A Year of Travel
Written on September 25th, 2022 by Renan Greca
Yeah, it’s been a while. Sorry Debo! I know I’ve been owing some contributions to the blog for… well, about a year now. We started this blog two years ago thinking about all the exciting things we could write about, but turns out things are not that simple. The first year of the blog was marked by long periods of “orange zone” and “red zone” quarantines in Italy, so we did a lot of staying at home which is not so interesting. We did travel in 2020 — we went to Slovenia and Croatia in October and… that’s about it. I’ll have to write about that trip at some point.
2021 was an interesting year because the first half of it was mostly at home. Debo and I both got quite a bit of work done; I submitted two papers around that time. I also played a ton of videogames (maybe I should’ve stopped to write about some of them here), maybe more than I had in my life until then. I was very excited about my new Xbox and definitely got my mileage out of it.
Then the second dose of the vaccines hit in June and everything changed. From then until now, our lives have been marked by almost ceaseless travel, including some of the longest and furthest ones we’ve been to.
Mid 2021
I already wrote about the first bit of the trips, including Cinque Terre, Genoa, Turin and southern France.
After that, I really dropped the ball. In part, I wasn’t feeling very happy about what I wrote, it felt kind of boring to read. I’m honestly not so good at journaling (which this kind of is) and it’s something I want to work on. At the same time, I had a colossal amount of pictures to process and filter, and we did not catch enough time between trips to clear the backlog.
So after those places, we’ve been to Poland 🇵🇱, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Latvia 🇱🇻, Estonia 🇪🇪 and Finland 🇫🇮, all within July 2021. We were with our friend Konst and I think it still is the longest continuous trip we’ve ever taken (maybe Debo has taken a longer one before? I have to ask her).
In August, Debo and I split up to separately visit some of our friends. I went to visit good friends from Brazil in Madrid 🇪🇸 and Lisbon 🇵🇹; meanwhile she visited Indian friends in Budapest 🇭🇺. I had a really nice time in the Iberic peninsula, and got to see friends I hadn’t hung out in a few years. It’s always nice to revisit some old friends and see that we still get along as well as ever.
We reunited a few days later in Sofia, Bulgaria 🇧🇬. The food there was amazing! We took a car and took a round trip around the country and finished by visiting the Seven Rila Lakes. More on that soon.
Debo’s cousin and his girlfriend came to visit us in Rome and we took them to the main sights as well as L’Aquila itself, wrapping up another hectic month of August.
Late 2021
We slept a bit in September and, in October, we went to Sardinia 🇮🇹 for Debo’s birthday, as she hinted at in the previous post. That was a really nice trip; just the two of us and a small Fiat Panda that we rented. Sardinia is an incredible island that almost feels like a country of its own. We are not the most adventurous travelers, but we definitely enjoyed the scenes, the culture and the food.
After that, we decided to lay low and spend a calm Christmas at home.
No, just kidding.
December was another marathon: we began by taking a sort trip to Modena 🇮🇹, an Italian city in Emilia Romagna. Emilia has some of the most famous foods in Italy and the whole purpose of this trip was to take a gastronomic tour. We had lunch at Osteria Francescana on a table we had booked in June. Needless to say it was fantastic, and I need to pester Debo to write about that experience, it’s totally her jam. We also visited the places where they produce some of Italy’s most famous delicacies: Parmigiano Reggiano, Prosciutto di Parma and Aceto Balsamico di Modena. Again, all this food stuff is Debo’s department.
Then, we took things to the next level and visited Reykjavik in Iceland 🇮🇸. The purpose of the trip was to fulfill Debo’s lifelong dream of seeing the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.
Spoiler: it didn’t work.
The whole time we were there, the country was covered by a thick layer of clouds and we couldn’t see a single spot of light in the sky. It was still an incredibly unique trip and we got to sleep very well thanks to the nearly endless nighttime.
If you can believe it, we returned to Italy not via Rome, but via Milan 🇮🇹. Debo had some bureaucracy to deal with there and the flight back from Reykjavik happened to be at the perfect time. We spent a single day there and rode Trenitalia to Trento 🇮🇹. From there, we once again rented a car to visit the Dolomites mountains, one of the most scenic regions of the Alps. Alto Adige, or Sudtirol, is the German-speaking part of Italy, and indeed it barely feels like Italy when you’re eating Bretzels and Wurstel!
We then took another train to Innsbruck 🇦🇹, to spend Christmas with Debo’s cousin and his girlfriend. It was some very nice family time with good food and good vibes.
We concluded the year with Liechtenstein 🇱🇮 and Switzerland 🇨🇭, visiting the eastern side of the country (we had been before to Geneva and Montreux). Right before New Year’s Eve, we returned to L’Aquila and had a calm and quiet celebration of 2022.
Early 2022
🇮🇹 We did take some time off in January, but by mid-February we were at it again. It was a shorter trip, to Naples 🇮🇹, to see some of the things we couldn’t do the first time we went back in 2019. It ended up being an… eventful saga, and definitely a story for another day.
March brought us to Tromsø, Norway 🇳🇴, to get another shot at the Northern Lights. With just one weekend there, it was all or nothing, and we were fortunate to get a good show of the lights around 10pm on Saturday. Pictures don’t do it justice!
After going the furthest North we had ever been, it was time to go the furthest West Debo had ever been. We got a good deal for flights to the USA 🇺🇸 and spent two weeks there in April! We only visited the northeastern part of the country, including cities I hadn’t been to before. The itinerary ended up including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C. There were again some misadventures along the way, including some frightening moments, but all worked out in the end and it was a very memorable trip!
You must think we are borderline insane at this point, but it gets worse. In May I went back to Brazil 🇧🇷 after nearly three years, to visit my friends and family and attend my cousin’s wedding. Debo, who would not miss this opportunity, worked hard to get her Brazilian visa and come along two weeks after me. We visited Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Florianópolis, Curitiba and Foz do Iguaçu. I may be biased because it’s my home, but it was honestly one of the best trips we’ve ever had.
Mid 2022
Almost immediately after returning from my pátria amada, we flew to Cyprus 🇨🇾 for a few days in June. It was my first time driving on the left side of the road!
And because we’re absolutely crazy people, in July we finally did the Scandinavia trip we had been planning since before the pandemic hit. We visited Sweden 🇸🇪, Norway 🇳🇴 and Denmark 🇩🇰, with a little bit of Germany 🇩🇪 in the middle, again accompanied by Konst.
All these trips have their own stories, not to mention some other stories in between, and I really want to go back and write them down. It’s not always funny or exciting, but it is what has been happening in our lives and I think there are a couple of good lessons to be learned.
And now?
Currently I’m back to Sweden for a research exchange and am already preparing my return to Italy. Debo, in the meantime, is extremely busy with her work as she tries to wrap up the PhD. I’ve been in Sweden for six weeks and this is the longest we’ve ever been away from each other, so it’s definitely challenging to say the least.
Now that I caught you up, whoever you may be… I’ll make a plan to come back on a weekly basis at least to write down all the stories and anecdotes that we’ve been through in these crazy, crazy years.