I started thinking back about the year 2010 and realized that this year I was a jet setter. Before this year I've only left the US once and that was to go to Bermuda (does that even count?). In 2010 I went to 9 countries....Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Colombia. I've discovered that traveling is addicting. You get back from a trip and can't wait to start planning the next. I am not sure where my next adventure will lead me too, but I am hoping to plan a trip with the family to spend Christmas 2011 in the Dominican Republic with my sister. Any suggestions on flying to Dominican or taking a cruise from Miami?
For my historic 30th birthday my sister bought me a plane ticket to visit her in South America. She has been there for 1 1/2 years so I haven't seen her in forever. For those of you who know my sister...she hasn't changed at all. She is still crazy high energy girl. The more we spend time together the more we realize how similar and different we are. In our hotel room I had my clothes and everything neatly organized in one area of the room and well on the other side a tornado had hit and my sisters stuff was all over. I am a tad bit ocd when it comes to organization. I also wake up most mornings at 6am and don't take naps. So at 6am my internal alarm would go off and I would try to lay patiently until my sister woke up. Typically after an hour I would get bored with waiting and either make some noises or simply give her the Nala stare treatment until she woke up. Despite our differences we are very similar when it comes to traveling style. We didn't fly to sit and do nothing we travel to explore. So every morning we would take a long walk around the city waiting for everyone else to wake up.
Cartagana was beautiful and an adventure. After many parts of the trip I would ask my sister how you could capture and explain the moment that we had just experienced. I'll try to upload some pictures at a later date to help with that explanation.
Prior to the trip I was worried about eating, drinking, not getting sick, not knowing Spanish, and the safety in Colombia. After the trip I realized that without my sister who knows Spanish we would have been lost. I barely made it from the airport to the hotel, luckily The Hilton is the same in both languages. The food was amazing. To my surprise we ate mostly seafood and red meat and didn't have any spanish food or chips and salsa the entire trip. I did come home and immediately get Moe's. I did pay close attention to what I ate and drank and used bottled water to brush my teeth so while in Colombia I was never sick. The city is amazingly very safe with police all over because their main income comes from tourists. However, in Cartagena they need to purchase more trash cans. Most of the locals simply throw their trash on the ground or attempt to put it in a trash bag, but don't tie the bags so it just blows out. I felt like I was constantly walking in "trash juice." Luckily the old town had people cleaning up the streets constantly so it was clean.
I hope to be better at posting pictures in the new year and staying in touch with family and friends. So here is my first attempt at keeping my blog up to date.
City street walk - typically our morning walk view in the 80 degree beautiful weather.
Lisa and I on our last tour of the week visiting the dungeons.
Walk after purchasing more bottled water.
Dinner at Paco's.
