Ciao! I write from Sicily from an AirBNB with amazing internet (grazie, Davide!). I am behind on getting our Sardinia post out (spoiler: we had a great time), but we got positive feedback from our last month-in-review post so I wanted to do one more quick stepback to answer some questions generated by that post.
And please keep the questions coming!
Question #1 from J: I can’t believe how much you eat in. What do you eat?
Thanks for the question, J! As we shared in the last post, during our first month of travel, we ate 68% of our meals in. That number is definitely going to drop this month as it is really hard not to eat out in Italy, but we have tried to eat in as much as we can to save money. Also, sometimes it is just way more relaxing to eat in your pajamas than to try to order in another language.
For breakfast, we eat a lot of chocolate cereal– something we pretty much never did in the states. For some reason, it is always, in every single country, the cheapest. And I mean, it’s chocolate, so it’s not going to taste bad.
In Iceland, which was super expensive, we ate a lot of hot dogs– hot dogs in buns, hot dogs in pasta, pork and beans- really, a lot of hot dogs.
Then we usually make pasta at least once a week because it’s just so easy and requires so few ingredients. We try to use everything we buy which sometimes results in totally strange behaviors like carrying extra garlic bulbs around in our luggage.
Related: Rich LOVES grocery shopping abroad. Sometimes I think we are never going to leave the grocery store. It makes him feel like a local, and he can play weird mathematical budget games to make sure we are getting the highest value on the eggplant versus the onion. Or something.
Question #2 from a sweet relative: You say that Europe is very communal. Are you becoming a communist?
Europe does feel very communal, and I currently do not plan to become a communist.
I wrote a bit about this in our Agios Nikolaos post— when you go out to dinner or get coffee or spend time at the beach in Croatia or Crete or Sardinia, everyone talks to each other. Crazy, huh? No one– including teenagers– uses a cell phone. It’s possible that it is because all of these Europeans are talking about secret communist plans (I kid), but mostly it seems like people really like each other.
Question #3 from R: Speaking of really liking each other, how do the two of you spend so much time together?
You would not believe the number of people who pulled me beside before leaving for this trip to ask me if I really and truly thought I would be okay spending so many hours a day, every day, with Rich.
I am okay. I really like him!
Have we had disagreements along the way? Absolutely. Sometimes is he grumpy? Totally. We have had some very early mornings and some very late nights. Sometimes does Rich tickle me and poke me and otherwise do annoying things? Yes. Like every ten minutes. Especially on bus and train rides when he has no cell phone battery.
And sometimes do I do dumb things? Only if you count irreversibly turning off the hot water heater in the AirBNB in Budapest resulting in 24 hours of cold water as “dumb.” Oh, wait, did I not share that story here on the blog before? Oops.
Seriously though, it works. We have both done a fair amount of growth mindset work so whenever we mess up, together or individually, we try to reflect and learn and do better the next time. In our marriage, the phrase, “I need a minute,” is pretty sacred– when one of us says it, the other one shuts up and backs off, and I think that saves us from launching arguments that don’t need to happen(read: pretty much every argument).
We both feel really grateful to get to do this and are just as happy to do it together. Only ten months, one week, and six days of just the two of us together every minute left to go… 🙂
Alright, off to explore some Sicilian temples!
Keep the questions coming! What else do you want to know? What do you imagine would be challenging about a trip like this?
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