inca Trail countdown goes from months to days…Need to step up my preparation. The UA Base 4.0 cold gear have arrived, I tried them on and they fit! Although, I have to say, they are not as warm as I thought they would be for something that’s advertised as “built to take on even the most brutal cold”. I hope I am wrong and these will hold up at night. I don’t look forward to freezing in my sleep.
Siem Reap, Cambodia
This photo of 3 Buddhist monks strolling through the Bayon Angkor Thom in Cambodia brings to mind images of a bygone time and a bygone empire. Bayon is one of the many temples in Angkor we’ve visited while we were in Siem Reap province. The Bayon’s most distinctive feature is the multitude of serene and massive stone faces on the many towers. Angkor is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Every week, I’ll share a photo with you from my adventures around the world and at home. Most of my photos have little or no post processing. If you would like to see more, please click the ‘Follow’ button.
There are just a few more days until I go home for 2 weeks! Even though I have a home of my own now, it’s hard to not think of my childhood hometown as “home” as well. A few times a year, I get to leave New York and go back to my small town roots. I am from a rural town in Canada (hint: Wayne Gretzky and I have this in common). Come to think of it, this town has grown over the years and probably is not even considered a town anymore but rather a city. Nevertheless, I am excited to leave the concrete jungle and enjoy some open space, or at least a place with a backyard. It’s been awhile since my last trip, so I am starting to get restless. Almost every day I look at the calendar and count down in my head.
I’ve struggled for two days writing this post. I started with a thought and it quickly changed to something else and I am left with a draft full of hodgepodge ideas of what I want to write about New York. It’s hard because there are so many things I want to write about this great place that we call home, but none of it fits together. I have to learn to be patient, just like you can’t explore all the different nuances of this city in a day, I can not possibly do it justice in a single post. So I’ve finally settled on sharing one of my favorite things about New York city with you, something that might not get mentioned in travel books.
Biking in New York
I always like the city on a holiday weekend. There are fewer people around, and all the New Yorkers have long gone to the Hamptons. The usual long lines have shortened and almost every restaurant is empty (except the ones in Time Square). It’s the perfect time to try that popular restaurant that everyone is talking about but impossible to get in. Every Memorial day, July Fourth, and Labor day weekend, New York turns into a ghost town, if New York can ever be called a ghost town.
Last night, while we were watching TV and decompressing after a very long week, Fausto casually mentioned to me that he reserved tickets to Vienna, Austria on Halloween weekend. And when I say weekend, I literally mean weekend. We are going on another mileage run (a short trip that helps you accumulate more miles in your airline program and achieve status).
I am relatively new to this whole weekend travel business. Before, when I think of traveling, I usually think of a trip that lasts for at least a week (anything shorter doesn’t seem to be worth the airline ticket). You need time to acclimate and familiarize yourself with your new surroundings, not to mention you need time to relax and really enjoy being away. This past year, due to work and personal obligations, we were very short on time. That’s when Fausto convinced me to take a weekend trip to Tokyo and Seoul on Thanksgiving weekend. Two cities, across the other side of the world in four days, sure why not. I find that it’s usually not too hard to convince me to go somewhere, especially some place I’ve never been.
life after 9to5 