Compatible Travel Companions...Is this possible?

Well the short answer I believe is yes, but I think it has alot to do with the personalities of the travel companions, whether it's one or 20 companions. And how well you know these "companions".

Traveling with family members can have both it's high points and low points. As teenagers my sister and I traveled to London together on our own, no parents (late 1980's). I look back now and think my mom and dad must have really trusted us, because how many parents these days would send their 19 and 17 year old daughters to London for a week by themselves? Well, OK, we had been there before with a group of students, a teacher and a couple parents (including our mom) a few years before, so we did know the layout of the city and there were some familiar areas, and we were pretty savvy having traipsed into NYC alot as teenagers on our own, but on the whole we were totatlly on our own in a foreign city.

Now, my sister and I get along pretty well for the most part, but we do have our "moments". Like the time in the hotel in London when my sister threatened to burn my face with her curling iron (over something stupid I'm sure, because I can't even remember what the arguement was about now), or was that me threatening her with my curling iron? Must have been her curling iron, I didn't own one! :) Then (and this is no exaggeration) 30 seconds later we both plopped down on the beds in the room and wanted to know what the other felt like "doing for dinner"? So, traveling with family has it's advantages because there are pretty much no boundaries, we can be completely ourselves, even if it's the good, the bad, or the ugly...imagine not being able to curl your hair because your sister's skin was all over the curling iron! :) OK...other feeble attempt at humor there! :) So I think for the most part family members can be compatible travel companions, at least my family members.

As I've mentioned in this blog I enjoy traveling solo it allows me to make all the decisions and not worry about upsetting or offending anyone by doing something they don't want to. So when the opportunity came up to meet up with a group of friends inTuscany and rent a villa I jumped at the chance, but was a bit cautious at first not knowing some of the participants and how things would "play out". Well, my concern was for naught because I have to say that was the best (ok, maybe it was one of the top 5) travel experiences I have ever had.

The story goes...
My friends Sandy and Alan who live in London were deciding how to spend their 5th wedding anniversary. They sent out an email to everyone who had attended their wedding asking if any of us would be interested in renting a villa in Tuscany to celebrate their "anniversary week"...well, who wouldn't want to do that, or at least in my mind that's what I thought. And God bless Sandy and Alan for coordinating the villa rental and a couple little extra treats. So, it was set that 20 of us would be renting the Villa Carvachione in Gaiole in Chianti about half way between Florence and Sienna.

Sandy & Alan the perfect hosts!
So when we all got the original email I quickly sprang to action typing to 2 other friends on the list to see if they wanted to go too. One did so we started to plan. See, Sandy and Alan were doing the villa rental end of things and then we had to get there and plan any other activities we wanted to do and others could join it or sit it out as they wished. So Scott and I decided we were going to "team-up". He would fly from Atlanta to Rome and I would fly from Savannah to Rome and we would meet up at the airport in Rome, get the rental car Scott booked and drive the 3 hours to Gaiole. Things worked out perfectly. I did a ton of research on the things we could do while there and Scott was the "designated driver" since I don't know how to drive a standard (stick shift) car.


Scott and Me in Sienna

One of the things that worked out well was that both Scott and I had been to Italy before, several times, but never together. So, we had seen some of the same things and some different things. I would keep throwing out suggestions of things I would like to see or do and Scott was always game for doing it, or if he wasn't he would just do his "own thing". The other thing that worked on the site seeing end of the spectrum was that our friend Ally and her husband Jim were pretty much on the same "wave-length" that Scott and I were on. So usually in the mornings when everyone at the villa was getting ready to begin their days we would all figure out what we were doing and just go do it. Then at night everyone would "reconvene" at the villa, with copious amounts of vino of course, and talk about what they did or saw that day. Sometimes we would all have dinner together (yes, 20 of us!) at the villa, or small groups would break off and go out on their own.

Ally, Scott & Jim...
Gelato in Firenza...
doesn't get much better then this!

I have to say that putting 20 people together for a week in a villa in Tuscany, some who had never met before Sandy and Alan could have been in for an "interesting" experience, but from my view, most everyone got along well and had a great time. Talk about interesting travel companions!


The Tuscany Gang

So, the best part of this Tuscany villa vacation was finding out that I was a pretty compatible travel companion with a few friends I had never traveled with before. I was concerned about this because (again) I didn't want to seem like the "trip navigator" telling everyone where to go and what to do. I tried to ask opinions and get a consensus, but honestly, Scott was so easy to travel with, I'd pretty much just point in a direction and say that's where we need to go and that's were the trusty little Nissan Micra took us, of course under Scott's expert guidance, because Lord knows I don't think I could have maneuvered on some of the roads that he was able to!

So now we are anxiously waiting Sandy and Alan's 10th wedding anniversary...can anyone say "The South of France"???? Hey, we've done the red wine thing in Tuscany, it's time to try the white wine thing in France! :)

"I'd rather BE alone then wish I WERE!"

God I love that quote! I recently read a book called the Solo Traveler by Lea Lane and this quote was in the book. And, yes it is a travel/guide book of sorts and definitely geared toward women.

I say it's a travel/guide book of sorts because I found it in the travel section of the bookstore near all the guidebooks. I had read about it in one of my travel magazines (do you see a reading theme here!). It gives some helpful tips about traveling alone, or as I like to say "traveling solo". So, it's a guidebook for traveling in general and not of one specific place or region. And I really enjoyed Ms. Lane's writing style along with her personal stories of her travel experiences while "hitting the road solo". Some of her information is pretty much common sense, especially if you have traveled before, solo or not. Some of the tips in the book I already use and others I may try in my future travels.

But back to this entry's title quote. Have you ever been in a situation, traveling or otherwise, where you just wished the person or people you were with would go away and leave you on your own? Like a time when you felt like going to one restaurant, but to "keep the peace" you went where the other person or persons wanted to go? Or maybe you were the only one in a group that wanted to go to a certain attraction or museum and because you were "outnumbered" you ditched what you wanted to see to go along with the crowd?

Believe me, I'm a pretty flexible gal when it comes to making plans, but I also do a lot of research when planning a trip. And, I usually have a very good idea of the places I want to visit when I am traveling. This includes attractions/sites and restaurants. Don't get me wrong, I can "roll with the punches" and adjust to a back-up plan when I need to, that's what all the pre-trip research is for! But I also don't like being dragged to something I have no interest in at all. I also don't like to "impose" my likes or dislikes on others. I totally understand that someone I may be traveling with might not want to see some church/temple/museum I may be "obsessed" with seeing! :) I think this philosophy makes perfect sense...at least to me.

So, why is it that when I tell people I am heading to "wherever it may be" and they ask who I am going with and I say no one, just me, they look at me like I have 7 heads. Maybe it's because I traveled solo at a young age, that this does not bother me. When I was in collage and did a study abroad in Switzerland I was fortunate to travel every weekend, thanks to a Eurail Pass and classes ending for the week on Thursdays at noon. Many weekends there would be a group of us that would head off to a new destination, but on a couple of occasions where I wanted to go and where the others wanted to go just didn't jive. I really wanted to see Vienna, no matter what I said to the other students in my program about my desire to visit Vienna, no one was up for the long train ride from Montreaux, Switzerland to Vienna. My thought was that since I am this close, how could you not go??? So, I wasn't going to let a little thing like no travel partner stop me! So I jumped on the train one Thursday afternoon and headed to Vienna for the weekend.

It was one of the best trips during my 3 months living in Switzerland. I caught the night train, so that I would sleep on the way to Vienna, but on the train I met this Australian girl who was traveling solo too. She was a bit older then me, she was a nurse working in the UK and taking some time to travel Europe before heading back to the "Land Down Under". We had a nice conversation on the train and when we got off in Vienna, neither one of us with a hotel reservation, we decided to share a room and romp around Vienna together, checking out the sites and parting ways when we wanted to do something on our own. It was great and lots of fun and I met an interesting person! If I had gone with one or 2 of the other students from school I probably would have never met Sue. Even though we parted ways after Vienna, and we never stayed in contact, I will also never forget those 2 days in Vienna with Sue the Aussie nurse! :)

So, traveling solo isn't so bad. My trip last summer to Ireland was with a group tour that I met up with in Ireland, but I booked the trip as a single...not so bad, I got matched up with a roommate and the other people were a joy to spend 2 weeks "tooling around" Ireland with. I had plenty of different people to do things with, or if I wanted to do something on my own, that was always an option.

As you can see, traveling solo isn't such a bad thing, sometimes, yes, it can be lonely, but if you're friendly and chat with the locals even dining in a restaurant alone turns out to be fun when you've met interesting local characters or other solo travelers...there's more of us out there then you may think! :)

Next installment....compatible travel companions...stay tuned...AND
Happy Trails!

Solo travel diatribe postponed....Group travel discussed.

The Council of Wise Women (and Kevin)



So in my last post I know I said that I would "wax poetical" on solo traveling and I honestly intend to do that, but just not in this post. Although it may lend support to my philosophy of solo traveling.

I enjoy the company of my 6 best girlfriends immensely. We range in age from mid-thirties to mid-fifties and we each bring such different perspectives to our friendship. The common bond that brought us all together about 10 years ago was line dancing. This has grown into a great group of 6 women affectionately dubbed (by one friend's husband) "The Council of Wise Women", or as we have shortened it to "The CWW". We do a lot of fun things together besides line dancing, in fact the line dancing componet seems to be fading slightly, but we hit the gym together, do Pilates, go to movies, celebrate birthdays, special milestones, holiday get togethers and just about anything else good friends do together.

A couple of us have traveled together to various conferences to places in the U.S., both near and far, sometimes Orlando, sometimes Vegas. But usually not more then 2 or 3 of us at these events.

A couple summers ago was the first time we planned a trip with all of the "CWW" and a couple husbands tagged along. It was a rafting trip in the upstate of SC. It was for about 4 days and we drove there in 2 cars, well, ok it was a minivan and a truck! :) We had a good time. We spent 2 days rafting with the night between camping, which was the first time I camped (that's a whole other story!) and the 2 nights on either end of the trip in a B&B type place.

I really enjoyed the rafting part of the trip, the camping not so much...it rained most of the 1st day which made for a soggy camp site!

So, all this information leads up to the ride home. While we were chatting about what a great time we had we talked about doing another trip with just all girls. NYC was brought up as a good place. In part because I had grown up near NYC and worked in the city for a little over 2 years before moving to SC and I could be a "tour guide".

OK, cut to summer 2005...our plan to go to NYC got put on the back burner because one friend couldn't afford it and honestly I was having doubts about going because of financial strains. So, we put off the trip. Now in the fall of 2005 we begin talking about going to NYC in 2006 and decide to go in May. Well, as I continue to think about this, plus my trip to Seattle in January and my "big Eastern/Central Europe trip" in Sept. 2006 I am realizing I might not be in a good spot to go. Plus I start thinking about the logistics of 6 women all agreeing on what to do during a 3 or 4 day trip to the Big Apple! And I have been designated the "tour guide", which I was uneasy about because I haven't been to NYC in 11 years! So after much thought and going back and forth with whether or not I should go I decide I am going to back out of the trip. I know this is not a popular choice with the "CWW", but I have to do what I am comfortable with. It's one thing when 6 women go rafting and we don't think about "getting ready" to go anywhere, all we did on the rafting trip was wake up, throw on a bathing suit and shorts and go. A long weekend in NYC is an entirely different scenario! Plus part of me feels that I would "lose control" and not be able to please everyone and having 5 friends ticked off at me because "the tour guide" screwed-up. I would rather bail out now then have a fiasco on my hands in NYC.

OK, so maybe a fiasco wouldn't happened, but I don't want to take that chance. These women are too special to me to ruin friendships over travel confrontations. Is this the right attitude? I know you can't please all the people all the time, but I think I would just be too stressed out worrying about whether or not all my friends were having a good time that I wouldn't be able to enjoy myself.

I know that may sound funny. And I've been away from NYC for a long time, but I always pictured in my mind that my return to NYC would either be by myself or with just maybe one friend. A couple years ago I had such a yearning to return, especially after the events of Sept. 11th, that I almost want to treat my first trip back there as something very special. Hokey as it may sound.

So, I adore my girlfriends, but I will be sitting this group travel adventure out...can't wait to see their pictures! :)

Am I mental or what?

Ok, so one week ago today I was "tooling" down Interstate 20 in Mississippi, (based on my memory and time calculations!). God, it seems like it was ages ago that I had my "travel mishap" and you guessed it, I'm ready for my next adventure. See, it just takes a few days of being at home catching up on my laundry, mail and newspapers, plus a few days back in the office that makes my mind start wandering again! :) Wanderlust is a great thing!

So, does this mean that I am mental, or just a travel junkie? A junkie I think, but that isn't such a bad thing...at least in my mind it's not.

Alrighty then, so this weekend was "time to talk about my next adventure". I had coffee (of course where else, but Starbucks) with my friend CathyLee (CL). She and I are going on vacation together next September. We decided to do a Rick Steve Europe Through the Back Door Tour of Eastern Europe (which is really more like Central Europe, but we won't mention that), and then extend the trip about 10 days or so after the "group tour" ends and travel down the Dalmatian Coast to Dubrovnik (hopefully Sandy, Alan and Alastair will meet up with us there, but I am digressing here!). So long story short CL and I chatted about my Thanksgiving adventure and then talked briefly about the airplane/connection logistics for our "European jaunt". But we haven't gotten our tickets yet, we will need to start working on that in the new year! At least we both agree on booking flights with lots of "lead time" for connections!

Then, on Sunday I finally called Katrina (of the Idaho Katrina's...hold that, I only know 1 Katrina!) back. She had called me last weekend to see how my Thanksgiving went and I hadn't had time to call her back. I wish she lived closer or I lived closer to her! Anyway, the next trip I'm taking is to Seattle in January to go to the ETBD tour reunion and since she and I met on the Ireland trip this year and bonded and both of our birthdays are in January (Me the 9th, her the 10th), we are going to "Rock Seattle" for our birthdays. So, ok we will be there the weekend after our actual birthdays, but hey, you're supposed to celebrate your birthday for a week...right??? :) Plus Stephen our tour guide from the Ireland trip will be there and he is such a hoot! Hopefully we will all get together in some fun place (maybe an Irish pub??) and knock back a few Baby Guinness!!!! A girl can hope! :)

So, I've thought about "waxing poetical" about solo travel here on this blog since I recently read a book on that subject, but I'm pressed for time at the moment, but will make my next "installation" all about my opinion on solo traveling.

Stay tuned...

The Intrepid Thanksgiving Traveler Returns!

The Blanchard Family, Allison, Lisa, Ken and Sara.

What would Thanksgiving be without a memorable travel story? It wouldn't be as interesting now would it?

I left for Tucson on Wednesday, November 23 and as holiday travel goes, it was a breeze. Yes, there was a delay in Dallas, but I was only about an hour and a half late into Tucson. So in the grand scheme of things, that wasn't too bad. Of course, this did alter Ken and Lisa's plans to pick me up with the whole family "in toe", so it was just Ken at the airport awaiting my arrival, but since Sara and Allison are 4 (almost 5) and 1 (almost 2), I didn't want them staying up until all hours. Although, right until the end Sara wanted to meet me at the airport and as soon as I got to their house around 11pm I was "required" to wake her up and give her a big hug and kiss. I know, I'm digressing here, but hey, it's my blog, and I can do what I want! :)

The rest of my time in Tucson was great, I couldn't have asked for better weather, 75 degrees and sunny everyday, except Sunday, the day I left, and then it was still sunny but only in the upper 50's. There were about 28 people for Thanksgiving dinner at K&L's and there was so much delicious food. The remainder of my time visiting was just hanging out doing whatever "daily" stuff the Blanchard family does. We went to one of my favorite restaurants in Tucson a place called Sauce, which has terrific salads and pizza, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it! Then right next door is Tucson's remedy for gelato addicts. A place called Frost, yup, a true gelateria right in Tucson. It was started by a couple business college students for a class project and it has taken Tucson by storm!

So, now for the story of my return home...sit back, relax, maybe grab a glass of wine, because this is one crazy romp across the southeastern US!

I was scheduled to leave Tucson on Sunday, November 27 at around 2:30 in the afternoon. I got to the airport a couple hours early, had some lunch and headed to the gate. Once I was in the gate area the agent announced the flight may be in an "over-sold" situation and anyone with flexible travel plans who wanted to give up there seat would get a $200 voucher and a flight on Monday. I had taken Monday off work in the event of something like this happening, but for just $200 (since airfares are pretty pricey), I figured I would just go on to Dallas for my connection. Plus I knew K&L were getting ready to go to NYC on Wednesday and I didn't want to "get in their way". So, I head off to Dallas (DFW). We land in DFW a little late, but that's ok, because my connecting flight was delayed by 30 minutes...no big deal. Well, of the 7 runways at DFW, only 2 were open. They were having 45 mph winds, so they weren't letting any planes take off, only land. So, we board the plane in hopes that the winds will die down. The plane gets out on the runway and sits for 2 hours. We then have to go back to the gate to re-fuel and one of the flight attendants has "timed out" and she can't fly anymore, so luckily a replacement is found and we can get back on the plane. We sit at the gate all fueled up and with the new flight attendant for about an hour. Then the co-pilot gets on the intercom and tells us the flight has been cancelled because the other flight attendant (not the new one) has now "timed out" and she can't fly and they are still not letting flights take off. So, we all get off the plane.

Once back in the terminal, with all the other passengers from their cancelled flights trying to re-book their reservations, you can imagine the line at the customer service desk! So, as people are finishing their re-booking and walking back towards the end of the line (that's about how I felt..."at the end of my rope"), we found out that the earliest flights out that we could get on were not until Tuesday or Wednesday...now remember this is Sunday night! So I made my own "Executive" decision, got out of line and headed to the rental car desk...

If you've ever been to the DFW airport you know it's enormous, the rental car center is not even at the airport terminal, there is a shuttle bus that takes you to the rental car center, which to me, looked like it's own terminal building it was so big! So, I head over to the Dollar Rental Car desk since they had a sign up saying "Cars Available" and a pretty short line. Well, now I know why...they were going to charge me $500 to rent a car to drive to Savannah!!!!! So I went over to the National Car Rental desk..."no reservation= no car", same with Alamo. Then I sauntered over to Avis, by now their line was pretty short...and BINGO! They had a car I could rent one way to Savannah and not for $500, but all they would rent me was a Suzuki SUV...can you say "Great Gas Mileage" ;) But at least I had wheels and the open road. So I headed out of the airport and away from Dallas, since most every flight had been cancelled I figured the chances of me getting a hotel room for the night in Dallas (and by the way, it's now midnight) were pretty slim. So, I drove for about an hour to Terrell, Texas...and if that town sounds familiar to you it's because Jamie Foxx, "the Oscar Winner" is from there...where I got off the highway (I-20) and pulled into a La Quinta Inn. You may be asking, why did I pick the La Quinta, when there were 6 others to choose from? Well, First, the parking lot was well lit, but Second and most important it was right next to a Starbucks and I know that the next morning I would need a VENTI caramel macchiato! :)

So I checked into the hotel and crawled into bed. I think it was about 2:30am by the time I actually fell asleep and then the alarm went off at 5:30am...yup...3 hours of sleep. Now, let me tell you why only 3 hours of sleep. My original game plan was to rent the car for 1 day and have it in Savannah by midnight on Tuesday (are you following all the days and times here???), so I wanted to get on the road ASAP, but I also knew that Starbucks wouldn't be open until around 5:30 or 6am...gee, I sure do have my priorities straight!

Good-bye Terrell, Texas at 6am...hello Interstate 20...thank God, with my warped need for travel, months ago I got on mapquest and just for grins punched in Hilton Head, SC to Tucson, AZ and I remembered seeing that I-20 went straight out of Dallas all the way to Atlanta, GA...ahhh, a familiar city! :) So, I "blew threw" (if you can call it that) east Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama by 4:30pm on Monday. I would have kept going but I had to stop in Birmingham, Alabama for a couple reasons...1) I didn't have my driving glasses with me (but I did have my sunglasses), 2) It started raining and I mean RAINING! 3) There were tornado warnings saying to "Get to your safe place"...well, were the hell was my safe place???? I was in an SUV driving down the road! 3) Unfamiliar car, and unfamiliar road (plus no glasses for night driving, let alone the rain... and last but not least, I had driven 10 hours on 3 hours of sleep...not such a good combination! So I stopped in Hoover, Alabama just outside Birmingham.
Lucky for me I found a hotel with...you guessed it... a Starbucks next to it! ;)

Tuesday morning (more like Monday night) I realized that if I left Birmingham at 6am, I would hit Atlanta right during their rush hour...Birmingham is about a 2 hour drive to Atlanta. So, I waited until 8:30 (Atlanta time) to leave Birmingham and the rest is pretty smooth sailing. I hit the outskirts of Atlanta at 10:45am, was able to pick up I-285 which goes around Atlanta and pick up I-75 on the south side of the city. And miracle of miracles, I was able to get around Atlanta and headed towards Macon, GA in 20 minutes! The rest of the drive is pretty uneventful but as usual for me, I knew just were to stop in Macon, yup, Starbucks to re-fuel for the "home stretch" on I-16 from Macon to Savannah. All this time my terrific friends and mom(seriously, not being sarcastic here) would call me on my cell phone to see how my progress was on this marathon trip!

I pulled into the Savannah airport rental car drop off at about 2:45pm on Tuesday. So, if you are ever in need of knowing how long it takes to get from Dallas to Savannah by car, it's 17 hours, ok, so I may have stopped to eat a couple times and gas up the ol' SUV, but that's a pretty accurate estimate. Once I returned the car to Avis I had driven 1057 miles and the last thing I had to do was get into my own car...getting into a Honda Civic after driving an SUV for 2 days felt kinda weird! And drive the 30 minutes home...my own bed never felt sooooo good!

Looking back at this "intrepid travel adventure" I have to say that yes, I was tired, and sometimes bored in the car alone, but that's what traveling is all about. Sometimes you just have to be flexible and roll with the punches. Hey, I always wanted to see that part of the USA, I just never thought it wouldn't be from the interstate highway! :)

Some may say I was nuts and why didn't I just wait it out in Dallas, but work was calling and I needed to be back at the office...so, you know, I can earn some more money to go on another travel adventure!

Upcoming trip...Thanksgiving travel...am I crazy??

Believe it or not, this year I am traveling during the Thanksgiving holiday...am I crazy? I think not. I'm heading to Tucson to spend the holiday with friends. Really looking forward to, even any unforeseen delays that may occur!

Welcome to my blog!

Since I am a newbie to the world of blogging it may take me a while to get the hang of things here. But I thought it would be a great way to chronicle my travel experiences and share them with anyone who is interested.

So, here goes... at times I may have great information or funny stories, or just ramble on about nothing in particular, but hey, isn't that what this whole blog phenomenon is all about! :)

Life is grand with good friends and good Guinness....Slainte!