Well, that was a trip!
PAST PART 1:
The Chaotic Journey to Europe
A good chunk of 2022 consisted of planning for a few special trips. 1. A wedding in Barcelona, Spain. 2. Visiting a pal in Amsterdam, Netherlands. 3. A luxurious week long trip curated by Moveable Feast Retreats in Lisbon, Portugal where I had planned to celebrate the book deal my friend Callie Little and I got this spring with Clarkson Potter.
The end of summer was supposed to be a celebration, a season of romance with my partner and relaxed vacationing in Europe. I’m a Gemini, I shouldn’t have expected things to be so easy. My existence is chaos. First, I figured out too late that I had misplaced my passport so I scrambled to order a new one. Turns out every American was doing the same thing so my passport did not arrive in time for the wedding in Barcelona which not only screwed over my system of plans but my partner’s as well. Cue massive guilt and depression wave.
Wedding in Barcelona
Visiting a friend in Amsterdam
V (my partner) and I decided to edit-undo-cancel-scramble-redo our plans and booked ourselves for a week and a half in Barcelona for the end of August. We’ll make it work! We’ll drain our savings! It’s worth it for love! And uhhh, whoops. That meant that I’d have about 2 and a half weeks in between Lisbon and meeting up with her in Barcelona. So I said fuck it, I guess I’m staying in Europe for almost 6 weeks. I was not going to pay for a flight to Europe and back, and another one there and back all within the same month. So work trip in weird unexpected places it became. Sort of.
Because I had no idea what I was going to do or where I would stay/visit for weeks between Lisbon and Barcelona, I decided to travel light with a travel backpack.
I 1000% recommend this specific travel backpack model by Osprey. It’s about to be discontinued so grab it now for $169 vs the original $220 at REI. I like that it’s two parts, one part lighter everyday backpack and additional well structured travel bag. When flying, I checked the structured travel bag part and carried the backpack.
Here’s what I packed clothing wise for 6 weeks of travel in HUMID HOT weather:
5 tank tops
4 t-shirts
2 nice collard shirts
1 pair of jeans
3 pairs of shorts
1 dress
1 jumpsuit
1 pair of sneakers
1 pair of nice flats
2 hats
And here are my travel essentials:
Travel Laundry Sheets - I washed my clothes in sinks every 5 days.
Travel Bungee Cord Laundry Line - I’m going to use this at home now too, so convenient and compact!
Crease Release Spray - Just spray it on your clothes and then stretch them flat and BAM creases gone!
Expandable Packing Cubes - Holy shit these saved my heart, mind and soul when I found myself repacking 10 TIMES while traveling. Organization nation.
Compact Cord Organizing Pouch - Buy this for your sanity.
Power Adaptors - Plug your 3 prong cords + USB cords + iPhone cord and more into one adaptor. Ah, sweet organized relief.
Loop Earplugs - Overly stimulated in new places? Me too! These stylish earplugs help massively.
Inflatable Puffy Neck Pillow - I’ve tried a million travel pillows and this is my fave for getting close to feelings like I’m sleeping in a more natural position.
Travel Leg Hammock - Hook this over your food tray on an airplane and elevate your feet and stretch. A little comfort goes a long way on 14 hour flights.
5 Ply Black KN95 Masks - WE ARE STILL IN A PANDEMIC ya’ll.
PAST PART 2:
Welcome to Europe, Taste our Local Covid
Speaking of masking up, guess who got Covid on day 2 of her 6 week long trip and had to hide in an airbnb alone starting day 3? It’s me, it’s me! Fuck. me.
I joined the Moveable Feast Retreat crew in the evening Aug 6th. And I took a million gorgeous photos for those first few special days lounging around the hotel, a former palace in the heart of Lisbon, Portugal. Day two, we toured Sintra, a charming little town with some bonkers beautiful, edging on gaudy, castles a top a hill. By mid day, the town was swarming with tourists and me thinks this is where Covid found me and took advantage of my weak immune system, extra weakened by stress and depression. How rude. Day 3, the symptoms came on and my roomie Callie suggested I take a covid test. CONFIRMED. I didn’t participate in the group lunch, instead I had a solid pity party weeping in my room while I scrambled to find a cheap cheap cheap airbnb in the city with air conditioning.
To see photos from the 2 and a half magical days in Lisbon, visit my blog, the place where I can better collect, organize and share my compulsive habit of seeing the world within an imaginary art frame and snapping lots of photos.
For my sudden Covid Quarantining part of this ram-shackled mess of a trip, I ended up booking myself a tiny little apartment 6 stories up via walk up. People on the internet kept telling me, “hey at least you have covid in a gorgeous place abroad!” To which I did not respond but grumbled to myself, “Sure, except I am alone in a country I’ve never been to and my Autism symptoms are LOUD right now, I don’t speak the language, I can’t go outside as I’m on a busy ass tourist street, the stairs are a billion miles long and my breathing is shot, and the sound of people having fun outside makes my pity party even more obnoxious within my already depressed brain.” And when the Covid symptoms were at their worst, and I had a moment’s reprieve from depression symptoms, I savored ever little thing about that lil’ quarantine cave above the city.
Here’s a tour of my second stay, a cute tiny apartment in/above Lisbon
One sad lil’ lonely me above the city:
I could only stay there 5 days but needed to keep quarantining so next I moved to an airbnb where it was safe to me/other people if I went outside.
My 3rd Stay, an apartment with a porch. YAY outside.
After 5 days of feeling like death, moving to a new spot was rough. But sitting in the sun for little increments was heaven.
A view of Lisbon at sunset from the porch:
I lost a week and a half’s worth of exploring Lisbon thanks to Covid. And hallelu, my quarantine came to a close after 10 days of staying put and no more positive tests. Honestly, I wanted to just go home. I missed my girlfriend, my friends, humans, routines, any sense of normal. But that would be an added waste of money on top of SO MUCH WASTED $$$ that this trip already sucked. So I made my way to the Selina, a co-working/co-housing space that’s got a location in Lisbon and many more across the world. The rooms were basic, just a bed and a closet, shared bathrooms in the hallway. But I was desperate for human contact and the amenities seemed legit and supportive of mixing and mingling with “digital nomads,” a term I had never heard but I guess, I kinda fit into when traveling.
I was still feeling like shit, the lingering Covid symptoms stuck with me for few a weeks like a travel buddy I couldn’t ditch no matter how hard I tried. Turns out, the Selina was also full of travel buddies I had no interest in connecting with. Stay at the Selina in Lisbon if you’re big into trust fund tech bro douchebags whose two talking topics are tales of fucking girls across the world and phone chats with investors beside the pool. I have a hard time not ripping into men like this with words that will make their inner child tremble. I love to show a predatory man that I am no prey, I am the weathered old storybook witch in a younger woman’s skin whose will boil them in my next stew. Alas, I did not have enough energy, Covid came to their rescue. Instead, I used what motivation I had to connect with an old pal from Germany who happened to be flying into Lisbon the second night I was staying at Selina.
Visit this blog post to see photos from this leg of the trip.
PAST PART 3:
Hippy Culture
Before I jump into a rant about the falseness that irritates me about some modern day hippy culture, let me tell you, my friend Susie actually uses her magic to really provide healing resources for others through sound baths. After weeks of feeling like shit and being so lonely, it was SUCH a relief to reconnect with her and meet her equally sweet and sincere friend Leticia. Susie did a free sound bath for us and it was one of the most grounding experiences I have had after a series of unfortunate events. Thank you sweet Susie.
And now, here’s how I ended up begrudgingly singing chants about as many religious deities you can think of in a dome on a farm in rural Lisbon, the first farm of 2 that I’d end up on while in Portugal.
Friends, from age 8-18, I grew up in a rural mountain town in Northern California where weed is the greatest source of income for the average folk, there are 2 communes hidden in the hills, and everyone dresses like they are stuck in 1972. Like most people, I have a strange fondness and massive criticism of my “home town.” In recent years, it seems every way-fairing soul from Burning Man decides to head to my hometown to harvest weed, bringing in a lot of cash to our local ma and pa shops. As long as you are fueling the economy of a small town that has a ban on any and all chain stores, whatever dude. But when you fuel the racism that brews and bubbles within a white-ass rural mountain town, you can get the fuck out. Ah, enlightened hippies and their fondness for co-opting black and brown culture under the hall pass of Spiritualism, not to mention the oppression of the local Native people. In my hometown, the Nisenan People.
Ram Dass and his esoteric pals were common frequenters of my hippy dippy town, Modest Mouse as well as other psych/alt bands from the 90s and 2000s had a particular affection for the place I called home. You wanna talk psychedelic drugs and spiritualism and chanting to deities? Honestly, I burnt out on this world before I ever fully jumped in. I was raised in this world. And I’m a bit of a critic and skeptic alongside my flower child nature. I can feel when people are true and tender in their spiritual journey vs opportunistic and taking advantage of vulnerable followers in wounded head spaces. In Portugal, I experienced it all and have stories to tell. That shit happens everywhere.
There is SO MUCH more to share which I will continue in next week’s email. This one is odd and messy enough, much like my chaotic 6 weeks abroad. But hey, since you’re still here, I would LOVE to hear some weird tales about travel from you. Leave a comment on my substack page with your travel stories. Let’s share in the wild and weird.