Our Journey Begins

Depending on your point of view I have either been blessed or cursed by having gotten to travel quite a lot.

The blessing has been that on every trip I have taken the opportunity to see a little of the place I am visiting, even if the trip is purely for business. On each of these trips I tend to have some sort of adventure or observation that makes telling about the trips amusing to my listener and I am sometimes asked to tell someone else about “the wedding trip to Ireland with the 5 lesbians” or about how I “almost walked out of town and just barely caught the tour bus before it left without me on Santorini” (both will appear in this blog). Some of the stories are about the local people or the foods I encountered; while others are about things that happened on the trip to me or the people traveling with me.

The curse of traveling has to do with the crazy sleep patterns that you can get traveling half way around the world, the time with family and events missed while on travel. For example I have missed several weddings, baby namings, and school events because of business travel.

All of the stories in this collection are true; the names have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty, and those who don’t wish to be embarrassed.

Ok, there are 2 stories that did not happen to me personally, these exceptions are marked as having been told to me, but are included as they are stories I believe really happened and can show some of the potential problems that can occur when traveling for work.

 

For each of the stories I will indicate the following information:

• Continent        
• Country    
• Year visited        
• City / Site
• Business / Pleasure

I provide this information for several reasons. Most important is the fact that places change over time. Two quick examples are related to the pyramids in Paris, France and Tulum, Mexico. My wife visited Paris in before 1990, so her visit to the Luvor museum was before they had the glass pyramid, my trip was in 1996 when the entrance already had the glass pyramid, thus giving us something to discuss and compare. The second example is the Aztec pyramid in Tulum. When I went to Tulum in 1992 the site was well established with only a few souvenir stands and snack shops, while it is my understanding that today there is a full shopping mall next to the site.

As you can see in these 2 pyramid examples time and man have made major changes that can change what you would see should you visit the same site today.  

 

I will be tagging each post with one of the following tags

• Travel Tale – a story as explained above
• Trip Advice – suggestions or advice for travelers
• Check list – specific check lists of things to bring, to do, etc.
• Musings – random rants about travel related topics
• Location – interesting observations about the locals or locale
• Conference – special considerations for attending or running a business event
• Bureaucracy – those special considerations about travel: visas, entry forms, etc.
• Guest – for those occasions where I have someone else writing a post (or rebuttal) or alternative view on a specific trip

And so Our Journey Begins . . .

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