Today John and I traveled to Houston to renew our passports. As soon as we got back from our cruise last November, we probably should have sent our passports in for renewal, but alas my team was trying to schedule some work travel so I was waiting to see how that all worked out.
PSA: do not renew at the Passport Offices. Ugh – it was a long and tedious day. But it takes 3-4 weeks to get your passport back even when you pay for it to be expedited and my life doesn’t work like that at this point in my life/career.
Within the span of three weeks I’ll travel to Toronto, Grand Caymen Island, and back to Canada in the Yukon province. I haven’t traveled for work since my Halloween trip to Ottawa, Canada, which has been unusual and definitely spoiled me. It was also great timing since it has been important to be at the house site to find and fix those things that were either forgotten or not installed correctly.
Looking back at 2019, I flew 126,760 miles and drove another 10,000 miles as we prepared our home of 20 years for sale and moved into our rental home in Texas. I visited 19 states (plus the District of Columbia), 5 countries outside of the US, and spent 112 nights in hotels (51 of those nights apart from John).
Looking back over 2019, my favorite trip was definitely our 12 days/nights in Brazil. First – John went with me, and I would not have wanted to go that far away for so long without him. Second, it was a great mix of work and pleasure and my first time delivering a keynote address. Even John gave a last minute keynote after the other international speaker missed a flight and wasn’t going to make it. And I definitely improved my Portuguese language skills.
I had been invited to speak at a conference in Cairo, Egypt in June 2019 and am sorry that I couldn’t go (it was a week before the new owners closed on our house so all hands had to be on deck to get us packed and out of there). But I would love to see Cairo someday.
My favorite domestic trip in 2019 was to Washington DC. I had to travel to DC for work the week of John’s birthday and by happy coincidence, it turned out that Lauren was going to be in Washington at the same time to see her (and John’s) alma mater play basketball. So I convinced John to join me and surprised him with tickets to the same game – but of course the big surprise was seeing Lauren!
Who knows how much I/we will travel in 2020. Where are some of your favorite destinations? Or what was your favorite trip in 2019? I would love to hear your thoughts! And as always, thanks for stopping by!
Hugs, Libby