Planes, Trains and Orthotics: A Middle-Age Woman's Guide to Travel

 We have been doing a lot of walking, hiking and laughing since arriving on the West Coast of Ireland.  We have also eaten a whole lot of soup, since January on the Emerald Isle would never be considered balmy.  I have written before about the heartiness of the Irish people and the evidence continues to mount to support that premise.  For example, there are far too Irish citizens wearing shorts for this time of the year and restaurant bathrooms continue to lack any form of heating, thus increasing the chances of frostbite for the brief time your skin is exposed when doing the business of why you came into the bathroom in the first place.   Since our arrival, the temperature highs each day have been in the low 40s, but that’s very different than what we experience on the East Coast of the United States. It’s an island so it’s always damp and almost there’s almost always a wind blowing. When we take walks, we are dressed with sweaters, winter coats, scarves, hats ...

  I wouldn’t describe the airplane trip from Newark to Dublin as “hell on earth,” but it was pretty close.  I don’t want to whine, but I am just too old to be a sardine for nearly seven hours.  Just getting out of my seat was painful on my already painful knee, due to how cramped things were.  My fellow seat mates were frequent toilet-needers, requiring me, in the aisle seat, to frequently leave my seat, much to the chagrin of my right knee.   Besides the sardine-like conditions, sleep alluded me thanks to the Olympic-like snorer sitting in front of me. I tried everything, including foolishly putting in my air-buds and listening to my Rain app.  I find this white-noise very calming and thought it would work—until I turned my head and lost my left air-bud.  The plane was pitch-black and I needed to use my phone light to try to find the missing bud.  I couldn’t find it and in my attempt to search, I needed to remove the things on my lap, including t...

 On Friday, my sister and I are again headed to Ireland. It’s been a long year and much of our time together over the last 12 months has been addressing issues regarding our aging mother and I am looking forward to spending some quality time together. This year, my sister’s friend from graduate school will be joining us and if I remember her correctly (I haven’t seen her in 20 years) she was a lot of fun.  That being said, two issues have already come up between us sisters:  1. The size of my suitcase . I wanted a new, larger suitcase because I was sick of sitting on my old, inadequate one every time I bought too much while traveling—often in the company of my sister. I frankly was sick of worrying about the zipper giving out somewhere over Newfoundland and consequently asked for and received a lovely new LARGE suitcase for my birthday. I am so excited because unless I burn up my credit card with purchases, my butt and the top of the suitcase will no longer need to make c...

 The third day of our Tuscany wedding started early.  At 9 am, we were to arrive and witness the “Kashi Yatra,” a part of the ceremony during a Hindu wedding. The story, as explained in Wikipedia, is that the groom decides to go on a pilgrimage carrying slippers, an umbrella and fans but the bride’s father tries to persuade his to stay and marry his daughter. As this was my first Hindu wedding, while all beautiful, I thought there were a lot of moving parts and it was difficult to follow, mostly because nearly all of it was in Sanskrit.  But there were some moments that need to be mentioned: 1. The bride looked beautiful in her traditional attire and the altar, with gorgeous pink and white roses and the Tuscan countryside as the backdrop, was nothing short of magnificent.  2. Bob played an impromptu role in the ceremony.  I’m not exactly sure what point of the ceremony we were at, but a member of the groom’s family was supposed to be part of the processional in ...

 The morning of the second day of Wedding Weekend started with breakfast that included salami, prosciutto and regional cheeses—not our usual morning nutritional start, but one I could get used to very easily.  We were all staying in the “Medieval Village” section of Il Borro, which included little artisan shops tucked away between the little streets and the gorgeous vistas.   But really, we had to get ready for the “Catholic wedding.” It was not a Catholic service as the officiant, our niece, had attended law school not the seminary… plus, Rome still is adverse to females running the religious show.  I think because Day 3 included the Hindu Wedding ceremony it was helpful not to confuse the two ceremonies.  It just made sense to call Saturday’s ceremony, the Catholic one.  As there were no priests attending the wedding weekend, I doubt that any of us Catholics would get in trouble—although I think Bob’s Jesuit cousin must have turned over in his grave at ou...

 A three day Indian wedding was a first for us all but to attend such a wedding in the Tuscan countryside was more than we could have imagined.  But as usual, things started with a hiccup.   We were told that there would be buses to pick us up outside the Florence bus station at 1:30 pm to bring us to the wedding venue. We had to vacate our Florentine apartment at 10 am and felt that if we arrived at the bus station early (three hours early!) we could just get coffee and read our books. But before we could get to that point, we recognized two things: There was no way we could walk to the bus pick-up location and a cab (or two) was going to be difficult because of Florence’s small cabs and our large suitcases.  Moreover, we never took into account that we would have difficulty calling a cab for two other reasons: We could not communicate with the cab companies because we didn’t speak enough Italian and every time we left our apartment to go downstairs and try to flag ...