See Me Now

If you haven’t already guessed, my next travel adventure will happen in Florence, Italy. Here’s the deal: Like many people, I’ve long had the dream of spending a month or more at a single European location; someplace where I can unpack once for the duration, where the barista in the nearby bar will soon recognize me and anticipate my order, where day trips to regional towns are easily do-able. I want to “live like a local” as the notion goes or, at least, pretend to.   But I’ve hesitated to pull the trigger, recognizing that the reality of a solo-extended stay probably falls short of the fantasy. I’m comfortable enough maneuvering on my own, but I figure I’d get lonely and feel isolated.   Although my hubs has become a good sport about active (cycling) vacations in recent years, a month or more in a tourist-filled town in an apartment without ready access to ice is definitely not his thing. I wouldn’t put him through it. However, even he has warned me lately that if I do...

               I’ve been revisiting the most recent series on this travel blog and even I find them boring. I suppose it’s partly because I’ve gravitated to guided tours and cycling trips, which can be great, but which leave little room for solo exploration. Also, chronicling bike routes and food stops is hardly relatable for most readers and could easily be done on Facebook. Why not just do that? I’ve had to ask.                 Well, it’s because I enjoy engaging more deeply, even though we’re in an era of short-attention-spans (me included).   I’ve come to realize, however, that I haven’t been putting in the effort. It seems I’ve lost my blogging mojo and to get it back, I’ve had to re-think why I started in the first place. ~~~~ When I began traveling, it was a lot harder. The world was barely online and there were no handy web-forms for making lodging or ai...

I started this blog back in 2009 after blogging had become mainstream but not yet replaced with social networks and YouTube. I chose Blogger as my platform because, to be honest, it was free. But I quickly came to appreciate its simplicity as well. It’s pretty easy to create posts with all the basics: text, photos, links. And it’s intuitive, so I haven’t had to “re-learn” how to use it after months of dormancy between trips.   More recently, though, I’ve noticed glitches in uploading and formatting. I got the drift that maybe Google is trying to phase out free Blogger by letting go of platform updates and maintenance.   I’ve been exploring whether I should migrate the whole thing to another platform. Certainly, there are many others out there with fancier templates and features.   But, long story short, nothing I’ve tinkered with seems as straightforward and those Blogger glitches haven’t recently re-appeared. Also, I’ve learned that my current blog is too big (old) t...