I launched a new site a few days ago to combine my passions for running and travel. It’s called The Runner’s Trip, and the tagline is Run Long, Travel Far, Discover More. The first post and about page describe its mission. In many ways it’s an outgrowth of this blog and my first running blog. I’m mothballing Away Together and encouraging readers here to subscribe to the new one.

I greatly appreciate all who followed our family travel blog and shared their comments on our posts. I look forward to traveling more with my family and blogging about the destinations on The Runner’s Trip.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this. I hope you find the new blog inspiring, motivating, informative, and entertaining.

Related posts:

1. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash
2. Happy Campers Touring North NZ by RV
3. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary

Our Curry Village tent cabin

I was carrying my bag into Yosemite’s Curry Village, about to check into a canvas-sided, one-room shack that’s a hybrid of a tent and a cabin, when suddenly I came within an inch of stepping in one of the biggest piles of poop I’ve ever seen.

I know dog doo, cat scat, cow pies, horse manure, deer droppings, feral pig dung and, of course, human feces, and I knew this cake-sized coiled turd was none of the above. Barely disguised with dust, and resting a mere 10 feet or so from our door, it looked frightfully fresh, thick, dark, and flecked with something nutty and grainy — a hapless hiker’s granola bar, perhaps?

“A bear did that!” I said out loud to no one in particular. Then I found Morgan to show him, and we in turn showed it to a man we had just met in the neighboring tent cabin.

“I’m not surprised,” the man said. “You should see the patch job on my cabin,” and he held up his hand and mimed a menacing scratching motion while describing a large ursine claw mark still visible underneath a patch on his unit’s flimsy excuse for a wall.

“Well,” I said to Morgan, “We’re not in The Ahwahnee anymore.”

Once upon a time, when we were newlyweds and my in-laws occasionally traveled with us and very generously picked up the tab, I discovered Yosemite while staying with them at the national park’s historic and top-rated Ahwahnee Hotel. We would gather for drinks in the Great Lounge (every public room at The Ahwahnee is so special that each has its Own Name), and we’d marvel at the stone fireplaces that are tall enough to stand in, at the Native American designs stenciled on the beams, and at the floor-to-ceiling windows that showcase the valley’s 3000-foot-high granite cliffs, which are streaked black with lichens and white with waterfalls.

Morgan took this shot of The Ahwahnee in 2004, the last time we stayed there.

I fell in love with Yosemite Valley then, and also with The Ahwahnee. Built in 1927, it remains one of my favorite hotels in the world — a magnificent example of understated luxury that fits in beautifully with the natural environment.

There’s only one problem with The Ahwahnee: a standard room, which is quite cramped for a family of four, goes for $443 a night. The nicer rooms range from $500 – $1000+.

When Morgan and I decided to spend almost a full week in Yosemite without our kids (who were at a wonderful sleep-away camp), there was no question that The Ahwahnee was beyond our budget, and we didn’t really want to stay there anyway. We planned to spend entire days running and hiking, so a fancy room would feel like a waste and the dinnertime dress code a burden. We wanted to stay somewhere cheap and rustic, but not do full-fledged camping, since we also wanted a hot shower and a safe place to secure our things during the day while out on the trail.

Thankfully, less than a mile away on the east end of the valley, lies Curry Village, a sprawling, dusty collection of some 500 barracks-style canvas cabins. We had never spent time in Curry Village in spite of visiting Yosemite Valley numerous times over the past two decades. I wrongly assumed it didn’t have much to offer beyond low-cost lodging that looked, during the crowded peak season, like a happier version of a refugee camp.

A typical row of Curry Village tent cabins.

Did I end up liking it? As my dad always used to say rhetorically to indicate the obvious affirmative, “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

We rented an unheated, 8′x10′ cabin for four nights. Our cabin could sleep three, but others accommodate up to five (extra guests are $10 each). And what did we get for the summertime rate of $109 per night?

Inside our tent cabin.

Two cots — one double, one single — with sheets and Army Surplus-style wool blankets, a couple of well-worn towels, a metal shelf equipped with a safe, a single bare compact florescent bulb hanging from the ceiling, one chair, a padlock on the squeaky door, and a bear-proof storage locker outside. That’s it — no plumbing except in the communal bathrooms and dining area, and no outlets except in the public lounge. But it was comfortable, cozy, and we found the communal areas to be a great place to hang out each day after we finished long runs and hikes to three of Yosemite’s summits. (For a guide to recommended runs/hikes in the area, see my running blog.)

A cafeteria, taqueria, pizza and burger place, store, lounge and amphitheater are clustered in the village core, housed in buildings little changed since they were built in the early 1900s. In August, the village is packed with a diverse mix of people dominated by college-age backpackers from around the world and families with kids who zoom around on bikes or splash in the public pool. The mix makes Curry Village feel like a cross between a youth hostel and a family camp. It somehow manages to maintain a laid-back vibe in spite of peak-season crowding that makes finding a free table on the dining patio as challenging as climbing the cables to the summit of Half Dome.

Hanging around the Curry Village lounge.

No matter, you can eat in your lap while sitting in a rocker on the veranda of the shingled lounge, which is decorated with black-and-white photos depicting the village’s early days when the founders, David and Jenny Curry, managed it.

The Currys were part of the first wave of tourists to explore Yosemite in the 1890s, drawn to the extreme beauty of the wilderness that was depicted in articles by John Muir. But the couple balked at the $100 stage fare and couldn’t afford $4 per night for a hotel, so they established Camp Curry in 1899 to provide affordable lodging for Yosemite visitors. It was no-frills but high in spirits, with a dance hall, lounge and pool. It remains that way today. Park guides stage energetic shows for wide-eyed kids on the amphitheater stage, re-enacting Teddy Roosevelt or, more bizarrely, a slow-moving glacier, while across the way at the dining area, beer flows into pitchers and ice cream is scooped into cups all afternoon long. Squirrels run underfoot while placid deer munch on bushes along the walkways, almost as tame as lazy dogs.

Comparing The Ahwahnee to Curry Village is like comparing apples to oranges, or a giant sequoia to a lowly oak, but if I had the choice to stay at one or the other regardless of cost, I might actually pick Curry Village. Unlike a resort that encourages visitors to lie around and be pampered, the tent cabins — noisy and chilly enough to feel like a real campground — prompted us to wake up early, get outside and hit the trail. The communal areas bring strangers together for conversation. And the deer, squirrels and bear poop (which was never removed during our time there) remind us that we’re really in the woods, barely insulated from nature, and isn’t that the reason to go to Yosemite?

If you go: Make reservations at least six months in advance, and pack these not-so-obvious things:

• a padlock to secure belongings in the bear-proof storage locker
• earplugs to block the sound of other residents talking, laughing and snoring at night
• rubber flip-flops to wear in the public showers
• towels to supplement the small ones provided
• sleeping bags for extra warmth at night
• groceries and a cooler, to be kept in the bear-proof locker. Groceries from the village store are quite expensive, so it’s better to stock up on snacks and drinks ahead of time, and buy ice from the store to cool drinks. No cooking is allowed — not even camp stoves to heat water — but you can get free hot water from the village coffee bar, which is useful for making instant oatmeal for breakfast. Dining options are relatively affordable in Curry Village and pricier at around Yosemite Village.

Hit the trail for views like this of Sentinel Rock (on the left) and El Capitan (on the right) cleaved by Yosemite Valley.

Related posts:

1. Welcome to Patagonia, Where Paradise Packs a Punch
2. 36 Hours in Telluride, CO
3. So Long, Sedona and SoCal

Morgan, Colly, Kyle and I each sat down and wrote letters reflecting on the experience, showed them to no one else at the time, sealed them up, and then opened and read them out loud over dinner in June on our last night before driving home. Now, the letters sit on my desk as reminders of what the round-the-world trip was all about. Today, for a couple of different reasons, I re-read them to reflect on how the 10-month trip affected us individually and as a family.

One reason is the snarky backlash, prompted by the film release of Eat, Pray, Love, to long-term travel for the sake of change, education and self-reflection. (I haven’t seen the film and don’t really want to since I liked the book and hear the film adaptation doesn’t do Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing justice.) As a Salon.com critic dismissively puts it in an article about “The New Colonialism of ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’” the new breed of travelers “want to spend a year in a faraway place on a ‘journey.’ But the journey is all about what they can get. … I don’t want to deny [Elizabeth Gilbert] her Italian carbs, her Indian oms or her Bali Hai beach romance. We all need that sabbatical from the rut of our lives. But as her character complained that she had ‘no passion, no spark, no faith’ and needed to go away for one year, I couldn’t help wondering, where do those people in Indonesia and India go away to when they lose their passion, spark and faith?”

Okay, that’s a fair enough question to ask, but I object to the idea that families taking long-term trips similar to ours, and living a significantly different lifestyle in the process, are doing it because it’s “all about what they can get.” Our motivation was much more, “What can we give up?,” “What can we learn and teach our kids?” and “How can we better connect with each other and with others?” It was, to a great extent, about thinking and acting more openly, more mindfully and less materialistically so that we have a better chance of functioning well as a family, and of raising kids with a socially responsible world view and a heightened appreciation for our privileged lives back home.

The other reason I reviewed our time-capsule letters is because tomorrow, August 15, marks the anniversary of our departure. Having just returned from a shorter trip, we are taking a deep breath to get back to school and back to productivity, all the while trying not to lose the lessons gained from the journey.

So the year away is really over. Was it worth it? (Yes.) Where do we go from here? (Still figuring that out.) Those letters provide additional clues and details. I decided to excerpt some short passages here to highlight some aspects of long-term family travel.

Colly in Malcesine, Italy

From Colly, age 11 at the time, on what the trip is all about and how it has affected our family:

“Some of the words people might think of when they think of this trip are ‘fun,’ or ‘cool,’ or ‘relaxing.’ To me, those words suck. As Mom and Dad would say, those are dull words that don’t describe a tenth of what’s going on. I don’t think there’s a single word that can even start to describe our trip! But, if I had to sum up our trip all in one word, I think that word would be ‘trying.’ We are trying new foods, we are trying new places, every day we are trying new things, and those things don’t always work out but at least we’re trying. Our trip has changed all of us so much. I am reading way more than I would in Piedmont, we all need less stuff, and, well, Kyle is still in love with ice cream. I think that this trip has without a doubt made us more of a family. We are definitely closer than we’ve ever been before. All in all, I am tremendously grateful that this trip is happening and I do not regret it at all.”

Morgan near Karamea, New Zealand

From Morgan, age 43, on whether this trip represented a “midlife crisis”:

“I bristle at the term ‘midlife crisis’ for the connotations of a somewhat selfish and sad desire to recapture a moment of youth. The term ‘midlife opportunity’ is a much better term. There are many opportunities in life that people never take, and can spend the rest of their life agonizing over whether they should have. They key to the midlife opportunity is recognizing that such opportunities actually do exist, and having the guts to make the wrenching changes necessary to seize them. Taking this trip was seizing hold of an opportunity to do something different with the remainder of my life. Now, with half the trip behind me, the question becomes: was it worth it? The answer is an unequivocal yes. It has taken me five months to slowly unwind the feelings that I have about what I left, and to get excited about a different future. The process of travel itself has allowed me to slowly change my focus from the past to the future. Travel forces ‘the new’ upon you on a daily and moment-to-moment basis. Trying to figure out how to order in Spanish, or work a foreign ATM or get a phone card in another country, or figure out what’s on the menu, all combine to make change a constant in your life — and a pleasure. Rather than fearing change, I’ve come to live with it on a daily basis involving all the small things in life. This trip for me has been much less about any particular place or thing, but more about the process. I hope the remainder of this trip continues the process of future-thinking that has started to take hold.”

The kids and me about to board a bus for a 17-hour ride to Mendoza, Argentina

From me, age 40 at the time, looking ahead to our return:

“When I reflect on our five-and-a-half months of travel, one thing that hits me is how much I love spending time together as a foursome. I thought I might yearn for more time alone, but the opposite happened: I’m happiest when we’re together, in a small space, such as the car or hotel room. My main hope pertains to this summer and beyond: that we don’t lose the closeness — the bond — we’ve strengthened during this journey; that we don’t lose the ability to be flexible and free-thinking; that we don’t get stuck in a rut and become more materialistic.”

Kyle on the Colorado River

And from Kyle, age 8 at the time, on the joy of discovery through travel:

“I have been to many places and a lot to come. It feels a long time from rafting [in Colorado at the start of the trip], but I still remember it because it was so fun. I also loved the dulche de leche from Argentina, and I really liked Patagonia with all the dogs. And luging [in New Zealand] was so fun and fast. I hope we get to Australia safe. I really hope I discover new ice cream flavors. This trip was fantastic so far and I’m excited for new things to come.”

A week ago, an article in the Sunday New York Times called “But Will It Make You Happy? Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness” did a much better job, in my view, of portraying the meaning of long-term travel than the critical response to the film Eat, Pray, Love. The Times story detailed new research supporting the not-too-common common-sense wisdom that happiness comes less from acquiring material possessions and more from meaningful experiences, such as travel, and from cultivating positive relationships. Amen to that. I’d much rather spend disposable income on family day trips and saving for travel than on replacing our faded sofas and buying new clothes.

According to the Eat, Pray, Love critics, we’re guilty of taking a journey to discover happiness. We got rich from experiences, knowledge and relationships. I’m not sure that makes us selfish and self-centered, but it certainly makes us feel lucky and grateful.

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary
3. Happy New Year and New Blog

I wanted to hear their breathing and feel their closeness one more night before everything changed back to our non-traveling life — before the movers came and filled our house with so much of the furniture and boxes of stuff that I now feel ambivalent about owning, and before my kids moved back into their own rooms and we all established our separate domains in this house that feels too big and fancy. I wanted to curl up in my sleeping bag and fantasize we were camping the way we did on the banks of the Colorado River or on the beach of New Zealand’s Abel Tasman Park.

Everyone has been asking how it feels to return home. The short answer is: weird, and tiring! I haven’t felt this conflicted and unsettled since … well, since we pulled out of our driveway to start the trip on August 15, 2009.

The penultimate stop: We drove through Yosemite on our last day and arrived home about four hours later.

At first, we were giddy with anticipation while driving back from the Eastern Sierra and seeing familiar landmarks that meant we were getting closer to home. Kyle even pointed to a freeway barrier and exclaimed, “I remember that wall!” We collectively felt the poignancy and optimism of starting a new chapter in life as Morgan heads down a different career path, I start some new projects, and the kids fix up their rooms and gear up for school.

Finally we reached our freeway exit and drove the final mile. The kids literally were shrieking with excitement and I held my breath as we braked to turn left onto our street, knowing our house would come into view and signal that we really had made it back, the round-the-world odyssey really was over. How would it look? How would I feel?

And then we made the turn, and what I saw caught me by surprise and deflated the moment in the most fitting and funny way. There at the edge of our driveway, like a monument or middle finger, stood a big ol’ porta-potty for use by workers at our neighbor’s house. How perfect: a harbinger of all the crap — of all the moving boxes, bags of mail, health insurance headaches and wood rot in the windowsills — waiting for us once we started to unload and settle in. I had to laugh.

This all happened three weeks ago. It has taken me this long to start to get my head around the transition and to return to this abandoned child of a blog.

We arrived on the Summer Solstice, when everyone was taking off for summer vacation. By contrast, we’d experienced summer all year long, having been in the Southern Hemisphere October through February, and it felt to me as though summer should be ending and we should get back to productivity. My daughter, let down by the realization that many of her friends had left town just as she was returning, unknowingly expressed my mood by what she wore her first full day back: she dressed all in black and donned an absurd Santa hat she found in a moving box, and she glumly hobbled around on crutches, having dislocated her knee the prior week, like a bird with newly clipped wings.

It felt so odd and slightly stressful to move our furniture back and confront the detritus of our past lives — the boxes and boxes of clothing and memorabilia I had forgotten about. I don’t need this I said to myself repeatedly — I don’t need the uncomfortable dress shoes I bought for a job I no longer have, the boring coffeetable books I displayed but never looked at, the 12 extra tea cups I saved for brunches I never hosted, the dusty picnic basket I put on top of the fridge for decoration even though we never made time for picnics — so I started a give-away pile that continues to grow.

And all those linens for our one bed — Morgan and I shook our heads as we unpacked giant boxes filled with the down pillow-top mattress cover, the thick damask duvet and the nine pillows. What bed needs nine pillows? We added the down pillow-top cover to the give-away pile because we’ve grown accustomed to futon-style thinner bedding while traveling, but we spread out and tucked in those expensive sheets and stacked all those velvet pillows in their place. Then Morgan put his hands on his hips, stuck out his chest and theatrically proclaimed, “I feel like a little prince!” which gave me another fit of crazy crying-laughter because this bed — this epitome of our union in comfort and luxury — no longer seemed like a cozy fit. But how long could I justify sleeping in my sleeping bag?

Everything in the house seemed to grow while we were away because our sense of size had shrunk; my bureau dresser, for example. It’s about 4 feet tall, with three columns of drawers in ornately carved mahogany. I began unpacking my things into the drawers on the right-side column because that’s what Morgan and I did whenever we’d unpack in a rental — I’d take the drawers on the right and leave him the left — and as I tried to remember how we divided the drawers in the middle column, I had a going-down-the-rabbit-hole moment of jumbled perception and jarred memory when I belatedly realized that Morgan in fact has his very own dressing area in the adjacent room with his own drawers, and this entire bureau is mine to use. I had totally forgotten this fact of how we used to live. I’m supposed to use this all myself? Why do I need all these drawers? Does this mean I can’t share space with Morgan anymore? I don’t want to unpack here, I never liked these frou-frou brass handles … all those hyper doubts and complaints sped through my mind as I unpacked two pairs of jeans and left the lower drawers empty. Only the drawer for running clothes had enough to fill it.

I was unpacking the clothes from two giant suitcases we used for storage — massive suitcases with wheeled bottoms that we bought long ago, before we realized the benefits of smaller, non-wheeled luggage. “I can’t believe we ever used to travel with those,” Morgan said. And then he looked at the one wheeled suitcase that we had taken on our trip, which was sitting near the bigger ones from storage — the black suitcase we used as a communal school supply and gear bag, which we derisively nicknamed “The Tick” because it looked so bloated and would stick to us when we wanted to get rid of it. Around the world we complained about The Tick, since it seemed so heavy and unwieldy compared to our lightweight clothing packs.

The one regular suitcase we traveled with in addition to our packs, aka "The Tick," flanked by the larger suitcases we used to use.

“Oh my god, did The Tick shrink?” Morgan asked. Indeed, it seemed like it had shrunk when we placed it next to the suitcases we used to use. Travel, I realized, truly had changed our perception of size and necessity. All my negative feelings toward this scuffed-up, black-sheep suitcase that we had lugged around the world melted into feelings of fondness and the realization that it symbolized our simpler-living, road-schooling nomadic life. I declared with sappy emotion, “I love The Tick! I want to keep it forever.”

In addition to moving back in, we faced the reality of literally plugging back in; that is, of re-establishing accounts with service providers such as electrical, trash, phone and cable that all generate bills from which we had been liberated. I cringe daily at the sound of the mailman on our porch delivering junk mail and bills.

We got a new SIM card for Morgan’s cell phone (the old one being leftover from Europe) and for over a week we shared that one phone, since I didn’t want to deal with setting up a land line and didn’t really want my own cell phone. I had this reclusive feeling of not wanting to hear a phone ring and not wanting anyone to contact me — not yet, anyway. The funny thing was, the new SIM card came with a number still registered with someone else’s name, someone named “Dorothy Bean,” which the phone company can’t seem to clear up, so all our outgoing calls show up on caller ID that way. I sort of like the element of disguise. Now I can call Morgan “Mr. Bean” and remember all the times he acted like the bumbling Brit on our travels by circling repeatedly around round-abouts while we hastily determined which exit to take.

I’m afraid I’m coming off like a complainer, and I’d like to say “yes!” when people ask, “Is it good to be back?” In many ways it is good, especially from the kids’ perspectives, since they’re happy to reconnect with friends and walk freely around their familiar neighborhood. And what a gorgeous neighborhood it is. I have renewed appreciation for how lovely these landscaped gardens and well-maintained homes are, having unpacked in so many modest abodes in areas with crumbling infrastructure. And some of the unpacking and settling back in has brought genuine joy. I was happy to  unpack my kitchen tools and restock our pantry, for example, since I’m eager to cook recipes we haven’t tasted in a year.

Reconnecting with friends and neighbors has been the best part of this transition. Several families invited us to their homes for dinners, coaxed us to return to our annual tradition of building a 4th of July parade float, and paid us the ultimate compliments when they said we seemed more mellow and happy. Then, one week after our return, seven extended family members came to stay under our roof for several days, delightfully filling up this house and making it feel more like a home again.

Morgan used our moving boxes to take the lead on building the annual neighborhood float ...

... while I worked with my sister-in-law and Colly (she's in a Wilma Flintstone costume) to put finishing touches on it.

Morgan and two neighbors show off the end result: a Flintstone-themed parade entry for the 4th of July. This is the kind of community fun we missed while traveling, and which eases the transition back home.

Round-the-world travel gave us so much, and yet we missed the connection with local community and extended family. But it still feels weird to be back, and oh how I miss discovering new places, people and perspectives through far-flung travel. I’m trying hard not to lose touch with the positive ways that travel changed our behavior and awareness. I really don’t want to stir up the manic, multitasking, materialistic, controlling, bitchy and provincial parts of my personality that long-term travel helped me tame, nor do I want our stronger family bond to weaken.

I’ll try to write about the challenge of “maintaining change” (that’s not an oxymoron, is it? I hope not) in a separate post. For now, I’m happy to report we haven’t lost that awareness or closeness, and we’re really trying to live differently than we did before the trip — though I admit, that bed and all those pillows feel pretty darn comfortable.

Related posts:

1. “Back to School” Becomes “Leave to Learn”
2. The Sappy Departure
3. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash

As we stood ordering bagels, we suddenly remembered we had eaten lunch at the same Noah’s on the day before we flew to Buenos Aires in early October. “I feels like we were just here,” Colly said, and I agreed while my chest hiccuped with anxiety.

It felt as though all those months abroad — which had stretched so elastically and netted so much in a single week, so that on the first of every month I’d express disbelief at how much we had experienced — had snapped back and condensed into a blip to make mental space for the task of reorganizing our lives and getting ready to move back into the house.

Checking out of a hotel in Marlow, England, on our last morning before flying back to California.

I’m feeling profoundly mixed emotions upon our return and need to think more about the transition before trying to write much about it. I got weepy on our last night in Marlow, a lovely town outside of London, as we checked out of a hotel a final time and toasted our trip; then, I got teary with joy as we approached my hometown of Ojai last weekend for a reunion. I also am in the process of thinking through the next phase of this blog, so stay tuned and thanks to all of you who’ve read it regularly!

In the meantime, I’m publishing the following list as proof and as a reminder to myself that we really went to all of these places. We called this our “sleepover list” and had fun updating it as we traveled. Most are linked to previous blog posts if we wrote about that destination. Three places are listed twice since we visited there twice, so the number of places totals 83, but the bottom line is that we moved and unpacked 86 times!

The Sleepover List: August 15, 2009 – June 15, 2010:

1. Claremont hotel, Oakland (slept there the night before we left since our house was all packed up)
2. Holiday Inn Express, Fallon, Nevada
3. Days Inn, Delta, Utah
4. My brother and sister-in-law’s cabin on Last Dollar Road in Telluride, Colorado
5. Colorado River campsite during rafting trip
6. Holiday Inn Express, Moab
7. Mountain Village condo near Telluride
8. Mesa Verde National Park motel, Colorado
9. Double Tree Hotel, Durango, Colorado
10. Pearl Street rental home in Boulder, Colorado
11. Quality Inn near Black Canyon National Park, Gunnison, Colorado
12. Telluride family cabin again
13. Red Feather Inn near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizona (what a dump!)
14. El Portal Hotel, Sedona, Arizona
15. Holiday Inn Express on Route 66, Barstow, California
16. Morgan’s parents’ house in Pacific Palisades, California
17. Casa Ojai Best Western, Ojai, California
18. Embassy Suites near LAX
19. Recoleta apartment, Buenos Aires, Argentina
20. Llao Llao hotel, near Bariloche, Argentina
21. Cabaña at Villa Huinid, Bariloche, Argentina
22. Guardianes del Bayo, Villa La Angosturo, Argentina (aka the place with all the gnomes)
23. La Comarca Suites de Montaña hotel next to the gnome cabaña,Villa La Angosturo, Argentina
24. Overnight on the bus to Mendoza (this link is to Colly’s great blog post about the experience)
25. Casa Glebinias, Chacras de Coria (near Mendoza), Argentina
26. Meridiano Sur hotel, Santiago, Chile
27. Quay West apartment, Auckland, New Zealand
28. First night RV: Waiwera Holiday Park, North Island
29. Second night RV: Beachside Holiday Park near Paihia in the Bay of Islands, North Island
30. Third night RV: Kerikeri Top 10 Holiday Park, Kerikeri, Bay of Islands, North Island
31. Fourth night RV: Kauri Coast Top 10 Holiday Park near Dargaville, North Island
32. Last night RV: Orewa Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, Orewa, North Island
33. Cabin at Blue Lake Top 10 Holiday Park, Rotorua, North Island
34. Van der Boom’s house, Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty, North Island
35. Great Lake Motel, Taupo, North Island
36. Holiday Inn, Wellington, North Island
37. Cabin at Harris Hill farm, Nelson, South Island, New Zealand
38. First night campground in Abel Tasman National Park, South Island
39. Second night campground in Abel Tasman National Park, South Island
40. The Barn backpackers’ lodge, Marahau, South Island
41. Abel Tasman Marahau Lodge, Marahau, South Island
42. Chelsea Gateway Motor Lodge, Westport, West Coast of South Island
43. Karamea Last Resort, Karamea, West Coast of South Island
44. Charming Creek B&B, Ngakawau, West Coast of South Island
45. The one and only Blackball Hilton, Blackball, West Coast of South Island
46. Greymouth Gables Inn, Greymouth, West Coast of South Island
47. Flock Hill Lodge along Arthur’s Pass, South Island
48. Kirkpatricks’ guest house, Queenstown, South Island
49. Meriton apartment, Sydney, Australia
50. Jemby Rinjah Eco Lodge in Blackheath by the Blue Mountains, Australia
51. Albury Country Comfort Motel, Albury, New South Wales
52. Jubilee Lake Holiday Park, Daylesford, Victoria
53. Anchor Belle Caravan Park, Phillip Island, Victoria
54. Apartment at 1 Esplanade, Lakes Entrance, Victoria
55. Cabin at Batemans Bay Big4 Holiday Park, Batemans Bay, New South Wales
56. United States Embassy, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
57. Apartment at Clifton Suites, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
58. IBIS airport hotel, Sydney (what a dump!)
59. Kowloon Shangri-La hotel, Hong Kong
60. Oakley Court Hotel, Windsor, England (barely 14 hours between flights)
61. Apartment in the Barri Gotic quarter, Barcelona, Spain
62. Aiguaclara Hotel in Begur, Costa Brava, Spain
63. Renaissance airport hotel, Barcelona
64. Apartment in Rome, Italy
65. Apartment in Venice, Italy
66. Albergo il Focolare, Treviso, Italy
67. Hotel Du Lac on Lake Garda, Malcesine, Italy
68. Apartment in Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy
69. One night in the awful hotel-that-shall-remain-nameless, Florence, Italy
70. Hotel Loggiato Dei Serviti, Florence, Italy
71. Hotel Hermitage, Prato, Italy
72. Hotel Campione near Lugano, Switzerland
73. Hotel Cascada, Lucerne, Switzerland
74. Hotel Splendid, Interlaken, Switzerland
75. Apartment on Lake Geneva, Montreux, Switzerland
76. Hotel Perren, Zermatt, Switzerland
77. Hilton Garden Inn, Bologna, Italy
78. Hilton Airport Hotel, Rome, Italy
79. Marriott Grosvenor Square, London, England
80. Oakley Court Hotel, Windsor, England
81. The Grand Hotel, Brighton, England
82. Silverdale B&B, Seaford, England
83. The Compleat Angler, Marlow, England
84. Morgan’s parents’ house, Pacific Palisades, California
85. Lower School dorm at The Thacher School, Ojai, California
86. Morgan’s parents’ condo in Mammoth Lakes, California

That’s it! Next stop, on June 20, home in Piedmont, California!

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. Playing Around Rotorua
3. Two Months To Go

Colly does the bungee jump trampoline against the backdrop of the Brighton Pier.

Like cotton candy, Brighton is a brightly colored swirl of sweet temptation that’s tantalizing to taste but leaves you sticky and queasy.

We went there for a couple of days for the same reason we make an annual pilgrimage to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk or Santa Monica Pier — because rickety amusement rides on the beach are guaranteed family fun — and we did indeed love to watch the kids on the spinning rides.

On the pier, the world travelers became hurled travelers.

But, good grief, I haven’t seen so many drunk, swearing, sweaty and scantily clad young adults since the time we spent New Year’s Eve on the Las Vegas Strip. Brighton certainly lives up to its party-hearty reputation.

At least it has cleaned up its reputation for seediness. (I don’t mean to sound like such a schoolmarm, but having my kids see a guy puke on his shoes and hear fights erupt in the middle of the night outside our window makes me wary of the place.) The businesses around the central pedestrian area known as The Lanes are cute and well kept. We also enjoyed the park around the Royal Pavilion, a palace built in the early 1800s in a wild style known as Indo-Gothic.

A detail from Brighton's Royal Pavilion, with architecture influenced by the empire's colonialism in India.

So here’s my main tip for families traveling to Brighton and anyone else seeking to cure the beach mecca’s hangover: leave after a day or two, and go explore the quaint Sussex towns of Seaford and Alfriston a half-hour east.

We went to Seaford for the sake of a half-marathon trail race in an area known as the South Downs. Hiking trails crisscross bucolic sheep pastures, connecting a valley formed by the River Cuckmere with the white chalk cliffs overlooking the sea. One segment of the unspoiled coastal cliffs, a series of vertical formations called The Seven Sisters, is part of a large regional park. It’s gorgeous!

On the edge of the South Downs cliffs and shore, running toward the finish of the half marathon.

We checked into a sweet, pet-friendly B&B on Saturday called The Silverdale and ate at a quality family-run Italian restaurant called Diella’s, where the owner clued us in on the coolest little zoo in England, on a quiet country road outside of Seaford: Drusillas Park. Then we walked to the start line of the race on Sunday morning and joined over 500 other runners for a hilly 13 miles. I’ve slowed down quite a bit since I’ve been substituting pub crawls for track workouts, but I still ran my bum off, helped along by the scenery and swift competition of the Seaford Striders.

Runners head for the hills around Mile 2 in the race.

It was the eighth and final running event on our journey, and during the 1 hour and 48 minutes I was on the course, I reflected on the places we traveled for the sake of participating in an event: from the Imogene Pass Run in Southwestern Colorado, to the Buenos Aires Marathon and Patagonia trail marathon in Argentina, to the Croesus Crossing in West New Zealand and Dirt Fest triathlon near Melbourne, to the 10K outside of Venice and the 40K in Tuscany, and finally to here. One piece of travel advice I like to repeat (and wrote about on my other blog) is to design an itinerary around a hobby, be it art history or hiking or whatever. Our passion for running turned out to be a wonderful travel guide, leading us to lesser-known destinations and connecting us with locals in a way that typical travel planning rarely does.

My favorite kind of date: running a race in a new place together.

The race course crossed the main street of Alfriston, a storybook village full of centuries-old Tudor inns.

On the main street of Alfriston, an idyllic and historic town. The half-marathon course crossed this block.

We took the kids there in the afternoon, on our way to Drusillas zoo, and had lunch at a pub that now ranks as one of my favorites in England: The George Inn, established in 1397. As we walked by the bar under a low-slung ceiling, I paused to study the blackened brick fireplace and gnarled wood beams and imagined what it must have been like to gather there in Elizabethan times. Then we took a table in the garden, and I indulged in my favorite British drink: a snakebite (hard cider mixed with ale).

Drinking and dining outside The George Inn.

From there we spent a few hours at Drusillas, which is worth a day trip for any families traveling around this region. The zoo specializes in smaller animals such as tamarins, lemurs and meerkats, with lots of hands-on educational exhibits.

A baby tamarin catching a ride from its parents at Drusillas.

It also has a sprawling play area with all the super fun play structures we don’t have in the States because they’re deemed too risky; e.g., spinning table-top merry-go-rounds without railings and circular treadmills that work like a hamster wheel.

Speaking of spinning, that’s what my head is doing after running around Brighton and its back roads, and transitioning through so many places in such a short time with too many stomach-lurching round-abouts along the way. I’ve described only a fraction of the sights seen and things done in our final week abroad. Suffice to say we’re feeling pooped and resigned to flying back to California in less than 48 hours, with very mixed feelings about ending our time abroad but nonetheless ready to re-establish some routines back home.

But I’m so glad we ended our time in England down here, on the edge of the cliffs and winding around country roads that distill what we love about England.

A quiet Sussex back road.

Related posts:

1. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
2. Snapshots of Venezia and Treviso
3. Some Days Are Like That, Even In Switzerland

After 10 months of family travel, I don’t have a comprehensive packing list to share (here’s a good one for starters if that’s what you’re looking for), but I can detail some of the gear and clothing we found indispensable. A lot of essential items seem obvious, so I left them off this list; e.g., our Mac laptops, photography equipment, running shoes, and the iPhone to which we’re truly addicted. (We had the iPhone unlocked and replaced the SIM card in every country to get a local phone number and GPS, which is a pain but doable — and worth it.) Instead, I listed personal favorites that travelers might not think to pack.

I also listed useful supplies for “roadschooling,” and finally a few items we could have left at home — things we brought because we thought we should, but it turned out we didn’t need them.

For families heading off for long summer trips or sabbaticals, I hope this helps make your packing job easier. For those of you who’ve traveled for long stretches of time, please add your tips on what or what not to pack in the comments below.

Can’t Imagine Traveling Round the World Without These:

Colly and me catching a train to Venice with our Osprey Porter packs on back and our daypacks (with laptop holders built in) on front.

Osprey Porter Packs: After months of having this luggage virtually grafted to our sides, it’s hard to imagine life without our Osprey convertible packs. They held up great — no busted zippers or other malfunctions — and we found them comfortable and well-designed. I loved being able to pull out the straps and carry mine on my back when need be; then I’d tuck the straps back in to make it more of a duffel bag when checking it on board. Morgan and I each got the Osprey Porter 90and for Colly we got the smaller Porter 65. For Kyle, we went with a rolling convertible backpack, the Osprey Sojourn 22.Note: I am a firm believer in not using suitcases with wheels, since the wheel frame adds significant weight and you end up having to pick the bag up frequently to carry up stairs anyway. (The very useful site onebag.com has a good discussion on “Wheeled Bags and Other Bad Ideas.”) But Kyle was too small to carry his, so we got one with wheels so he could pull it. We also used an old, small Tumi suitcase with wheels as a “mobile office” filled with books and gear. I hated that clunky, heavy suitcase and wish we could have done without it.

REI Travel Document Organizer: We use this 6″x10″ case to hold our passports and extra credit cards and money. I carried it with my laptop pack, which I always kept in hand or looped around my leg while sitting, until we reached our lodging, and then I’d lock it in the safe (or hide it in folded clothing when no safe was available). I believe in hiding passports and extra credit cards and money with belongings left in the locked room rather than carrying those essential documents while sightseeing because pickpocketing or car break-ins seem more likely than room thefts. When we walked around, we carried only a driver’s license for ID and one credit card so that in case of theft or loss we’d have to cancel only one card. The document organizer made it easy to keep these things together and hide them.

Black Fleece Pullover and Rain Shell: Since I had only a few outfits that I wore repeatedly, I learned to dress in layers for warmth and to wear black as much as possible so dirt won’t show. I dressed up outfits and added color with scarves but basically lived in my black fleece pullover (and a few T-shirts made of high-tech synthetic fabric that dries easily and won’t wrinkle). The kids and I all had waterproof shells rather than thick coats, and they were warm enough for almost-freezing temps when coupled with the fleece underneath and gloves. Morgan decided to bring a thicker waterproof jacket and ended up glad he did, even though it’s fairly heavy, since it’s so versatile  and dressy enough to wear out. In Barcelona, I finally broke down and bought a thicker, dressier jacket to look more fashionable in European cities, but it felt like a luxury rather than essential, and I had to get rid of other clothes to make room in my pack for it.

These are the jackets I recommend, seen here when we're in the cold of Patagonia last October. I'm also carrying the Eagle Creek packable daypack recommended below.

Kindles:We love our Kindles! We started out with two and ended up getting a third, plus we use the Kindle iPhone app for another reading device. Given all the reading we did on the trip, it was a godsend to have a lightweight reading device in lieu of heavy books, and to be able to easily purchase books in non-English-speaking countries. The iPhone Kindle app was particularly useful for travel guides; several times in Italy, for example, we downloaded a Rick Steves guide to a particular city, and we’d refer to it on the iPhone while getting around town and touring a site.

My pack with some of the compression clothing sacks pulled out.

Eagle Creek Compression Sacks:The plastic bags are like giant Ziplocks that come in small, medium and large sizes to hold clothing. You pack your clothes in and squeeze the air out to make the clothes as compact as possible; plus, they work as organizers so you can separate your clothes into different sets rather than having them all jumbled together in the bag.

Swiss Army Knife: I’m amazed by how many times we ate out of cans and used our Swiss Army knife for opening them, or used it for myriad other purposes. I’m also amazed by how many times I forgot that it was in my carry-on bag and it got through airport security anyway.

Our lovely braided rubber clothesline, strung between two chairs in the sun and doing its job.

Braided Rubber Clothesline:We washed clothes in the sink once a week on average, and this little clothesline came in handy every time. It’s designed so you can hang several pieces of clothing from it, rather than just a few pieces draped over. We also stocked up on individual packets of hand-wash laundry detergent.

Headlamp:A lot of packing lists say to bring a flashlight, but I say get a headlamp instead! A couple of times we were in places where the power went out at night, and it was reassuring to have a headlamp so that both hands were free. Also, since the four of us often shared a single room, one of us could use the headlamp as a reading light when the others wanted to sleep.

Shoe Tag ID:Any time I go off on my own to run, I make sure I have this ID tag on my shoe so that if, heaven forbid, I were hit by a car or in some other accident, then I wouldn’t be a Jane Doe. What I like about this new generation of interactive tags from Road ID is that you can update the contact info online, so that emergency responders can go online or call a phone number on the tag to get your medical and contact info and then contact loved ones. This is particularly useful for travel when your contact info frequently changes. I also got two of the company’s dog-tag IDs for the kids to wear around their necks on travel days, in case we got separated in airports or big cities and they couldn’t communicate with authorities about their personal contact info.

Portable External Hard Drive: Prepare for the likelihood your laptop will get stolen or broken during travel. We backed up ours weekly with the Western Digital My Passport for Mac and made sure to pack the hard drive in a separate bag from the laptop carrier.

Really Handy Extras:

GoLite Mini Rain Shell: This paper-thin but powerful windbreaker folds up and stuffs into a pocket-size, ultra-lightweight triangle. I took it with me running and sightseeing frequently, just in case I needed an extra layer. It’s amazing how one thin layer provides so much wind and rain protection. I couldn’t find a link for it online, but the GoLite site (a great company for lightweight adventure gear) might offer it again or something similar.

Running with my GoLite rain shell in the Lake District of Argentina. This jacket weighs only a few ounces and folds into a pocket.

Eagle Creek Packable Daypack:This thin lightweight daypack folds up into a pocket-sized pouch. I liked it better than regular, heavier daypacks for hikes and sightseeing, and it was useful to have another bag to carry things like groceries.

Cheap Plastic Flip-Flops: I bought some in New Zealand when we stayed in lots of campsites with communal showers. They’re useful to slip on and wear in showers with icky floors.

Scissors: We use the scissors in our homeschooling kit all the time. I also brought along high-quality hair cutting scissors to cut Kyle’s and Morgan’s hair from time to time.

Portable Power Strip:We used this small power strip to increase the number of outlets in our lodging to accommodate our laptops. Coupled with the Apple World Traveler Adapter Kit, we could power up anywhere.

Roadschooling Essentials:

I’m listing some of our schooling supplies because they can be useful for family travel even if you’re not doing school on the go.

Pencil Box with Supplies: We have a 5″x12″ hard plastic pencil case that contains pretty much all the supplies the kids need: pencils and sharpeners, scissors, markers, paper clips, ruler and protractor, PostIts, tape, dice and playing cards. The only thing that doesn’t fit in it that we also use a lot: a stapler.

Small White Boards with Dry Erase Markers: We have three 9″x12″ white boards and use them constantly for lessons, especially math problems. They cut down on the need for scratch paper.

E-versions of Books: Most of the kids’ schoolbooks are online or in PDF form. We got login access for their math and science texts, so they can read them online. Colly’s history book publisher didn’t have an online version, so we purchased the book, removed the binding, and took it to a copy story to have the whole thing scanned as a PDF. (Halfway through our trip, however, I decided to get and carry her heavy math book because I was unhappy with the online interface, and our Internet connections were spotty and expensive.) We got most of their books for pleasure reading in Kindle format. We supplemented their e-books with online resources, our favorite being Brain Pop. I can’t say enough about how fantastic Brain Pop is, and it provided a great substitute for TV.

Mobile Scanner:This lightweight gadget is only 11″x2″. We scanned and sent a lot of their work to their long-distance teachers, and this scanner also came in handy a few times when we needed to scan something for personal business.

Journals and Paper: Even though the kids used the laptops daily, good ol’ paper and pencil were still the best for creative writing and drawing. We also brought graph paper for math.

Things We Thought We Had To Bring And Never Used:

Travel Towel: Every place we rented — even the RV — provided towels and other linens. Unless you’re camping the whole time or staying in hostels where no towels are provided, don’t bother bringing a towel.

Toiletry Kit for Carry-On: For the first few months when we flew, I’d include a toiletry kit with our essentials in my carry-on bag in case our luggage got lost. I never used these travel-size duplicates of things in our main toiletry kit, and it ended up being clutter we didn’t need. Keep in mind that unless you’re traveling to a very remote area, essential medicines and pharmacy supplies can be purchased pretty much anywhere.

Guidebooks and Maps: All the info you need is available in e-book format, from websites and from tourist info offices in destinations. Leave the heavy books at home.

Sink Stopper: Why is this on all packing lists? We brought one and never used it, even though we always did laundry in the sink. A plug was always available, or we could have plugged it up with a washcloth.

Final words of advice: Travel light so you can easily carry all of your belongings!

Kyle and Colly packed and carried all their own stuff for the year.

So many times we had to run to catch a train or squeeze into a small cab, and each time we expressed relief that we didn’t have more luggage. It really is possible to live out of a couple of small bags. Plus, there’s the added benefit of teaching our children (and ourselves) to be more self-reliant and less materialistic. The less you bring to carry, the happier you’ll be on the go.

Related posts:

1. When It Rains…
2. Packing It In
3. A Typical Atypical Travel Day

Lauterbrunnen

Over the past few days, we’ve glimpsed Switzerland at its prettiest and most poetic (which is such a relief after the stormy sky and mercurial moods detailed in the previous post).

Standing under Staubbach Falls.

The drive from Lucerne to Interlaken revealed alpine beauty that rivals even the Colorado Rockies and New Zealand’s Southern Alps. We checked into a cozy family room in a friendly little hotel, aptly named Hotel Splendid, and immediately headed out to explore before rain returned.

I’ve never seen as many waterfalls as we saw on the drive to Lauterbrunnen, a small town seven miles up the valley from the better-known Interlaken. “Lauter brunnen” means “many fountains” or “loud wells,” and there are 72 of them in and around town.  The waterfalls stream over sharp cliffs colored with alternating shades of dark and light gray, and then they’re swallowed by swaths of forests where the lighter green of new growth contrasts with the darker evergreens.

We stood in a meadow under Lauterbrunnen’s beloved Staubbach Falls, all of us feeling warmed by the sun and awed by the stream of mist floating down in the wind. I thought the moment couldn’t get any better, but then it did, because we saw a little plaque that indicated we once again were following in Goethe’s footsteps. He visited this spot in 1779 and was inspired to write the poem Spirit Song Over the Waters, which we read and discussed right there at the base of the falls until Kyle ran off to chase some sheep. (The next day Kyle wrote in his journal about the beauty of the waterfalls and concluded, “But most of all I love the mountains. They give me ideas for my mind.” I agree!)

After days of rain and indoor time, Kyle was so happy to run around here.

Overall, we really enjoyed Interlaken; I only wish the town could demolish its tacky modern high-rise hotels that look utterly out of place against the charming historic cottages done in quintessential Swiss-German architecture. The town’s original buildings look like they’re lifted from a Hansel and Gretle storybook, all woodsy and decorated with patterned carvings and stenciled paintings.

German is the dominant language in this region, but as is the case everywhere in Switzerland, we heard multiple languages and tasted a variety of cuisines. Our favorite meal was at a surprisingly authentic Mexican restaurant, El Azteca, where the Portuguese twentysomething waiter spoke so many different languages to the diners around us that I finally asked him (in Spanish) how many languages he speaks. He said six, as though it were no big deal (German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English)! One thing I love about Switzerland: It has solidified the kids’ desire to study a second language in school, which before this trip they had groaned about as though it would be an endless chore.

A well-marked trail network branches out through the valley, and Morgan and I left the kids alone in the hotel room one morning to run together (which we only do when we feel certain it’s a safe place, with someone we trust at the receptionist desk available to help in case of emergency). We ran a path back toward Lauterbrunnen and once again marveled at the views — until a cloudburst drenched us with rain so freezing that we turned back. Well, the sun was nice while it lasted!

Morgan on our rainy run. No wonder the grass is so green and the waterfalls are so full around here -- it's really wet!

After Interlaken, we crossed over to the French part of Switzerland and settled on the north side of Lake Geneva. We checked into a terrific apartment in the town of Montreux, about a half hour from Lausanne, and rejoiced to be in a rental with a kitchen again. We have stayed in too many hotels recently and therefore celebrated the opportunity to cook simple meals and avoid overpriced restaurants. The apartment overlooks the lake and has a playground in front.

Our apartment building in Montreux isn't terribly pretty ...

... but the view from its balconey sure is.

The kids quickly made friends with three siblings (who are completely trilingual — German, French and English) from the apartment below us. We met their parents, who invited us down for dinner, and it was such a treat to get to meet some locals.

One morning, after the kids hit their schoolbooks for about an hour and a half, we gathered around the laptop to learn about the history of Chateau de Chillon and to read Lord Byron’s poem The Prisoner of Chillon. The castle is just a mile away from the apartment, so we packed a picnic and set off walking along the lakeside trail to spend much of the afternoon exploring the medieval masterpiece. We’ve visited many castles along the way, but this was the best restored and had wonderful displays enhanced with period furniture and artifacts.

Morgan called up, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel!" when he took this shot of me in one of Chillon's towers.

Byron’s words — written in 1816 after he imagined how the prisoner Bonivard must have felt during his six years chained to a pillar there during the 1530s — came to life as we poked around the dungeon. Morgan excerpted lines from the poem for captions to some of the photos in this slideshow (click the play button, then the “full screen” icon in the bottom right corner, then the “show info” tab in the upper right corner to read them).

This is turning out to be a great week not only for seeing Switzerland, but also for homeschooling. I’ve been meaning to write a followup to our early post on homeschooling, since families planning similar long-term trips have been asking about how we do it, how many hours a day the kids spend on school, and that sort of thing. I’ll try to write it soon, but suffice to say that their learning is intertwined with travel more than ever and is difficult to quantify because learning happens all the time, wherever we go. We managed to strike what feels like a good balance between sitting indoors and working through their core curriculum, and going outside to learn more spontaneously and experientially.

Speaking of which, right now we’re headed to the Musee d’Alimentarium, a food museum in neighboring Vevey that explores the history and politics of food production as well as the science of nutrition and food digestion. It may not inspire poetry, but likely will be food for thought!

A statue of Charlie Chaplin gazes at a giant fork in the water outside Vevey's food museum. As we often say during this trip, "That's something you don't see every day."

Related posts:

1. Some Days Are Like That, Even In Switzerland
2. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
3. Changes Ahead

Our view of Lugano, Switzerland, from the hills of Campione.

“This is one of those days,” I said on our first full day in Switzerland as rain fell in sheets outside the window, obscuring the Alps.

We were sitting cross-legged on a hotel room floor and eating lentils out of a can for lunch while making innumerable Skype calls to apartment managers, hotels and the One World airlines ticket desk. While the kids gloomily plugged away at their math lessons, Morgan and I busied ourselves with research to redo our itinerary to avert freak Swiss snowstorms and British Airways strikes. When I needed a break, I washed clothes in the sink (“No laundromats in Switzerland,” the hotel clerk informed us, “everyone have their own washer”) and blew them dry since it was so cold they wouldn’t dry on their own.

I'm drying a sock, not intending to air my dirty laundry

But my spirits didn’t sink too low, because I know full well that unpredictable swings from great days to frustrating ones are inherent in long-term travel. Just two days earlier, on our last full day in Italy, I had declared, “This is the best day.” I ran across mountains in Tuscany for a 40K (24 mile) trail event, from the small town of Prato to the tiny village of Montepiano.

Italy and neighboring countries have a vast network of trails connecting remote regions, with this symbol to guide the way. This trail was part of the Prato to Montepiano run in Tuscany.

Along the trail, I paused to snack on incredible buffets laid out by the friendliest volunteers. I had never seen anything like it: Out in the middle of nowhere, near 4000-foot summits overlooking rolling green hills, teams of sweet gray-haired Italians handed out bruschetta, roast meats, pasta, cakes and cookies, cheese and red wine to runners and hikers. They all fussed over me when they learned that I’m American and that it happened to be my birthday. I can’t imagine a better taste of Tuscany, or a better birthday present.

At this aid station halfway through the trail marathon, these volunteers poured me red wine and dished up penne pomodoro.

An adage that I repeat while racing marathons also applies to travel: “There will be good times and there will be bad times, and neither will last very long.” That means it’s wise to savor any mid-race rush of positive emotions but exercise restraint and not pick up the pace too much, because fatigue and pain surely lurk around the corner; and on the flipside, don’t despair and give up when feeling lousy, because a second wind surely will come soon. So it goes with this journey, as shown by the contrast between our magical days in Cinque Terre and nightmarish arrival in Florence: Savor the good days and don’t sweat the disappointing ones. The four of us often cope with the down days by repeating the last line from the classic children’s storybook Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: “Some days are like that, even in Australia” — changing “Australia” to whatever country we’re in.

Our travel day from Italy to Switzerland also alternated between funny and frustrating. We loaded up Mario (the nickname for our rental car) and found our way onto the autostrada, which anyone who’s driven in Italy knows is a white-knuckle experience. First you have to find the on-ramps (which are few and far between), each of which has a stressful electronic toll booth to figure out, and then you have to merge with cars going 80 mph in the slow lane. I used the GPS on our iPhone to navigate, but the little blue dot showing our position often was delayed, so more than once I missed telling Morgan to exit and we got stuck going on miles-long detours. We must have circled the outskirts of Milan four times and spent an extra 10 euros on tolls due to these inadvertent “longcuts.”

Hungry from the longer-than-expected drive, we decided it was time to experience Autogrill, which is the Italians’ answer to fast food and rest stops.

Autogrill: Way better than Taco Bell or Subway.

This is a special chain of restaurants and minimarts literally straddling the autostrada — like a bridge with the cars zooming underneath, with parking right next to the highway — so travelers can get off and on the freeway without having to go through a toll exit. The kids had been asking to go to one the whole time we’ve been in Italy, but we always said no because we wanted to avoid fast food and sample local establishments. Well, we should have listened to the kids, because the Autogrill rocks! Leave it to the Italians to serve affordable fresh dishes for “fast food” such as risotto, grilled meats, gourmet fresh panini, and a salad and antipasti bar with delicious grilled vegetables and tabouli.

We crossed over into Switzerland and immediately noticed that people drive slower. The snow-capped mountains became progressively higher and more picturesque, and we were dazzled by the views in spite of the overcast sky. We arrived at a nice but not particularly memorable hotel in the small lakeside town of Campione, about five miles from the popular city of Lugano. (By staying on the outskirts rather than in the center of major destinations, we’re cutting our lodging costs significantly.)

A chapel in Campione.

The rain cleared enough on one afternoon for us to explore a lovely tulip-filled park in Lugano and window shop at stylish stores with prices as steep as the Alps.

Cheap thrills: The kids love these rocking horses found in Lugano and elsewhere in Switzerland ...

... and so does my rockin' husband!

Yesterday we climbed back into Mario and drove two hours north to Lucerne, a place as perfect and precious as the carved cuckoo clocks for sale in the souvenir shops. The route took us through the 10.5-mile-long Gotthard Road Tunnel, the third-longest road tunnel in the world (the first being in Norway). It’s so long that I drifted asleep shortly after Morgan entered it, and when I woke up, we were still driving through the dark! If not for my nap, I surely would have freaked from claustrophobia.

Our plan was to get lunch as soon as we got to Lucerne, so I searched TripAdvisor on the iPhone and found an out-of-the-way pseudo Mexican diner called Crazy Cactus, which supposedly was good and relatively cheap. We got there and ordered one small chicken fajita plate to share, one half-portion of nachos for Colly, one appetizer-size quesadilla for Kyle, two drinks for the four of us to split (a Fanta and a large sparkling water) … and the bill came to $55 Swiss francs, or almost US$50! Oh how we missed Baja Taqueria on Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue at that moment.

Lucerne is lovely in spite of (or because of?) its cost of living. We checked into a fun and fairly affordable hotel called Cascada and set off to walk across the 14th-century Chapel Bridge, rebuilt in 1993 after some bozo dropped a cigarette and set the span on fire.

A view of Lucerne's Chapel Bridge showing its tower ...

... and the view of Chapel Bridge with the waterfront where we ate at Pickwick Pub.

The bridge leads to the Old Town square, full of Alpine architecture with flag-topped turrets and gold-rimmed clock faces that must have inspired the designers of Disneyland’s Fantasyland. We discovered well-priced pub grub along the waterfont there at Pickwick’s, and for the second time that day (the first being at Crazy Cactus) I heard wait staff speaking both Spanish and German — such a cool combination! This polyglot culture inspires me to study language more.

Lucerne looks lovely even in the rain.

Today, with rain still pouring down, we headed to the Verkehrshaus, aka Lucerne’s Museum of Transport, where we enjoyed seeing a model of the interminable Gotthard Road Tunnel mountain we drove through and a National Geographic documentary in their IMAX theater.

My Swiss miss and her little bruder at the transportation museum, in front of the model of the mountain with the looooonnnnngggg tunnel.

The road trip resumes tomorrow; next stop: Interlaken. Our itinerary changed quite a bit because we’re sticking to lower elevations to avoid the snow. We also extended our stay in one place (Montreux, on Lake Geneva) long enough to rent an apartment, since it’s becoming unbearably expensive to stay in hotels and dine out. But the biggest change to report, which I’m sad but relieved about, is we canceled our short trip to Athens. Going there this month ultimately seemed too risky and stressful, especially since we’re flying British Airways and they plan strikes on both days we were scheduled to go in and out of Athens. Greece now joins Turkey, Kenya, Costa Rica, Peru and too many other places to name on our “someday” list.

Meanwhile, we’re truly looking forward to seeing more of Switzerland and England, and if another May snowstorm sneaks up or an Icelandic volcano gets cranky or locusts fall from the sky, we’ll take pictures and try to laugh about it.

Related posts:

1. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
2. The Swiss Cascade and Castle That Inspired Poets (and Us)
3. Eat, Run, Love

A view from the Cinque Terre coastal trail, with the town of Vernazza coming into view.

Last night I read Goethe and ate divine pesto, and this morning I ran across a mountain and climbed back into bed with Morgan.

It’s all about life, Italy and the pursuit of happiness.

(Bear with me while I explain what Goethe has to do with it …)

I didn’t expect to pick up 18th-century German Romanticism more than twenty years after my last college lit class. I’ve been eating up delectable novels and memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love and told myself I should ingest some historical fiction or classics (similar to how I reach for bran flakes and skim milk to balance out the pasta and wine).

Then, around the same day, we serendipitously stumbled upon Goethe. His name was everywhere. We were in the town of Malcesine on Lake Garda, a giant drop of blue in Northern Italy hanging like a bead off the skirt of the Alps, and were spending five nights there for no better reason than because three months earlier, in New Zealand or somewhere, Morgan had looked at Italy on Google Earth, saw the splotch of blue and the steep topography around it, and said, “I wanna go there!”

Kyle on a snowy ridge in the Alps above Lake Garda during a hike he took with Morgan.

As we drove the freeway up from Verona and the steep mountain pass down through Turbole, we started noticing inns and restaurants named after the German literary great.

Once we settled into our lodge, Morgan logged on to research why Goethe was such a big deal in this neck of the woods. “You gotta read this,” I soon heard him say.

We found ourselves following in Goethe's footsteps.

I looked over his shoulder at a newspaper article from 1986 about local bicentennial celebrations of Goethe’s sojourn to Lake Garda: The 37-year-old Goethe set off for Italy from Weimar at 3 A.M. on Sept. 3, 1786, in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis. Impulsively, he took a short leave of absence from his post as the right-hand man to the young duke of Saxe-Weimar, jumped into a coach without a servant or much luggage, assumed the name Filippo Moller and left for what turned out to be almost two years of renewal in the Mediterranean. … In Italy, Goethe experienced what he called a rebirth, living a life “exactly like a youthful dream.”

I wound up entranced by Goethe’s early novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and learned more about his Italian journey while touring the 6th-century Malcesine castle, a place he explored after docking his boat there due to bad weather.

The castle and town of Malcesine, which Goethe visited 224 years ago.

Ever an artist, Goethe pulled out his sketchpad and settled in to draw the castle. An exhibit at the castle detailed how the stress of Goethe’s job left no room in his life to pursue artistic interests, and how by radically changing his circumstances, the poet hoped to get closer to the meaning of his existence.

It will come as little surprise to those who know us that Morgan and I could appreciate the motives behind Goethe’s odyssey, much as I could relate to Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision, detailed in Eat, Pray, Love, to spend a year of self-inquiry through travel. It’s trite but true that the most satisfying kind of travel involves contemplating the meaning of life, and discovering and pursuing new interests along the way. It’s part of what we’ve been doing, and with a mere six weeks remaining until we return to California, we’re spending more time reflecting on where we’ve been — not just in the past year, but in the two decades we’ve been married — and what we might do next.

The topic came up again over dinner on the patio of the apartment we’re renting this week in Vernazza, one of the five impossibly beautiful villages that make up the coastal region known as Cinque Terre.

The town of Vernazza, with our apartment in the corner of the building on the far right, directly above the cafe umbrellas (that's our laundry hanging out the kitchen window).

The patio has a staircase that leads two flights down to the small town square and harbor, so the kids periodically ran from dinner to the beach. We opened a white wine harvested from the hillside outside our window, and served a rotisserie chicken and baguette from a deli downstairs. For the side, we cooked fresh pasta, covered it with locally made pesto, sautéed green beans and sliced an heirloom tomato (which isn’t labeled “heirloom” here — it just is). An outdoor restaurant sits right on the other side of the apartment terrace, and at one point a waiter, who had been observing our family meal with some amusement, came over and handed us a giant bowl filled with a couple dozen garlicky steamed mussels garnished with lemon wedges, compliments of the chef, just to be nice.

We lingered over the plates covered with mussel shells and chicken bones and looked across the water at the steep hill, where innumerable layers of dark gray rock stretch across in diagonal lines and then curve, dip, and rise again, as though charting geologic time, and we wondered how many millions of years it took the hill to push up from the sea. Then we looked over to the 14th-century church, so pretty against the pastel-colored buildings around the town square, and peered down to check on our kids, who were climbing on boulders protruding from the water, and we heard their giggles float up on the wind.

The church and hillside vines across from our apartment at sunset.

It was in so many ways the most satisfying dinner, and the potency and transience of the moment made me teary.

It’s not just that packing up and leaving home — and in the process leaving the security that comes with a familiar routine, a generous income and a solid reputation — forces change and exploration (of self as well as of surroundings) in a way no amount of therapy ever could. What moved me is the way in which this journey has delivered constant reminders — in the form of spectacular natural history as well as human artifacts such as Roman ruins and medieval castles — of the brevity of our time on Earth and the degree to which we’re microspecks in the millennia, so what can we do but seek happiness through relationships and experiences, and do the best we can with our greatest gift and trace of immortality — our children — during the limited time that we do have?

Kyle and Colly hanging out at the harbor after dinner while we watch from our apartment above.

I paused after that paragraph for a two-hour run. While Morgan and the kids slept in, I climbed the narrow coastal trail linking the towns of Cinque Terre.

I’m running more these days in part to prepare for a 35K trail race on my 41st birthday two weeks from now, which will be through a valley outside of Florence. Morgan is caring for the kids and arranging transportation so I can do the race, which is really giving me the gift of all the drama and endorphins that go with a tough mountain run, and what can I possibly give him in return on his birthday in September, after all he has given me? I smiled at the passing idea of a Rembrandt hat and cape so he could dress up like Goethe for Halloween.

But the main reason I’m running more, just as I’m letting myself eat and lounge around with Morgan and the kids more, is to soak in the sensations of these destinations and explore them as fully as possible before we head back home.

Kyle and I make a toast to each other with gelato cones.

As I navigated the rocks on the tapering trail and glanced over the edge to the ocean below, I considered something several people have said in casual conversation: “You must be sad the trip is coming to an end.” Oh yes, I really am, I automatically reply. But as I ran that cliff edge, I realized that assumption is only partly true; more than sad, I’m fundamentally grateful we’re heading home in mid-June.

Our days like this are numbered.

I’m thankful the trip has an endpoint because it is that very ending that enables me to so fully appreciate these numbered weeks. It’s that return date on the calendar that made Colly reach for my hand and squeeze it as we walked along the lakefront in Malcesine, and prompted her to say with maturity and tenderness beyond her 12 years, “I’m going to miss this so much.”

Along my run, I met an Italian man on the trail who had a creased face and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was carrying a gardening tool and looked stooped over as he walked toward a row of vines on the steep terraced hill. Generations of families have carved out a living by working the soil in this remote corner of the country, and it’s a safe bet he was carrying on a family tradition. I said buongiorno as I ran toward him, and he smiled and raised his eyebrows, a look of admiration crossing his face as he paused to study me and perhaps imagined what it must be like to run for fun. I wish he could have known how much I admired him at that same instant; he might be surprised that in that moment, I wanted to be less the fleeting, carefree passerby and more the local with a harvest to reap.

Morgan and I have talked over dinners and during runs about how we really can’t see our family joining the growing ranks of modern-day gypsies who travel indefinitely and call themselves “digital nomads” as they work and homeschool via the Internet wherever they might be (though anything is possible). We want to go back for the kids’ sake. This trip has been undeniably beneficial for their personal growth and education, as well as for our family bond, but they yearn for the friendships and familiarity that only their school and neighborhood can give. And we want to get back to aspects of life that we put on hold: maintaining a home, reading the local news, lending a hand to help in the community, socializing with friends, developing and finishing projects, earning the satisfaction of a job well done. Those things all really matter. The challenge, we know and vow to remind ourselves regularly, will be to preserve as much as possible the values and visions, and the rhythm of life and closeness with each other, that we rediscovered between Argentina and Italy.

Morgan took this shot of me near the north end of the Cinque Terre trail near Monterosso before we turned around and headed back.

Related posts:

1. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash
2. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
3. Some Days Are Like That, Even In Switzerland

Getting to Venice from Rome was one of those days, at times completely nutty but oddly fitting with our new sense of normal.

When we woke Colly and Kyle up early with the phrase, “It’s a travel day,” they knew to pack, check under beds, and look for chargers and adapters left in outlets. We reminded them to eat a good breakfast since we’re not sure where or when lunch would be, and brush teeth quickly so we could pack the toiletry bag. The Rome apartment was the 63rd place we’ve unpacked and slept in since leaving home August 15, so they knew the drill.

Morgan and I packed up this bedroom in our Rome apartment.

We had to put the place back in order before the apartment owner came by at 8:30 a.m. Checking out of a hotel is what you do on vacation; checking out of an apartment while leading an itinerant life is something else completely. We had to do chores such as dishes and debate what groceries to keep. (I regrettably left behind breakable bottles of olive oil and balsamic, but I crammed leftover breakfast cereal into baggies.) The apartment manager showed up, returned our deposit and made a phone call in Italian to help us figure out how to check into our Venice place. The clock was ticking to catch our 9:45 train, so I enlisted the kids to guard our luggage in the lobby while Morgan finished the checkout and I went in search of a cab.

I walked six blocks toward the Coliseum to find a taxi queue, armed with only an Italian phrase book to explain that I would need the driver to pick up our family and then go to the station. The cabs were lined up as expected, but the first few were too small to transport all of us and our stuff. I approached a larger car that was fourth in the row, knocked on the window and said, Buongiorno, parla inglese per favore? He said the Italian version of “not really,” so I proceeded to use mostly Spanish, adding an “eh” sound on the ends of words.

The driver understood but then had to get out and exchange words with each of the drivers ahead of him so there would be no hard feelings that he was getting out of line. They exchanged lots of words — they seemed to be talking about family and sports — but finally we got on our way and I directed him back to where Morgan, the kids and our bags were waiting on the curb. We piled in and drove ten minutes, which cost 8 euros according to the meter, but the driver said in English, “No, it’s 12 because you have luggage.” We rolled our eyes and forked over 12.

At the station, multiple doors led to dozens of platforms, all of them crowded and everyone rushing. We had about 20 minutes to get our tickets and find our train. Morgan located an electronic ticket window, but it was broken; he found another, which was broken too. I waited with the kids and studied the train schedule to find our platform while Morgan found a third ticket dispenser that worked. Then he discovered the system had no record of the reservation that we made online three days earlier. With only 15 minutes left until departure, he had to go through the whole process of buying four seats, not knowing if they were still available or if we’d be able to sit together.

Colly and Kyle, meanwhile, stood by with a look they’ve developed this year: a very adult-looking blank expression, honed through myriad security lines and customs interrogations, that indicates they’ve switched to autopilot and are ready to cope with whatever happens next. At one point Kyle did a dramatic hyperventilating thing and said in double time, “I’m scared! We’ll miss our train! What’ll we do!” and for a second I thought his head might spin around, but then just as quickly he slipped back into a deal-with-it mode.

I cheered when Morgan pulled a piece of paper from the machine. Then we all rushed, as best as we could, to a platform half the station away. We found our train, but then we had to find the car with our seats. Once we found the right car, we encountered an aisle jam-packed with people and luggage. Our seats were toward the other end, so we told the kids to squeeze through and hold them for us while we figured out how to load and store our four packs and the heavy black rolling suitcase (the one we nicknamed “the tick” because it’s always bloated with schoolbooks and equipment and is such a pain).

We found ourselves stuck at the doorway, surrounded by people and struggling with bags. Morgan hopped off, ran down the platform to the car’s other door and ran back to tell me there was storage space down there. He told me to get the bags off and help him take them down to the other end. I looked at him, mildly aware of my armpit sweat soaking through my shirt, and tried to keep my voice calm as I said, “We are not stepping off this train when our children are seated in the middle and it’s leaving any second.”

Fine, he told me, we’ll split the difference; he hopped off again with as many bags as he could carry while I stayed and slowly maneuvered the rest of our stuff. In a minute, I looked down the aisle and saw him approaching me. Bag by bag, we squeezed past other travelers, took our seats with the kids and exhaled. “That was interesting,” Morgan summed up.

Victory! We made it on the train, got seats and found a place to stash our bags.

I abandoned my earlier good intention of homeschooling on the three-hour train ride because I wanted to zone out and figured the kids did, too. Colly pulled out her laptop and began creating a spoof Power Point presentation with clipart. Kyle watched The Simpsons on his iPod and read a chapter of Bridge to Terabithia. Pretty soon they were both sound asleep, and when they woke up at the Venice station, we realized we were famished.

Mmmmm ... train station pizza hits the spot.

We got off the train and headed for the station’s pizza bar. Colly and Kyle finished their slices and asked for gelato, so Morgan fished out some euros and told them they could have some if they figured out how to order it themselves. They wandered off on their own, out of sight — such is the trust, or foolish lack of concern, that we have developed after eight months on the road — and they came back grinning with scoops of stracciatella, the Italian version of chocolate chip ice cream. “Did you say grazie?” I asked, and Colly said, “Of course” with a “duh, Mom” tone, as though mildly insulted to be reminded to attempt to speak the language.

From there, it was just a few steps to the water taxi hub where we took in our first dazzling view of Venice. “Wow!” we all said, and just stood there, no longer in any hurry. This, I explained to the kids, is a place where not much has really changed over the centuries. Look, a city with no cars! Look, water lapping at the front doors! Look, buildings all built before Columbus even set sail! “Wow!” we all said again.

We pulled out the iPhone, which carried an Italian SIM card and local number thanks to Morgan’s cleverness, and called the not-very-helpful apartment manager who gave us baffling directions and told us a security code to punch in the door. Then we had to figure out which canal, boat, ticket and stop to choose. From there, everything progressed by trial and error, a classic case of three-steps-forward-and-two-back: buy four tickets, get on the wrong boat; no, no says the captain, pointing, quello (that one). Off the boat, down the dock, onto another taxi; no, no says another captain, pointing at a ticket machine. Oh, capisco, I get it, we gotta validate our tickets. Off again, fumble with the machine until a stranger takes pity on us and demonstrates the right way to do it. Finally we’re on our way — to where?

On our way down the Gran Canal to find our apartment.

“Um, excuse me,” I asked a couple from Hong Kong who spoke English and held a map of the canal, “can I take a look?” We realized that we had about 12 stops to go.

“You know, most families who come to Venice probably spend months planning the details,” I mentioned to Morgan, “and we’re just making this up as we go.”

We relaxed and soaked in the sights of the gondoliers standing and propelling their beautiful long boats and nodding hello to the water taxi captains who zoomed by in their fancy speedboats with the highly varnished wood sides. There were so many details to observe on all the buildings — so many mossy and sooty reliefs of faces and gargoyles that have looked down on travelers like us for who knows how many centuries. We went along the whole S-shaped Gran Canal before finally arriving at our stop, just past Piazza San Marco.

We heaved our packs on our backs for the last time that day and headed toward an alleyway a couple of bridges away. Around a nondescript corner and behind a gelato shop, we found the apartment front door, and as if by magic, the security code worked. The door opened to another extremely small passageway with nothing but a spiral staircase almost as steep and narrow as a ladder. Feeling like Alice in the rabbit hole but in reverse, I climbed up and braced myself for whatever we’d find on the other side of the next door.

The waterfront where we got off ...

... and the alley where we found it.

The apartment door was oddly decorated with sparkly smoked mirror panels that looked more Vegas than Venician. I opened it, and the first thing I saw was a remodeled bathroom with a large tub. “Oh, this is nice!” I called down to the others who were still navigating the staircase. Then I looked down the hallway to the rooms. “Oh, uh … this is weird!”

I saw a main room with exposed wood beams and antique hardware around the windows that gave a feel of Old Italy — but its orange sofabed and linens looked borrowed from a nursing home. The kitchenette, circa 1975, fit into a closet constructed of fake wood paneling. Then Morgan made the announcement we all have come to dread: “No WiFi, no data port.” Ugh, no Internet, no Skype.

I looked at the oddly oversized, decades-old microwave oven that sat perched like modern art on a tiny, teetering table in the middle of the hallway-that-passed-for-a-kitchen. Of course there would be no Internet in a place like this. Oh, well.

Our apartment had a lovely view, but ...

... the interior could have used some updating.

“C’mon, let’s go check things out,” I said. We dumped our stuff, secured our laptops and hid our money and passports as best as we could, and headed back out to explore. The kids, visibly wilting, perked up at the prospect of another gelato. (Our nutritional standards, like most aspects of our lives, have loosened up considerably.)

So goes our first-day-in-a-new-place routine: Find the market, buy some fresh milk and fruit. Scope out restaurants and the main streets leading to the main sights. Find a park with a playground and a good place to run. In Venice, this involved getting tangled in tour groups and lost down dead-end streets. Glassy eyed and loopy with growing fatigue, we had little sense of purpose or direction other than filling our stomachs and finding our way back.

We crossed San Marco Square ...

... explored streets like this ...

... and occasionally got lost in narrow passageways like this.

We used Morgan’s TripAdvisor iPhone app to search for nearby restaurants and were overwhelmed by listings for overpriced yet mediocre dining options. We didn’t want to cook in the slightly creepy new apartment, which didn’t have a proper stove to cook on, but we didn’t want yet another slice of pizza or overpriced noodles.

Then three things happened that reaffirmed my faith that things have a way of working out on days like this, as long as we get creative and don’t give up:

(1) We found a grocery store and I asked the checkout clerk, in broken English and Italian, if she had any restaurant recommendations for an affordable, good-quality place to eat. (Foolproof travel advice: When in doubt, ask a local.) She eagerly wrote out the name and directions to a restaurant not too far away. We had passed it earlier — it looked like nothing special, just long picnic tables covered with red-checked cloths and a TV playing sports — but we went there a few hours later, and sure enough, we were rewarded with a cheap but hearty and authentic meal.

(2) We had seen one of Anthony Bourdain’s foodie travel shows that profiled Venice on an airplane, in which he spotlighted one special hideaway where the seafood is remarkably fresh and the preparation is phenomenal. We figured it would be impossible to find in the maze that is Venice. And then, walking back to our apartment from the market, something caught my eye in the window of a restaurant: a small collection of stickers. One was from Michelin Guide and the others were for Italian food awards. I zoomed in for closer inspection at the menu. At about the same time, Morgan recognized the exterior from the show. Yes, it was Al Covo, the restaurant Bourdain profiled, and it was only about 30 feet from our front door. Of all the places it could be in Venice, it was virtually right under our nose! “This means,” I said, “you and I can have a date and leave the kids in the apartment watching a movie while we eat. We’d be so close, they could come get us if anything goes wrong.” And so we did a couple of nights later — and it was magical, and the kids loved having a movie-watching night on their own.

A couple of nights later, Morgan and I had a date here.

(3) Back at the apartment, Morgan figured out a way to wire the cell phone to the laptops and siphon a connection from Vodafone so we could have some Internet connection via the cell phone. The guy is a genius.

This day actually happened eleven days ago, and I felt ambivalent about taking the time to record these details in one of my longest blog posts yet. But then I thought about how we’ve had several more travel days in just the past week, each unique but similar in their unpredictability and sense of discovery. These travel days blur together, and I feel the ones from the first half of our trip slipping from memory. I want to be able to show others who ask about our trip what it was really like — how we functioned as a family while getting from one point to another — but mostly, I want to keep these days in mind to savor when I’m sitting in my permanent address and wanderlust, always simmering, heats up.

Related posts:

1. Snapshots of Venezia and Treviso
2. Eat, Run, Love
3. In the Backwoods of Blackball, Not Your Typical Hilton

In the Plaza Real near our apartment, next to one of Gaudi's lampposts.

My elementary-level Spanish, packed away for four months since we left Argentina, re-emerged when we landed in Barcelona and I asked the cab driver, “Puede usted llevarnos a esta direccion?” (Can you take us to this address?) I caught enough in his rapid reply to understand that he could take us close, but then we’d have to walk part of the way because our street is so narrow that it’s closed to cars. Once again we found ourselves grateful to be traveling light enough to carry everything on our backs, with just one heavy rolling suitcase that functions as a mobile office.

About 15 minutes later the cab pulled over to the curb along Las Ramblas — the pedestrian boulevard bordering the Gothic Quarter (in Catalan, Barri Gòtic), famous for street vendors and sidewalk performers — and the driver gestured past Plaza Real (or Plaça Reial). As we walked to find our new home for the next ten days, we paused to gaze at the vibrant 19th-century public square that would serve as our extended front porch. The square is formed by apartment buildings with arcades on the ground floor that house a string of open-air cafes, where multitudes stroll by or sit and drink red wine at midday while musicians perform, artists sketch and philatelists swap stamps. I hear snippets of every Romantic language and know just enough Castilian Spanish and French to decipher the hybrid that is Catalan, which the signs are written in. At least a dozen palm trees fill the plaza and surround an elaborate black fountain flanked by Gaudí’s outlandish lampposts — my first glimpse at Gaudí’s intoxicating, Seussical style. Balconies above are fronted by intricate wrought-iron railings and greenery, and wooden shutters frame the windows. We’re living here?! I thought, and I couldn’t stop exclaiming to Morgan, “I love it, I love it!”

We found our apartment on one of the narrow cobblestone streets leading off the plaza, which like so many streets in the maze-like Barri Gòtic curves and confusingly intersects with other one-lane thoroughfares. Our apartment reminds me of a San Francisco flat since it has a narrow hallway and tiny kitchen with bedrooms to one side, and elaborate detailing carved into its doors and windows. It occupies a corner where the first-floor businesses are a natural foods deli, a rotisserie chicken grill, a pizza parlor and a sex shop.We’re just one floor up, so we can stand on the balcony and watch pedestrians stream past and hear the bar hoppers throughout the night. It’s noisy — as I write this at 6 a.m., a drunk is screaming in Italian outside — but we use earplugs and mostly like the festive buzz, which quiets down only from about 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The view of our street, Calle Vidre, from our apartment in the Barri Gotic.

We have been here more than a week already and it’s hard to say where the time went. I have done nothing particularly productive or quantifiable other than homeschool the kids for several hours here and there, and run. The other hours are a blur of walking, sightseeing, reading, eating and drinking, and I keep losing track of the time and day. The light in the Barri Gòtic looks crepuscular for much of the morning as well as the afternoon since the sunlight penetrates the shadowy thoroughfares only at midday.

Thankfully, running in the morning reorients my senses; while the kids and Morgan sleep late, I leave the apartment bleary-eyed and head up to Mountjuic, a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean and the city. The run winds through botanical gardens, around a 16th-century castle, past a hillside of utilitarian-looking stacked crypts (giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “self-storage unit”), and then around the 1992 Olympic stadium.

When I reach the castle at that early hour, I encounter just one security guard and perhaps another runner or two, and as I cross the drawbridge over the moat and gaze over the ramparts to the panoramic views below, I’m awed and haunted by the history underfoot. It’s not a very pretty castle; it’s intimidating and spooky. It served as a fort and prison for ruthless rulers over the centuries, most recently in the late 1930s when 173 people, including Catalonia’s president, were executed by firing squad during the Spanish Civil War. It helps me understand why Barcelona fiercely promotes its Catalonian identity and language, since it was repressed as recently as the 1970s.

Inside Castell de Montjuic ...

... and the view of Barcelona below, with La Sagrada Familia's tall spires showing in the center.

Before I return to the apartment, I stop and buy croissants and baguette from a panaderia, which we’ll munch on throughout the day. We’ve been sleeping at odd hours and grazing food more than having regular meals. I’m finding it nearly impossible to eat and drink moderately in the midst of this nocturnal, pedestrian-oriented cafe and bar culture. Tapas (small plates of food meant to be shared) and pinchos (hors d’oeuvre-size portions on a stick) dominate the menus and make every meal seem like happy hour, when you want “just one more.” Copious amounts of wine and beer flow, and since virtually everyone gets around by walking, taking the metro or riding one of the free bicycles available around town, people can drink without worry of a DUI.

(Tip if you visit here: Restaurants around Las Ramblas and Plaza Real on the whole are mediocre; head up to the Eixample district for the best bite. Of all the tapas bars we tried, Cuidad Condal — also spelled Ciutat Comtal — was the best, followed by Taller de Tapas).

Morgan's brother, Randy, showed up and enjoyed strolling the streets with us. This is on Calle Ferran, one of the main thoroughfares in the Barri Gotic.

The scenes outside our window and throughout the city, coupled with this apartment lifestyle, combine to strike a tonic chord in Morgan and me that makes us feel like we’re in college again. Flashbacks to our lives from when we were half our age intensified when our back-to-back visitors arrived: First Morgan’s brother, Randy, came for a visit while in Europe on business, which was 24 hours of fun; and now our lifelong friend from college, Cheryl, is living with us for the week. Thank goodness the kids are here to keep me behaving, otherwise I might be tempted to light up and wear as much eyeliner as I did during my late-’80s goth phase.

Hangin' with Cheryl on a hike up Montjuic. Everywhere we go around Barcelona, we encounter interesting public art, like this sculpture in the background.

Silliness aside, there’s something about this city that makes me feel more intellectual and impassioned, more yin than yang, than I’ve felt anywhere else on this trip, which finally leads me to Gaudí. I can’t write about Barcelona without writing about Catalonia’s hero and most famous architect, Antoni Gaudí, but I hesitate because words fail me when I try to describe the experience of visiting his seminal works, especially La Sagrada Família.

La Sagrada Familia's Nativity Facade

One detail out of hundreds on the facade.

La Sagrada Família left me awestruck by the audacity of his vision — that one person can think so big, and have so much faith in God and confidence in himself, to embark on a radical project so grand in scale that it would take much longer than his lifetime to complete. He started it 128 years ago, and today, dozens of masons and carpenters are still busy at work in its center, determined to fulfill his vision. We gaped at the figures and symbols on the Nativity and Passion façades and towers — the longer you look, the more you see — and I started to feel a bit dizzy after staring at the details that all curve and blend asymmetrically like melted wax on candlesticks. Inspired by nature as much as by Christianity (because, of course, he saw the two as inseparable), Gaudí created columns that branch out like trees and weave together in a fantastic stone canopy — but like a brilliant Jesus freak on LSD, he also saw intricate, spiraling patterns in all living things, as perfect yet as wild as a collection of overlapping spirograph drawings, so he pulled the patterns of hyperbolic paraboloids and twisting ellipsoids and other trippy shapes out of thin air and sculpted them into this ever-growing monument, which is supposed to be finished by 2026, the 100th anniversary of his death. Gaudí died by accident, hit by a tram, and ten years later the church was trashed and his workshop was destroyed during the Civil War. When I see how the construction bounced back and carries on, I also view La Sagrada Família as a testament to the resiliency and good inherent in the human spirit.

A look at the interior of La Sagrada Familia ...

... which has been a busy construction zone for more than a century.

I’m astounded by the originality and diversity of Gaudí’s works, as Morgan’s photos from Park Guell and Gaudí’s apartment show better than I can describe:

Colly, resting on one of the swaths of mosaic-covered benches at Park Guell, studies Gaudi's spire and the city below.

And here's part of Park Guell from the front, set against perfect spring weather.

Gaudi's curves and ironwork are on display on this apartment building. I think the man was a genius.

I’ve focused perhaps too much on Gaudí when this city has so much to offer; we love its shopping boulevards, its museums (Picasso and Dali are right around the corner), its redeveloped waterfront, and mostly its unique identity and cross-cultural style.

The kids loved our day at the beach area known as Barceloneta, not far from Barri Gotic yet as different as day and night.

We leave tomorrow to drive up to the Costa Brava town of Begur for six days before heading to Rome, and I think I need the breather of a small coastal town before Rome bowls me over!

Related posts:

1. The Costa Brava Retreat
2. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
3. A Typical Atypical Travel Day

Plus, I’m still mentally recovering from the odyssey of getting here. We got ensnared by the weekend British Airways strike, which canceled our connection from London to Barcelona. We almost went to Helsinki — twice — first because the toilets on the 13-hour Hong Kong to London flight malfunctioned, creating a mid-flight emergency (nothing messy, but drink service was suspended and passengers were asked to “hold it” as best as possible). The captain was making contingency plans to land in Finland when someone managed to get the toilets’ vacuum system working again.

We arrived at our hotel in Windsor mid-afternoon London time but our bodies were telling us it was midnight in Hong Kong. The kids were zonked and Morgan was bumbling like Mr. Bean. We soon found ourselves sipping pints in the very British library of our hotel (picture a grand fireplace flanked by framed hunting scenes) with a very starched and tweedy British couple sitting nearby and  giving us curious looks. When Morgan casually stood up and reached for a musty book to browse, the entire shelf of century-old tomes tipped and lurched, and he had to throw both his arms up to prevent it from collapsing. I doubled over with suppressed laughter and then went to our room and fell asleep at dinnertime.

We almost went to Helsinki for a second time the following day. Because of the strike, we were re-booked on a Finn Air flight with an absurd detour and five-hour layover in Helsinki en route to Barcelona. We checked out of the Windsor hotel after spending just 13 hours there and arrived back at Heathrow at 5:30 a.m. Right before we checked in with Finn Air, we found out that British Airways had brought in a substitute plane and crew at the eleventh hour for a flight to Barcelona that day, and we snagged four of the seats on it.

A few hours later, we were in rickety seats in a 757 belonging to a Portuguese-based carrier I had never heard of called EuroAtlantic. The age of the flight attendants ranged from about 18 to 21. The pilot had some reassuring gray hairs, but his co-pilot looked like a groovy yoga instructor. A bald, hulking maintenance worker speaking some Eastern European language I couldn’t recognize kept pacing the aisles, making last-minute checks and looking perplexed while communicating to the Portuguese-speaking crew in broken English. I became convinced that the plane was held together with chewing gum and baling wire and we were all going to die somewhere over France, but Morgan made me laugh when he did his best gee-willikers impression of Mickey Rooney telling Judy Garland, “I know a barn we can use to put on a show!” I could just imagine some mid-level manager at British Airways declaring moments earlier, “I know a plane we can use to get to Spain!”

But all’s well that ends well. Now I’ll try to reconstruct some of our highs and lows in Hong Kong.

We arrived from Sydney on March 12 without a hitch and checked into a gorgeous hotel room at the Shangri-La in Kowloon, which sits across the water from Hong Kong Island.

The view of Hong Kong Harbour from our hotel room in Kowloon.

Morgan and the kids on the waterfront promenade with our hotel, the Kowloon Shangri-La, in the background.

The Shangri-La was the only decent hotel that would allow the four of us to sleep in one room (the kids and me sharing a king-size bed and Morgan on a rollaway), whereas virtually every other place would require us to have two rooms or a suite, which would be prohibitively costly. The room was a godsend, as we needed a retreat from the streets below. I joked that I wished I had a T-shirt that said in English and Cantonese, “I don’t want to buy a watch or a handbag” because sidewalk hawkers constantly tried to sell me one.

We really loved this stylish, spacious hotel room.

Here we are on a typical side street off the swanky shopping strip along Nathan Road known as The Golden Mile.

My kaleidoscopic impressions include tall, narrow apartment and office buildings packed together in astounding high density; clean, efficient subway trains jammed with polite people whom I always felt safe around; jumbled, chattering market stalls overflowing with knick-knacks and knock-offs; and quiet, solemn corners in parks and public squares where dozens of people meditatively tuned out the city and practiced tai chi. The backdrop to it all was a gray sky that blocked the sun and masked the island’s mountains. Smog and clouds perpetually shrouded the city, and I felt the pollution in my eyes and lungs.

We sampled some restaurants and hit the main tourist attractions with mixed success. The famous tram to The Peak was terribly crowded and not nearly as fun or interesting as old-time funiculars we’ve ridden elsewhere; plus, the tacky mall at the top, along with the mucky sky, diminished the experience of viewing Hong Kong from above. At least we discovered the peaceful and pretty Hong Kong Park on the way and admired exotic birds while walking through its impressive aviary.

I screwed up our attempt to view the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, which supposedly is the best and newest museum and is located in the outlying New Territories district. I read that its opening hours are “Monday – Saturday, 10 – 6” but didn’t read far enough to see it also said, “Closed Tuesdays” and you guessed it, we chose Tuesday to go. We were so disappointed to go all the way out there and find it locked up and deserted! The museum is housed in an impressive complex meant to showcase traditional Chinese architecture, but sadly, its beauty is enhanced by its juxtaposition with some of the tallest, most packed-in and impersonal apartment high-rises I have ever seen.

Almost everywhere I looked, I saw apartment buildings like this.

We left the New Territories determined to make a pilgrimage to the Giant Buddha, far away on Lantau Island near the airport, even though we were getting a late start and it would take four transfers on the subway. We ended up having an entertaining time figuring out the subway system and reached our destination at the end of the line about an hour before access to the Buddha closed. Having not done my research ahead of time, I had no idea that we then had to take a loooooonng gondola ride up and over a mountain.

The 25-minute cable car ride to the Big Buddha sweeps visitors across the mountains of Lantau Island.

I tried to suppress my fear of heights and enjoy the kids’ enchantment of the view from the glass-bottomed floor.

The gondola ride was a little too long and high for my liking ...

... but the kids loved lying on the gondola's glass bottom and watching the water and forest below.

We finally got to the erstatz Ngong Ping visitors’ village at the base of the Buddha, where a mountain of souvenir shops and cafes overshadow the Po Lin Monastery, and hurried to hike to the Buddha before the last gondola departed. It was worth it when we scaled the 250 steps and gazed at details not visible from a distance; the massive bronze monument really is awe-inspiring. We were disappointed, though, by the dearth of information available explaining the statue’s history and construction. (We found out later it was built in 1993; we were under the mistaken impression it was quite old.)

We made it to the Big Buddha! It was worth it.

We topped off that fast-paced afternoon with a stroll through the Temple Street Night Market, an experience no Hong Kong visitor should miss. The street fills with scores — perhaps hundreds — of vendors who haggle a mind-boggling array of traditional trinkets, electronic gadgets, fake-designer clothing and mounds of plastic junk.

Warning: walking around Hong Kong at night can lead to sensory overload.

One of countless vendors at the Temple Street Night Market.

I got a clearer idea of how people get used to living and raising a family in Hong Kong when I made a connection with a friend-of-a-friend and her family. A high school classmate emailed to say I should contact her friends Stephanie Oana and and Joe Osha because they’re from Oakland and have two kids about the same age as Colly and Kyle. They live in the community of Stanley, on the south tip of Hong Kong Island. The kids and I took a cab to their house (while poor Morgan stayed behind to cope with stomach troubles), and when we emerged from a long tunnel, the three of us said “how pretty!” as we saw steep hills covered with greenery. It’s easy to be in Hong Kong and forget you’re on an island until you find yourself on a narrow, curvy road like the one toward Stanley, which brings sandy beaches into view.

Colly and Kyle with the Osha-Oana family from Oakland on the Stanley waterfront.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon and dinner with them, as it turns out we have a lot in common and used to live close to each other in the East Bay. They’re living in a condo-like development filled with other ex-pats, and the units are blessed with a rare feature in Hong Kong neighborhoods: a front door that goes directly outside to a play area (as opposed to one that leads to a hallway and elevator).

We wrapped up the week at the Disneyland Hotel, which turned out to be surprisingly classy in terms of service and décor, with lovely landscaping and a waterfront location. I braced myself to dislike Disneyland for its crowds and artificial environment, but it turned out to be a place where we unwound, felt free to run around, encountered few lines and even felt close to nature. HK Disneyland is much smaller than its Anaheim counterpart, with only one roller coaster (Space Mountain), but we found it charming — in part because it brought out the little kid in our quickly maturing preteen. Both Colly and Kyle admitted to liking the corny “It’s a Small World” ride because when they saw the singing and dancing dolls representing different cultures and countries, they could say, “We’ve been there!” or, “I want to go there someday!”

There was something weird but delightful about going round the world on the Small World ride from the vantage point of Hong Kong. In my head I flipped through all the places we’ve been and then pictured the Hong Kong skyline and started singing, “It’s a tall world.”

Celebrating Colly's 12th birthday at Hong Kong Disneyland was a real treat.

Although Hong Kong won’t make our Top Ten list of favorite places, I’m definitely glad we made the week-long, eye-opening stopover there. Here are a few more photos from Morgan:

Related posts:

1. A Little Bite of Hong Kong
2. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
3. Branching Out on Lago Nahuel Huapi

So long, Australia! This shot overlooks Canberra and Lake Burley Griffin.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about “how to plan a year-long family itinerary” as though I were some kind of expert on the topic. But far from being experts, Morgan and I are learning as we go — with mixed success. As soon as I published that post, we made the big, difficult decision to tear apart and rebuild the last leg of our itinerary.

The rebuilding part has been rather stressful and time consuming, with thousands of dollars and our last month of travel at stake. We ate up much of our limited WiFi access during the last few weeks researching where to go, how to get there, how much it’ll cost and where to stay. As is often the case with travel planning, these issues are maddeningly interrelated.

So here’s the scoop: We pulled the plug on visiting Turkey and the Greek Islands and will drive a big loop around Switzerland instead.

The new plan began to take shape as we puzzled over the Greek Islands. We were having a terrible time figuring out which island(s) to go to and how to get there — and then how we’d get to and from Turkey — without spending too much time on a boat or incurring too much extra cost by flying. And Turkey wasn’t falling into place, either. We wanted to go to both Ephesus and Istanbul, but to get from one to the other involved an extra flight or long drive that we didn’t want to pay for or do. We felt we were belatedly and awkwardly grafting an expanded Turkey itinerary onto our ill-conceived Greek plans.

I listened to an inner voice say, “Admit it, you’re trying to jam a square peg in a round hole … you’re not excited about going to someplace everyone says you should feel excited about … this has started to feel like more trouble than it’s worth.” Morgan admitted he was having the same thoughts. He also kept saying, “I want to go up to see the Matterhorn and be in the Alps … we’re going to be right there at the edge in Italy, and we’re happiest when we’re in mountains and around lakes …”

We therefore dove into a new round of research as though cramming for a geography exam. The more we did, the more excited we got about heading to Switzerland after Italy. We eventually settled on a route from Lugano to Zermatt, then Lausanne, followed by a small village near Interlaken and Lucern.

The crazy thing is we’ll still spend a couple of days in the one Greek place we’ve heard repeatedly is a dirty and crowded disappointment: Athens. And it may be that we find widespread strikes and depression once we get there as the country reckons with its austerity plan. But our tickets are set to fly out of there, and we didn’t want to cut it out because the kids — who turned into fans of Greek mythology, fueled in part by the popular Percy Jackson book series — genuinely want to see the Acropolis, and I want to help make Colly’s Ancient History textbook come to life.

Then we’ll spend our final week in a place we love: England (likely in the southeast coastal area, but those details are still TBD). We also resolved to go to Turkey when we can “do it right”; that is, when we can make it a dedicated trip, not hemmed in by our existing itinerary and the restrictions on our One World airline tickets.

Somewhere in here, perhaps, is a lesson about being flexible and open to change. Either that, or about the importance of researching and planning travel details earlier!

This also serves as a roundabout excuse for why I haven’t blogged as frequently or as well as I’d like about our recent destinations. We’re headed to Hong Kong today, where I resolve to write about our highlights from our final week in New South Wales and Canberra.

Related posts:

1. Halfway There Together: Surprises and Changes So Far
2. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary
3. When It Rains…

The lookout next to our lodge in the Blue Mountains (click to enlarge).

The alternative title for this post could be, “How We Ended Up Off A Beaten Path Near The Blue Mountains.”

Our home for the week is at the end of a road in a thick, misty gum tree forest where wild parrots fly overhead and the cliffs of the Blue Mountains plunge into a forested canyon. In the mornings, the parrots flock for a feast of birdseed offered up by Colly and Kyle’s outstretched hands.

"A bird in the hand is worth a loo in the bush" -- the parrots make up for some of the inconvenient aspects of this eco lodge.

We’re exploring nearby trails, enjoying the offbeat towns of Blackheath and Katoomba, and unplugging at a cabin at the Jemby-Rinjah Eco Lodge, which is deep in the woods with no traffic noise, no Internet access and very few other guests. I love the simple, natural way of life — but I admit I was shocked to discover that the cabin’s toilet lacks what we all take for granted: running water and a flusher. It’s just a seat above a pit, a.k.a. “a roto loo composting system.”  At least I have good reason now to argue that the others should put the lid down when they’re done!

Whenever we find ourselves in a weird and wild place like this, I think to myself, We’re a long way from Piedmont — how did we get here? The simple answer is that we reserved this cabin about two months ago. We figured we wanted a rustic setting after two weeks in Sydney, but didn’t want to drive too far or spend money on a flight to elsewhere in Australia. The Blue Mountains National Park seemed like a no-brainer. Our research turned up a New York Times article recommending this affordable eco-lodge, and that was enough to convince us to book it.

As the above example suggests, planning an itinerary is a very unscientific and subjective process that involves looking inward at values and priorities as well as looking outward at the world of possibilities. It’s always a balancing act between dreams and reality — that is, limitless interests versus limited time and resources. Sometimes it’s fascinating, but just as often it’s frustrating.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the process not only because we’re in the throes of researching the final leg of our trip, but also because we spent a lovely half-day with a family in Sydney who invited us over to get advice on how they should plan their year-long trip around the world. Our conversation brought back so many memories of how bewildered we felt one year ago when we stared at the map on the One World airline website and tried to figure out which continents — let alone which countries and cities — we should visit, and how to make the route work out.

We’re less methodical and less organized than some traveling families we know who plan and budget every detail far in advance of departure. If Morgan and I were traveling without kids, we’d probably plan even less and be more like the backpackers we were on our college trip overseas. But the reality is that traveling with two kids means we can’t just “wing it”; we have to book places in advance so we’re assured we have a relatively affordable and pleasant place to sleep and to minimize the stress of getting from one point to another. Long-term family travel differs significantly from single or couple’s travel in part because we need apartment-style lodging that can sleep all four of us and has a kitchen for cooking meals, which usually takes more work to find than a standard hotel room.

Our cabin here has the kind of cozy kitchen we seek when researching rentals.

The problem with travel planning is it can turn into a giant time suck. We could easily spend eight hours a day on the Internet reading about destinations, debating one over the other, comparing lodging options, and then trading emails with apartment managers and arranging overseas wire transfers to those who won’t take credit cards. We have spent days like that, and it’s no fun. Rather than searching for “the best” deal in “the best” place, we found it’s better to research just enough to feel that a choice seems pretty darn good, and then go for it.

Over the past year, we’ve developed these guiding principles to plan our itinerary, and I hope they might help other families contemplating a far-flung, months-long journey:

Less is more. The biggest mistake any family can make in planning an itinerary is trying to go to too many places and do too much. Packing, checking out of a place, driving or flying, and then checking in and settling into somewhere new is stressful on the kids and kills the better part of a day. We’ve discovered we’re happiest when we go for depth over breadth; this is, we move around less and settle into a community for a couple of weeks. During two months in New Zealand, we experienced both road-tripping — sleeping in a new town almost every night — and two-week stays at a couple of main destinations (Nelson and Queenstown). It was exciting to see so much, but overall we had a more satisfying time at the two-week spots, where we could really get to know the community and establish normal family routines such as planning meals and doing schoolwork.

A year ago, we considered choosing one major destination per month and renting an apartment there for four weeks. That would have been a cheaper way to go — the more you move around, the more money you’re likely to spend on lodging and everything else — but in hindsight I’m glad we didn’t do that; we probably would start to feel restless after a couple of weeks, and we don’t want to sacrifice too many opportunities to explore different places. For whatever reason, one to two weeks feels like the optimal amount of time to spend in any one location.

Accept the fact you can’t see every “must-see.” While we were in Argentina, we agonized over whether we should buy plane tickets and take a few days to see Iguazu Falls. Now we’re in Australia, and people are telling us we’re crazy to miss the Great Barrier Reef. I feel certain, however, that we’ve done the right thing by skipping both those destinations because of the time, money and effort it would take to get there. We’ve got enough “must-sees” on our calendar. Plus, some of the most interesting travel times happen outside of typical tourist destinations, in ordinary towns where real people really live.

Book far in advance for holiday seasons, but otherwise it’s okay to fill in the details as you go. There is no way we could have planned everything before we left home — it would have taken too much time, and we were preoccupied with packing and moving out. All we did was determine the outline of the itinerary so we could purchase the One World tickets (and even then we changed dates and destinations along the way), and we found apartments in our first two major destinations. We also found a special place to stay during the week of Christmas. Otherwise, we’ve been ironing out the details and booking lodging approximately two months in advance of where we’ll be. It has worked out well, although we learned the hard way that we should have booked earlier for the holiday season Down Under (mid-December through January) because some places we wanted to stay were already full. Similarly, if we were going to be in Europe over summer, we would have to book much farther in advance.

One advantage to staggering the process and letting the itinerary evolve more organically (for lack of a better word) is we’re more open to change. For example, we initially planned to go to Athens and a still-to-be-determined Greek Island, with a side trip to Ephesus, Turkey, to see the Roman ruins there. Then, about three months ago, we started hearing a steady drumbeat of Istanbul, Istanbul, Istanbul. An article here, a friend’s recommendation there — it was strange how we seemed to be receiving signals to go there. We resisted because getting there seems expensive, complicated and culturally too confusing. But then a couple of others whose opinions I respect mentioned something out of the blue about how they loved Istanbul. Meanwhile, the more we heard about Athens, the less alluring it seemed. The upshot is we’re going to change things around to go to Istanbul and spend more time in Turkey, less in mainland Greece.

Our front porch this week leads to a dense gum tree forest. Our kids are always happier in settings like this (and by extension, so are we), where they can wander outside and play, than in big cities.

Limit time in big cities, or at least balance it with time in the countryside. If we go to Istanbul, it’ll be for a week at most. We’ve found that big cities have two main drawbacks: they’re expensive, and they’re stressful on the kids. Colly and Kyle enjoy the city sites for a few days, but then the noise, the crowds, and the inability to go outside the front door and play freely starts to wear on them.

Plan around a hobby. For some, this might be art history or regional cuisine or mountain climbing. For Morgan and me, it’s trail running. We picked destinations with scenic trails and are taking detours to trail running events, which is why a campground in Daylesford, outside of Melbourne, is on our itinerary next weekend — it’s the site of a “dirt fest” with trail running, mountain biking and events for kids. I’m sure there are at least a hundred other destinations in Southern Australia that are more attractive and culturally significant than Daylesford, but we figure we’ll have fun connecting with other families and doing something we enjoy there. We never would have discovered the West Coast of New Zealand if not for the trail running event that prompted us to go there.

Morgan during a run/hike on a cliffside trail in the Blue Mountain range.

Don’t be shy — hook up with locals even if you barely know them. Tap into networks such as alumni groups, Facebook and friends-of-friends in order to meet people in your destinations, especially if those locals have kids that your kids can play with. In New Zealand, we met up with a friend-of-a-friend via Facebook and ended up having a magical day touring an area that only a local would know, and through this person we met a wonderful family who gave us the use of their house. Then we connected with really old friends who have kids our kids’ ages and spent a blissful two weeks in their home. I look forward to returning the favor to the family from Sydney when they swing through Northern California. Meeting new people and forming relationships is part of the joy of traveling — of life, really.

Use tried-and-true websites. We cast a wide net on the web when we research but return repeatedly to these sites: Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet and The NY Times Travel section. Morgan also is a master at using Google Earth and Google Maps to “see” a place in advance. We’ve actually decided against certain apartments because the street view on Google reveals they’re in a place that looks particularly shabby or inconvenient. We also rely on other traveling families’ blogs for recommendations (such as those listed on the right hand column of our blog). We don’t carry many guidebooks because we don’t want the weight; we read a few select books mainly to get an overview on a country or region, rather than specific recommendations.

Remember, “Wherever you go, there you are.” I start feeling flutters of anxiety about the big gaps in our itinerary that we still need to fill for April and May, but then the Jon Kabat-Zinn title Wherever You Go, There You Are pops in my head and helps me relax, having faith that we can make the best of wherever we end up if we have the right attitude. Whether we have a positive experience traveling depends less on the destinations themselves and more on what we do as a family — how we interact with each other, and with other people and the surroundings — wherever we go.

You can stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and have a pretty lousy time if you’re annoyed by other tourists, pissed off at your spouse and frustrated that your kids don’t feel like hiking. Or, you can find yourself in a remote corner of Patagonia, smelling of carsickness after a difficult drive, and laugh uncontrollably upon discovering that your lodge lacks a view but has a bizarre collection of gnome figurines. As Morgan put it, “You can end up in some pretty weird places, but they can be a lot of fun.”

This is the iconic Blue Mountains shot: the legendary Three Sisters rock, which all the tour buses stop by to see. It's pretty, but ...

... we had a better time discovering this out-of-the-way waterfall on the other side of the canyon than staring at the Three Sisters.

Related posts:

1. Byways by the Blue Mountains
2. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash
3. Happy New Year and New Blog

Kyle and Colly steppin' out to see Sydney's production of the musical Wicked.

When we got to Sydney, our friend Cheryl said she had heard that “Australia is the LA and New Zealand is the SF,” and she wanted to know if it’s true. My answer, based on seeing only Sydney so far, is yes — to a point. Sydney, with its string of famous beaches, has a surf culture that mirrors Santa Monica and a sense of style that channels Hollywood. Whereas Kiwi fashion looks earthy and understated, lots of people here dress as though they’re going clubbing — circa 1985. Morgan, who arrived here before me, emailed me on his first day in Sydney: “Make sure to bring high heels, tube tops and tight clothes since it seems to be what lots of other women are wearing. Sort of reminds me of the Aussie girlfriend in Spinal Tap.”

But the LA-SF analogy falls apart when I realize that many of Sydney’s loveliest parts evoke San Francisco. In Sydney’s central business and shopping district, grandly refurbished and ornately detailed Victorian and Edwardian buildings stand next to sleek modern high-rises. Along the bustling waterfront, shops, exhibits, restaurants and, of course, boats are everywhere, as though San Francisco’s stretched-out Embarcadero had been compressed into a few distinct harbor areas.

Sydney also feels like San Francisco because of its large Asian population. But the demographic diversity doesn’t stretch much beyond Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian and Indian. We can buy egg rolls, sushi and curry on every block, but burrito places are few and far between. I can count on one hand the number of black people I’ve seen so far, and the only Latin American I’ve noticed is the wizened old street musician with the rainbow serape who seems to play the pan flute in every major city we visit. And the only Aboriginal I’ve seen yet is on a postcard.

As for the weather, it doesn’t match either city. You could call it “hog” — humid fog. It’s been overcast and rainy most of the time, but sticky hot, and then the sun broke out and it was scorching!

In spite of less-than-perfect weather and a high price tag on everything, we have grown very fond of this city. It’s urban yet easy to get around, flashy yet laid back. Of all the big cities we’ve visited, this is one of the most kid friendly. We’re staying in a high-rise apartment building in the central business district, next to Darling Harbour, where there’s a sprawling playground and easy ferry access. Catching ferries the way you catch cabs or subways in other cities is one of Sydney’s charms.

Here are highlights and recommendations for anyone visiting Sydney:

Two of the many creatures at the Taronga Zoo with a great view of the Sydney skyline.

Wildlife (and I don’t mean the kind of wildlife with open containers in our elevator every night):

• Go to the Royal Botanic Gardens next to the Opera House, look up at the trees and be prepared to gasp at the site of thousands of fruit bats the size of small dogs hanging upside down and flying around. They’re also known as “flying foxes,” and they took up residence in the gardens when much of their forest habitat was lost to farming. At dusk the city sky is full of them flying by, along with native white cockatoos. I have never seen anything like it — so many really big bats spreading their wings and flexing the bones in them like fingers — and they’re strangely beautiful and downright cute. (Having read the children’s picture book Stellaluna innumerable times undoubtedly colors my view.)
  

  They're not coconuts, they're "flying foxes"!

  

  Some of the fruit bats spreading their wings above the Royal Botanic Gardens.

• The sprawling Taronga Zoo is on par with the San Diego Zoo — one of the best we’ve ever seen — and its 2,660 animals look extremely well cared for. Kyle can’t stop talking about the Komodo dragon.
  

  Kyle's favorite creature at the zoo, the Komodo, was about the same size as he is.

Beaches:

• Bondi: We walked to Sydney’s most famous beach from the neighborhood of Coogee, about three miles south of Bondi. The coast walk was hard on the kids because of the heat and hills, but Morgan and I loved seeing the waves crashing against the cliffs.
  

  The surf on along the walk from Coogee to Bondi.

  Bondi beach lived up to its reputation as a grown-up playground crowded with beautiful bodies sunbathing, surfing and partying. The kids reveled in the rough surf, and we watched them like their lives depended on it (which they actually did, given the notoriously dangerous currents here, not to mention the underwater things that can sting and bite — though this generally is a “safe” swimming beach).

  

  Colly with Bondi's waves behind her.

• Manly: One of the area’s prettiest suburbs, Manly, is 30 minutes north by ferry from central Sydney, and the beach is spectacular, with water as clear and blue as Hawaii. The currents here are crazy, creating multiple sets of waves in multiple directions. We saw something we’d never seen before: waves that run sideways like a zipper opening, parallel to the shore, and often there’s another sideways wave going the opposite direction on the same line, and they meet and crash midway. It’s the wave pattern you’d see if two people held two ends of a rope and jerked the ends at the same time. The kids thought this surf was even better than Bondi. We felt some relief that lifeguards were patrolling the waters, and they were strict about keeping swimmers between two flags marking a relatively small area. They had a warning sign for “blue bottle” jellyfish, aka a Portuguese Man of War, and both kids got stung at the end of the day. “It felt like a thousand bee stings at first,” said Colly. “It felt like a stinging whip had curled around my leg,” said Kyle. The medicine — ointment and ice cream — worked wonders.
  

  Surf's up on Manly Beach. From this East Coast, it was hard to imagine the blizzard hitting America's East Coast.

Shopping:

• The QVB: We hate to shop but it proved to be a worthwhile activity on a rainy day when we discovered the Queen Victoria Building. The building itself — not the shops — is what got me excited. It’s a gorgeous pavilion covering a city block at the corner of George and Market streets.
  

  The Queen Victoria Building. (Photo from wikimedia; we would have taken our own, but it was pouring rain!)

  It was built in 1898 in a grand Romanesque Revival style with lots of arches, columns and a giant dome. Inside, two massive mechanical clocks hang from ceiling, in the middle of the open area between the shops, displaying ornate dioramas and figurines that depict moments in Australian history. The kids thought it was “really cool.” The shops are all high-end designer boutiques, so we didn’t buy anything, until we got to the third floor and discovered Hobby Co., one of the best toy shops ever, and Kyle picked out some Legos.

• Kent Street: Sydney’s shopping district is so packed with malls that I assumed it would be easy to find travel- and outdoors-oriented stores with the type of clothing and gear we needed. Not so. After walking in circles (or squares, I guess, is more accurate), block after block, we finally found all the stores that sell outdoor gear and travel clothing clustered together around the 400 block of Kent Street — stores like Trek & Travel and Kathmandu (a brand that’s sort of the Down Under equivalent of REI). I don’t know why they’re all hidden in this corner. There — I’ve done my duty to spread the word to other travelers!

Eating:

• We didn’t eat out much because of the prices and forgettable fare near the waterfront (where the food offerings are a little too much like Fisherman’s Warf). But we had one worthwhile meal with a panoramic view of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge at Cafe Sydney, which is in the rooftop room of the landmark Customs House building in Circular Quay. The Customs House is a neat place to visit because the first floor has a full city model under glass built into the floor, so you actually walk on top of it and peer down at the miniature city. It also features displays about the not-so-proud history of immigration to Australia, where they fess up to the country’s not-so-distant history of racism and exclusion. The restaurant’s food and service were good but not great (I can’t even recall what I ordered), but the view and ambiance made it worth it.
• We found the best Latin American food we’ve tasted since leaving California and Argentina at Cantina Bar & Grill, tucked into a storefront on Oxford Street, which is Sydney’s Castro and has lots of bars and dance clubs with names like The Toolshed. The tapas, grilled meats, Spanish tortilla and churros were among the best I’ve ever tasted and reasonably priced.

Running:

• The most obvious and scenic place to run is on the quilt of green that covers Hyde Park, The Domain and the Royal Botanic Gardens, skirting the Opera House. But I actually prefer Centennial Park. There’s a two-mile equestrian track where riders exercise their horses and practice dressage routines in the grassy middle area, which of course I loved watching while running the perimeter of the track.
  

  The Harbour Bridge and Opera House as seen from the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Museum for Kids Who Are Sick of Museums:

• The Powerhouse Museum of Science and Design, Sydney’s largest museum, is housed in an old powerhouse and is full of interactive displays on engineering, design, technology and pop culture. It seemed fitting, given the fashion we’d seen on the street, that they had a special exhibit called “The 80s Are Back” that spotlights all the styles and trends of my teenage years. I liked the fact that the kids left the museum eager to sketch and develop engineering plans for new products they had cooked up in their minds.

Now we’re heading to a rustic lodge in the Blue Mountains, so we’ll say goodbye to city life at week’s end. It doesn’t really feel like urban living, though, because people walk around with beach towels over their shoulders and sand clinging to their calves, and amazing animals and plants thrive in various corners of the city. It’s been great to soak up these sights along with the rain.

Morgan tried to find shelter in this fern during a downpour.

We saw spiders like this all over the Botanic Gardens and on a trail near Manly.

The bats and bugs in Sydney's Royal Botanic Garden left us open-mouthed.

Phew -- the rain stopped and nothing bit me!

Related posts:

1. Halfway There Together: Surprises and Changes So Far
2. The Wild, Wild West Coast
3. Canberra: There’s Something To It!

The Sydney skyline as seen from a ferry.

As you can guess from the photo, we’ve started the five-week Australian leg of our journey! This past week was a blur as I left Morgan and the kids for a short trip back to California. The three of them transitioned from New Zealand to here, and I rejoined them midweek.

I felt the way this guy looks after I crossed the date line twice in a week. Morgan and the kids saw this koala at the Sydney Zoo.

At first I felt as bushed as a koala who looks drunk on eucalyptus midday. (Little-known fact from Friends of the Koalas: “Contrary to popular belief, eucalyptus leaves do not make koalas drunk. Koalas appear drunk or lazy because they have developed a low-energy lifestyle to compensate for their extremely low-energy diet.” What a bummer to discover — I liked the idea that this lovable species had evolved to be fat, lazy and perpetually buzzed.)

In the midst of the past week, each of us took time to mark the halfway point in our journey by doing the following exercise: write a letter to ourselves and the other family members. Reflect on the trip so far, making note of what memories stand out and our feelings about the past six months. Then imagine the second half of the journey (when we’ll go from Australia to Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey) and write down some hopes and expectations for those months. Don’t share the letter with anyone yet; seal it up and set it aside. Then, on the last night before returning home, open and take turns reading them to one another and reflecting further — not only about where we went and what we did, but also why we did it, how it affected us and what we’ll do next.

I have my friend Carolyn to thank (the one who hosted us in Queenstown, who’s an accomplished educator and world traveler) for suggesting this exercise, because it prompted me to think more deeply about how this trip has changed and surprised us. There’s no way I can fit all those ideas into a blog post, but I’d like to share some.

Here, then, are some surprises and revelations  in no particular order:

I really like my family. This wasn’t obvious to me before. Of course I love them — but did I like their company so much that I could spend all day, every day with them? As we planned this trip in early 2009, I seriously worried we would get sick of each other. I braced for the inevitability that we would bicker and get in one another’s way. What happened instead is they became my closest friends. We do bicker (that really is inevitable), but nonetheless I am happiest when we are sharing small spaces, such as a car or a hotel room, and when they are in sight or earshot. This is one reason I don’t miss our big house with its separate areas. Back home I occasionally found myself thinking “I need my space” or “my kids are driving me crazy,” but those thoughts don’t enter my head now.

Colly and Kyle are de facto BFFs. They’re reluctant to admit it, but the kids have developed a bond and have more fun together than ever before (see the earlier post on how long-term travel affects play and sibling relationships).

We don’t need much stuff. Traveling has made us less materialistic, less cluttered and more frugal. We have pared down to the essentials, and we value every item in our bags. I swear to God, nobody needs more than three pairs of shoes (sandals, running shoes, and close-toed leather shoes that are dressy but still good for walking around). We have purchased almost nothing as souvenirs, preferring to spend money on experiences and eating rather than on stuff. I look at price tags like never before and try to take home leftovers to make two meals out of one. We have to shop here in Sydney to replace some worn-out grubbies and to get some decent outfits for places like Barcelona and Rome, and the trip to the mall looms like a chore on our to-do list.

Kyle soaks in the Sydney Harbour scene. He's not the only one who's overdue for a haircut!

Related to the point above: We really don’t need all those toiletries and expensive skin and hair care products. I packed a mini-pharmacy when we left and discovered we didn’t need half the things we brought, and if we did need something, then we could buy a comparable product wherever we are. Brand loyalty faded quickly. My must-have conditioner from a salon ran out, and I replaced it with a product I had never heard of, at a mini-mart in Mendoza, for about one-tenth the cost, and my hair looked and felt pretty much the same. The idea of spending money to get my eyebrows and toenails done monthly now seems crazy. I recently wrote to a friend that these months of roadtripping have revived a latent hippie streak in Morgan and me, and we’re all overdue for haircuts.

I’m bigger. I weighed myself for the first time in months, and the scale confirmed what my tighter clothes and mirror told me: I’m enjoying the regional cuisine a little too much. I’ve got saddlebags that look well stocked for the long ride ahead. Lo que sea (whatever).

Long-term travel has leveled the playing field in our marriage. Morgan and I have a twenty-five year relationship with all the peaks, valleys and rocky terrain of a good trail run. These months away have helped our marriage in ways I didn’t expect, mainly because we’re more collaborative and united — we have to be, because we’re stuck together and need each other in these utterly foreign environments. We now work together on the essential things that often determine the (im)balance of power in a marriage, such as who controls the money, who cares for the house and who keeps the all-important calendar. The kids now look to their dad for answers and direction every bit as much or more than they come to me.  (One small example: Last night Colly asked me a question about makeup but went to Morgan for help with her hair.) Of course there’s still some division of labor — e.g. I do more than half of the homeschooling, he does more than half of the travel planning — but we trust one other to swap roles far more than we did before.

This notion hit me when I left them for my solo trip last week. I did not make multiple lists with endless reminders for Morgan about what he should do in my absence, and when he and the kids Skyped or emailed me details about their day, I did not second guess what they had or hadn’t done. I did not interrogate them about whether they were using sunscreen and flossing. I just felt happy for them and missed them. I trusted Morgan and respected him to a degree I know I wouldn’t have six months ago.

Morgan reading his Kindle in our Sydney apartment.

We’re reading books instead of the news. I’m guilty of political apathy. I’m not reading past many headlines. But I am reading — novels, memoirs, travel blogs — and savoring literature in a way I didn’t back home, where I had to deliberately make time to read just one book a month and my attention span shortened to article length. Morgan is reading about twice as much as I am, going off at least once during the day to read on his Kindle. And Colly and Kyle have become bookworms — they wander off and read, sometimes surreptitiously because they don’t want me to tell them to put away their books and get something else done. I truly doubt they would have discovered reading for pleasure back home, where reading is lumped together with homework and their time is so sliced and diced.

We’re not doing a lot of things we thought we’d do. Before we left, I had noble plans for various things we’d accomplish. I wanted to make a commitment to “voluntourism” — i.e., to volunteer for a worthy cause in each of our major destinations. I had images of the four of us pulling weeds in an organic farm in the countryside or handing out food at a soup kitchen in a city. None of that panned out. Volunteering takes time to set up, and takes time away from sightseeing, and quite frankly we have enough logistical wrinkles to iron out on a daily and weekly basis, so I let it go. I also wanted to attend a local church at least once a month, thinking it would be a good way to get a sense of the community we’re in, but we haven’t set foot in a church since we left the Bay Area (except to view the architecture). Like voluntourism, going to church felt like something we “should” do rather than really wanted to, so we let it go. Ditto with learning Italian (we started a “daily phrase” program but it petered out; I lost interest because it’s hard enough to study Spanish occasionally). And what about my fledgling career as a travel writer? Oh, yeah, I meant to get to that — I have all my notes from last year’s multimedia and travel writing seminars somewhere, along with ideas of stories to pitch to various websites and publications, and … well, this blog is about as far as I’ve gotten.

So far, no regrets. I wasn’t at all sure this trip would live up to the “no regrets” phrase in the blog’s tagline. The risks were huge: We jeopardized a career, strained relationships, risked our kids’ education and raided our savings. What if it all turned out to be a colossal mistake? What if we spent 11 months drifting around feeling homesick and anxious? What if we spent the whole time fighting? We had a long list of reasons not to leave home and go out on this longest of limbs. One thing that helped us make it happen was a refrain we heard from others who had taken time as a family for a similar trip: “It’s the best thing we ever did.” We heard it over and over, and now I’d say the same: It’s the best thing we ever did.

My favorite picture of the Sydney Opera House, courtesy of Colly.

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On the road between Queenstown and Glenorchy (click to enlarge).

On a run with Morgan this morning, I wistfully said goodbye to New Zealand and its intoxicating, idyllic landscape. We headed out from our friends’ home near Queenstown, where we stayed for over a week, and took a trail that showcased so much of what I’ll miss about New Zealand: ragged peaks that rise up sharply to cut the sky, and blue lakes that spread out to make the mountains appear even larger. Soft pastures and tangled bushland that reflect so many shades of green, and trails that lead past communal huts and over bridges carefully covered with a no-skid surface. New Zealand apparently decided early on in its short history as a country to make hiking (or “tramping,” as it’s called here) a national priority.

This trail leads to our friends' home at Closeburn Station.

And the sheep — it wouldn’t be New Zealand without them. We inadvertently cornered a big flock against a gate and had no choice but to run right through. What a sendoff: a chorus of sheep at my feet, a group of alpacas to our left, and three fat and sassy horses to our right. This isn’t the Queenstown most people know — the Queenstown of bungy jumps, ski slopes and the famous Shotover Jet — but I highly recommend a taste of life on a station (what Kiwis call sheep or cattle ranches).

Here are a few other recommendations and final reflections from New Zealand to frame Morgan’s photographs:

As we transitioned from the South Island’s West Coast to Queenstown, ever more big and beautiful mountains and lakes kept bursting into view like the grand finale in a fireworks show.

Mount Cook, NZ's tallest mountain (3754m or 12,316ft), as seen on our drive next to the brilliantly blue Lake Tekapo.

The rivers flowing on the Southern Alps, like this one on Arthur's Pass, have the color and clarity reminiscent of a gemstone.

Before we left the West Coast, we stopped at Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki (between Westport and Greymouth). The “pancake” stacks are columns of limestone with almost perfectly thin, horizontal layers fantastically carved by the wind and sea, which rushes into the columns and spews through blowholes.

One of the Pancake Rocks blowholes that fills up and churns like a giant washer.

One of the water- and wind-sculpted figures at Pancake Rocks.

Turning east and quickly gaining altitude, we drove over Arthur’s Pass and found ourselves gazing at mountains above timberline on a road barely clinging to the shale sides and flanked by steep drop-offs. It reminded me of the San Juan Skyway in Southwestern Colorado, and it felt as though we had driven from Big Sur to the Rockies in only an hour or so.

Along Arthur’s Pass, we spent a couple of nights at Flock Hill Lodge, a beautifully landscaped retreat with comfortable cabins and a tasty restaurant on the edge of seemingly endless open space. Rock outcroppings on the green mountainsides look so magical that filmmakers decided to shoot The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe near here a few years ago. We headed out on a trail called “The Narnia Track” and saw why this area is a mecca for mountain bikers and trampers.

The view out our window at Flock Hill.

Colly and Kyle pretended they were characters from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as we hiked toward the film location.

Kyle got a spring in his step when he found a fossil toward the end of our Flock Hill hike.

Then we bombed down to Queenstown, the home of our high school friends The Kirkpatricks (the same family we kayaked with). Entering town, I suddenly felt as though we were back in the Patagonia Lake District, but the lakes and sky reflected a brighter, clearer blue. Lake Wakatipu, shaped like a lightening bolt, zigzags through craggy glacial peaks aptly named The Remarkables. If you look in the sky almost anytime, any day, you’ll see splashes of color from adventure seekers in parachutes swooping around and wafting down.

There's always someone floating overhead above Queenstown.

Colly struck a pose on the chairlift to the luge overlooking Queenstown.

There is so much to do in Queenstown — it’s a playground of adventure sports, similar to Rotorua in the North Island, plus a winter ski destination — but we didn’t do anything notable in town except swoosh down the luge. All we really wanted to do was soak up the pleasures of country living. Ahhh … the joys of being in a real home, with a real kitchen and washing machine and two wonderful boys to play with our two kids. Who needs TV or a Wii when you’ve got “chooks” (Kiwi for “chickens”) to care for? Long-term family travel really benefits from built-in downtime like we had last week, preferably at the beautiful ranch home of a dear friend. Being on the road for months heightens appreciation for and pleasure in the opportunity to do ordinary things, such as baking pumpkin pie, playing marathon Monopoly games and finding a dentist to clean our teeth.

We had dinner and spent a night with our friends in a communally owned "hut" (a small, rustic house) near Moke Lake outside of Queenstown.

Since I’ve been going on and on about New Zealand’s natural environment, I’ve neglected to say much about the people and customs I’ll miss as well. People who call ice cream cups “pottles” and breakfast “brekkie,” who wear wellies (rubber boots) with skirts or shorts, who still dry their clothes on a clothesline, and who sometimes say “hooray” or “cheerio” for “goodbye” seem predisposed to be extra nice and welcoming. This is a country that still relates in an old-fashioned, Midwestern way: telephoning with impromptu invitations, ringing the doorbell to chat, smiling and wishing strangers “g’day.”

Another thing about New Zealand: flashy cars are few and far between. We fit in with our third-rate, 12-year-old rented station wagon. I’m actually going to miss that car, because of all the time we spent in it and the places it took us — even though it made one of my biceps ache whenever I drove because the wheels are so out of alignment that I had to grip the steering wheel to keep us going straight. We named the car Dink because its license plate letters are DNK, and we laughed about how we’ve managed to turn the DINK acronym (Double Income No Kids) on its head (double kids, no income).

Goodbye, Dink!

So cheerio, New Zealand, and thanks to our friends and hosts from the past two months. Your country is brilliant and we’ll miss it heaps.

Want to see more photos? We finally updated the gallery with additional South Island shots.

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3. In the Backwoods of Blackball, Not Your Typical Hilton

A recent 24-hour period gave us that kind of experience in a remote corner of the South Island’s West Coast region — in part because I was gullible enough to fall for a joke.

A vintage advertisement for The Blackball Hilton, "Cheapest In the West" (click to enlarge).

Many months ago, when I was mostly ignorant about New Zealand and starting to plan our itinerary here, Morgan and I heard of a mountainous trail race that finished at The Blackball Hilton and decided to sign up. The Hilton was part of the draw. What a treat it would be, I thought, to stay at an upscale, familiar hotel chain after so many budget motels and campgrounds — and convenient, too, since it would be right at the finish line. I can still recall the mental picture I had of a typically plush Hilton lounge and lobby.

Only after we registered for the January 16 race did I google Blackball and discover the “Hilton” is a creaky Victorian inn and pub built in 1909, located way off the main road in a dying mining town with only one general store and a couple hundred residents.

“I would never stay here again,” shouted out one TripAdvisor.com reivew. “The rooms had layers of dust and dirty carpets.” Another detailed, “There are many quirky things about this hotel — the dolls staring at you as you turn round a corner upstairs. The poetry in the toilets and washrooms. The gallery in the middle of the upstairs with the drawings and paintings of ladies of the night. The monkeys looking in at you as you sit on the loo.”

In 1992, the Hilton Corp.’s lawyers demanded that the hotel drop the trademarked Hilton name, and the rebellious innkeepers responded by changing the official name to “Formerly The Blackball Hilton,” which it  has been ever since.

Hmmm, I pondered, more curious than appalled — maybe it was meant to be that we stayed there. Perhaps part of the adventure of running the remote race would be staying in a historic hole in the wall. I contacted the owners, Chris and Viv, about our babysitting quandary (initially I erroneously assumed “the Hilton” would have a kids’ club or childcare to supervise Colly and Kyle while we ran the race), and they told me no worries, they’d keep an eye on the kids and let them have the run of the pub. I took a deep breath and had faith it’d all work out.

One of the dilapidated buildings on Blackball's main street, with the mountain range in the background that our January 16 trail race traversed.

Driving to Blackball is like driving back in time to the early 1900s, to the kind of one-store mining towns you can still find on back roads of Colorado. There is no cell phone coverage, no Wi-Fi. The Blackball Hilton looks as though it was lifted straight from an old Western flick. When I first looked up at the second-story balcony, I half expected to see a floozy lady of ill repute looking busty in an off-the-shoulder pioneer dress.

Instead, I saw a mix of fit-looking runners and working-class barflies milling about. Newspaper clippings and old photos hung on the walls, detailing Blackball’s colorful history as the proud birthplace of New Zealand’s Labour Party. Coal miners went on a three-month strike here in 1908 for a half-hour lunch break and ultimately prevailed.

Morgan on the balconey of the Blackball Hilton.

Kyle takes notes on the Blackball Hilton's role in the mining town's history as the cradle of the country's Labour Movement.

The Blackball Hilton today is a cross between a museum and vintage boarding house, each room sporting a different color theme and wall paintings that look inspired by Romper Room. When I crawled into the creaky, collapsed bed and stepped on the spongy floorboards near the communtal shower and toilet down the hall, I tried not to think about all the people over all all the decades who had used them before me.

I checked out our room (lucky number 13) and tried to make sense of the sponge-painting art, which resembled mold. "We're sleeping here?"

One of the fanciful dorm-style rooms at The Blackball Hilton. Notice how some are old hospital beds.

Overall, though, it wasn’t so bad. We had a great meal (veggie lentil burger for me, chicken curry for Morgan, burgers for the kids — yum) with friendly service, and we got to chat with some of the other visitors from throughout New Zealand who were there for the trail run. The kids thought it was cool and made themselves at home. The following morning, while we gutted out the trail run, they played in the pub and garden with other kids hanging out at the finish line.

The Blackball Hilton's pub is rarely empty like this. Each piece of memorabilia on the walls has a story behind it.

As for the race? Well, we survived and my time was a PW, which is short for “personal worst.” I wrote a race report for my running blog with details. (Here’s an excerpt: “That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, no question about it,” Morgan said matter-of-factly as we shuffled along. His eyes looked sunken, and dried sweat and sunscreen gave his face a ghostly pallor. Did my husband really age 20 years in about four hours?)

Most people reading this will never find themselves near Blackball, off of Highway 7 on the South Island, and I wouldn’t recommend an overnight there — though it is worth a stop for lunch or dinner. What I do recommend, though, is seizing opportunities to stay in unexpected, unfamiliar and even uncomfortable surroundings. Our overnight at The Blackball Hilton, coupled with the strenuous trail race, goes down as one of the strangest and most challenging days of this trip. Getting to know this weirdly wonderful and gritty corner of New Zealand definitely deepened our understanding of the region and its people, and it made us more seasoned as travelers.

I’ll never stay in a real Hilton without remembering the one in Blackball and reminding myself that creature comforts are luxuries, not essentials, and sometimes the most memorable learning and living takes place when stripped of them.

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Trails like this (which is part of the Oparara Valley Track) crisscross the wet and wild West Coast.

I knew very little about the West Coast region of the South Island before we spent a week here, except for its reputation as rainy, buggy and rural. The average rainfall is 2575 mm (8.4 feet), and a sign at Abel Tasman National Park said, “You think the sand flies are bad here? Wait ’til you get to the West Coast!”

“At least you’ll miss the crowds over there,” a tour-guide type mentioned in a look-on-the-bright-side tone.

We detoured to the West Coast to participate in a low-profile trail running event (which I’ll write about next time), and we’re so glad we did. We have been blown away by the West Coast’s landscape — and not just ’cause it’s windy. This swath of New Zealand is gorgeous, authentic, unspoiled … and, yes, wet. Perhaps nowhere is New Zealand’s remarkable commitment to preserve open space and make it accessible with well-maintained trails more concentrated than in this region, which has five national parks and more “tracks” (what Kiwis call trails) than I could keep track of. For trail runners like us, it’s paradise.

The West Coast region covers some 375 miles of coastline, and its biggest district, Greymouth, has a population of less than 14,000. Almost half the West Coast residents live in and around Greymouth, while the others live in a sprinkling of sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it towns populated mainly by coal miners, pub owners and shopkeepers. Imagine if you drove from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz and the biggest town were about the size of my hometown of Piedmont, and you begin to sense how sparsely populated the region is. Here are highlights from our far-flung tour:

Karamea

Oparara Arch, a 200m-long limestone tunnel carved over eons by the river, is one reason to visit Karamea.

Way, way out there, at the north end of the West Coast’s main road, is the funky farming community of Karamea, famous for caves in the Oparara Basin and gateway to the Kahurangi National Park and its 78K Heaphy Track (the longest of New Zealand’s amazing Great Walks). We drove up on a rainy day that obscured the views, wondering where the hell we were and what we were doing, and checked into The Last Resort motel, where the decor is dorm-room-circa-1985. (The lounge and restaurant are quite nice though, with a woodsy Big Sur kind of vibe.) The next day we put on our windbreakers and drove up a 10-mile dirt road with not another car in sight. The slick mud made the car fishtail, and again we wondered where the hell we were and nervously joked that it looked like we found ourselves in the place where Jurassic Park was filmed.

Finally we reached a trailhead with a brand-new picnic area surrounded by museum-quality informational boards describing the colorful history of logging and mining here. It also explained the science behind the cave and arch formation, and answered perplexing questions such as, Why is the river here the color of an amber ale? (Answer: tannins from the foliage stain the water, as though all the water were passing through a giant teabag.)

The river runs reddish-brown near Karamea, stained by tannins in the forest.

The kids took it all in and enthusiastically set off on a hike among fuzzy-green trees that Colly said looked Seussical. We all marveled at the porous mountain that drips like a sponge and the natural arches that sprout stalactites and stalagmites. (Roadschooling doesn’t get much better than this.)

One of the "Seussical" trees along the trail.

We had to crane our necks all the way back and look straight up to get this view of a natural limestone bridge over the trail.

Morgan and I didn’t make it onto the Heaphy Track, but we took turns running through rain forests and over bouncy suspension bridges along the 8-mile Oparara Valley Track, which opened in late 2008 after years of work and fundraising by local volunteers. I actually got teary eyed when I reached a hut in the woods midway on the trail, which the volunteers built as shelter for hikers and adorned with informational boards showing pictures of the crew building the track and camping in the woods. Someone had taken the time to carve a chair and matching ottoman out of a giant stump. The hut was so special and so secluded, so lovingly constructed, that it struck me as an unintended monument to Thoreau in that it invited anyone who had the spirit to delve into the woods to sit back and spend as long as possible contemplating Nature.

Charming Creek and Granity

Colly and Kyle learned about coal mining history along the 10K Charming Creek Track, which follows an old railroad bed through tunnels and past waterfalls. Rusted mining equipment is left along the way.

We stopped for a few nights in a place about an hour south of Karamea that’s a speck on the map, Ngakawau, which is next to Granity (which isn’t saying much). Our little inn, the Charming Creek B&B, was a great spot to stay — right across the street from a blustery beach — but only if you don’t mind being in an isolated area (we didn’t). We spent the days homeschooling and hiking along the beach and the Charming Creek Track, which follows the roaring Ngakawau River.

A piece of old iron along the Charming Creek trail by Mangatini Falls.

The West Coast tracks feature numerous suspension bridges like this one over the Ngakawau River. I found them scary, but Kyle and Colly loved bouncing across them.

The Charming Creek railroad tracks, which transported coal and logs for decades, now make a path for hikers and runners.

Westport

Cape Foulwind next to Westport (click to enlarge), as seen from The Bay House restaurant.

Westport is the only “big town” (pop. approx. 3000) in the north half of the West Coast. It’s a working-class community with the basics we needed (market, laundromat) but not much to offer in town itself. Outside of town, however, are more natural playgrounds.

We checked into a forgettable motel and then drove toward Cape Foulwind (which doesn’t actually smell bad) and stumbled upon the surprisingly sophisticated, Thai-influenced Bay House restaurant with an incredible view of waves crashing against the rocks at sunset. Anyone who’s anywhere near Westport should have a meal and walk around here.

The Bay House restaurant behind the big rock the kids climbed.

Westport sits at the base of the Buller Gorge, a spectacular river valley. (I know I’m overusing superlatives in this post, but I can’t help it!) We got up close to the river on horseback during a two-hour ride with Buller Adventure Tours. Having suffered through numerous nose-to-tail guided rides on bomb-proof horses, I was pleasantly surprised to find rental horses in good condition with high-quality tack and a guide who let us trot and canter. At one point, we forged a sizable creek (not Buller River itself, which is much bigger than the stream in these photos).

Kyle manage to ride English by himself and guide his reluctant pony through the creek.

Colly took her horse through the deepest part and got her jeans soaked!

Now we’re headed to the southern half of the West Coast — between Westport and Greymouth — to explore places like Pancake Rocks and the Croesus Crossing before heading over Arthur’s Pass to Queenstown. Today marks the five-month day of our journey, approximately the halfway mark of our trip if we return in June as planned, and I can’t believe how far we’ve come.

Thanks to Morgan for taking these great photos ...

... and thanks to the kids for being great hikers!

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