A note that this edition of the newsletter will be focused on what can only be described as a harrowing travel tale, followed by a method for our most comforting comfort food: chao (rice porridge). Life is a balance?
Somewhere along the line, we accidentally became “frequent flyers”. Having recently crunched some numbers, we realized that, by the end of the year, we will have flown nearly 25 times. Shocking! When we first made our way to Paris last year, we were novices, amateurs really. Neither of us owned a proper suitcase, so we opted instead for duffle bags the size of our bodies. This, it turns out, is neither practical nor glamorous. Dragging along 2 months worth of clothes when running late to catch your train, in not an experience we’ll be seeking again. Backpackers, we are not.
By the time we were planning for this most recent trip, we were armed with sturdy, incredibly practical, some could even say chic, aluminum suitcases (Anthony is very good at finding deals on Facebook marketplace). For our 5th flight to Paris, we thought we surely had this traveling “in the bag”.
Unfortunately, this is where the practicality ends. In the weeks leading up to our departure, knowing full well that 6 months is a very long trip to take, we a) booked ourselves full with pop-ups, which b) left us very little time to clear out our apartment for subletters (Anthony has his own room, devoted to enough tools to open a repair shop, five bicycles and an obscenely large coat collection, to give you an idea of things) and c) had decided to bring our cats with us. Not to name names, but the cats were our downfall.