November Update: a new home!

So, it’s been a while. A few reasons for this, but the most exciting one is, drumroll please…

Salt With Your Coffee has a new home! You can now find us at saltwithyourcoffee.com!

As with any new home, the decor isn’t quite how I want it yet, and I haven’t quite figured out where everything lives. But the main thing is there’s plenty of room, and plenty of flexibility to make the changes I’ve got planned over time. I hope you don’t mind sitting on boxes at the house warming party. I’m attempting to hold myself to the mantra that done is better than perfect.

Before I get on to what else we’ve been up to recently, a tiny bit of admin on following the blog now it’s been rehoused.

1. If you follow the blog by email you should have got an email telling you about this post.  If that didn’t happen we’d be very grateful if you could let us know!
2. If you follow using Facebook then nothing’s changed, you’ll still be able to see new posts on our page.
3. If you follow with your WordPress account then you’ll still see new posts in your reader, but if you want to get email notifications then you’ll need to sign up for emails manually on the new site.  Sorry about that!

Phew! Moving on…

It’s been a busy few weeks for us. Lots of changes. Really the biggest one is arriving in a country where we plan to stay for a while: New Zealand. I’m not sure how long that ‘while’ will be, but let’s just say that I’ve bought myself a coffee mug and a swimming pool membership, and I’m getting a library card.

Continue Reading… at our new home.

October Update: On the road again

Big news this month is that we spent almost half of it in one place, for the first time since April!  We’ve been doing a lot of hanging out with family and general normal stuff, as well as a few short trips and days out.

Slowing down and spending an extended period of time in one place has been great (mental wobbling aside), and it’s made me really think about how we want to travel as we continue on this trip.  I got the idea of deliberately spending a month in each place from a fellow blogger, and right now that sounds very appealing — digging a bit deeper into places, as well as retaining some aspects of routine, and avoiding burnout.

Something to think about anyway.

But couple of days ago we sorted out our next step in our travels, so it’s on the road again today!  More on this below.

On routine: reading, rambling, and mental health on the road

I haven’t posted anything in a while, and now that I’m typing away, I don’t want to write about China (as I’d planned).  I don’t even really want to write about travel at all.

I sat down this morning and thought about finishing off my post about Beijing.  It’s sat there mostly finished.  Really I should just finish it.  But I don’t have any enthusiasm for it, and if I’m not writing with any enthusiasm, how can I expect you to read with any.

What I want to write about instead is home, and about trying to stay sane.

For the first time in a while, last week we went hiking by ourselves.

The last couple of weeks has been a welcome change of pace for us.  We’ve been mostly hanging out with family, doing a bit of hiking, and these last few days swimming, camping, and going to the beach.  Spring is turning into summer in Western Australia, and I’m looking forward to spending as much time as possible outdoors in the next few months.

This — and some sad news from back home — has got me thinking about aIl of the things we’re missing being on the road.  Before you switch off, this isn’t (entirely) a moan fest.  I am profoundly grateful for all the experiences we’ve had in the last year.  I’m proud that we managed to carve out this time in our lives, and so very glad that we were in a position to make it happen.  It was hard work saving up enough for this trip to be an option, and it was hard to let go of our life in the UK, but we are very lucky that it was possible at all.

But naturally, spending time with familiar people in a familiar kind of life is making the loss of hearth and home more prominent in my mind.  

One year travelling round the world: thoughts on our first trip anniversary

Today marks the end of our first year on the road. In 365 days we’ve visited seventeen countries and two sort-of-countries (Hong Kong and Macau), sort-of-visited another country (North Korea), crossed over two more (France and Belgium), and sailed in sight of another three (The Phillipines, Palau and Papua New Guinea). We’ve crossed borders 31 times (33 if you count the Korean MDL), once every 11 or 12 days on average. Gosh.

Seven of these crossings we made by boat, one by air, and the rest overland (or bridge).

Leaving Russia for Japan by ferry: much more exciting than flying!

We’ve been on three continents, and ventured across both tropics and the equator. We’ve travelled thousands and thousands of kilometres — 4000 of them on the world’s longest passenger railway, 3000 by bicycle, and 8000 on board a cargo ship.

We’ve seen the great wall of China alone at sunrise, climbed sacred mountains, had a Russian sauna next to the biggest lake in the world (then jumped in), hiked ancient pilgrimages, floated in hot springs, sipped cocktails on top of skyscrapers, abseiled down a 60 metre waterfall, motorbiked down dirt roads to deserted beaches, learned how to rock climb by ourselves, roamed the temples of Angkor, snorkeled with sharks (plus a sea turtle, a ray, and a conger eel), and been surprised to find scores of whales breaching and splashing their tales, metres away from our boat.

In a sense these moments are what travel is all about, the peak experiences that make you feel truly fortunate to be alive, and to have the opportunity to travel. But they’re not what travel is made up of. They’re one day in 10, sometimes much less. Day to day, travel for us is about soaking up a place, trying the food, drinking the coffee, hanging out in the beer gardens, sitting in a temple watching the world go by.

Week 1 on the road

We’ve been on the go for a week now, and spent some time in Amsterdam and in Berlin.  More to follow on these, but for now here’s a round up of how the first week’s been.

We started the trip pretty exhausted.  Sub-optimal, but not that surprising given our track record of biting off more than we can chew.  I feel like we’re only just getting our energy back a week in.  The first week has been fun, but we spent a lot of time wondering why we were so tired.  We feel old!

It’s taking us some time to adjust to travelling – mostly we’re finding it uncomfortable to be spending money all the time!  We were chatting about this this morning and we think it’s because we’ve been in thrift mode for so long saving for this trip (/for our entire adult lives).  So it feels uncomfortable spending money every day.  We wouldn’t usually eat out two days in a row, and it’d be rare for us to eat out (I’m including all meals in this!) more than a couple of times in a month.  And we never really do any activities that cost money.  How sad!

I expect this will get easier (#firstworldproblems) as we go on, and especially as things will generally get cheaper as we move east, and then south (Amsterdam is mega expensive).

Things we’ve learned

1. Our enthusiasm for the city we’re in is directly proportional to the current sunshine level.
2. There is a limit to how many WW2 related museums you can visit and still feel any enthusiasm to visit another one…
3. Always arrange couch surfing hosts in advance.
   We planned to couch surf most of the time so that we would meet people and get a more in depth idea of the city we’re in, as well as to keep costs down.  Unfortunately we haven’t managed to arrange any hosts yet because we’ve left it too late.  Fingers crossed for St Petersburg.  UPDATE:  We have a host for Warsaw, hurrah!
4. Night buses are tiring.
   Probably should have remembered this from previous travels.  They are cheap though…
5. Dutch looks quite like English on paper.  Don’t be fooled.

Highlights of the trip so far

1. Riding bikes around Amsterdam and into the suburbs.  We felt slightly more like locals on our rickety Dutch bikes, and Amsterdam is small enough to get more or less everywhere easily by bike.
2. Visiting the Anne Frank house.  We queued in the rain for about 40 minutes, but it was definitely worth it.  The rooms are empty, but there are pictures on the walls still, and you can feel what it would have been like living there.
3. Joining in a “Stop TTIP” demonstration marching through Berlin in the Saturday sunshine.  (TTIP is an EU-US bilateral trade agreement that threatens to gut all participating countries’ power to regulate the activities of companies trading within them; click here for further info.)
4. Drinking beer brewed on site in a packed bar in our (adopted) Berlin neighbourhood.
5. Stumbling across a restaurant round the corner from our hostel that was doing amazing all you can eat Sunday brunch, when we discovered that supermarkets are shut in Berlin on Sundays (oops) .  We had a great time slowly eating our way through the selection.  N.B. Tiramisu is totally a breakfast food.