Our first year as vagabonds was even better than we’d hoped for: 285 days (nine and a half months) spent discovering and savoring five countries: southern Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Ireland, and France. It was a privilege to be able to spend the year that way. What made it especially memorable were the generous, genuine, interesting, and fun people we met along the way.
Thanks to Couchsurfing, Servas, LGHEI, and HelpExchange, we stayed with more than 20 hosts, making personal connections and seeing daily life first-hand in ways that tourists rarely get to do.
Since we’ve been back in the United States for a few months, we’ve been boring our friends and family with stories of the people we met in 2008. “Do you remember when Skye tried to drive us to the beach and we got stuck in the mud?” “Do you remember lugging our backpacks up all those stairs to Eric and Laurent’s sixth-floor apartment?” “Do you remember the night when Tim and Emeline took us out for kir and frog legs?”
“What about Marco and his great food, American record collection, and the little maps he drew for us to sight see with.” “Do you remember those gorgeous hikes in Slovenia with Niko and Tanja and Bojan?” “Ah, and that night in Malaga, eating tapas, drinking tinto de verrano, and watching the pretty girls with Isabel.” And those memories are just the tip of the iceberg.
Invariably, people ask us where we liked best. It’s hard to choose favorite places. There’s really nowhere we visited that didn’t have a lot to offer. We were delighted by the Moorish flavor of southern Spain, by Italian art and architecture, French food and villages, Irish coastal scenery, and Slovenian mountains and hospitality.
Here are some especially memorable moments of 2008 (it’s hard to choose!):
- Touring the Alhambra palace in Grenada, Spain, at night
- Wandering the ruins of a 2,000-year-old Roman town at Herculaneum (similar to Pompeii)
- Seeing statues by Bernini and paintings by Caravaggio for the first time in Rome
- Hiking among the traditional mountain herders’ settlements in Velika Planina, Slovenia, and being wowed by the incredible Skocjan Caves
- Paragliding high over Lake Bohinj in the Slovenian Alps
- Hiking out a remote peninsula in southwest Ireland, across fields, bogs, rocky hilltops, and jagged coastline
- Seeing Monet’s massive waterlily paintings displayed at the Orangerie museum in Paris
- Walking up the pilgrim’s route to medieval Vezelay, France, and then stumbling upon mass being chanted in the famous basilica
The two big negatives were Melissa’s massive ankle injury (which left her on crutches for two months) and the fact that we invested half our money in the stock market around this time last year—sigh. Most likely, that means that we’ll have to support ourselves (maybe working in national park lodges or teaching English overseas?) in 2010 and perhaps 2011 while our investment recovers. Then (inshallah), it’ll be on to Africa, Asia, or the Pacific.
