It was exhilarating and exhausting, and sometimes, in the emptying hostels of the off-season, more than a bit lonely. When Cindy asked if I wanted to join her and eight classmates on a cruise around Patagonia in the new year, I replied yes faster than you can say goodbye, $10 dorm bed.

A cruise on the Star Princess was quite a departure from my previous months of budget travel. For one thing, I was on the ship for 12 days. Except for a few weeks’ stint in Mexico in December, I spent longer on the Star Princess than any one place since September. I was able to unpack my stuff and hang clothes in the closet and put my toothbrush in a cup in the bathroom. Like a normal person!

Instead of being one of the oldest of my fellow travelers, I (and all of our 10-person travel group) were firmly among the youngest. As far as cruises go, the longer the voyage, the older the clientele. That we were generally less than 1/2 of the median age of the passengers made us somewhat infamous on the ship, as the herd of us tore from deck to deck giggling, posing dubiously for formal-dress portraits, heckling our favorite cruise staff, perhaps after one too many Beverly Hills Iced Teas (a lethal mix of vodka, gin, tequila, Cointreau, …., and a shot of lemon).

The cruise was definitely a different mode of travel, focusing far more on little luxuries during the voyage than any actual destinations – different chocolates left on your pillow, fresh buckets of ice left in your fridge, unlimited entrees and desserts at every dinner – but only 6 hours to explore Ushuaia, the southermost city in the world, and no visit at all to the Falkland Islands, thwarted by bad weather and an immoveable schedule, despite traveling for weeks towards that destination. At each port of call, you basically have time to do one 3-4 hour excursion, and then it’s back on the boat for a shower and another huge meal, some after-dinner musical entertainment and perhaps a few more drinks.

All that said, it was a refreshing vacation from a vacation – nice to have your bed made a few times a day – nice to have a bed that is YOURS. Cindy’s classmates are a fun, diverse group, and it was great to have travel companions to stick with for more than a couple of days. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to go. I experienced a bit of culture shock when we landed in our un-airconditioned hostel in Buenos Aires and suddenly started having to plan our own meals and entertainment once again. But I’m now firmly back on terra firma, and getting ready to spend a night at the Santiago Airport. Have a flight in the morning to La Paz, where I’ll start a 30-day overland tour with Intrepid Travel through Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, back down to Buenos Aires. My friend Susan will be joining me and all lodging and transportation arrangements are taken care of, which means I’m still experiencing a bit of travel luxury compared to the fall, but at least we should have some more time to actually see what South America is about. And I’ll be coming back to Patagonia someday to check it out properly. Anyone in?

Enough whining; we have boarded a new bus. I’ve spied my backpack being transferred from old bus to new (for some reason I’ve developed a paranoia about my bags not making it to each destination with me, unless I actually see them being placed into the cargo hold). No breakdowns during the first 3 minutes in this new vehicle. It will be great to catch up with some folks in New York, and I’m headed for a Southern Hemispheric adventure in less than 72 hours. Can’t complain

I was told by my sister over IM yesterday that my blog “fails”, I suppose because I write at an approximate rate of one entry per month.

So here I am, post-Spain, post-Germany, post-Amsterdam, post-Scotland and post- various other places (which I fully intend to write about at some point in life). I’ve been in Italy for two days. So far it has been damn cold.

Day 1 started with a luxurious RyanAir flight from Seville to Milan (I woke up at 5:30am to get on it, which I felt justified a 3-euro inflight coffee). RyanAir’s definition of Milan happens to be Bergamo, a town with its own airport which happens to be an hour-long bus ride away. Lonely Planet says that Bergamo is actually quite charming but I didn’t get to verify this, as I immediately hoppedon a bus shuttling me into the center of Milan. (First thing I heard when I got on the bus was a woman hollering in Chinese into her cell phone, apparently trying to book a flight to Venice that day with a travel agent. The booking process apparently wasn’t going too well, as she kept yelling and getting disconnected and re-dialing for about 15 minutes until another passenger did an exasperated “Shhh! Signora!!!” Made me kinda feel at home.)

After I got into Milan, I jumped right on a tram going the exact opposite direction as I needed to get to my hostel. Also, despite my naive expectations, they don’t actually sell tickets on trams in Milan. No one fortunately seemed to notice, but I spent my whole prolonged tram tour of the city feeling kind of nervous and shifty.

Eventually I got to Hotel Galla, quite a comfortable little place. I complained to Alfredo (I think that was his name), one of the two brothers running the place, about my accidental scenic tram trip, and somehow we got talking about weird weather and global warming and how, according to Alfredo, the world is “sick”. Quite a pleasantly chummy conversation, the kind of thing I think makes a big difference when you’re traveling around and staying in lots of new, strange, often impersonal places. Sometimes places which smell a bit funny. Hotel Galla smelled great. Alfredo says he and his brother clean everything personally. Worked for me.

After check-in I took a subway back into the city center, snapped a couple requisite pictures of the Duomo, ate a cheese sandwich and a tangerine, and then went in search of Peck, a “food emporium” listed in my guidebook that they claim stocks 3200 varieties of Parmesan cheese. I don’t know, the store isn’t that big, but it made me swoon a little. They have about 20 varieties of salt, for example. Little matching bottles of pink salt from the Himalayas, black salt from Hawaii, salt with Madagascar vanilla and bourbon. I lusted, but what am I going to do, buy some pink salt to sprinkle on my next paper bag cheese sandwich lunch? I went downstairs to the enoteca, where they had shelves laden with magnums (magni?) of expensive-looking wine. A bit nervous around so much glass and aged vintages, I soon took my leave. But not before snapping a pic of Peck’s giant Parma ham window display.

hamity ham ham

After Peck I wandered over to the Castello Sforzeco, snapped a few pics, took a few pics for other tourists, pulled out my guidebook, and was immediately beset upon by a Senegalese vendor who tried really hard to tie a rainbow bracelet around my wrist. Unsuccessfully! You gotta get up pretty early! I ran across the plaza and finished reading my guidebook on a different bench.

I stumbled upon a food market and eyed the cheese and cured meats hungrily, but didn’t buy anything because I didn’t know how to ask for anything less than a kilo in Italian (a problem remedied that night with the help of Google. Look out markets!) Some further wandering and I came upon the site of my first gelato consumption in Italy: Le Colonne Gelateria.

fior di riso, marrons glacés

Basically, rice and chestnut flavors. A bowl of icy autumn, which pretty much described that evening in Milan.

This morning I took the train to Como, reveling in the cheaper Italian train fares. I haven’t seen great evidence myself, but Lake Como is supposed to be quite the scenic locale, a big Y-shaped lake amidst plenty of little mountains and picturesque villas. I missed seeing Minjie and her fam on their visit here just a couple weeks ago. Hopefully they got better weather than below. (Yes, I believe those are more hills in the background.)

kinda scenic? Como on a cloudy day

The upside of the crap weather is that I didn’t feel too bad deciding to stay in tonight and partake of the hostel’s multi-course, generously portioned dinner, cooked by a guy who looks way happier in the kitchen wearing a white jacket and bright blue chef’s hat than when he is sitting behind a reception desk in street clothes, slightly bored, as he is at the moment.

Oh, and what meal is complete without an 89-cent box of wine?

primo: pasta al pomodoro

secondo e contorni: cosco di pollo al forno, con patate e carote

per bere: vino da tavola rosso

So the crackle of crunchy leaves floating down around me today reminded me that fall is here — and by here I mean Nördlingen, a little medieval German town of 20,000 people, one of a few towns in Germany that is still completely surrounded by an undestroyed city wall. It is smack in the middle of Germany’s 366-km-long “Romantic Road”, a much-frequented tourist route that connects various medieval towns, castles and whatnot (in a quite commercially strategic way). Also, as I learned from Wikipedia, there is a shot of it in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

It’s a 5-hour bus ride from Munich, 7-hour train ride from Berlin, and right in the middle of a 25-km crater  (the Ries Basin) caused by a meteorite that fell here 15 million years ago. Compared to some stops on the Romantic Road, Nördlingen is not all that touristy (most signs, museums etc are in German only, as I discovered upon arrival). But as I had somewhat of a tourist overload yesterday at the Neuschwanstein castle, I didn’t mind taking a bus somewhere where I could escape hordes of other buses. And I found the town’s geological history pretty cool.

Incidentally, Nördlingen is pronounced NERD-lingen.

View of Nördlingen from the 90m-high Daniel Tower. You can see the city wall about 1/3 of the way down - and the meteorite crater wall in the far background!

With all these noble intentions, I almost spent tonight sleeping in a train station. Apparently I’ve been spoiled so far by staying in large cities or quite touristy places (such as Füssen, a town close to the Neuschwanstein castle – i.e., a relatively small place but full of helpful accommodations and information for the busloads of tourists coming in year-round). So I’m in Füssen last night checking out hostel information online for Nördlingen. Not much pops up in the searches, but I find one number and one address, jot them down. I call the number once I get back to the Füssen hostel, but get the “number not available” message. I ask the front desk if they know a different number, and the guy looks in a book, then looks online, then writes something down for me. I try calling this number, but no one picks up. It’s about 8:30 or 9pm at this point, so I chalk it up to Nördlingen being a small place, maybe they had a slow night and no one is at the desk. No worries, I tell myself: I’ll hop on a bus, get there midday tomorrow, stop at the tourist info center first thing and sort it out.

So this tactic, “I’ll just stop at the info center when I get there,” had worked in Füssen. But Füssen is a bigger, busier place, and I did talk with the Füssen hostel the morning before arrival to confirm availability. Little did I know that in Nördlingen I should have called to confirm the hostel’s existence.

The bus drops me off in Nördlingen a little after 2pm, right in front of the tourist info center. Perfect! Sadly for me, it closes before 2pm on Saturdays. (Lonely Planet actually says this. Oops.) So I harvest the small amount of English-language information, leaflets etc available from the little stand next to the locked tourist information door. I grab a map, hoping to track down the address I’ve written down for the hostel – Kaiserwiese 1. The map shows the streets within the city walls, but Kaiserwiese is vaguely indicated by a label to the north of the walls (i.e., off the map). I wander in that direction and exit the city walls via one of the many gates. From my knowledge of German acquired during a day of drinking in Munich at Oktoberfest, I have learned that “wiese” means some kind of meadow. And so as I am wandering into a large, gravelly field with some people packing up after what seems to be a large flea market, or gypsy settlement, huge backpack strapped to my back and various jackets and other bags dangling from all limbs, I am still optimistic. It’s only when the field becomes a parking lot adjacent to a supermarket that I rethink my strategy of wandering blindly in search of  meadows.

I retrace my steps to a building I spotted before the gypsy camp, which had a sign saying “Kinder” something something. Kinder has to do with children, I thought! Maybe that’s the youth hostel! Luckily there is a woman out front, and I ask her if she knows where the hostel could be. As her face scrunches with uncertainty my heart is already sinking; I see the address “Kaiserweise 1” in small letters on the sign behind her. Basically the woman says that this building used to be a youth hostel, but isn’t anymore, and she doesn’t know where the new one could be. She calls upstairs and asks Frau Berg if she knows, but no luck. I say danke and trudge back to the city center in search of a room elsewhere.

I learned (at least) four lessons during this episode:

1. Pay more attention to the Lonely Planet. They were right about the visitor center hours and I went back just now to see what they say about Nördlingen lodgings. Sure enough, they have the new address and number for the new youth hostel (which I ended up calling later this afternoon, only to find out they were booked full). I’ve seen inaccuracies in LP before, but today their information would have served me better than my optimism and vague plans.
2. Keep your laptop charged. ‘Cause mine wasn’t, and that’s where my electronic copy of LP is stored.
3. Keep your mobile charged (and actually have one). After some hemming/hawing, I bought a new mobile and SIM card in Edinburgh for “emergencies” (and then proceeded to use it mostly for texting people and making drinking plans). Today though, as I frantically used it to call every hotel/guesthouse I had a number for (all three places), it fulfilled its rightful purpose.
4. Book your bed before you get there, for God’s sake.

After a couple strikes out, I got somewhat lucky and found a room at the Hotel am Ring, a short walk outside the city walls and conveniently across from the train station where I will have to catch my 7-hour ride to Berlin tomorrow morning. It’s three times what I would have paid for a hostel bed, but I just took a luxurious shower in my own bathroom, trimmed my toenails without worrying that I was grossing anyone else out, and now am happily typing away with no shorts on.

The  pillows are plush and the thread counts are high. There is free breakfast included with the room, which I am specifically postponing my departure in order to enjoy. I’m counting on it to be somewhat better than the toast-and-cornflakes hostel fare. I had a lovely dinner tonight at the restaurant downstairs – Maultaschen, a Swabian specialty, basically sheets of pasta rolled with a mixture of meat, basil and egg, topped with fried onions and served with potato salad and fresh green salad. The English menu translation said something about “farinaceous pillows” – how can you say no to farinaceous?

Maultaschen: Farinaceously delicious.

(I had read about Maultaschen in Lonely Planet, had written it down in my notebook and had been on the lookout for it. LP 3 but Amy 1 for finding/eating it.)

But even if it is cold cuts and Nutella toast for breakfast, at least I’m not snacking on Pick Ups after a restful night sleeping on a train station bench. (Though Pick Ups really are great. Thanks for the heads up, German dude with dreads from the hostel in Copenhagen.)

10:27 train to Berlin tomorrow. Spending three nights, and you better believe my hostel is booked.

I’m pretty excited to be back in a city where I can eavesdrop on other people. Dropped my bags off at the hostel (I’m staying in a quite pleasant 10-bed room, big and airy; hope I don’t keep everyone up tonight with the cough I’ve been having; passed a newsstand on my way to get dinner tonight with a headline posted – “First ‘healthy’ Scot dies of swine flu’); did some laundry (best £2 I ever spent); stopped into a takeaway joint to get a homemade steak pie to go (it was  delicious – sorry stomach, I’ll get you some veggies soon); bought a Ribena and some cough syrup at a shop nearby, then headed back to the hostel to chow down. It feels a bit quiet tonight (Sunday evening I suppose), but I was told there’s a pub crawl starting at 10:30pm at the hostel. I need to get up around 7am tomorrow to get ready for a 5-day tour of Scotland with a company called “Haggis Adventures”. Common sense dictates that I should stay in and sleep off my cold, but this is one of only two nights that I have in Edinburgh. I must press on.

Add a pub crawl starting at 7pm, multiple pints and half-pints of Guinness, a few shots of Jameson, and the company of a fun-loving, boy-crazy blonde from Oregon who was staying with us in our hostel - Diana and I had quite the night out mingling with the locals. Let it be known that when a boy from County Mayo is drunkenly silent all night and then at some point, in the wee hours, inscrutably busts out with “oh, what’s a fella to do? ’cause her hair is black and her eyes are blue,” and repeats himself several times, it’s not that he’s getting the color of your eyes wrong. I heard the Steve Earle song for the first time on a tour bus to Wicklow a few days later. Consider me enlightened.

Diana flew back to NYC today after trotting with me around Dublin, Galway, Belfast and surrounding counties for a few days, so I am actually experiencing my first solo travel time today. It’s a bit quiet, but I’m making the most of my evening by finally updating this blog (hoping the wi-fi stays functional), nursing a half-liter can of Smithwicks (my current favorite Irish ale, sorry Mr. Guinness), and listening to a bunch of young French 20-somethings belt out  “Chasey Lain” which they have pounding out of their laptop speakers.

But without further ado: The Ireland Wrap-Up!

Day 1 (September 4)

Arrived in Dublin in the early AM after sleeping 2 hrs the night before the flight (last-minute packing), and about two hours during the overnight flight. Delta flight attendants were a bit cranky. But I caught the Star Trek movie (first time watching). Scotty’s accent makes me want to adjust itinerary to go to Scotland.

Eyes on fire due to lack of sleep. Keep glasses on all day. I go through immigration and learn the correct way to pronounce Galway (GALL-way) – whoops. Customs at Dublin Airport apparently nonexistent. I  stroll through where it should be and spot Diana. We find a place to stash our luggage for the day.

Dublin is experiencing a rare day of intermittently piercing sunshine. Cannot put on sunglasses over existing glasses, so basically am blind as we wend our way from the airport to the city center, walking south on O’Connell Street across the River Liffey to Trinity College. Get mildly lost on the way to Merrion Square and St. Stephen’s Green, which means we get some extra views of  blocks and blocks of Georgian buildings – pretty ubiquitous and uniform at first, but the colorful doors and wide windows grow on you.

old church, fancily repurposed as a Dublin tourist info center

We walk over the cobbled curves of Grafton Street, and it’s easy to picture Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová from Once among the various flower sellers and buskers there.

We have lunch at Gruel, one of Lonely Planet’s picks – kind of a soup, salad, sandwich and pizza place during lunchtime, apparently switching up their offerings daily. I had the soup & sandwich special – the daily “Roast in a Roll” – salt beef with onion jam and beetroot relish, stuffed into a whole wheat “bap”, and a bowl of French peasant soup. The sandwich was a nice mix of salty, sweet and tart, underscored by a creaminess from the fat in the beef and an earthy note in the brown bread. The soup was rich, chunky, tomatoey, peppery, and was a bit overpowering beside the subtle sandwich flavors. (The other soup option, carrot & sweet potato, may have been the way to go.)

Good fresh ingredients, but overall reminded me of a lot of sandwich places in NYC/SF/Cambridge.

soup & roast in a roll

We pass by Dublin Castle (snapping a few photos and already feeling the beginnings of castle fatigue) en route to the Guinness Storehouse, which is the #1 fee-paying tourist attraction in Ireland according to this morning’s Herald AM (900,000 annual visitors, followed by 800,000 to the Dublin Zoo and 700,000 to the Cliffs of Moher).  For 11 euro, we walk through a Guinness-worshipping museum and end the afternoon with a pint at the Galaxy Bar at the top of the storehouse, providing with an almost 360-degree view of the city.

jetlagged & dwarfed by freshly pulled pints

Walking through the exhibits I felt a bit over-propangandized (we get it, Arthur Guinness will stop at nothing to make his beer perfect, PERFECT), but the views at the bar are hard to beat.

view over Trinity College from Guinness Galaxy Bar

Knees weak from lack of sleep and a diet of mostly beer, we finish our Guinness tour and head back to the airport, collect our bags and hop on a bus to Galway…

I am a procrastinator and a Boy-Scout-esque packer (in the “always be prepared” sense only), so I was a bit nervous as the day of my flight to Dublin drew near and I had done nothing but make a lot of online travel gear purchases and think vaguely here and there about what I was going to bring or not bring.

Luckily, compared to packing up and moving six years of accumulated crap out of my apartment in New York City, packing for a couple months in Europe turned out to be a-OK.

(I got to cheat a little – although I’m traveling through next year, I’m coming back to New York in November and will re-pack a bit then, picking up the Tevas, malaria meds, 40% DEET, Immodium, Cipro etc that I’m hoping not to need in Europe. But the debate rages on about whether to bring my trusty, under-used but several-pound hiking boots.)

So I had done a bit of online searching and merging of other people’s lists, and here’s the first assemblage of what I was going to try to cram into my L.L. Bean White Mountain backpack and carry-on-sized day pack:

the spread

Surprisingly, I was able to squeeze everything in except the sleeping bag, which I decided I didn’t need anyway. I gave the fully packed bag a test-wear and my spine groaned under the massive load.

papa bag and baby bag

OK, surprisingly it actually wasn’t that bad, the big pack coming in at about 35 lbs. The backpack weighs about 5 lbs empty. Given my history of packing 12 outfits and for 4-day trips, I expected far worse. Still, I dutifully unpacked and nitpicked again through my inventory. These didn’t make it past the semi-finals.

copy of Omnivore’s Dilemma
backup pair of flip flops
1 travel lock
1 long-sleeve shirt
1 pair socks
1 pair leggings
1 dress
1 bottle makeup remover
perfume bottle

Final weight at the Delta check-in counter: 31 lbs.

Together with handbag and carry-on (which holds a netbook, water bottle, a couple of books, camera, and lots of snacks), I’m carrying about 50 lbs of belongings with me all over Europe. I hope I come back big and burly.

at Albany Airport, bags packed and ready to go

The List

1 L.L. Bean White Mountain backpack

Clothing etc.
1 North Face Pumori fleece jacket
1 Marmot Oracle waterproof jacket

3 t-shirts
6 tank tops
2 pairs jeans
1 pair capri pants
1 skirt
1 sundress
1 pair shorts
2 sweaters
4 long-sleeve tee
1 cardigan
PJs (t-shirt & shorts)
6 pairs socks
12 pairs underwear
2 bras
1 bikini
pashmina scarf

1 pair flip flops
1 pair Skechers
1 pair Nine West flats

Pillow case & sleep sack
1 quick-drying towel

Laundry
sink stopper
travel-size detergent packets
mini-clothesline
1 stain remover packet

Electronics
Dell Mini 10v netbook + charger
iPod + charger
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS1 camera + charger + extra SD card
Joby Gorillapod tripod
USB drive
International plug converter/adapter

Books
Rick Steves Scandinavia
Rough Guide to Spain
Lonely Planet Italy
Lonely Planet Latin American Spanish (I know, not going to Latin America yet)
1 non-travel book

Toiletries
Eagle Creek toiletry bag
shampoo
conditioner
shower gel
face wash
moisturizer
body lotion
toothbrush/paste
contacts & solution
razor & shave gel
eye cream
deodorant
hair brush
hair elastics
bobby pins
chapstick
hand sanitizer
face wash wipes
makeup

Rx
sunscreen
Assortment of NyQuil/DayQuil, Advil, Pepto Bismol etc.
multivitamins
10 packets Super-C

Miscellaneous
travel neck pouch
2 travel locks + cable
padlock for hostel lockers
Petzl 4-LED headlamp
travel alarm clock
mini sewing kit
mini first aid kit
cell phone (bought in Australia, will buy charger & SIM card abroad if needed)
Surf Safe case (for keeping IDs/cash at the beach. unclear if needed!)
compass
Swiss Army knife
can opener
3-in-1 plastic spoon/knife/fork
ear plugs
1 Moleskine Cahier notebook
4 packs mini Kleenex
Sigg 1L water bottle
ziploc bags – assorted sizes
two folders with assorted docs/travel info
misc office supplies (pens, pencils, paper clips, post-its, rubber bands, duct tape)

1 North Face Isabella day pack

1 Flight 001 Urban fold-up tote

airplane snacks

Two weeks exactly till departure!

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