Adventure of the month

My last day in Marseille. Time to squeeze in all the things I had been meaning to do but had put off in order to explore the rest of Provence. I had booked a late flight so I had enough time to finally do the self-guided walking tour that I had picked up on day one. In theory, this should have been easy enough, since the city had been thoughtful enough to draw color-coded lines on the sidewalks to match the tour route. For the most part, this worked like a charm.  The problem was that the particular tour I had must not have the only version available and certain intersections had multi-colored lines vectoring off in each and every different direction. I was never fully able to ascertain which color I was supposed to be following.  By default, I ended up doing my own hybrid version of multiple tours.  As a result, I got a great overview of the old part of town.

With the hopes of seeing fields of purple now dashed and having followed in Van Gogh's footsteps as far as I could, day three brought new challenges. What to do?  I had heard of Aix-en-Provence.  I knew Cezanne was from there.  I was now privy to the zone tickets allowing you to traverse southern France for next to nothing.  I could almost pronounce Aix.  The decision was made. Had I done a bit more research and found out just how proud they were of their fountains, I might have rethought this.  I would have known that the principal thoroughfare is a shopping street with ornamental spouts gurgling every couple of blocks. Not in a Bellagio, choreographed along with lights, pretty manner...no, just regular fountains. Some were made of stone, others were mossy blobs kind of dribbling away...none of them particularly remarkable but there they were, the pride of the town.

It was day 2 in Marseille and the word around the hostel was that the lavender fields were no more. It was towards the end of the season and some fields had already been plucked of their little purple bounty. I could not find anything online to confirm or deny this and the hostel staff was exceptionally useless so I figured I would head in the general direction of the fields and investigate. I was planning on going that way anyways. After at least a dozen visits to Amsterdam's Van Gogh museum, I wanted to go to Arles and see the city that (along with a healthy dose of absinthe) inspired such frenzied creativity.  If I could pair the visit with a ride out to the scenery found on every single Provence postcard, that much the better.

My plan at the beginning of the summer was simple enough. I would be based out of Amsterdam for two months, therfore I'd have the opportunity to knock off two more countries from my dwindling European list. July, I would hit Lithuania (#98) and August, I would spend some time in Barcelona and use it as a base to get to Andorra (#99). As you may have noticed from my last post, the first part of this plan went off quite well. I loved Lithuania and the very cool people I met there. The problem arose when I began to research things to do in Andorra. Had it been winter, I could have watched people skiing (note: Cubans raised in tropical climates are not genetically engineered to put planks on their feet and careen headlong down snowy surfaces. To paraphrase Lucille Bluth: I don't understand this and I will not respond it. But I will hang out in a lodge like nobody's business). But this was August and all I could find were suggestions for duty free shops. I envisioned ...

Before landing in Vilnius, I was going highlighter happy on the discount Lithuania book I had managed to find in a second hand book store. After seeing every single thing in the capital city, I was going to visit a hill with roughly a bajillion crosses on it in the north. I was going to hit up a communist theme park in the south. I was going to take a selfie in the geographic center of Europe. Since all this running around might be a bit tiring, a spa town was definitely in order. Trying to figure out how to do all this in only three days was proving a bit challenging but I was undaunted.  I would ask the locals, who were sure to know a shortcut or two.  To this end, I presented Lina, the owner of Vilnius' coolest hostel, with my wish list.  She briefly got the "Oh no, not one of these.." looks that I am pretty familiar with but gamely continued.  "You will go to Trakai" she said. Sure, if it's worth a visit, I'll add it to my list.  "No,...

98 countries!! I am now two countries away from hitting triple digits! What began as a game with a friend has become, if not exactly an obsession, at least an active quest. And what do I get for my efforts? In theory, I could join the Travelers' Century Club , made up of members who have all been to 100+ "countries" but they are way too liberal with their classifications and time requirements. A fuel stop in Puerto Rico counts as a visit to a new country in their eyes. Amateurs. There is, of course, bragging rights but after a while, introducing myself as "Hi, I'm Berti and I have been to 100 countries" might get kind of tiresome.  Not to mention the murmurs of "Dude, don't even make eye contact with that girl.  Yeah, the one carrying around the atlas.  Trust me on this.." As I close in on my goal, I am realizing what the real prize of all this is.  It is the motivation that it has given me to visit places that I might not have ot...

Sometimes all it takes is one person doing something nice to change the whole trajectory of your day. All you need is one kind-hearted gate agent (admittedly a creature as rare and mystical as a rainbow-pooping unicorn) to take the time to take you off your STL-LAX-PHX routing, which gets you into Phoenix at nearly 3pm and put you on the direct flight, getting you to your hotel before breakfast closes at 10am. Suddenly, what would have been a wasted day becomes rife with possibility. This was the scenario that played out earlier this week. The discussion about doing a short trip to Sedona the following day quickly morphed into an overnight in Sedona with a side trip to Jerome. Within 20 minutes of the idea being floated around, a hotel room was booked, a groupon for a jeep tour had been purchased and a rental car awaited us.  It came together so easily that it was clearly meant to be.