Deb’s Travels

This category brings you to my diary-type posts. It’s here for my friends and everyone else I have met since 2011 who have asked me to keep them up to day with my adventure. It’s here for anyone who wishes to follow my travels. To read any full post, click its header.

Side-trip from Bratislava to Prague

 in Czech Republic / Deb's Travels / Europe / Sleeping Accommodations / Transportation

One of three popular destinations from Bratislava is Prague. It’s a relatively short train or bus ride. As I had not been to Prague or any of what was Czechoslovakia during my first travels, I decided that a couple of days in Prague, Czech Republic (as it is now called) would be a new experience and more worthwhile. So today, having relaxed and enjoyed much of Bratislava at my leisure, and knowing I needed to be back there for my friend Annaline to arrive and travel with me to Israel, it was the perfect time to take my side-trip.

I don’t always know where I’ll stay upon arrival to a new place but in this case, I had already selected and reserved my accommodations for the night. All that was left was to enjoy getting to Prague and making it my next home.

Deb in Prague train station
Our escorts took this photo of me with all my bags. My first photo in Venice for this trip.

From Riomaggiore (Cinque Terre) to Venice

 in Deb's Travels / Europe / Italy / Transportation / Travel w/Tech Wherever / Traveling with Technology

A long day…
Today is the day my friend and I leave fabled Cinque Terre for storybook Venice. From one romantic area of Italy to another. I am still traveling with my friend A, ever since hitting mainland Italy after Sicily. Today we’re traveling on FlixBus. But before we can get to our bus, we need to leave Riomaggiore (our Cinque Terre home base) and get to La Spezia as that’s where FlixBus travels from.

Want to follow along with me for the full day’s adventure? Check-out, walk carrying luggage, short train ride, bus from one coast of Italy to another, walk through some of Venice carrying luggage, check-in, and then… explore a new city!

The hairdryer that died once and I killed later.

Killed my hair dryer

 in Deb's Travels / Packing

I was absolutely determined this time to carry a hairdryer and have hair that looks nice and polished each day. That was not meant to happen.

Be careful what you wish for. I am carrying only a 50-L carry-on duffel bag that converts to a small backpack and after logging in around the Miami airport for a day and walking 5 or 6 miles in one day just to find a plane out of Miami and another 5 miles the next day to get somewhere, I was feeling the load. I was wishing my backpack would be lighter.

Having finally escaped from Miami because of a sympathetic American Airlines staffer who fully understood the situation, I was in New York City JFK airport. But frankly, I smelled. I certainly did not feel good look decent. I had hoped American Airlines and their Ambassador lounge people would understand the errors made and in sympathy allow me to use their shower for five minutes but their rules didn’t allow for this. So instead I bathed in the public women’s room. And… I blew dry my hair. That was my downfall.

Catania to Palermo by train, finally going to start seeing Sicily

 in Deb's Travels / Europe / Italy / Transportation / Traveling with Technology

My first morning in Sicily wasn’t where I had planned it. I’d planned to arrive into Palermo, but due to circumstances had to end my into-Sicily travels in Catania instead. This morning I would continue onto Palermo with just enough time to start my first-ever organized tour — Sicily’s Beating Heart Tour with La RosaWorks.

I woke up at 10 — only because I’d set my alarm for the last possible minute that I could shower quickly and still make check-out. Still groggy and with my coordination not intact, I started my day.

Less tech is more travel experience

 in Deb's Travels / Packing / Travel Tips

This blog is called Tales of Travel and Tech, but I’d like to remind everyone that traveling doesn’t mean taking all your tech with you on your vacation.

Want to maximize your travel experience? Then skip the tech!
Most of the time, that is. Not all of the time.
There’s plenty a bit of tech can do to expand your travel, but not if it blocks you from experiences!

Getting ready to travel again 1

 in Deb's Travels / Mindset / Packing

I’m getting ready to travel again. I’ve really enjoyed having the past year with my family. I must confess I had a bit of a dilemma deciding whether to travel again or to stay put in a comfortable apartment home close to my family and friends. But in the end, I chose the travel my soul craves over the comfort my heart craves.

I have been out of that apartment for a few weeks now and I have my ticket to fly to Europe.

My Eagle Creek backpack, day pack, and a few tech things.

The apprehension of the unknown in travel 4

 in About Deb / Deb's Travels / Mindset

Faced with the impending finality of giving up the apartment that has become my comfortable home over the past year, I am once again feeling the constriction in my throat and bouts of fear of what is to come. I am again starting to wonder if I’m crazy and if I should just stay comfortably where I am.

The reality starts to hit me whenever I leave “home” for the unknown. Where am I going to stay? Will I be invited into peoples homes? Will I be safe? Am I crazy for doing this?

For the most part on this blog I have shown you the places I have been and they are indeed exciting. If I have invoked your wonderlust or wanderlust, then I have done a good job of showing you how exciting travel can be. However. I’m not sure whether I have shown you the other side, the uncertainty of it. If I haven’t, I owe it to you to do so.

Going away? A pre-travel security checklist for your home

 in Deb's Travels / Misc / Packing

This is for those of you who do leave your home empty as you travel.

SimpliSafe, a new style, low-cost alarm system and company, created this pre-vacation checklist to give you — or remind you of — ways to protect your home while you’re out traveling. These are very basic but wise. Maybe it will get you started building your own list of ways to take care of and protect your home while you travel.

Threatened with jail at Nicaragua border over exit stamp position

 in Deb's Travels / Mindset / Nicaragua / Theft / Transportation

Each time someone tells me they want to go to Nicaragua I cringe. I hear the people are lovely, they say, and it’s so inexpensive. Yes, that might be true — but my experience wasn’t about nice people. I was locked in a room at the border and threatened with jail — because of an immigration agent on a sick power trip.

I have long debated telling this story, but I feel it’s important. I’ll never know if I really would have been sent to jail in this Dictatorship, but the Tourism agent at the border certainly believed I was about to land there.

Please read this — and take it seriously.

Redondo Beach get-away packing

 in Deb's Travels / Packing / USA

I’m back to living in my adopted hometown for a while, so you might not call that traveling. But LA is a major travel destination — and I am traveling within it this weekend! From Friday – Tuesday, I’ll be a guest of a friend in Redondo Beach. I get to show her all the tricks of the iPhone, see friends, and enjoy the beach air and all that Redondo Beach and the Redondo Beach Marina and Pier have to offer.

Wondering how I packed?

My practical traveler’s thank you to hosts 2

 in About Deb / Deb Fixed It / Deb's Travels / Misc

As a guest in people’s homes, it’s a given that I bring food or a gift for my hosts. But for the longer-term visits, I typically try to contribute to the home in some way as a special thank you. Sometimes my host/hostess knows. Other times they have no idea unless they notice the difference later on.

Sometimes it’s just cleaning floor molding and cabinet doors. Once I recaulked a bathroom. Once I repaired a large hole in the wall…

The tub with the new silicon sealant.

Normalcy of a bedside clock

 in Deb's Travels / Mindset

[I write this while in LA, newly sub-leasing a small apartment. My plan is to stay in LA for a while, enjoying family and friends here for a while.]

Each night now as I go to sleep and look at this red clock beside my bed and I think: “I have a bedside clock.” It’s been a long time since I’ve had a bedside clock. One of these red glowing LED lights that shine the numbers that tell the time. It might seem silly but it’s a luxury I’ve long lived without and a bit of normalcy for me. I haven’t had much normalcy in quite a while — in 4 1/2 years.

Best dining option at Dead Sea hotel zone

 in Deb's Travels / Food / Food in Israel

The Taj Mahal restaurant is a very welcome change from the hotels that line the Ein Bokek area of the Dead Sea. It is outside! You have the Bedouin-inspired benefit of cover without walls so you can feel the air and see the Dead Sea. You can choose from a range of seating styles: tables with comfy cushioned seats, benches and metal-backed chairs, cushion seating at low tables, and thick-cushioned lounge chairs around low tables. The decor is unique, fun and a bit eclectic. And, the food is fantastic! As are the owners.

House sitting in Tzfat Israel 1

 in Deb's Travels / Israel

This week I had a new experience in Tzfat. A woman I have known for a while invited me to her home. Then she needed to go away but she also needed to be here for the refrigerator repairman. So I got to house-sit. I cleaned out the fridge and salvaged food.

Sound boring? Sound crazy?
Here’s the thing: that fridge is in a stone-walled kitchen!

Living the downsize: from 2 bedrooms to 65 liters 2

 in About Deb / Deb's Travels / Mindset / Packing

This time 4 years ago I lived a typical American life in a two-bedroom condo. It was home to my furniture, photos … two dressers full of clothes…. kitchen full of fine appliances…home office.

Now I’ve virtually been living out of a 65-liter backpack. If something fit into that backpack, I don’t take it with me.

Sometimes I miss my old stuff but If I still had it I would need to still have a place for it to — and I would not have had the freedom to be in whatever country I happened to be in at that moment.

The truth is, we really need very few physical items to be well-dressed, clean, well-groomed, and comfortable. And your perception or definition of “very few items” will even change as you live the downsize.