This ship is about to sail. In T-minus two days we toss our bags on the local airport shuttle, and off we go! The months of trip planning had me thinking about travel challenges, and the time when Padre yelled at me on our honeymoon in Ireland.
We’d been married two weeks; what do you know about your partner at that stage in the relationship, really? Not much. Now, I’ve lived with the guy for decades and know he’s not a yeller; that’s only if he’s really frustrated, and I’m talking too fast/interrupting him mid-sentence due to stress/panic/exhaustion, or we are working on a complicated problem with lots of unknowns. Like we’re lost in Rome, going around in circles. Or we’re on the wrong platform to catch a train leaving in five minutes. Or we’re completely lost on the back roads of Ireland, and when he asked me which way to turn, I said ‘Go that way!”
I’ll tell you what Padre was yelling about later – I grudgingly admit he had a point – but travel challenges go with travel. (If not, that’s called ‘luxury class’ and you pay someone else to have challenges, which takes all the fun out of it.) While in retrospect we take perverse delight in re-telling near-disaster travel stories, we seek to minimize problems since the aging tickers can’t take the massive excitement our younger selves could. So here are a few things we’ve learned that help.
Trip Research
Two different styles here; I over-prepare because I love research and can’t stop, and Padre asks for the details just before liftoff. He reads through everything last minute, asks questions, and points out what I’ve missed. It’s hugely helpful that he does this, because 1) it’s way better if two people have the info, just is, and 2) when we’re under stress in a train station and I’m spinning out of control because something in my plan has gone awry, he’s much better at calming things down and focusing on facts. (He knows better than to straight-out tell me to ‘calm down’ though; I loathe those words and start swearing if I hear them.)
Pocket-sized paper maps and lists
Sure you can have it all at your fingertips, on your phone. But can you read your phone in the sunlight? (no). Can you operate it wearing gloves? (no). Will the pickpockets have a bead on it as soon as you take it out of your pocket? (yes). For so many reasons, I only depend on my phone for picture-taking and language apps.
Instead I print hand-sized maps, marked ahead of time with our hotel location and the destinations we’re headed for. For example: Our ability to navigate Tokyo train stations will be key to three trip transfers, and I found (with help from my wonderful travel agent!) these fabulous fold-up-in-a-pocket maps of both massive train stations we have to navigate.
We also have several port stops. The city maps that cruise lines provide tend to be incomplete and designed to deposit you on the closest shopping street (of course). So I find better maps online, and I also download government-provided tourist brochures, walking tours, and museum guides; some of these are just amazing!
Other info I carry includes small cards with our hotel address (in both languages for countries where English is not widely spoken) and a currency exchange cheat sheet. In pickpocket cities we wear money belts, and if you don’t I strongly suggest you do. No way to ruin a great trip faster than losing passports, cash, and credit cards, and the pickpockets are crafty (lost a clasped watch right off my wrist, in fact, in Stockholm. So beware).
Packing
Padre’s suitcase has been packed and sitting by the bedroom door for a week. I’ve done
one practice pack, but right now my suitcase looks like an exploded piñata. Trust me, once I finish, everything will be SOOO organized. I just have to make a mess to get to organized.
One of the reasons I’m still at the exploding piñata stage is because packing for two months abroad is hard! I read one packing article that advised me to only take two pairs of shoes. On a two-month trip, with formal nights. Oh I’m so going to do that, right?
On our last cruise I do remember hearing one gal tell her
friends she brought 25 pairs of shoes. All I could think at the time was how in heaven’s name she dragged all that luggage over the cobbled Copenhagen streets. Cobblestones hate wheeled suitcases; I swear they tip your bags over repeatedly just for fun so they can watch as sleek Copenhagen cyclists wiz by, smiling at you sadly.
So too much luggage spells disaster, and we both try to pack just what we need, and no more. I also swear by the compression bags that squish things down to half their size, which Padre won’t use but should. The best advice I’ve read about packing comes from Susan Heller, who says: “Lay out all your clothes and money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” That’s about right.
Money and Duct Tape
Speaking of money, Padre really shines here. He loves foreign money – ordering it from the bank, studying the cool pictures on them (why does Aussie money have so many women’s faces, and the U.S. doesn’t have any? Seriously? ). Anyway, while I can do money when I
want to, I don’t want to, and Bill fusses and figures it out ahead of time, which leaves me time to obsess over things like whether I need to bring those cute sandals (no). I do stick to a budget, though; very important to agree on what that is, ahead of time.
Relationship experts say that finances crack up more relationships than just about anything, so if money is an issue, my advice is: Don’t travel. Seriously, don’t, because money decisions come up constantly, before, during and after. It’s so easy to blow your wad, especially on cruises, where the whole experience is designed to empty your bank account in a blink.
Oh, and don’t forget the duct tape. We’ve used it every trip, I swear. It really does fix just about anything.
And About That Relationship
People sometimes ask me how we travel in close quarters for so long without throttling each other, and sure, there are moments. We’re a team, though, so we work it out.
Take the yelling incident. We married just two weeks before, hopping a plane to Shannon a day after our wedding ceremony. All the way there I kept asking if he was nervous about the left-side driving, but he said ‘no sweat’ – until he actually sat in the rental car driver’s seat outside Shannon Airport, crazed cars whipping past outside the windows. After days of white-knuckle driving, he could pass a huge hay truck, no sweat (I think the Irish in him prevailed). I had settled into my role as map reader, after taking the wheel once for 10 minutes and saying ‘never again’ (I’m convinced Irish drivers want to die).
Our two-week trip was magical, and I thought I was the best map reader ever. But no. What he yelled was: “Don’t tell me THAT way. Tell me WHICH way! Right or Left?”
Of course since I was a newlywed I had to cry first before we could discuss it, and that made Padre feel bad. Of course. But afterwards, we did work it out; he admitted he shouldn’t have yelled, and I realized that ‘go that way!’ is really not that helpful to a driver in Ireland, or anywhere.
I think our travel relationship works because we’ve learned to listen (sort of), compromise, and work with our collective strengths. He drives way better than I do in foreign countries, for instance, and I’m no slouch at map and chart reading. After years of practice during twenty years sailing Puget Sound’s waters, and now as world travellers, we’ve got this thing down now. So well, in fact, that Padre calls me the navcomnaggler (the navigation-communication person who nags, in a good way.)
So that’s about it; I think we’re ready, and if we’re not, hey – we’ll work it out. Now if I can only figure out how many shoes to take and solve my piñata problem (wish me luck!).
Here’s a bit more info to help you follow along:
How to Track Us: I plan to change the weather app on the main page as we move from place to place, so you can track us that way, and/or sign up for the email notifications to get a link in your in-box every time we put up a new post (our goal is every two or three days). Thanks, everyone, for joining us on our epic journey!