Does anybody use that term (copout) anymore? And is it one or two words? Regardless, the next several posts are from a trip Mike and I took to Portugal, Spain, and Morocco in September 2010. I am working on some current pieces, but I wanted to post this travelogue to buy myself some time and to create a record of my travelogues so they are all together in one place. If you have your writing scattered around in documents, handwritten journals, emails, and sticky notes, you’ll appreciate my desire to at least have the travelogues in one place.
Because Mike planned the trip, we visited 5 cities in 3 countries in 16 days. Although this is not my preferred method for travel (it’s not relaxing), I do love the excitement of minimal planning and zero research. If nothing else, it encourages spontaneity, and by encourages I mean requires. Mike is the consummate “let’s see what happens” kind of traveler. If I ever unearth my handwritten journal of our 1995 trip to Ireland, I’m sure the first entry will detail how Mike wanted to switch our tickets when he found out our plane was delayed two hours. I had already consented to have nothing planned except reservations for our first night, but when Mike went to look at the list of international flights leaving before ours, I nearly panicked. Instead of flatly refusing to change our tickets (this was early in our relationship), I subtly poured cold water on Mike’s suggestions. Germany? That’s fine with me but then you won’t get to do any genealogy. Istanbul? Sounds good but…probably not a lot of pubs there. You get the idea. So we went to Ireland; I kept a journal of our activities (including getting lost by car, bus, bike, and on foot in Dublin) and thus began the travelogues. The one that follows is from 2010. Somewhere there exists the first Spain travelogue from 2008; hopefully it will turn up someday. I can’t even remember how I wrote it. These travelogues were emails to friends, which is an interesting method as I tend to be a little freer when writing friends. There’s no evidence that hoards of strangers are reading my current work, but one can hope.