Paris - Being A Novice Traveler in 2000

 People who know me from Facebook or other online sites just assume I have always been a traveler. I have posted hundreds of travel photos.  I talk about travel a lot.  If you look up my hobbies it will say photography and travel.  But to many friends surprise I never traveled abroad until the year 2000 when I was 48 years old.   I grew up with fantasies of travel.  It was always something I wanted to do but it was always of my reach.  I traveled through the movies.  At the age of ten I saw my first James Bond, Dr No movie and was amazed at all of the exotic locations that were thousands of miles from my small town in Maryland.  

Yes, that's me in the photo above standing spell bound at my first look at the Eiffel Tower in 2000.   I was so enthralled I was not even aware my photo was being taken.  I had to keep reminding myself I was really in Paris.   I was really in France.  It did not seem possible.  If anyone had asked me where would you like to travel I would have said Paris.   It was always a dream destination.   We were offered French or Spanish in high school.  There was no choice for me.  It had to be French.   If a movie was about France I wanted to see it.  If you asked me what was my favorite childhood movie starring Judy Garland was my answer would have been Gay Purr-ee.  Never would I have said The Wizard of Oz.  It was set in Kansas not Paris.  And the Wizard of Oz co starred Ray Bolger not Robert Goulet as in Gay Purr-ee.  But that's another story.  

The sign said Modern Hotel. But novice traveler here had no idea what the two stars meant. I thought it was just a decoration on the sign. Nope. It was a two star rated hotel on a kind of run down street. This my was my view from the hotel window. There was no Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe any where in site. But there was a rather ratty looking bed in a dismal room that I planned to be in as little as possible so it did not really matter. And yes if you look closely I was wearing some really ugly glasses in 2000.

I did not have a cell at this time. I did not have a digital camera. No computer. I had no way to make contact other than a phone in case of an emergency. And this was not a bad thing. My photos were awful. I really had a lot to learn about travel photography. My photos were developed when I got home and were also digitized on a disc for me. But the photo quality was terrible on the digital disc. But looking back at the photos now the memories are very vivid and that's what it's all about really. Traveling. Making memories. Writing a travel diary. 

I got to see a lot.  I was a true tourist.  

I saw the Statue of Liberty in Paris.

The Sacre Couer

And the Venus de Milo of course.  I felt just like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face.

Arc de Triomphe

If you could pose by it I have a photo of it.  

I learned to take better photos.  In 2002 I joined the Virtual Tourist online group.  I learned to write travel advice there.   And I learned a lot about taking travel photos from the many great photographer there.  But there is something special about being a first time novice traveler.  I learned a lot from that experience also. 

I guess you noticed there are no photos of my ex included here.  And that is by choice.  As Bogart said in Casablance "We'll always have Paris." but in this blog in my best Bogart voice it should be "I'll always have Paris."

I never got to Jim Morrison's grave on this visit.  That had to wait for my next visit this time with my husband Mark.  And I can say this time,  he and I will always have Paris.    

Odd Travel Moments - A Young Girl With A Bird On Her Boob In Lisbon

This photo was taken in 2015 and for some reason I am just now writing about it all these years later . And I don't know how I missed posting this. Mark and I were with our friend Gillian on holiday in Lisbon. Our last day there we were having lunch in an outdoor restaurant and noticed this girl with a bird hanging on her shoulder. At first we thought it was a dead bird which we found a bit odd. But then it moved. She was wearing a live bird on her blouse. It was just sitting there and not bothering to fly away. I love odd travel moments like this.

Mark and I have known our friend Gillian for almost 14 years now. We are more family than we are just friends. Gillian visits us often. And we travel together frequently. She makes frequent guest appearances in blogs because when we are all together trouble usually ensues. I am not sure why. Perhaps it's because we tend to drink a bit when we are all together. Gillian will deny this of course. But trust me. It's a fact. From time to time she and I remember this girl. We always say she is part of a novel that should be written. Or we say that one of us really needs to write a blog about it. But it has not happened until tonight. Gillian, her time in the spot light has arrived. I hope I do her proud.  

Times are tough.   To complain about it makes you look juvenile.  Everyone, world wide, knows times are bad. There is nothing you can say about it that everyone doesn't already realize for themselves.   We are sharing this pandemic world wide.   When 400,000 people have died in your country it seems selfish and callous to say how much you miss travel. Or it seems insensitive to say I wish I could go out to my pub.   And then it really seems childish to complain that you have nothing to write about in your travel blog.  There are far more serious things to be concerned about.   I talked to two good friends today and both told me they have tested positive for COVID.   That's very serious.  I prayed for them both tonight.  I can't sleep.   Stress has robbed me of sleep for weeks now.   So while I sit here fighting insomnia the unfinished blog about the girl with bird on her boob came to mind this evening.

Mark and I love Lisbon.   It was never a place on our bucket list to visit.  But once we arrived there it captured our imagination. We have now been to Portugal twice and would love to again.   We have some travel friends who live in Lisbon that we enjoy visiting.  

Gillian, Mark and I with our friends Miguel and Gloria from Lisbon.

And the wines in Portugal are some of the best in the world.  The food is very good also, 

 And then there is the mesmerizing Fado music that we learned to love.  Having some wine and listening to Fado music is one of our favorite experiences when we visit Portugal.

Back alley out door Fado music bar in Lisbon

Young girl singing the melancholy Fado music

And yet the girl with the bird on her boob seems to be my one haunting memory.  When I think of my time in Lisbon I almost always go back to that last day and seeing her.  It was odd.  This was to be our last day in Lisbon.   We were to leave for the airport in the morning to bid goodbye to Gillian and start our flight home.   But we wanted a good meal and a few laughs on our last day.   We really wanted something that we would be able to remember and talk about for years to come.  And there she was.  Leaning against a wall behind our table.  An attractive young girl with a bird sitting on her breast.  It caught my attention and then Gillian saw it also.  We tapped Mark and motioned for him  to turn around and look behind himself and then he too saw what we saw.  There was no point trying to explain it to him.  It was easier just to tell him to look.  So we all looked.

  Our first thought was why does this girl have a dead bird attached to her blouse.  So we started making up reasons why the bird was attached to her.  None of them made any sense at all but it didn't matter.   We were just confused.  And then the birds head moved.  It was alive!  Then we wondered why and how she had attached it to her blouse.  Was she cruel and stapled it to her shirt?  No, the birds foot moved and it repositioned itself a little.  It was just sitting there hanging on to her blouse.  And it never left her or flew away.  Finally she pet its head, took it off of her blouse  and put it in a small box.  Then she went inside the restaurant and to our surprise was working there as a waitress and was going on her shift.  She handed the box to a waiter who was going off shift and he kept it for her.   It almost felt like Woody Allen should be narrating this in one of movies set in Europe.  I could almost hear his voice introducing the girl as the main character in his movie and her love interest who shared the bird with her.  And then suddenly everything changed.  Again Gillian and I noticed something else odd and we were transported from the world of Woody Allen characters to a John Waters movie.  Just across the street from where we were sitting we saw a man, a true John Waters character. He was standing by a wall relieving himself right in eyesite of our table.  Well if it was a Woody Allen character we would say relieving.  But this had turned into a John Waters movie so this man was pissing against the wall. Directly in front of us.   Did I take a photo?  Of course I did.

I knew I would be telling this story one day.  And I knew I needed an ending.  And this man provided the ending for me.  So now in January 2021 when I am stuck home quarantining from the pandemic and fighting with stress and insomnia I finally am writing this blog from the summer of 2015.   You never know how a story will end.  I assumed the girl with the bird would be the entire story.   And then man started urinating.  So there's the end of the story.

When this mess we are in is over we will travel again.  And we will see more strange things happening around us.  And yes, I will document them with photos and tell you all about them in due time.

2020 - The Year We All Stayed Home

 I usually write a year end blog on New Years Day.  I have been thinking about what I wanted to say about 2020.   I went back and reread my year end blogs from 2019, 2018, and 2017.   I noticed that each of those years I started out by saying this has not been one of my best years.  And I ended each blog saying I was sure the new year would be better.   This year I just don't know what to say.   So I think this photo taken in Meredith, New Hampshire is the best way to start.  What a long strange trip it's been.  

Last years blog said we were already planning travel for February 2020.   Well that didn't happen.  Mark did buy his new car in February.

 And we did take a road trip to Odessa, Delaware where we went to a restaurant for the last time without a mask.  Also with the new car we went to Woodland Beach, Delaware.  That's a place I had not been since I was five years old when my family rented a boat and went crabbing in the Delaware Bay.  The high lights of Woodland Beach were my photos of a lone house on the beach...

..and a nuclear reactor on the New Jersey shore across the Delaware Bay.  When I edited my photo of the reactor to a black and white image there was a spooky blue haze all around it like radiation coming out of it.   Oh 2020 this was just my first surprise of the year.

We started hoarding toilet paper, stocking up a two week supply of emergency groceries and hunting for masks to wear next.    While doing this we got the word from my daughter Danielle that she had been hired for a job in Boston,  She had been unemployed for most of 2019.   She and her wife ended up selling their house in Atlanta, packing up a rental van and moving to Boston right at the heart of the original quarantine.  List this under things to stress out Dad.  Just as Danielle was preparing to move my other daughter Katie was diagnosed with Crohn's disease.  She was hospitalized and of course we were not allowed to visit.   Another item to add to the list of  things to stress out Dad.   We did go the hospital parking lot and wave to Katie's window.  You can see Katie in the window above.   I will not be embarrassed to say I cried on the way home. 

So what is next to add to the list of things to stress out Dad.  After leaving the hospital Katie was told due to Covid and budgetary issues she was being let go from her job.  Perfect timing.  Just what a person with a major medical diagnosis needs.  No health insurance.  Lots of prayers were said.  That's one thing 2020 has done.  It has increased my prayer life triple fold.  And within a couple of weeks Katie was offered a temporary job in New Hampshire!  The company provided her with a beautiful log cabin on isolated dirt road with a view of  Mt Washington in her back yard.  

I was a bit concerned when she accepted the job.  The idea of her just being diagnosed with Crohn's disease and moving to an isolated cabin on a dirt road in New Hampshire was definitely another item on the things to stress out Dad list.  She had to drive up for an initial interview and introduction to the new company.   I did not want her to drive from Baltimore to Lancaster, New Hampshire by herself so I drove up with her.  We were booked into a resort that had been closed for twelve weeks.  We were one of a handful of guests there for opening weekend.  Other than one or two other people were were the only guests in a 180 room resort.  I will say in the midst of a world wide pandemic with quarantining all around this was a wonderful escape for three days.  

I wanted to be trendy and follow the big fashion statement of 2020, a Covid beard.  I had never grown a beard before and I have to admit I liked having one.  I still have it to start out the new year 2021.  Add this to the list of things to stress out your husband.

We were able to visit Katie in New Hampshire later this summer and also spend a day in Boston with Danielle and Andrea.  It was a bit tricky going to Boston.  Massachusetts had a ban on visitors from Maryland due to Covid that came with a healthy fine if you tried to spend the night there.  We did drive to Danielle's house and drove with her to see some of the sites in Boston but that was the best we could do under the circumstances.  

2020 continued to haunt us the rest of the year.  Everyone has been affected by 2020 no matter who they are.  It was no respecter of persons.  I had friends who died.  Friends who were very sick.  And our beloved dog Delilah died this year.  She was fourteen years old and had health issues.   We did get to take her to New Hampshire before she died and she loved the cabin and the huge fields around it.  She died November 8, 2020.   We had a vet come to the house and we said our goodbyes on the back deck of our house.   

We were lost without her and knew we wanted another dog to fill the void as soon as possible.  We found Tallulah just a few weeks later from a rescue site.  We drove to central Pennsylvania to pick her and bring her home.  

But 2020 was not finished with our home yet. Two days before Christmas Tallulah darted out of our house and was hit by a car.  We thought she was gone for good.   Once again many prayers were said and out faith was tested but she survived.   She had a dislodged shoulder and a multi fractured leg below the shoulder.  There was concern this 18 month old pup would have to have her leg amputated.  But as of New Years Day she is recuperating at home and her leg has been saved.   We will have eight weeks of recovery and hopefully the leg will heal properly.

As I said in the beginning "What A Long Strange Trip It's Been".   2020 is a year no one living now will ever forget.   This truly has been one of the worst years of our lives.   But my girls both have jobs.  They both had adventures moving to New England during the pandemic.  Mark's mother had Covid while in assisted living and recovered but sadly is fading from Alzheimer's every single day.  Our dog survived.   We have toilet paper.  And as a family we all have each other.  

What is my final image of 2020?  This about sums it up.  A dirty mask left on a table in Littleton, New Hampshire.  I'll this year here at the table.   

Pollyanna Days in New Hampshire - Visiting Littleton and Meredith

 

I saw the movie Pollyanna starring Haley Mills at the movies in 1960.  I was eight years old.  I loved the movie and was so sad at the ending.  SPOILER ALERT - The cheerful Pollyanna falls from a tree and can not walk at the end of the movie.  Haley Mills starred as Pollyanna and won a special childrens Oscar for the movie.  Pollyanna was always the optimist.  Pollyanna had been taught by her father how to play the "glad game", in which the goal is to find something to be glad about whether it's a disappointing Christmas gift or a life long illness.

If any year needed a Pollyanna attitude it's been 2020.   And little did I know at the beginning of this year that I would end up in Littleton, New Hampshire the home of the author of  Pollyanna.   Mark and I had big travel plans for 2020.  We were planning a trip to Sweden in the spring to visit Mark's cousin.  And hopefully a trip to New Castle, England for a meeting with our Virtual Tourist friends.  And maybe even a fall trip back to our beloved Hawaii. Instead we were hit with Covid and quarantines. And then my daughter lost her job due to Covid budget contraints.  And a few weeks she was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease.   So Pollyanna, where is the glad game in all of those?  There was not a lot to be happy about presently.   

Then the good news amidst the quarantine blues started to appear.  My younger daughter who had also been unemployed for almost a year received a job offer in Boston.  So she and her wife put their home on the market.  Packed up their belongings, three dogs and three cats, and moved from Atlanta to Boston in the heart of the quarantine.  About a month later my older daughter was offered a temporary job in New Hampshire.  The company set her up in a fully furnished log cabin isolated on a dirt road in the northern New Hampshire town of Lancaster.  The thought of her moving there for six month with the recent Crohns disease diagnosis certainly was not the part of any glad game for me.  

I traveled to New Hampshire with Katie the last part of June for her job interview.  I had only been to New Hampshire one time previously and that was almost ten years ago.  Little did I know that this year I would end up in New Hampshire three times including the job interview trip.  I also had no idea that Mark and I both would fall in love with New Hampshire.  

We loved the cabin.  It was large and accommodating.   The views from the side porch were breath taking.  We got watch the early morning sun rise over Mount Washington.  And then in the evening we got to see the beautiful sunsets as well.   

We got to visit two beautiful little towns on this trip.  Littleton and Meredith, New Hampshire.  Littleton calls itself "The Glad Town" because of it connection to the author of Pollyanna.  And it truly is a glad town.  There is a memorial to the character Pollyanna in front of the library.   The crosswalks all have Pollyanna emblems painted on them.  They instruct you to stop, look, and wave. .  And the minute you step off the curb all the traffic stops for you and you really do feel like smiling and waving.

We took turns posing with the Pollyanna statue.  It was a vacation after all and we were tourists kind of, although Katie is now a resident.

I was in such a Glad Game mood I even posed with the umbrella's at the Pollyanna Gateway.

I visited Littleton on all three of my  trips to New Hampshire this summer.  Why three times to the same little town?  Well other than it being the "glad city" it also has a brewery that I really liked a lot.  Perhaps one of my favorites I have ever visited.   It's the Shilling Brewery.  It's located in an old mill sitting on a hill over the Connecticut River.  Now here is a glad game face with one of their excellent beers.

They also had excellent wood fired pizza and one of the best pretzels anywhere.

And there was plenty of out door seating for a safe and social distancing experience.

Littleton is large by northern New Hampshire standards but in reality it is only a town of 5,920 people.  So it's truly a small town.   But there is a lot to see and do there on a visit.

You can take a leisurely stroll along the Connecticut River.

Take photos of the beautiful covered bridge.

You can visit the Guiness Book of World Records longest candy counter at Chutters General Store.

Try some Poutine made from french fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy.  It tastes a lot better than it sounds.

Or you can just be a nasty tourist and leave your Covid mask on a table for someone else to clean up for you.   

If I returned to New Hampshire again any time soon I would go back to Littleton.  I enjoyed it that much.

I want to mention another small town in New Hampshire here also.  Meredith, New Hampshire.  It's about 45 miles south of Littleton.  

Meredith is a small resort town.  It's a little larger than Littleton with a population of 6,241.  It is located in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee.  I mention it along with Littleton because it is the home to another fictional hero of mine.   The author of the Archie comic books lived in Meredith, New Hampshire.  And there is a statue to commemorate Archie in the town square.  We saw this online and I said I have to go see this.  I loved the Archie comics as a preteen.  The statue of Archie sets on bench staring across the street to the work shop where he was created.

The lake area is beautiful.  There are several bars, restaurants and hotels in Meredith.  We were there on a warm sunny day and the lake front was crowded.  For social distancing precautions we did not visit any of the bars or restaurants while there.  But I would like to return and check some out after we are over this Covid mess.  

There are some fun sculptures along the water front also.

I will be writing more about our time in New Hampshire.  I  never thought of it as a vacation destination.  But Covid and Pollyanna's Glad Game changed my opinion.

Here I am back at home.  Writing my blog and wearing my Pollyanna Glad Game tee shirt for inspiration.   Take that Covid.