Tag: travel for work

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2019 Travel in Review

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.

Out with the old and in with the new.

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.

Hooray for new luggage!

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).

Images from Curitiba, the Brazilian rainforest, and Rio de Janeiro

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.

Speaking at the My Innova (My Innovation) Summit in Curitiba, Brazil

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.

Pics from John’s birthday trip to Washington DC

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

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Halloween in Ottawa, Canada

This week, my work brought me to Ottawa, Canada for a few days of training. The training was organized very last minute (for which they apologized multiple times) and could *only* be done on October 31-November 1. Meanwhile back in Texas, John went to a Halloween party at our landlord’s house, which I had to miss. Shoot!

My colleague, Oliver, helped organize most of the event, so I was surprised when I arrived and everyone spoke French! Je parle un peu le francais, but certainly not enough to do two days of training on business topics. Comment dites-vous revenue model en francais?

It’s almost not cloudy!

My colleagues at work say that I have a “Canada curse” because almost every time I fly to Canada, I get delayed, rerouted, or even get snowed in overnight and this trip was no different. Thanks to strong storms across the US, my morning flight out of Austin to Chicago was delayed by more than 3 hours, which required me to rebook my connections. Long story shortened, I finally arrived in Ottawa at 1 AM, crashed in my hotel room and then had to be up and training by 9 AM. Ouch.

A sunny pic in the hotel elevator.

Ottawa, Canada’s national capital, seems to be a lovely city (of about 1.5 million people), but unfortunately it was rainy for the first 36 hours and very cold the entire time I visited. So the picture above (of a picture from my hotel’s elevator) is the prettiest shot I have of the Parliament building. The other interesting note is how difficult it is to get here. The airport is tiny with limited flights. My training participants told me they either took 8 hours bus rides to get here or had to pay $1200 for a domestic flight here. Ouch again.

On Friday night it finally stopped raining and I had awoken that morning with a sore throat. Since I could not leave Ottawa until Saturday (again very few flights into Canada’s Capitol city), I searched for a place for dinner “pour un”. Trip Advisor helpfully let me know that just a 10 minute walk from my hotel in downtown is Sansotei Ramen. In fact, it is rated #4 of 2,218 restaurants in Ottawa.

The reviews were indeed superlative! What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the line outside the building.

The line in front of me
The line behind me

Yep, I waited outside in 34 degree Fahrenheit weather for more than 40 minutes. I thought about bailing, but being alone in a foreign city – what else did I have to do? Plus this place is legit – the website is in Japanese first and English second. But no French? How very un-Canadian!

Sansotei Ramen’s menu in English
Hot tea, to warm my cold hands and ease my sore throat

I’m not sure if it was worth the 40 minute wait out in the cold, but it WAS the best ramen I have ever had. The last ramen I had was in Curitiba, Brazil with John when he had the sniffles. There is just something about a good Japanese ramen soup when the weather gets cold!

Miso Black Ramen with the best gyoza I have ever had. I could not eat all the noodles but really enjoyed the broth!
My dish had spicy Kakuni – a simmered pork belly.

The guys in line next to me were friendly, although they mostly spoke French. They asked me to take their photo and in return I snapped a photo of one of their ramen bowls. This was the tonkotsu.

Tonkotsu – a basic ramen dish with pork belly

My dinner, with 18% tip, was $22 USD – very reasonable. Especially at the 4th most popular restaurant in Ottawa…

It’s a little sad that my highlight of this trip is ramen, but sometimes that’s just how it goes – the weather didn’t cooperate. Thankfully I’m flying home today to Texas, just before the snow hits Ottawa. Brrr! 🥶

View from my seat on the flight back to the states.

Have you had good luck traveling to Canada? 🇨🇦 What is the best ramen you have ever had? Let me know in the comments below and thanks for stopping by!

Hugs, Libby