The extended radio silence is finally broken!
If you follow me in Instagram or Twitter or Tumblr or the Facebook page, you probably noticed that I was “at large” in Denmark and the USA. The mosaic above is a screen shot of 54 photos I’d uploaded to Instagram while away. (If you’d like to scroll through, I copied them to a Pinterest board — they link to the Instagram shot with the full description.)
I did take along a DSLR, but it mostly sat in my bag because I was too busy visiting with people. In fact, I shot less in the whole trip than I typically take at a single event, believe it or not!
This trip was unusual (and occasionally downright bizarre) in a bunch of ways:
- It was the longest I’ve been away from Portugal since I moved here. September 29 was my 3-year Anniversary, but I was in New York stuffing my face, courtesy of Yahoo. (For my First Anniversary of living in Portugal, I was in Poland stuffing my face on a press trip, courtesy of the Polish government. See a pattern here?) I scribbled notes for the 3-year Anniversary post, but needless to say, it’s still in the works.
- It’s the first time I’ve not taken the big lens on a trip since I bought it in 2008. I was traveling as light as possible.
- I wasn’t the ride share driver this time, I was a passenger x 3: upstate New York to New York City, Scranton to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to Scranton. I’d posted trips in Craigslist, Ridesharing.com, and Carpool World, but as it turned out I went with Craigslist drivers. After years of being the driver, it was a novelty to be the passenger.
- Like a badly written romantic comedy, a guest from another wedding staying at the same hotel in Long Island started flirting with me in the lobby as I was waiting for the shuttle to take me to a rehearsal dinner somewhere else. The shuttle bus arrived at the most convenient moment, after he asked my name: “Oh, there’s my shuttle! Gotta go! Bye!” (Have I mentioned that Paulo and I didn’t get wedding rings?)
- I was locked out of my guesthouse in Brooklyn, NY, after a late arrival at JFK from Copenhagen and a long transit delay. Thankfully, someone on another floor in the building let me in after one o’clock in the morning, the guesthouse doors were unlocked, I found an empty bed, crawled in, and passed out. (I’ve been totally locked out before, in London, but since it was in South Kensington, nobody would let me in and there were certainly no unlocked doors. You win some, you lose some.)
- I’ve completely lost track of how many people I met on this trip, partly because it included a wedding spread across three days. Between the friends, friends of friends (some I met before), family of friends, extended families, friends I made online and only met up with for the first time during the trip (one after 12 years, another after 9 years, one is a fellow Portugal blogger!), and friends-in-the-making. I jokingly called it my Favourite Americans Tour, and it even included one of my Favourite Canadians with whom I had dinner before going to the airport, because he happened to be in New York on business.
- The day after I arrived at a friend’s house in upstate New York, she received a letter from her kids’ school addressed to the parents about the “clown threat phenomenon“… really?
- This trip coincided with the final days of a general election in the United States, the likes of which has never been seen before and hopefully never to be seen again. It’s a political frenzy right now, with one candidate in particular weaselling his way into practically every conversation I had with anyone for more than five minutes, because no-one could believe he’d get this far. I kept asking everyone what they would do if he won… “Move to Portugal?” was the half-joke answer. It was oddly tempting to say YES whenever I was asked if I’d like to register to vote.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg for stories. I could keep going, but I don’t know where to stop. The challenge will be to remember them all, because there’s hardly any photographic evidence to help out my brain. I have a few scribbled notes here and there, but that’s all.
The important thing is that…
I’m Still Alive!
Philadelphia Museum of Art
I didn’t trip over my feet chasing trains, or fall down any subway stairs, or slip off the sailboat in Denmark, or collide with anything while borrowing my friend’s car, or miss any planes (I learned my lesson in May!), nor were there any mishaps with the ride shares. I declare this trip a resounding success, by virtue of arriving home in one piece.
I missed Casa Aguiar (Paulo and Ice the Dog), I missed Portugal, and I must admit, I missed blogging and blogging about Portugal. It’ll take me a little while to get sorted, catch up, and be still after weeks of motion, but it’s really good to be HOME!
