Traveling Sam

People who know me from Facebook or other online sites just assume I have always been a traveler. I have posted hundreds of travel photos. I talk about travel a lot. If you look up my hobbies it will say photography and travel. But to many friends surprise I never traveled abroad until the year 2000 when I was 48 years old. I grew up with fantasies of travel. It was always something I wanted to do but it was always of my reach. I traveled through the movies. At the age of ten I saw my first James Bond, Dr No movie and was amazed at all of the exotic locations that were thousands of miles from my small town in Maryland.

Yes, that's me in the photo above standing spell bound at my first look at the Eiffel Tower in 2000. I was so enthralled I was not even aware my photo was being taken. I had to keep reminding myself I was really in Paris. I was really in France. It did not seem possible. If anyone had asked me where would you like to travel I would have said Paris. It was always a dream destination. We were offered French or Spanish in high school. There was no choice for me. It had to be French. If a movie was about France I wanted to see it. If you asked me what was my favorite childhood movie starring Judy Garland was my answer would have been Gay Purr-ee. Never would I have said The Wizard of Oz. It was set in Kansas not Paris. And the Wizard of Oz co starred Ray Bolger not Robert Goulet as in Gay Purr-ee. But that's another story.

So how did I get to Paris this first time? That's an interesting question. I was in a relationship with someone at the time who was a scientist. He was scheduled to attend a medical convention in Marseille. Paris was not even part of his itinerary. He asked if I would like to travel with him to Marseille. My immediate answer was YES of course. Marseille sounded much more exotic and exciting than Catonsville, Maryland where we lived. Who would say no? So we started to plan the trip. Keep in mind this was in 2000. There was no Google yet. We were still using Yahoo and Alta Vista for search engines. There was no Facebook. We were using AOL to "surf the web". Trip Advisor was just being founded in 2000. So it was a different world planning a European trip in 2000. We booked our airfare using Cheap Tickets.com. We searched for hotels through Yahoo and Alta Vista. But I agreed to go on one condition. We had to stop and see Paris. This did not go over well immediately. It was much cheaper to buy tickets to Marseille and fly home from Marseille. There was no time or reason to stop in Paris. But there was a reason. I said firmly I am not going to France and not see Paris. That was reason enough. So it was reluctantly agreed we would spend three days in Paris before moving on to Marseille.

I had no idea about traveling, I didn't even have a passport. I didn't know what to pack. How much to pack. Did I need to buy maps? A guide book? Should I use traveler's check or trust my credit card? There were so many decisions to make. And I was excited about all of it. We had purchased the airline tickets. We looked at hotels but no decisions were made yet. Then he came home from work the next afternoon looking very sad. He said he had some bad news. The trip was cancelled. The woman who was sponsoring the medical convention had died and they were cancelling the meeting. We could get the tickets refunded with no problems. I was speechless. And I must have had the saddest expression ever. He went to work the next day and sent me an email to my my job. It said to not cancel my time off. We were still going! I asked how was this possible. The answer was I could not come home and look at that sad expression of yours again tonight. We are going. He had arranged the airline tickets so we agreed I would work on finding our accommodations. I had a lot to learn.

Searching Yahoo I found the Modern Hotel in Paris. Great name I thought. And it was in the Pere Lachaise neighborhood which I thought was a plus as I wanted to see Jim Morrison's grave in the cemetery located there.

The sign said Modern Hotel. But novice traveler here had no idea what the two stars meant. I thought it was just a decoration on the sign. Nope. It was a two star rated hotel on a kind of run down street. This my was my view from the hotel window. There was no Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe any where in site. But there was a rather ratty looking bed in a dismal room that I planned to be in as little as possible so it did not really matter. And yes if you look closely I was wearing some really ugly glasses in 2000.

I did not have a cell phone at this time. I did not have a digital camera. No computer. I had no way to make contact other than a phone in case of an emergency. And this was not a bad thing. My photos were awful. I really had a lot to learn about travel photography. My photos were developed when I got home and were also digitized on a disc for me. But the photo quality was terrible on the digital disc. But looking back at the photos now the memories are very vivid and that's what it's all about really. Traveling. Making memories. Writing a travel diary. And reliving it years later.

I got to see a lot. I was a true tourist.

I saw the Statue of Liberty in Paris.

The Sacre Couer

And the Venus de Milo of course. I felt just like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face.

Arc de Triomphe

If you could pose by it I have a photo of it.

I learned to take better photos. In 2002 I joined the Virtual Tourist online group. I learned to write travel advice there. And I learned a lot about taking travel photos from the many great photographer there. But there is something special about being a first time novice traveler. I learned a lot from that experience also.

I guess you noticed there are no photos of my ex included here. And that is by choice. As Bogart said in Casablance "We'll always have Paris." but in this blog in my best Bogart voice it should be "I'll always have Paris."

I never got to Jim Morrison's grave on this visit. That had to wait for my next visit this time with my husband Mark. And I can say this time, he and I will always have Paris.

This photo was taken in 2015 and for some reason I am just now writing about it all these years later . And I don't know how I missed posting this. Mark and I were with our friend Gillian on holiday in Lisbon. Our last day there we were having lunch in an outdoor restaurant and noticed this girl with a bird hanging on her shoulder. At first we thought it was a dead bird which we found a bit odd. But then it moved. She was wearing a live bird on her blouse. It was just sitting there and not bothering to fly away. I love odd travel moments like this.

Mark and I have known our friend Gillian for almost 14 years now. We are more family than we are just friends. Gillian visits us often. And we travel together frequently. She makes frequent guest appearances in blogs because when we are all together trouble usually ensues. I am not sure why. Perhaps it's because we tend to drink a bit when we are all together. Gillian will deny this of course. But trust me. It's a fact. From time to time she and I remember this girl. We always say she is part of a novel that should be written. Or we say that one of us really needs to write a blog about it. But it has not happened until tonight. Gillian, her time in the spot light has arrived. I hope I do her proud.

Times are tough. To complain about it makes you look juvenile. Everyone, world wide, knows times are bad. There is nothing you can say about it that everyone doesn't already realize for themselves. We are sharing this pandemic world wide. When 400,000 people have died in your country it seems selfish and callous to say how much you miss travel. Or it seems insensitive to say I wish I could go out to my pub. And then it really seems childish to complain that you have nothing to write about in your travel blog. There are far more serious things to be concerned about. I talked to two good friends today and both told me they have tested positive for COVID. That's very serious. I prayed for them both tonight. I can't sleep. Stress has robbed me of sleep for weeks now. So while I sit here fighting insomnia the unfinished blog about the girl with bird on her boob came to mind this evening.

Mark and I love Lisbon. It was never a place on our bucket list to visit. But once we arrived there it captured our imagination. We have now been to Portugal twice and would love to again. We have some travel friends who live in Lisbon that we enjoy visiting.

And the wines in Portugal are some of the best in the world. The food is very good also,

And then there is the mesmerizing Fado music that we learned to love. Having some wine and listening to Fado music is one of our favorite experiences when we visit Portugal. This is the Fado bar we visied in a back alley in Lisbon. There is a young girl dressed in black singing the melancholy fado music.

And yet the girl with the bird on her boob seems to be my one haunting memory. When I think of my time in Lisbon I almost always go back to that last day and seeing her. It was odd. This was to be our last day in Lisbon. We were to leave for the airport in the morning to bid goodbye to Gillian and start our flight home. But we wanted a good meal and a few laughs on our last day. We really wanted something that we would be able to remember and talk about for years to come. And there she was. Leaning against a wall behind our table. An attractive young girl with a bird sitting on her breast. It caught my attention and then Gillian saw it also. We tapped Mark and motioned for him to turn around and look behind himself and then he too saw what we saw. There was no point trying to explain it to him. It was easier just to tell him to look. So we all looked.

Our first thought was why does this girl have a dead bird attached to her blouse. So we started making up reasons why the bird was attached to her. None of them made any sense at all but it didn't matter. We were just confused. And then the birds head moved. It was alive! Then we wondered why and how she had attached it to her blouse. Was she cruel and stapled it to her shirt? No, the birds foot moved and it repositioned itself a little. It was just sitting there hanging on to her blouse. And it never left her or flew away. Finally she pet its head, took it off of her blouse and put it in a small box. Then she went inside the restaurant and to our surprise was working there as a waitress and was going on her shift. She handed the box to a waiter who was going off shift and he kept it for her. It almost felt like Woody Allen should be narrating this in one of movies set in Europe. I could almost hear his voice introducing the girl as the main character in his movie and her love interest who shared the bird with her. And then suddenly everything changed. Again Gillian and I noticed something else odd and we were transported from the world of Woody Allen characters to a John Waters movie. Just across the street from where we were sitting we saw a man, a true John Waters character. He was standing by a wall relieving himself right in eyesite of our table. Well if it was a Woody Allen character we would say relieving. But this had turned into a John Waters movie so this man was pissing against the wall. Directly in front of us. Did I take a photo? Of course I did.

I knew I would be telling this story one day. And I knew I needed an ending. And this man provided the ending for me. So now in January 2021 when I am stuck home quarantining from the pandemic and fighting with stress and insomnia I finally am writing this blog from the summer of 2015. You never know how a story will end. I assumed the girl with the bird would be the entire story. And then man started urinating. So there's the end of the story.

When this mess we are in is over we will travel again. And we will see more strange things happening around us. And yes, I will document them with photos and tell you all about them in due time.

I usually write a year end blog on New Years Day. I have been thinking about what I wanted to say about 2020. I went back and reread my year end blogs from 2019, 2018, and 2017. I noticed that each of those years I started out by saying this has not been one of my best years. And I ended each blog saying I was sure the new year would be better. This year I just don't know what to say. So I think this photo taken in Meredith, New Hampshire is the best way to start. What a long strange trip it's been.
Last years blog said we were already planning travel for February 2020. Well that didn't happen. Mark did buy his new car in February.

And we did take a road trip to Odessa, Delaware where we went to a restaurant for the last time without a mask. Also with the new car we went to Woodland Beach, Delaware. That's a place I had not been since I was five years old when my family rented a boat and went crabbing in the Delaware Bay. The high lights of Woodland Beach were my photos of a lone house on the beach...

..and a nuclear reactor on the New Jersey shore across the Delaware Bay. When I edited my photo of the reactor to a black and white image there was a spooky blue haze all around it like radiation coming out of it. Oh 2020 this was just my first surprise of the year.

We started hoarding toilet paper, stocking up a two week supply of emergency groceries and hunting for masks to wear next. While doing this we got the word from my daughter Danielle that she had been hired for a job in Boston, She had been unemployed for most of 2019. She and her wife ended up selling their house in Atlanta, packing up a rental van and moving to Boston right at the heart of the original quarantine. List this under things to stress out Dad. Just as Danielle was preparing to move my other daughter Katie was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. She was hospitalized and of course we were not allowed to visit. Another item to add to the list of things to stress out Dad. We did go the hospital parking lot and wave to Katie's window. You can see Katie in the window above. I will not be embarrassed to say I cried on the way home.

So what is next to add to the list of things to stress out Dad. After leaving the hospital Katie was told due to Covid and budgetary issues she was being let go from her job. Perfect timing. Just what a person with a major medical diagnosis needs. No health insurance. Lots of prayers were said. That's one thing 2020 has done. It has increased my prayer life triple fold. And within a couple of weeks Katie was offered a temporary job in New Hampshire! The company provided her with a beautiful log cabin on isolated dirt road with a view of Mt Washington in her back yard.

I was a bit concerned when she accepted the job. The idea of her just being diagnosed with Crohn's disease and moving to an isolated cabin on a dirt road in New Hampshire was definitely another item on the things to stress out Dad list. She had to drive up for an initial interview and introduction to the new company. I did not want her to drive from Baltimore to Lancaster, New Hampshire by herself so I drove up with her. We were booked into a resort that had been closed for twelve weeks, The Mountain View Inn. We were one of a handful of guests there for opening weekend. Other than one or two other people were were the only guests in a 180 room resort. I will say in the midst of a world wide pandemic with quarantining all around this was a wonderful escape for three days.

I wanted to be trendy and follow the big fashion statement of 2020, a Covid beard. I had never grown a beard before and I have to admit I liked having one. I still have it to start out the new year 2021. Add this to the list of things to stress out your husband.

We were able to visit Katie in New Hampshire later this summer and also spend a day in Boston with Danielle and Andrea. It was a bit tricky going to Boston. Massachusetts had a ban on visitors from Maryland due to Covid that came with a healthy fine if you tried to spend the night there. We did drive to Danielle's house and drove with her to see some of the sites in Boston but that was the best we could do under the circumstances.

2020 continued to haunt us the rest of the year. Everyone has been affected by 2020 no matter who they are. It was no respecter of persons. I had friends who died. Friends who were very sick. And our beloved dog Delilah died this year. She was fourteen years old and had health issues. We did get to take her to New Hampshire before she died and she loved the cabin and the huge fields around it. She died November 8, 2020. We had a vet come to the house and we said our goodbyes on the back deck of our house.

We were lost without her and knew we wanted another dog to fill the void as soon as possible. We found Tallulah just a few weeks later from a rescue site. We drove to central Pennsylvania to pick her and bring her home.

But 2020 was not finished with our home yet. Two days before Christmas Tallulah darted out of our house and was hit by a car. We thought she was gone for good. Once again many prayers were said and out faith was tested but she survived. She had a dislodged shoulder and a multi fractured leg below the shoulder. There was concern this 18 month old pup would have to have her leg amputated. But as of New Years Day she is recuperating at home and her leg has been saved. We will have eight weeks of recovery and hopefully the leg will heal properly.

As I said in the beginning "What A Long Strange Trip It's Been". 2020 is a year no one living now will ever forget. This truly has been one of the worst years of our lives. But my girls both have jobs. They both had adventures moving to New England during the pandemic. Mark's mother had Covid while in assisted living and recovered but sadly is fading from Alzheimer's every single day. Our dog survived. We have toilet paper. And as a family we all have each other.

What is my final image of 2020? This about sums it up. A dirty mask left on a table in Littleton, New Hampshire. I'll this year here at the table.

I saw the movie Pollyanna starring Haley Mills at the movies in 1960. I was eight years old. I loved the movie and was so sad at the ending. SPOILER ALERT - The cheerful Pollyanna falls from a tree and can not walk at the end of the movie. Haley Mills starred as Pollyanna and won a special childrens Oscar for the movie. Pollyanna was always the optimist. Pollyanna had been taught by her father how to play the "glad game", in which the goal is to find something to be glad about whether it's a disappointing Christmas gift or a life long illness.

If any year needed a Pollyanna attitude it's been 2020. And little did I know at the beginning of this year that I would end up in Littleton, New Hampshire the home of the author of Pollyanna. Mark and I had big travel plans for 2020. We were planning a trip to Sweden in the spring to visit Mark's cousin. And hopefully a trip to New Castle, England for a meeting with our Virtual Tourist friends. And maybe even a fall trip back to our beloved Hawaii. Instead we were hit with Covid and quarantines. And then my daughter lost her job due to Covid budget contraints. And a few weeks she was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. So Pollyanna, where is the glad game in all of those? There was not a lot to be happy about presently.

Then the good news amidst the quarantine blues started to appear. My younger daughter who had also been unemployed for almost a year received a job offer in Boston. So she and her wife put their home on the market. Packed up their belongings, three dogs and three cats, and moved from Atlanta to Boston in the heart of the quarantine. About a month later my older daughter was offered a temporary job in New Hampshire. The company set her up in a fully furnished log cabin isolated on a dirt road in the northern New Hampshire town of Lancaster. The thought of her moving there for six month with the recent Crohns disease diagnosis certainly was not the part of any glad game for me.

I traveled to New Hampshire with Katie the last part of June for her job interview. I had only been to New Hampshire one time previously and that was almost ten years ago. Little did I know that this year I would end up in New Hampshire three times including the job interview trip. I also had no idea that Mark and I both would fall in love with New Hampshire.

We loved the cabin. It was large and accommodating. The views from the side porch were breath taking. We got watch the early morning sun rise over Mount Washington. And then in the evening we got to see the beautiful sunsets as well.

We got to visit two beautiful little towns on this trip. Littleton and Meredith, New Hampshire. Littleton calls itself "The Glad Town" because of it connection to the author of Pollyanna. And it truly is a glad town. There is a memorial to the character Pollyanna in front of the library. The crosswalks all have Pollyanna emblems painted on them. They instruct you to stop, look, and wave. . And the minute you step off the curb all the traffic stops for you and you really do feel like smiling and waving.

We took turns posing with the Pollyanna statue. It was a vacation after all and we were tourists kind of, although Katie is now a resident.

I was in such a Glad Game mood I even posed with the umbrella's at the Pollyanna Gateway.

I visited Littleton on all three of my trips to New Hampshire this summer. Why three times to the same little town? Well other than it being the "glad city" it also has a brewery that I really liked a lot. Perhaps one of my favorites I have ever visited. It's the Shilling Brewery. It's located in an old mill sitting on a hill over the Connecticut River. Now here is a glad game face with one of their excellent beers.

They also had excellent wood fired pizza and one of the best pretzels anywhere.

And there was plenty of out door seating for a safe and social distancing experience.

Littleton is large by northern New Hampshire standards but in reality it is only a town of 5,920 people. So it's truly a small town. But there is a lot to see and do there on a visit.

You can take a leisurely stroll along the Connecticut River.

Take photos of the beautiful covered bridge.

You can visit the Guiness Book of World Records longest candy counter at Chutters General Store

Try some Poutine made from french fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy. It tastes a lot better than it sounds.

Or you can just be a nasty tourist and leave your Covid mask on a table for someone else to clean up for you.

If I returned to New Hampshire again any time soon I would go back to Littleton. I enjoyed it that much.

I want to mention another small town in New Hampshire also. Meredith, New Hampshire. It's about 45 miles south of Littleton.

Meredith is a small resort town. It's a little larger than Littleton with a population of 6,241. It is located in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee. I mention it along with Littleton because it is the home to another fictional hero of mine. The author of the Archie comic books lived in Meredith, New Hampshire. And there is a statue to commemorate Archie in the town square. We saw this online and I said I have to go see this. I loved the Archie comics as a preteen. The statue of Archie sets on bench staring across the street to the work shop where he was created.

The lake area is beautiful. There are several bars, restaurants and hotels in Meredith. We were there on a warm sunny day and the lake front was crowded. For social distancing precautions we did not visit any of the bars or restaurants while there. But I would like to return and check some out after we are over this Covid mess.

There are some fun sculptures along the water front also.

I will be writing more about our time in New Hampshire. I never thought of it as a vacation destination. But Covid and Pollyanna's Glad Game changed my opinion.

Here I am back at home. Writing my blog and wearing my Pollyanna Glad Game tee shirt for inspiration. Take that Covid.

I don't normally visit large expensive resorts. An all inclusive resort in the Caribbean would be my worst nightmare vacation. Recently I did visit a very beautiful resort and spa in New Hampshire. And it was not a nightmare. Of course there was no one else there but me. So that made it easier for me to enjoy. My daughter had a job interview in Lancaster, New Hampshire the first weekend in June this year. The company interviewing her booked us a room at The Mountain View Grand Resort and Spa, Of course this was in the midst of quarantines and lock downs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The resort had been closed for eleven weeks. They reopened on Friday June 5, 2020. We arrived on Sunday June 7. It was interesting to see a big resort like this with no one else there. I did see three or four people in passing. But for the most part the halls were empty. The ballrooms were vacant. The bars were closed. And there we three very friendly staff members that I interacted with during my stay.

The hotel was massive. It has 150 rooms. The have a full menu of services available for the guests. I was at the hotel for two full days while my daughter was interviewing for the job. She took the car each day into the tiny town of Lancaster, New Hampshire and I stayed behind at the hotel. I had planned to bring my lap tap with me. I was going to relax at the hotel and work on editing my travel photos. I figued a glass of wine from the bar or on the patio with my lap top in front of me would be perfect. When we arrived I realized I had left my lap top packed up in its travel case back at home. And then I found out the bar would not be open and there was no alcohol being served on the patio or any where else in the hotel. New Hampshire only had restaurants and bars opened if they had outside seating. So I had lunch on the patio deck each day but no wine or beer to relax me.

That is my lunch view. Some water, a menu and a table with beautiful mountains in the background. It was a bit odd. I was the only person at the hotel other than one or two other guests. I asked the lady at the desk about lunch. She told me I would need to make a reservation each day for lunch. I looked at her with a grin and kind of looked over my shoulder to make sure there was no one else in line for reservations. So I asked to make a reservation. She asked me what time. It was 11:45 am. I looked at my watch and asked "Is 12:00 alright." And I am not exaggerating here. She pulled her little electronic tablet out of the drawer and checked the calendar. She keyed me in for 12:00. She then told me to come down to the lobby a few minutes before 12:00 and some one would come to seat me in the porch dining area. By this time it was already 11:50 so I just walked over and sat on one of the large couches in the lobby and waited to be called for seating.

So there I sat with my mask, which was required in any public area of the hotel, waiting for someone to call me for lunch. And magically at precisely 12:00 a lady appeared from the porch area and called my name. I was the only person in the lobby. But I guess she wanted to make sure I was indeed the person waiting for lunch. I turned my head around and she asked me, "Are you Larry?" I assured her I was Larry and we walked out to the porch together. I looked around. There were several tables on the terrace all empty. She asked if I had a preference. I said no so she looked at all of the tables and pointed to one and asked if that was alright. She then looked around as if it was crowded and seated me. They were not using individual menus and I had to use my cell phone and focus on the link provided at the table to see the menu. She brought me a bottle of water and left me to read the menu on my phone. I did understand that the kitchen was not fully stocked yet and the menu was not full of choices. They had sandwiches for the most part and a pizza. I opted for the cheeseburger platter and had an enjoyable lunch. I took photos of my food and chatted on Facebook while I was eating. There wasn't much else to do.

After lunch I needed to find something to do to entertain myself. The hotel normally has a full selection of services for the guests. They have a spa in the tower room which looked beautiful in the photos. They also have an in ground pool and a huge golf course. The spa and the pool were both victims of the COVID-19 closing and were not open for guests. There was a large golf course which surrounded the hotel. It was open I was told. But I am not a golfer so I did not really care one way or the other about the golf course I did look at it though and the grounds were beautiful.

But like everything else at the hotel, there was no one there to play golf. So I could not even go outside and watch a brisk game of golf being played. They did have two services available for guests. And they were not exactly what I was expecting. There is a large llama farm attached to the hotel where you can visit the llamas.

There were quite a few llamas to go look at. I had seen llamas in the wild when I was hiking in Peru once. But I had not been to an actual llama farm. So I took a walk to the back part of the property to go visit the llamas. They mostly ignored me. I did whistle and got the attention of the one pictured above. He looked at me. I snapped the photo. And that was the end of our interaction.

I tried to get a selfie with llama looking over my shoulder but he chose to ignore me and went back to grazing. I think he was as bored as I was at this point. The hotel did have one other service available at this time. COVID-19 was not interfering with everything. Every morning between 9:45 and 11:00 am the hotel offered axe throwing. Yes, you read that correct. There was no pool open, no spa to use, and no bar for a drink. But you could go throw axes.

I took a photo of the TV screen where it explained about the axe throwing This was advertised as Adult Axe Throwing. I was glad to hear this. I certainly would not want to see child or family axe.throwing. I was a bit confused by the image on the TV screen though. It appears the two ladies are getting ready to battle with axes much to the amusement of the man standing behind them. My only thought was if there were people here I could go watch this and maybe start looking for Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote in the episode The Missing Axe.

I did do some hiking on the back roads while I was here. The scnery was beautiful. My only concern was all of the signs warning me to wear repellent and to be check for ticks after hiking. I had not prepared for this and doubted they had tick repellent at the hotel. So I mainly walked down old roads and took photos. I did not really adventure out into the wooded areas. There were also warning signs about moose and I had no idea how to deal with a wild moose. The only moose I was ever familiar with was Bullwinkle J. Moose.

It was fun though. I've never had a huge resort all to myself before. The room was beautiful. I really had nothing to complain about with the hotel or the staff. They could not have been nicer. And they seemed really happy to be back at work and having a guest again, even if it was only me.

I will admit thought that the empty hallways did get a little creepy in such a big hotel. At times I did think of Jack Nicholson in the movie The Shining. If I had seen two little creepy twin girls in the hallway I would have run as fast as I could out of there. Of course a lone old man in an empty hallway wearing a mask is kind of creepy in itself.