Entry 1 (June 1, 2021)
And off we go! Well, wait! Not quite yet. But our intended departure date is one year from today: June 1, 2022, (give or take a few days, and God willing). And yes, though the blog is called “a Mimi on the Move,” because I'm a mimi and it sounds cool, I will take my husband Woody with me as we embark on a one-year global experience. Our intent: to immerse ourselves into 12 different cultures one month at a time. Please join us for the ride.
At this point, you may be asking these three questions: 1) How old are you? (Like, why should I follow two old people around the world?); 2) Are you rich? (Like, as my friend Chuck would say, MBN: Must Be Nice); and 3) Why the heck start this blog a full year before departure?
I’ll respond to questions 1 and 2 in future blogs.
To answer question 3, for me, a lot of the fun of traveling is the planning, and I want to include you on the journey. Now, I understand not everyone likes the planning, but I may actually be a bit obsessed with it. I plan conferences. I plan meals…(Well, no, not really. Nope, not at all. I do NOT plan meals, but that’s beside the point.) I DO religiously keep my day planner up to date. And I just recently found out my daughters made fun of the itineraries I created for our travels. I am a planner! Of course, the flip side of that is I’m not very spontaneous, which doesn’t always go well with international (or any kind of) travel.
That said, I’ve learned over many years of traveling adventures—especially when flying non-rev (my mom worked for the airlines) and sleeping in airports because there were no seats left on a plane—that I CAN be flexible if I must be (though tears, prayers, and gnashing of teeth are usually involved).
Okay, I digress. Back to starting this blog so early: I want this to be a two-way street. Maybe some of you have been on a similar adventure and can give us pointers on which cities to reside, what to eat and do, things to avoid, what to pack, how to rent out our house, what to do with the dog (hopefully, one of our daughters will dogsit for a year), etc. And some of you may have similar future plans, and I welcome you to follow along to glean what you can from this blog and the helpful comments I hope readers include.
We currently stand on square one...or maybe two. We chose most of our countries, though we still need to narrow down a few of them: Scotland; Emmerlev, Denmark; Norway or Estonia; Wengen, Switzerland; Portugal; Spain (because I minored in Spanish, and by golly I’m going to use it!); somewhere in Africa…maybe Madagascar; Israel (ummmmm...now I'm not so sure😔); Pokhara, Nepal; Chiang Mai, Thailand; somewhere in Australia; and Chile (to speak even more Spanish).
As you see, we still need to decide on most cities or towns or villages. I’d love to hear your suggestions and why. And if you have any contacts, send their info my way. We plan to "AirBnb it" in most places…so we’d love recommendations. Also, there are no plans (except in Denmark) to rent a car, so we need to be able to get to our living quarters via plane, train, boat, taxi, or even a chariot will do.
So, that’s it for now. There’s a lot more to say, but I’ll save it for future blogs….stay tuned the first of each month.
And welcome to our travel journey. I’m so glad you’ve jumped onboard.
Hasta luego (I do remember a little Spanish!),
Pam
PS: Forgive any glitches on this post. I'm still navigating my way around Blogger.
Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2018
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