I’m Home: Travel Recap

My goodness! So much has happened, so little was written! It was a whirlwind 75-days of travel. I still can’t believe we did it, but I’m glad we did. I hadn’t anticipated it would be 75-days long, but I found that to be poetic considering it was our reward for completing 75-Hard at the start of the year.

Let me go through a quick recap, and then list all the articles I’ll be writing from our trip. It’s a lot. And this way, I’ll be able to trick you (once again) into being my accountability partner.

Travel Recap

We started in Jakarta, our first visit to the capital of Indonesia. It was a quick trip focused on luxury relaxation. We stayed at the Four Seasons, which was worth it. My only regret was not having a longer stay. It was the best way to prepare for the long flight to Amsterdam (17-hours total). Here’s a clip of the stay in Jakarta.

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We met up with Jarrell’s mom and stepdad in Amsterdam to surprise her on her birthday trip. It was the perfect start to our stay in Europe. Amsterdam was wildly expensive and overly touristy. We’d been before, staying for about 10-days in 2015-ish, but we rented an apartment in a residential neighborhood then. This time, we stayed at the Kimpton hotel. I wouldn’t recommend it, but nothing awful happened. All the hotel rooms tend to be rather small, so that wasn’t a deal breaker. But the Kimpton wasn’t on a canal, and we often found it out the way. For $350/night in slow season, I wasn’t impressed.

What did impress me? The food! My goodness, I didn’t know Amsterdam had so many great options. I had a list of the traditional foods I wanted to try, places I wanted to visit, and things I wanted to do. I’ll share that in an upcoming post.

Paris

After a short speed train (about 3-hours), we were in Paris. And this was the major reward we’d planned for ourselves. A month in Paris to eat and drink our way through the city. And we did just that. We rented the cutest Airbnb in my now favorite neighborhood in Paris and had a ball! Throughout our month, we did so much, and tried so many of the traditional meals on my list (yes, there’s a Paris list, too. I’ll share that in a blog post as well). We went to the Louvre, the French Open, the largest movie theatre in Europe, a salon that took my hair to new levels, and so many great restaurants.

Then, Porto. This was just a short stop, a nerve wracking one at that. It was during the time when you still had to test negative with covid before returning to the states. And I had had the bright idea to take a glamorous photoshoot two days before leaving Paris. In order to avoid crowds, the photographer wanted to shoot at 6 AM. One of my gripes about the European leg of our world tour was the weather. Although we traveled in May, it was freezing most of the time, particularly in the morning. Naturally, we didn’t let that affect our wardrobe selections. And so there we were at 6 AM, wearing shorts and a dress in 50 degree weather. Long story short, our throats were sore before the photoshoot was over and we arrived in Porto a little under the weather. But, the 10-year anniversary photos were worth it.

Porto

In the short visit, when I wasn’t creating make believe scenarios of what would happen if we tested positive, couldn’t fly to the states, and had to quarantine in Portugal, we were eating and drinking. The city was beautiful, but it didn’t give me ‘I need to live here’ vibes. Instead, it felt more like, ‘I need to vacation here again’. It was very touristy, almost like a port town known for cruises. 

The food was unbelievably delicious, though. Definite highlight. Yes, there’s a list, and subsequent blog post to come. Actually, let’s cut to the chase and get to the list of blog posts I need to write.

After Porto, we flew back to Amsterdam for a day, then onto Atlanta to visit my side of the family. We rented a Tesla there, and drove to Ohio to visit Jarrell’s side of the family. Eventually, we flew out to Los Angeles to visit my bestest friend in the whole wide world before catching our flight back to Asia. We stopped in Tokyo for a split second, then on to Singapore for a night, before finally arriving back in Bali.

I didn’t write much during the trip, not even journal entries. But I did have quite a few writing ideas (even a whole book premise), which I’m looking forward to bringing to life in the near future. I’m ready to get back in my groove of writing and sharing something every day. Here are the topics I plan to share. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see from me in the near future. I broke the article ideas into sections for simplicity.

Inspirational

• What I Learned About Myself from 75-Days of Travel
• The Art of the Restart (and knowing when you need one)
• Business Class is Better
• My Plight to Take Better Care of Myself
• Getting Serious About My Goals + Planning

Travel

• Paris Deets – my list, our experience, recommendations
• Amsterdam Recap – my list, where we stayed, recommendations
• Porto – the food list and what I plan to do next time
• Luxury Travel is Peak Self Care
• Thrifting in Paris – the stores I loved
• Hipster Shopping in Paris – Jarrell’s list of the coolest stores even I liked
• No, I’m Not Interested in Moving Back to America

Recipes

• Recreating some of the dishes we ate abroad – beef bourguignon, Dutch apple pie, empanadas, hot chocolate
• Salad Dressings – Ranch, Caesar, Vinaigrette

Did I miss anything? Let me know if you saw anything on our travels that you want me to share more about. I’ll be writing daily, mentally working my way through the trip I’m still smiling about. What an incredible opportunity. Thanks for coming along on the journey. If you missed it, check out some highlights on my Instagram.

XOXO