Cusco
I began with 4 wonderful days in Cusco, wandering, taking a cooking class, and attempting to acclimate to 3400m elevation. My adventure began with an adventure. LatAm airlines bumped me off my flight from Lima to Cusco! They put me on a later flight and gave me a food voucher, but it meant that I would miss the tour to 4 Inca ruins sites. 😭 I thought about crying, but instead contacted the tour operator, explained my situation, and they…
🎼🎶 On the Road Again 🎶
It has been nearly a year. A lot has changed, and yet much is the same. But now I’m headed off for another sola adventure. This is a “life list” adventure to Peru. I’ll be hiking the Inca Trail – 40km over 4 days, crossing multiple peaks, including “Dead Woman Pass”, a 4200m (~14,000ft) peak, and ending at the citadel of Machu Picchu. Then I will spend a week in Manu National Park in the Peruvian Amazon basin. And I…
20 months and 3 days (611 days)
That is the length of time it took from the Basha’s death until I had a valid and correct Mexican death certificate for him. But it is done! A lot of time and money for something that should have taken only a week. (Mexican law says the death certificate has to be issued within a week of the death.) There were small problems, one after the other, but each one blew up into a tempest (in a teapot!). The first…
Toluca diablitos – I guess I have a team
The drive from Angangueo to Mexico City is about 120 miles and takes about 4 hours. I had 2 more days before meeting my friend, CY, in Mexico City, and I did not want to have to leave at oh-dark-thirty to meet her flight at noon. I looked at places in between and chose Toluca, the capital city of the state of Mexico. My choice was made when I read about a place called the Cosmovitral, a converted Art nouveau…
Pátzcuaro: Adventures and Food
The drive to Pátzcuaro started the adventure! Road closures, traffic diversions, and Google maps sending me into town on practical cart paths. Cobble stone alleys with axel-breaker speed bumps (topes). I am sure that at least 2 of the “streets” Google sent me on were one way, and not the way I was going! 😂 The middle of town, where my hotel was located, was a complete zoo of cars, horses, tour busses, motorcycles, and scooters. There was a HUGE…
Still so difficult…
It has been 7 months. Getting out of bed has gotten easier, but other things have not. There are many “administrative” items that I haven’t been able to face yet. Luckily for me, many of them can be put off for a long time before they HAVE to be addressed. Today I started wading through the credit cards. Over the years, most of the credit cards ended up in his name, with me as a secondary card member. It was…
Amsterdam v.2.0
Final Installment for this trip. Last stop – Amsterdam, again. I stayed in the same hotel as last time – Hotel Abba. It is a nice, small hotel near Museumplein with lots of public transit connections and only a 30 minute walk to Dam square. Reasonable price, comfortable rooms – the first stay I had a single with shared bath and a balcony, the second a double with a private bath and a balcony. They are friendly, will let you…
Family and Friends
A complete change of pace. Nothing was scheduled except the visits. And they were great visits! First stop not far from Assen to see my cousin and his family. It has been years, but felt like no time at all. I had some solo adventures, and we had some family fun. It was wonderful!! 💕 Second stop, Belgium, to see a friend from Egypt. We figured it had been 16 years since we had last seen each other. Again it…
Basha stories: The Third Pitcher of Sangria
I’ve decided to put some Basha stories here, mostly for me, but occasionally I have referred to them in other posts. Feel free to skip, these are my memories. The year is 1999 and we are on our first big trip together. We knew it was a “make-or-break” test for the relationship. We were backpacking for a month in Spain and Portugal during the summer. We began the trip in Madrid, speaking very little Spanish, and not really having an…
Meaningful, magnificent, and completely mental Mugello
MotoGP at either of the Italian tracks (the other being Misano) was always on the wishlist. The Italians are PASSIONATE about their racing, however the races are EXPENSIVE. This race was planned as OUR race. OUR once-in-a-lifetime. OUR bucket list item. As wonderful as the experience was, it was diminished without the Basha. Friday practice and qualifying – this was new. We’d rarely had Friday tickets for past MotoGP events. In all honesty, this day at the track might have…