I'm Australian, and back in May 2009, I had a very neat travel blog set up on Wordpress for my long awaited 'ten year long service leave' trip around the world. I took this journey with my hub about eighteen months after my ten years with the company had past. It can be hard to tear yourself away from a high pressure career when you're all caught up in the middle of it, and barely able see your way out.
That 29 night trip to Manhattan, Paris, Morocco and Madrid was absolute magic, but when we got back, my life began to slowly and dramatically unravel. Over the subsequent five-year period my life changed completely, and with that, so did I. Thankfully, I've emerged at last, and come out through the other side of what was an abyss. And for the past year or more I've been too busy working multiple jobs to think too much more about it, in any detail. That's probably a good thing.
Now that I've organised this next big overseas trip seven years since the last, I figure I should start a whole new blog for it, so here we are... on blogspot. When we got back, we promised our then five year old daughter that we'd never leave her again. We said we'd take her everywhere we go, when ever and where ever that may be. We've kept our word on that.
In May 2013 we did manage to spend a week together in Hong Kong. We took some wonderful photos, but at the time I didn't feel like writing about it. Now, three years later, I think I'm ready. I'm not sure yet whether I'll integrate photos into this blog, or just leave it as a text-based travel log. Time will tell.
So where are we going this time? And why? Well, it's a very long story, but basically I had this idea that I'd be presenting one or two academic papers at a conference in Montreal, as an independent. With this great ambition in mind, I paid for our flights a full year ago, at entirely inflexible, bargain basement rates. A few months later I found out that the conference organisers had pulled the whole conference forward by five days. So now, instead of my first full day in Montreal being a clear day for jet-lag adjustment prior to the conference starting, my first day is the very last day of the conference, and it's basically all over. Obviously, there's no point paying several hundred to register for half a day of sessions, the morning after I've taken a mammoth long-leg flight across the globe. I've also noticed that half the conference is in French anyway, which I should have known, but somehow neglected to think about. Oh well.
For a short while I was shocked and annoyed, wondering why this extravagant trip to all these mind-boggling heritage places on my B list for places to go in my lifetime. Since then, I've decided it was obviously meant to be. It's hard for Australians to make it to these sort of places: up and down the East Coast of the U.S., because to do so assumes you may have already seen absolutely everything on your dream destination A list.
Personally, I am fortunate to have been to almost all the places on my U.S. A list (New York City, San Francisco, New Orleans & Chicago), but there's a long list of places on my European A list that I've not been, as yet. Still, I may as well make the most of it and enjoy it. What else can I do? I've spent a non-refundable small fortune on flights and accom already. It's a great privilege to be going and our little family does need a break afterall. We've had a pretty hard time emotionally these last five or more years.
If I hadn't been planning to attend that Conference, I would love to have organised to be there for the Montreal Jazz Festival, which is also during our daughter's school holidays. Instead we're there in June, which is a bit weird, but at least it's during the Australian Uni swat vac and exam period and break, and straight after my Festival wrap up happens, so it is strangely perfect timing with regard to my work commitments.
This trip does give me something monumentally inspiring to do during June, it must be said. And when I return to resume my PhD studies part-time, I'll do so with fresh recollections of grand heritage cities and spaces clearly in mind. That can only be a good thing, given my PhD is in history... Maybe it was meant to be after-all.
I still haven't explained where we're going, have I? I guess that can be the subject of my next post.
