When in Rome...

October 05, 2016

On our way to Rome we stopped in Siena for a few hours to check it out. Siena is a hill town, and was very different from Venice and Florence in that regard. John and Mary took time to go into Siena’s Duomo (which was originally planned to be larger than the one in Florence), and we all walked around town. Note on the last photo: the Italian's ended the breastfeeding in public debate long ago...

We made it to Rome in the late afternoon, and spent the next 4 nights in a huge apartment in Vatican City. We were all surprised at how large Rome is- very different from the smaller walkable towns in Italy we had been in. We walked to the Vatican that night- which is a great time to get some photos without a million tourists around!

During our first full day we went to mass (much longer than Irish mass), then we did a free Rick Steve’s walking tour around parts of the old city. We saw parliament, the Pantheon, Spanish Steps, and the Trevi Fountain.

Then we met up with our friends Chip and Marie who happened to be in town for a wedding. I told you they would make another guest appearance! We trekked to a little hole in the wall pizza joint that was at the end of an alley, next to a random church. (There seem to be churches at the end of every alley in Italy.) Jeff and I had been wanting to go to this pizza place, called La Foccacia, since we heard it recommended in a travel podcast I frequently listen to. Thank goodness this place had indoor seating, because within 15 minutes of sitting down outside, the skies opened up and it poured! Unfortunately, after relocating inside, we didn’t think that the food was that amazing. It was good pizza, but not as good as the expectations that I had built up after 4 months of first hearing about this place. Anyway- we were really there for the company- which was fabulous! We learned that Chip and Marie have already purchased their tickets for Vietnam at the end of this year, and Jeff and I are planning on meeting them there! So I get to say this again- you will see more of Chip and Marie in future blogposts!!!!

The next day we woke up and met up with a tour group that Mary had previously booked to go through the Vatican. If you ever plan to visit the Vatican, I suggest you take a guided tour. We knew there would be a lot of people there, but I’m not really sure how you prepare yourself for shoulder-to-shoulder masses moving throughout the museums and basilica at the same time. Jeff did the math, and there are roughly 16,000 visitors through the Vatican each day and with over 14 kilometers of museum to wander through, you need a guide. We didn’t walk all 14 km, but we did see some of the museum, the Cistene Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica.

Taking of photographs is not allowed in the Sistine Chapel- a Japanese media corporation paid for the complete restoration a few years ago and owns all the copyrights, but after hearing about this chapel all of our lives, it was a little underwhelming. The famous painting by Michelangelo is relatively small compared to the other frescos he did in that same building. (Remember- we don’t really appreciate art….) In my opinion, the coolest part of the Sistine chapel is that it is built to the exact dimensions of Solomon’s temple as described in the Bible in 1 Kings. I have read 1 Kings, but I suppose my perception was off because I always imagined something much larger. Photos from St. Peter's Basilica, and the Vatican Museums:

In Florence all of the art galleries that we walked through had art depicting the Virgin Mary and Jesus. There were a few sculptures of other things, and maybe 1 or 2 paintings of someone other than Jesus. What had happened to all of the other pagan gods that people in the Roman Empire used to worship? Where are all of the random idols they used to worship? Turns out, all of this art is in the Vatican! Popes used to collect it, and it is still housed there. I was a little shocked to see pagan artworks in the Vatican, but I’m really glad it’s preserved and we got to experience some of it.

Our last day in Rome, we took the Metro to the Coliseum. I had only ever heard bad things about Rome’s subway system- but it completely proved us wrong! It isn’t a very extensive system- so you can’t get everywhere in Rome, but for the stops we needed it for- it worked! Everything was well labeled and ran efficiently. If you are ever in Rome- I suggest it!

We listened to another Rick Steve’s tour of the Coliseum upon entering. Listening to some sort of audio guide or having a tour guide is recommended, because there isn’t necessarily information posted about what you are looking at.

It’s kind of disgusting to think about people getting excited to watch other people battle to their deaths, but a very different and important part of Roman history that we hadn’t experienced yet. After the Coliseum, we walked across the street and explored the Roman Forum and Palentine Hill.

After that, we walked to a restaurant that our friend Tom had recommended. It was our best meal in Rome! Jeff and I shared a pepper/cheese pasta dish and rabbit. Of course we had dessert (I guess it was technically 1st dessert, since we had gelato later…). The tiramisu and chocolate cake were amazing! John and I washed it all down with coffee. Italian coffee culture is unique. Normally, if you have your coffee in the morning, you would run into a little café and drink your coffee standing up at the bar and scarf down a croissant with it. Most Italians seem to enjoy coffee after each meal- so we decided to do the same! Coffee is served in the cutest miniature cups I have ever seen. But the mini cup is only about 1/3 full. Trust me- it’s all you need. John summed it up the best- it’s like they boiled the entire pot of coffee down to the 3 thick tablespoons they serve you in your cup. This stuff was strong!!!!! I haven’t had coffee in about 2 years (I converted to tea) and needless to say, I didn’t need my afternoon nap that day.

Very early the next morning, John and Mary dropped us at the airport so we could head to Greece, and they drove back to Munich for their flight home. We are so thankful for the time we got to spend with them enjoying each other and experiencing new countries. Thanks to you both for having a great sense of adventure- we love you!

-Cara

Italy in Total:

Modes of transportation used: Metro, taxi, gondola, rental Mercedes

Total amount spent in Italy: $1,018.25 USD

Avg.: $113.14 USD per day

*We only paid for one night of lodging (the hotel in Venice), but tried to buy as much of the food for my parents as they would let us*

MILESTONE: When in Rome we hit the 3 month mark since leaving the States! Hard to believe we have been gone a whole quarter of a year!

A Real Italian Treat

October 03, 2016

While we were in Florence we had the great opportunity to meet up with our friend Tommaso and his wife Elizabeth. We met Tom while he was doing an exchange with the US Navy and was spending some time in Virginia and attending CrossFit Rife with us. We had always said we would meet up in Italy one day, and we were pumped that it worked out.

Tom and Elizabeth came into town and had already made dinner reservations for us, but we had some time to kill. The Italian tradition or normal string of events is to get a drink and talk for awhile before getting a meal anyway, so we grabbed a bottle of wine and stood on the sidewalk catching up. They didn’t know Florence very well, but since we had been in the neighborhood of the restaurant they chose a few times we happened to know that the great sandwich place we had been to also served wine, so we went there. Wisely, we let Tom pick the wine though! (Cara's note: this is the first red wine I have actually enjoyed! What can I say, I'm a white girl!)

After a drink we made our way to what claimed to be the oldest restaurant in Florence, but I don’t think they are the only ones making that claim… Either way, the food was great and it was an incredible evening catching up with friends and laughing over excellent food. The waiter was fantastic and took extra good care of us, plus it was funny to watch our friends try and translate for us back and forth and I think the whole restaurant enjoyed the banter coming from our table, especially the waiter harassing my mother for her special order and then not finishing all of it. Seems that Italians really like to be members of the clean plate club haha.

After dinner they ordered us some Tiramisu that was fantastic and different than any we had ever had before, as well as a traditional Tuscan dessert of a biscotti like cookie/bread and some sweet desert wine that you dip it into. It was a combination unlike anything we had eaten before, but nonetheless delicious!

This evening was one of our favorites among the two weeks with my parents, and we can’t say thank you enough to Tom and Elizabeth for coming into town and meeting up with us. When we are back in the States our home will always be open to the both of you!

Last night in Florence was a gorgeous night!

-Jeff

P.S.: If you don't understand the joke that the title of this post is making, watch the following video:

Florence

October 01, 2016

Making our way through Italy, next stop: Florence!

But first, we have to tell you about a stop we made on our way to Florence from Venice. Jeff decided to make a pit stop in a town called Ferrara. We’ve been using Trip Advisor and Google reviews to choose places to visit and eat at lately. Before this trip we regularly read reviews for everything (food, places, gear, etc.), but we never, ever left a review. Now Jeff is pretty dedicated to leaving reviews for other people to read. The key is that he will leave an honest, constructive review that will help people make a decision. Public service announcement: if you like OR don’t like an establishment or company, leave them a review so other people (who are just like you!) can use them. Life is too short to eat mediocre food, or make poor decisions about purchasing sub-par junk on Amazon.

Anyway, let’s get back to the food! Jeff found 2 places for lunch on Trip Advisor in Ferrara and told me to choose a place. One of the options was closed that day, so that made my decision an easy one. And it was brilliant! We ordered sandwiches from a small stand in the middle of town. Mordicchio-Piadineria deserves all the wonderful reviews they get. You could watch them roll out and fry the thin dough right behind the counter as you ordered, and then they assembled beautiful creations! Piadina (Piada) is flatbread native to this region of Italy, and it is worth a trip across the ocean in itself.

I ordered one filled with pepperoni, tomato, lettuce and tons of melted cheese!

This sandwich is one of the best things I have eaten since we left the States. Right up there tied for first place with Finnish strawberries. This was the ultimate sandwich experience!

After we wandered around Ferrara, we got back in the car and Jeff drove us into the heart of Florence. This was a little trickier than it sounds, since the main road to our lodging had collapsed and was closed for construction. Florence is a medieval city, which means that most streets are 1-way, the space between buildings are the roads, and on most roads you can touch both buildings on each side of the road with a normal wingspan. Jeff did an amazing job moving our Mercedes wagon on the cobblestone streets- I did all the cursing for him. Once we finally found the address we were looking for we stopped in the middle of the street- no room to park, and of course an Italian in a small car pulled up behind us and started yelling. There were lots of loud noised and arm motions. Once Jeff maneuvered slightly out of the way and the Italian parked, we sort of found out in broken English that he was trying to help! After that, we unloaded and parked without a problem.

Mary had reserved an awesome apartment in Florence. Right on the South side of the River Arno, 1 block from the Ponte Vecchio. It was a perfect location within walking distance of everything we wanted to see!

Let’s get something straight: Jeff and I are not art conessuiers. We are not artists. Both of our minds work in a structural sense, we like order and directions and things that make logical sense. Gee, sounds like we would make decent engineers! We do not appreciate art. So, to be honest, a lot of Florence was pretty boring to us. For that fact alone, I am skipping over most of the sights we saw, and will summarize in photos. We climbed to the top of the Duomo, saw David in the Accademia, visited the Galileo museum, Ufizi, Pitti Palace ...

But the food! I can definitely appreciate food!!! We stopped in All’Antico’s for fresh pannini’s 2 times during our stay (and purchased extra for a 3rd meal). They were fabulous! The menu was in Italian, so our sandwiches were always a surprise after we ordered.

One night we had dinner at Ristorante Accademia. Shout out to Rebekkah for the recommendation! It was the Italian restaurant experience that I had been waiting for! Jeff and I ordered the set menu which included 3 courses. We had a meat and cheese starter plate, Jeff had spicy spaghetti and I had truffle ravioli, and then we shared Florentine beef (aka huge steak!) and potatoes for our final course. Mary ordered chicken parmesan (the best she said she’s ever had) and John ordered salad, soup of the day and chicken stuffed with sausage and apples. Of course we stopped for gelato on the walk back!

Thanks to many of you who gave us recommendations for places to eat and get gelato while we were in Florence- we checked out a lot of them, and found a few great places of our own!

-Cara

Short Stop in Venice

September 27, 2016

We piled in our super classy Mercedes and headed through the Alps and arrived in Venice, Italy for 1 night. We all thought that 1 night was enough to see the city. Jeff had booked us a hotel room near the airport to save a little cash, and we arrived early enough from Munich (around 1pm) to have a picnic lunch at the hotel and then head into town for the rest of the day.

After no buses came by the bus stop, we ended up taking a taxi into town. Turns out the bus drivers were on strike! We got dropped off at Piazzle Roma, which is as far as you can get into the city via land.

We walked the entire city and made a few stops! Shopped on the Rialto Bridge, got lost down a few alleys, and went up the Campanile di San Marco.

Of course, we went on a gondola ride! Our gondolier was friendly and told us that his gondola was named for his grandmother, since it was originally his grandfather’s boat and had been handed down to him.

We ate outside at a nice restaurant in a plaza. I was pleased to find out that the wine in Italy is the same price as water.

I enjoyed Venice much more than I expected to. Of course my only other Venetian experience has been in Las Vegas. It’s obvious that this city is very different from others due to the water, and I almost felt like we were in an amusement park since that is the only place I have ever experienced buildings right on the water (Disney World, anyone?). I do think Venice is worth seeing, but you only need a short time to do it in!

-Cara

The hills were alive....

September 24, 2016

We took a day trip to Salzburg, Austria from Munich. From our AirBNB it took us about 3 hours to get there (with traffic), but only 2 hours to get home.

We took an afternoon ‘Sound of Music’ tour, which took us to many of the filming locations of the movie, but also around town and out to the Lake district! We didn't take one of the large tour buses, instead we were in a van with 2 other couples, so there were 8 people plus our tour guide.

Look familiar? This place is now a 5-star resort!

Fun fact! Red Bull is an Austrian company. This is a picture of their headquarters.

Photos from the Lake District, and of the chapel that they filmed the wedding in for Sound of Music. They made the church look over twice as long in the film! Very different in person.

Our tour stopped at a small luge run outside of the Saltzburg Lake District. This was one of 'my favorite things' about the tour! We didn't see any 'Edelweiss,' but we would 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain' if we had time- it was beautiful, we must have done 'Something good' to have such great weather!

We found the unicorns that flank the stairs where some of 'Do-Re-Mi' was filmed. I'm no longer 'Sixteen going on seventeen' but 'I have confidence' that if you visit Satlzburg you'll find it stunning.

'So long, farwell' Austria!

-Cara

Munich Madness

September 21, 2016

On our way out of Ireland we met my (Jeff’s) parents at the Dublin airport as we conveniently booked our flight to match the last leg of theirs to Munich so we could arrive at the same time. We arrived in Munich and went to pick up the rental car, and they initially tried to give us a VW 15 passenger van, which we kindly declined and ended up with a Mercedes station wagon. Definitely a big upgrade from the tiny Toyota we drove in Ireland! I hopped behind the wheel as my parents had been traveling for almost 24 hours and didn’t want to drive, and Cara navigated to get us to the apartment we had rented for our stay in Munich. We had a great lunch at a little butcher/deli just up the road and picked up some groceries for the next few days.

First sight in Munich as you exit the subway station

The next day we did a Rick Steeves walking tour of Munich, which is a nice free way to learn some history and see some sites. We had lunch at the original Hofbrauhaus, which had surprisingly good food, and then walked about town some more. My parents wanted to check out the Residence, which is one of the palaces in town, and Cara and I decided to enjoy some more fresh air and just explore while they did that. We ended up seeing the somewhat famous Munich river surfers and watched them for awhile.

We spent the following day in Salzburg, which Cara has written a great post on, and that will be up soon.

After a somewhat long day in the car, we took a much shorter trip to Dachau to see the concentration camp and memorial. It was a very somber experience and a great chance to see some history from another country's point of view. The exhibits were very well put together, and it was mostly about the history of the camp and other camps in Germany/the German empire, and was slightly less focused on the human element than the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC (if you haven’t been there, you need to go). We needed a little pick me up after that and had a great lunch in the town of Dachau and spent the evening just playing cards and hanging out.

Lunch in the village of Dachau. Schnitzel, pork and other deli-like meat!

My parents wanted to go for a drive and check out some of the countryside and smaller villages, but Cara and I didn’t want to sit in the car as the next day we had a long trek to Venice, so they took off to see some other places and Cara and I spent the day in other parts of Munich. Once you get familiar with the layout, the Munich bus and train system is very convenient, runs very close to most places, and is cheap at 12.20 Euro for an unlimited day pass for up to 5 people. This day ended up being exactly what everyone wanted, as it was Heritage Day (German holiday) and my parents got to experience some fun festivals and see the locals out and celebrating. Cara and I got to stretch our legs exploring Olympic Park (from the 1972 Olympics) and then went to a true beer garden where we split a couple liters of beer and a pretzel as big as Cara’s head. It was great to sit and see how the German’s like to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon!

Munich was a great time, and Cara and I enjoyed it more than we thought we would. We really didn’t know what to expect, but the people were friendly, the food was great, and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. Munich was clean and very walking friendly, and the public transit system works great, not to mention the beer was delicious!

-Jeff

Modes of transportation used: Plane, bus, train, tour van, rental Mercedes

Total amount spent in Germany (and Austria): $580.49 USD (including flight)

Avg.: $116.10 USD per day

*We didn't pay for the lodging, but tried to buy as much of the food for my parents as they would let us*

-Jeff

Are We Broke?

September 20, 2016

I figured it’s time for an update on how well we’re managing our finances. We’re just over 3 months into our international journey (actually I'm writing this on our 3 month USA departure anniversary), but we’ve been traveling for almost 4 now. If you look back at what we have budgeted, when we average it over the whole trip (est. end date July 4ish, 2017) we could spend about $135 a day. We know that we have some expensive times coming in Africa with a safari and climbing Kilimanjaro, and the tour of India will likely be over the $135 a day average once we buy plane tickets and food, but we have mitigated that by our farm stay in Ireland and by staying with friends and family, as well as trying to make as many budget choices without feeling like we can’t have a decent meal once in awhile.

At 4 months on the road, 3 internationally, we are averaging $86.44 a day, putting us well below the budget. We know that we have some expensive times coming up, but hopefully we can get out of Europe still well under $100 a day average. Based on what we plan on spending in Greece, this shouldn't be an issue. We are currently $1600 under our budget, but we have spent a lot less on lodging than we planned on. Our initial plan was to travel for a year, but as our projected end date for our trip has shifted to allow meeting up with some friends next summer, we are actually looking at about 410 days of traveling (starting when we left Virginia).

Even though Africa and India will be expensive relative to our trip thus far, we hope to still be under budget when we head into Southeast Asia. Our current plan is to lay low in one place for a couple weeks when the India tour ends (likely Vietnam) as we'll probably be tired of bouncing from place to place. Then we are meeting our awesome friends Bri, Marie, and Chip (sorry Chip, we don't have the Rome post written yet to link to...) in Vietnam just after Christmas and Cara's brother in Thailand mid-January. We plan on doing lots during both of these visits, but the dollar goes a lot further in Asia so it should be a cheap time. After that we are planning on spending some time in Cambodia before going to Japan and then heading off to Australia and New Zealand!

We still need to plan our time in Australia and New Zealand, but with that exception we have at least some budget put together for the rest of our trip. We have been talking about adding Ecuador in the spring and trying to meet some other friends there, but we don't know if that will work out exactly. Since we want to WWOOF again (hopefully with a better overall experience) in New Zealand, we should be able to afford it and still have enough to get back to the USA without stowing away on a cruise ship.

-Jeff

Quarterly Report

September 18, 2016

It has been 4 months since we quit our jobs and left Virginia. It has been 3 months since we left the States. It’s a little daunting when you realize that adds up to one quarter of a year. Guess what?! We aren’t broke yet, and we have zero regrets about our decision to travel. Honestly, it’s been so much better than I thought it would be. (Cara’s responses in bold, Jeff’s are in italics!)

# of countries visited: 9 (Iceland, Finland, Sweden, United Kingdom (England/Scotland), France, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy

# of passport stamps: 8

Favorite place: Glencoe, Scottish Highlands

Favorite Food: TIE (so much good food!) Finnish strawberries and/or Italian Piadina (type of sandwich), Paczki

Things Jeff didn’t eat before this trip, but now enjoys: strawberries (thank you Finland!), green cabbage

How many times I have missed getting up for work at 4:50am: 0 (or working third shift: 0)

# of days internationally: 92

# of nights of free accommodation: 69

Thing we wished we would have packed: colored nailpolish, Another t-shirt, sweat pants (if they could be shrunk down to take 0 space in a bag…)

Thing we packed, but haven’t needed: winter hat, Thermal long sleeve

Thing we miss most (besides friends and family- you are always our #1!): heavy ass barbell to throw around-my butt is shrinking as we speak, Tienda Jessy’s (for non-Hampton Roads folk – best Mexican food!), heavy squats, regular daily routine

One thing I wish I knew before this trip: As a native English speaker, Europe is very easy to get around! Trying new foods and being open to liking them doesn’t have to be a rare occurance

Transportation used: Plane, rental car, ferry, train, bus, taxi, subway, walking

Amount of USD spent: $13,925 – includes things we have paid for in advance, such as our tour of India in November

Places we have bookings for next: Greece, Tanzania, Dubai UAE, India

Have you ever become really good friend with people away from home, and then never want to leave them? Friends that make you wish that you lived right down the road all the time? We found this with Phil and Mavis and their daughter Winter in England, and with Mavis’s parents in Ireland! We have felt extremely at home in England and Ireland. This is completely thanks to Phil and Mavis and their amazing family. Every once and awhile Jeff and I would have to remind ourselves that we weren’t actually at home in the States.

Phil teaching Jeff about beekeeping and our family photo! Winter modeled for me and I got to practice taking photos of people instead of landscapes. Winter helped us exercise in her garden (yard) everyday and took us exploring through the woods. Isn't she gorgeous?! Phil and Mavis will have their hands full in 10 years!

We have spent the first 3 months of our trip abroad in Europe. The next 3 months (and beyond) consist much of the developing world. Our creature comforts are going to change a little bit…adventure time! -Cara

I’m really glad we started with Europe, and that we had such long stretches in English speaking countries. It allowed us to settle into traveling and figure some things out in much easier manners. I was really surprised at how few nights of lodging we have actually had to pay for. This is greatly in part to our great friends Tony and Sara (and Sara’s entire awesome Finnish family!), our old jobs for providing the means to gather some Marriott reward points we have used, Phil and Mavis (as Cara has listed above), Mavis’s amazing parents, Steve and Teresa in Ireland, and our WWOOFing hosts.

I can’t wait to see what adventures are in store for us in the next few places we travel, but it’s a bit daunting to not know when we’ll be in an English speaking country again. Time to get more comfortable being uncomfortable! -Jeff

If you are still reading and following our travels-we want to thank all of you for taking this adventure with us. We can feel your love from halfway around the world, and want you to know that we are sending you love right back!

What Are We Doing?

September 14, 2016

Cara and I need to be ready to climb Kilimanjaro in October, and while we are definitely not as fit as we were when we left, we've done fairly well at keeping ourselves from getting fat. It helps that we don't eat as much as we did before, and both of us have lost weight because of that. We do our best to stick to meat and vegetables as much as possible, and avoid too many sweets and breads.

We also try to stay fairly active, and do tons of walking. We are trying to build a habit of doing 50 pushups, situps, and squats everyday, but we will do really well for a week or two, and then fall off the wagon for another week. Overall, I think as long as we pick it up a little in next couple weeks we'll stay in shape enough for Kilimanjaro.

Here are a few of the workouts we've done in the past few weeks:

Tabata: Skaters, Russian Twists, Jump Rope, Burpees

Ten Rounds of Ten Reps of each: Pushups, Jumping Lunges, Pistols, 10 sec handstand hold

5 Rounds: ~600m run, 20 thrusters. 1 partner runs, when they start the thrusters other person takes off on the run, 1st person rests after completing thrusters until partner 2 returns

Partner WOD: 5 Rounds: 1 person does 20 snatches while partner holds plank, swap and repeat

(Cara's note: we are both missing the barbell. All we could find on the farm was a heave piece of crow bar, see photos above. Whatever works!)

Food - A budget guide to not starving to death

September 13, 2016

Eating on the Road

One of the biggest expenses while traveling (and let’s be honest, at home too) is food, especially if you’re trying to avoid fast food. Cara and I are staying a lot of places where we can cook for ourselves, so that is a start. Being able to do more normal grocery shopping is definitely helpful, but what about days when you’re staying in a normal hotel that isn’t self-catering (has a kitchen)? If we can’t cook for ourselves, one thing we try to make sure of is that there is free breakfast, so at least we get one meal out of the day bundled into a cost we are paying anyway.

Groceries in Europe so far have been pretty comparable to the US, and we usually don’t have to spend too much to eat well. As a reference, this week in Ireland, we did some shopping and spent the equivalent of $80 to get enough food for 6 meals, plus extra snacks including fruit, granola bars, and nuts. Typical breakfast for us is a few eggs, and granola with yogurt and berries or just some fruit. We tend to stick to things that are easy to cook for other meals, and lately as we travel around Ireland we do a big breakfast and then our day goes one of two ways. Either we eat a big meal out in the afternoon and have something small for dinner that we make, or we eat something light that we packed (lunch meat, fruit, nuts, etc) and make a bigger meal for ourselves in the evening. Since lunch is typically cheaper than dinner, if you’re going to eat out once a day that is a good choice.

For example, on a night we cook for ourselves we made great dinner with chicken, cut onion and bell peppers, and a jar of salsa all mixed into a 9x13 glass dish and baked. We ate the mix over some greens and had a delicious dinner easy and cheap!

Overall, we try to only eat out once or less per day, and when we buy groceries we go for chicken and pork before steak (most days). You can’t be afraid to try new food, and if you can handle cooking at home, you can do it on the road too!

-Jeff

Dublin in 36 Hours

September 11, 2016

Our Irish road trip ended in Dublin. With less than 48 hours before our flight to Germany, we saw what we could of the city.

By the time the rental car was returned (kudos to Jeff, who navigated himself to the airport while driving stick on the left side of the road!), we went to eat a late lunch at the Brazen Head. It was right around the corner from the Four Courts Hostel where we stayed. The food was affordable and delicious!

With full bellies, we walked to the Chester Beatty library which contains an excellent free exhibition of many ancient books and manuscripts, mostly on religious texts. Did I mention it was free?! If you haven’t picked up on it already, we tend to gravitate toward free activities. We also walked around St. Patrick’s church, Trinity College and Temple Bar.

Since we were both thirsty we decided it was time to find a pub. Ironically, we randomly walked into ‘The Temple Bar’ because we heard good live music. It was probably the most touristy, expensive bar in the whole Temple Bar area. But I don’t care. Because they made me this:

I’d been craving a Bailey’s coffee for days (when in Ireland, right?). It only cost something like $12. Totally worth it! ($12 is more than we normally spend for dinner for the both of us. Needless to say, we ate a pretty light dinner that night.)

The next day we woke up, ate breakfast and headed to the Guinness factory for our second breakfast, in the form of pints. Many of our American friends have recommended touring Guinness. One of our French friends on the farm warned us that it was a complete tourist trap. I have to say (gasp!) the French are right. If you are visiting Dublin, do yourself a favor and order a Guinness in a corner pub. It costs less, you get more atmosphere, and you won’t have to deal with tourists. I guess most brewery tours would be disappointing after Lagunitas (Jeff’s Note: I wouldn’t even call this a brewery tour, it’s a shrine to all things Guinness and is just a way for them to make some cash. Multiple restaurants and bars populate the “tour” and other than pouring yourself a pint, it’s really not that exciting. It would be much better if they would show you around their massive production facility).

At Guinness, it’s a self-guided tour through some modern exhibits, and then you get to pour your own pint. Don’t get me wrong- there are some great selfie opportunities (see below), but we were looking for a little more than that.

Also, this left a bad taste in my mouth:

I can't figure out why you would brag about polluting the oceans...

We spent about 2 hours at Guinness, then walked across the city to the National Museums which are also free. Even if you aren’t extremely interested in natural history or archeology (the ones we went to) for example, these museums are worth a visit just to see the buildings. They had gorgeous architecture!

We picked up burritos for lunch and ate in a park on our way to visit the Kilmainham Gaol. All of the reviews about the jail were great, and advised us to buy our tickets ahead of time. I was so glad we did! Tours of the Gaol sell out before that day, so book in advance. This was my favorite thing that we did in Dublin, it was only 7 euros a piece ($8), and we learned so much about Irish history and their fight for independence.

Ireland didn’t gain independence from Great Britain until 1949. The 1916 Rising (100 years ago!) was the first successful attempt for Ireland to become independent in the fact that, although it was a futile attempt against British troops, the movement for independence gained public support. This was only after the cruel executions of those imprisoned at Kilmainham Gaol for their role in the 1916 Rising. Although Ireland is a young country, you can feel the pride throughout the tour.

Both of us are convinced that 48 hours is plenty to do Dublin justice, but you really need to get out to the country side to experience Ireland.

Slàinte! (Irish ‘cheers’ to your good health)

-Cara

Modes of transportation used: Plane, bus, taxi, rental car

Total amount spent in Ireland (including flight): $1762.03 USD

Avg.: $65.26 USD per day

*Those numbers include the entirety of our Ireland trip, and the majority of the time we were working for room and board so our daily cost was virtually $0. If you take just the time we were traveling about the rest of Ireland being tourists, we averaged $114.90 a day, and that includes a few nights spent with friends in Cork, so just our roadtrip portion would be a little higher*

-Jeff

Irish Road Trip Part II

September 09, 2016

Day 4

We left Killarney and headed up to the Dingle Peninsula. Both of us agreed that we enjoyed this peninsula much better than the Ring of Kerry. We had great weather for both, but Dingle seemed a little more scenic!

We weren’t the only ones who thought so- the end of the last Star Wars movie was filmed on the Dingle Peninsula…

The drive around the scenic loop was only 30 km, so it took us only 2 hours to complete with stops. We spent the rest of the day walking the town, eating and listening to live music in multiple pubs! The first stop of the night was in Foxy John's. Hardware store by day, pub by night....

I am so glad that we splurged a little on our 1 night in Dingle. We stayed at Heaton’s Guesthouse, and it was the best (fanciest) B&B we have been to. Tea and chocolate cake were served around 3pm, and breakfast was presented beautifully- and it was delicious!!! Jeff ordered the full Irish breakfast (eggs, sausage, bacon, white pudding, black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, toast, but skipped the beans and toast) and I ordered the smoked salmon omelet. This was a welcome treat to the type of traveling we have been doing. There’s not a whole lot to do in Dingle, but if we come back, I definitely want to stay longer at this B&B because it was so wonderful! Note: there was a marathon in Dingle the day we left, we did not participate, but we saw the runners start!

Day 5

After I had 2 pots of tea with my breakfast, we left Dingle and headed north to the Cliffs of Moher. The weather held out for us and started raining only after we snapped a few photos on the cliffs!

Then we continued just north of Galway to a hostel in Oughterard. We had originally thought we were staying in Galway, but turns out you can’t always trust the internet. Sometimes it pays to double check the address for hotel bookings. Turns out it was a blessing in disguise. We drove right past Galway without stopping. I’m sure it’s a great town and a nice Irish city, but to Jeff and I, cities normally mean expensive hotels, expensive meals and tons of tourist shops that we aren’t going to buy anything in. I can only window shop for so long. Anyway, the Oughterard Angling Center and Hostel was more like a small self-catering guest house. We cooked some great cheap meals in the kitchen, and since we were north of Galway, we were already on our way to Connemara National Park.

We visited the park and went for a day hike up Diamond Hill. I’m not sure what Jeff and I did in another life to have such great karma, but the weather in Ireland has been completely favorable for us!

-Cara

Irish Road Trip Part I

September 07, 2016

After spending a few days in Cork, we climbed in our miniature Toyota Yaris and headed West! Jeff has now mastered driving on the left side of the road, and shifting with his left hand.

Jeff and I have spent the past few weeks living and/or working around other people. We decided that we wanted to see the rest of Ireland, and figured it would be a nice break to spend some time together, just the two of us. Also, with the money we saved by working on the farm (free room and board), we feel like we can afford to spend a little more this week.

Day 1

We left Cork City and drove to Kenmare. Arrived in Kenmare in the evening, just as it started to rain. We stayed 1 night at a B&B just outside of town.

Day 2

Drove the Ring of Kerry backwards to avoid tour buses. Weather was great for most of the day and we didn’t hit too many tourists! We stopped in Portmcgee to try to get a boat out to the Skellig Islands. The Islands are extremely remote and used to be inhabited by monks. Unfortunately, the seas were too rough for a boat ride, so this is definitely on our to-do list when we come back to Ireland!

Skellig Islands in the distance- we plan to come back and see them by boat someday!

Since we were out that way, we drove the Skellig Ring (another peninsula and island off of the Ring of Kerry). We completed the Ring and arrived in Killarney around 3 pm without much traffic, if you don’t count the sheep and cow that caused minor roadblocks on separate occasions. We walked around town and grabbed a bite to eat before settling in our hostel for the night.

Day 3

We had a typical Irish summer day. Rainy and misty all day, even though you can see blue sky, with cooler temperatures. It didn’t stop us! We hiked in Killarney National Park. I am so glad we decided to take an extra day in Killarney to explore the park. Ireland has been really pretty up to this point, but we’ve seen a lot of coastal vistas in the past 2 months. Maybe we’ve become desensitized. However, we were blown away by the National Park. Of course our pictures don’t do it justice, but even in the misty rain we began to realize that faeries and leprechauns really can live here.

Of course we worked up an incredible thirst while walking, so we popped into Killarney Brewing Company (they like to call themselves KBC, but honestly!!!!!) for a tour and tasting. The craft brew scene is pretty non-existent in Ireland, so it was interesting to check out.

PS It’s 10pm at night in Killarney and we are staying in a private room, shared bath, at a youth hostel. There is a group of teenage girls here in the common room (teenage girls = not much sleep). They have all sat down for tea and biscuits (Cookies. Although, biscuits do sound healthier…) before bed. I haven’t quite figured out the Irish teatime- it seems to be whenever you want sit and eat cookies (biscuits). For me it’s teatime, all the time.

-Cara

Exploring County Cork Ireland

September 05, 2016

We have been so lucky to experience much of Cork Co. Ireland over the past few days!

After taking the bus to Cork City from the farm, we were met by Steve and Teresa at the bus station. They are the parents of our good friends in England. We are so glad that we have gotten to know their family in past few months- we’ve gotten to live like locals in England and Ireland!

Shortly after we got picked up at the bus station, we went to Blarney Castle. Of course we kissed the stone! (See below.) Which to be honest, was pretty anti-climactic since it’s a great photo-op for the castle to sell you a professional photograph that they take of you. Anyway, now Jeff and I are now blessed with the gift of ‘eloquence’ that comes from kissing the stone.

Even more impressive than the Blarney Stone, are the castle grounds and gardens. There is an interesting poison garden, teaching visitors about poisonous plants. The grounds are gorgeous, and you could easily spend a few hours walking all of the trails.

We also made a pit stop at Woolen Mills. I think a lot of the tour buses stop there. They have beautiful merchandise, but I think it would have been more exciting if Jeff and I were actually in the market for souvenirs. I would need another backpack for all the things I would want to buy…and then Jeff would make me carry it all by myself...

After the Castle, Steve and Teresa treated us to lunch on the way to Cobh (English = Cove). In Cobh, previously called Queenstown, we visited the Queenstown Heritage Center. This was much more interesting than Blarney Castle. Queenstown was the reverse Ellis Island of Ireland. If you were leaving Ireland, you left on a ship from Cobh. Many Irish immigrated to Australia and the America’s from here. Some left by force in order to serve prison sentence, others to start a new life across the sea. Queenstown was also the final port call for the Titanic before it left for its tragic maiden voyage. The information in the Heritage Center was extensive and extremely well put together. Well worth a visit! Today, Cobh is a cruise ship harbor.

Queenstown Heritage Center- well worth a visit!

We went up to the beautiful cathedral that overlooked the town, which was the last part of Ireland that may immigrants ever saw. Coincidentally, we were in time for Saturday mass. The past few Sunday’s we have attended a mass in Ireland, and it sort of feels like a race compared to masses that we are used to. The mass in Cobh set a new record for us- 27 minutes long. I appreciate the Irish, they don’t waste any time! That night we went to the local pub with Steve and Teresa. It was a struggle for us, as we left the house after 10 pm and then stayed up until 2:30 am. Pubs seem to be an integral part of Irish life- something that we highly approve of!

The next day we toured much of Cork County. It was the most beautiful day we have had in Ireland- sunny skies all day and warm temperatures! We went through Kinsale, a quaint little town on the coast and stopped at Charles Fort. We were treated (again) to lunch by Steve and Teresa at the Dunmore House near Inchydoney Beach.

In the few short days we spent in Cork, we learned so much about Irish hospitality. We had met some awesome fellow workers at the farm in Schull and were lucky enough to catch up with one of them in Cork. Katrin escaped Schull and is spending a few weeks at a different farm just outside of Cork City. We went to go visit her at the farm and drink some whiskey. When we showed up to her new farm we were greeted and served lunch! We love getting to know new people on this trip, and it is so heartwarming to know that others want to get to know us too. After being treated like part of the family, Katrin came with us to The Jameson Experience.

We learned about Irish whiskey and distilling. All of the Jameson in the world is produced in Middleton, Ireland. And we were there!!! Katrin and Jeff were pretty serious about the tour, and volunteered to drink more than the rest of us.

Irish whiskey is better than Scotch, but I am still a fan of American whiskey.

We did a quick walk around Cork City the morning before we left on a week long road trip and stopped to eat at the English Market. Delicious!

-Cara

Farm Life in Ireland, 2.0

August 30, 2016

*Written the last evening on the farm, posted several days later*

Part II: the farm saga continues…

I had hoped that the second week of WWOOFing would bring a more positive attitude. We worked on some different things than we did last week, and the house was a lot quieter with only 3 of us WWOOFers around. We worked pretty hard again this week- a lot of house cleaning and manual labor.

I was excited to finally go pick some potatoes! Now, I have a greater appreciation when potatoes appear on my plate that I haven’t prepared myself.

We followed the tractor and collected potatoes into large crates, which we later bagged so the farmers could take them into town. They are sold at the local grocery store. Doesn’t get more local than that! I also fed the calves. They were too busy eating to smile with me.

Remember the room that we all busted our butts to finish last week for an Airbnb rental? The eventual plan is for it to be for Betty, the 80-year old mother of the farmer. Betty has been so sweet to us! We are staying in her home and it’s not really clear if she’s been on board with WWOOfers taking over her home…We ate many suppers with Betty and she took us to church last Sunday when it was too rainy to walk. I really hope she ends up with the little mother-in-law suite of her dreams! This is what the room looked like last week:

Anyways, now I have another picture of that space. We stripped the entire room from in order to divide the room into a bedroom and sitting room. Jeff taught me how to frame a wall and once we did that, we plaster boarded the outer part. That was all we had time for while we were on site.

I can’t even begin to describe how thankful I am to Jeff. He has been amazing these past two weeks dealing with my general dissatisfaction (bitchiness) about our situation. We were not always treated the way I believe we should have been treated- for example, the one night this past week when we did not have dinner because groceries had not been purchased in over 1 week. Pretty unfortunate when the sole purpose of our work is for room and board. I think we both have learned a lot from this experience, especially to set ourselves up with a better situation if we ever decide to work like this again.

We still have about a week and a half in Ireland and are renting a car to do more touristy things. I keep reminding myself that the money we saved by staying at the farm made it a little easier to book the B&B in Dingle that is over 100 euros. More on that soon!

-Cara

Enter Jeff’s Perspective:

I had fun this week, we did some manual labor which allows me to zone out and just get stuff done which is like meditation for me, and I enjoy building things so it was fun to make something. A little frustrating to tear apart some things we had done before, but I think the end result will be nice.

I think one of my favorite parts of this adventure was getting to know Betty. She had a great personality, and it was awesome to know that she had traveled quite a bit, including several trips to the US. It was really nice to meet someone that had been born and raised right near here and had seen other parts of the world and still lives in the same place and knows almost everyone.

Overall, I think the farm has been a positive experience. It was a little trying, and not always what we expected, but our hosts overall have been great people and are really nice. They are trying to find their way in the world and I don’t think they have quite figured out exactly how to deal with lots of WWOOFers and they are still trying to figure out exactly what direction they are headed. One of the big reasons we are traveling is to meet people different then us and get to experience how they live, so I think this has been a great part of that. Being a tourist is great, but it really doesn’t teach you how the average person lives.

That being said, I’m super excited to go play tourist for awhile again and see the rest of Ireland. Then its off to Germany and Italy with my parents, which is going to be awesome!

Jeff

These pictures are at the closest pier, about a 15 minute walk from the farmhouse. We would go workout near the water after work! We have definitely been blessed with good weather so far. Fingers crossed that it holds!

ET Phone Home?

August 28, 2016

One of the things we were worried about when we were planning the trip was what we were going to do about our cell phones and being able to afford keeping in touch with people at home. At first we were doing a bunch of research and thought we were going to transfer one of our numbers to T-Mobile and cancel the other, which would’ve been tough for us because we have both had the same numbers since high school/college. We knew we wouldn’t have been able to stay with Verizon internationally, and T-Mobile seemed like the best deal.

Somehow I stumbled upon the Google phone plan (Google Fi) and it seemed too good to be true. The plan breaks down like this: $20 a month for unlimited text and talk in the US, and unlimited texting around the world in the 100+ countries they cover. If you call using the local network outside the US, it’s $0.20 a minute, which isn’t too bad. Data is $10 a gig anywhere they have coverage, so as long as you don’t use a ton of data (we try to use Wifi as much as possible), its really cheap. While we were in the US, our bill was usually about $35 a month, each. This makes the total just over half what we were paying Verizon each month for our shared plan. The coverage wasn’t quite as good, but for the money we weren’t complaining. The coverage in the US was provided by T-Mobile and Sprint, whoever had the better signal in your location. They have since added US Cellular and Three (international coverage throughout Europe), so it’s getting better and better.

The real bonus comes in that they facilitate calling over Wifi, and that calls over Wifi from anywhere in the world (well in their 100+ countries) to the US are free, so we can call home and it doesn’t cost us anymore than the $20 a month of our base price. The cost of calls over Wifi varies within different countries, but overall you can call local numbers for a few cents a minute most places, so calling a hotel our checking the hours of somewhere we want to visit is no big deal.

Focusing on using Wifi as much as possible, and doing things like downloading offline Google Maps before going to new areas has made it so we use very little data each month. Our July bills were each under $30, and we haven’t had any complaints about being able to get on the network when we need it. Hopefully the coverage continues throughout our travels through less developed countries, but so far we are really happy with our choice to swap to Google Fi.

Cara's note: Google Fi in no way compensated us for this review. These are our unsolicited opinions. We fully recommend service with Google Fi at home or abroad. HOWEVER, if Google Fi saw fit to lower our already cheap phone bill we would not complain- get a hold of us!

Farm life in Ireland

August 28, 2016

*This post was written about a week ago, but delayed posting until we had moved on*

Summary after our first of 2 weeks on an Irish farm:

I literally do not know what to say about our current situation. If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it….

We arrived from England just over a week ago to Dublin with no problems. We spent about 6 hours on buses getting from Dublin to Schull, which is in Cork Co., about as far South in Ireland as you can go. It’s a small sea side community that has many small dairy farms and some tourism.

We came to work on a farm in exchange for food and lodging. The work exchange is commonly called WWOOFing (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). We found these farmers through a friend of a friend, and we are supposed to work 5 hours a day, and we have 2 days off a week. 5 hour days seem to sometimes turn into 6, 7 or 11 hours. On this farm they have about twenty dairy cows that get milked twice a day, a few ducks, a chicken who prefers to walk through cow muck then roost on the kitchen stove, cats, they also farm potatoes, have multiple properties they rent on Airbnb, and are currently renovating old outbuildings into Airbnb rentals.

I started recording my thoughts for the first few days of work here:

Arrival Day: Waited 1.5 hours for a ride from the bus station to the house, no worries as there is a pub- we drank a pint. Go to farmhouse. Ok, a bit dirty, but look! 5 new French friends! And they are all engineering students. Yay! Jeff and I don’t have to talk to just each other anymore! This is an adventure!

Day 1: The French have the day off and Jeff and I are out to work. Shit get real (literally) when Peter (the dog) leaps from cow barn across yard spraying me with cow pies.

Day 2: Clean houses. Scrub ass ton of toilets. 8 WWOOFers are working, ‘Cara, can you make lunch?’ Woman back to the kitchen. Pm- made brick patio for Airbnb apartment.

Day 3: Rest Day. Walked into town to church, ate lunch at the local market- beautiful coastal walks.

Day 4: 11 hour slave day. Owners took parts from the toilet to put in the new guest house. Now there is 1 full bathroom for 13 people.

And then I stopped recording my thoughts while working, because it mostly involved a lot of colorful language.

My current view from the top of the stairs looking down into the living room (not really 'livable').

As I type this, the WWOFers have been banished from the first floor of the house because the farmers have guests visiting. This is a little complicated because it is windy and rainy outside, Jeff and I are staying outside in the trailer (no internet outside), and there is only one staircase upstairs from the dining room. So I am literally sitting on top of the stairs next to the wireless router waiting for guests to leave so that I can exit the house. (One of the guests just asked, ‘Is that noise a ghost?’ ‘No, it’s just our WWOOFers.’).

You are probably thinking, ‘Cara- why the heck would you stay there?’ Hmmm, valid question!!!! Right now I’m kind of comparing this to something like reading The Grapes of Wrath. It’s pretty difficult to get through, but afterwards you realize it was a pretty worthwhile experience. Don’t burst my bubble people. I tend to be pretty high-strung when I have to live in clutter, and this experience has been extremely challenging for me emotionally. One of my personal goals this year is to get more comfortable outside of my comfort zone. This is definitely a place where I can work on my anxiety. I do not understand how people live in constant clutter. Clarification: I am not talking about having a messy house. I am talking about hoarding garbage. See below. This is one outbuilding that originally housed cows and horses, but has since been used to store....stuff. I'm sure at one time this 'stuff' was usable.

We did find a nice pair of Isotoner driving gloves with tags still on them that I am using as work gloves!

Before and after of the room we converted with other WWOOFers last Monday. This outbuilding looked like the picture above with all of the 'stuff' in it before Jeff and I arrived at the farm.

This week we turned this room (above) into a studio to rent out (ref.: Day 4 above). The picture was taken at about 2pm, and guests were booked to show up at 6pm. Thank goodness they showed up at 10pm. You probably shouldn’t use a toilet 10 minutes after it has been plumbed, or take a shower right after it has been caulked- these are minor details.

We have since cleaned out all 3 large rooms in the outbuilding that is pictured above wiht all of the 'stuff' in it. We were extremely productive (sarcasm) and relocated all of the rubbish up to the large pole barn. Don’t get me started on health and safety. (Mom- we’re ok. I’m making Jeff wear safety glasses.)

In addition to ourselves and the French WWOOFers here, there is 1 Spaniard and 1 German. It’s a true international house and Jeff and I have been so excited to learn about other cultures. All of the French and the German leave soon, so it will be much quieter here. I think the atmosphere of the house will be a little different, in a good way. AND we should have a real bed to sleep in. We are extremely grateful to have gotten to work with some amazing WWOOFers!

Anyway, we are leaving this farm earlier than we had originally planned (YAY). We will stay here only 2 weeks instead of 3, and then be able to use the money we are saving now to rent a car and take a week to see the rest of Ireland. The farmers are indeed nice people, but I believe they are in a little over their heads. On top of the Airbnb properties, animals and potatoes to take care of, they are expecting their first child in 1 month.

I’ll let Jeff give a more (uplifting) constructive summary of what we have been doing so far. I do believe that the next post will be of a more positive nature.

-Cara

Enter Jeff: I had always thought that we might be literally shoveling shit when we were WWOOFing, so I think I was a bit more prepared mentally than Cara. I also am a bit better at rolling with things outside my control, at least in certain areas of life, so I think the past week and a half has been less taxing on me then her. Overall I haven’t minded this experience, and I’m focusing on enjoying the view and reminding myself that our account balance isn’t going down while we’re here, so we’ll be able to do more awesome stuff later.

Other than the super long day Monday, the work hasn’t been too bad. Manual labor feels good on the muscles that haven’t been super active lately, and I do enjoy working with my hands. Cara isn’t wrong that we are dealing with hoarders. They have the issue that most of the outbuildings either currently do, or have at some point, housed cattle and other farm animals so there is literally shit on most stuff. This can make it difficult, but I just take a deep breath and remember to wash my hands a few extra times a day.

While I am about as far from a pregnancy expert as you can be, I know that our host has a lot mental, emotional, and physical things going on, so when she does something I can’t comprehend, I just try to smile and let it go as a product of that. I do wish we could bring in a couple dumpsters and fill them with all the stuff laying around, but I know that won’t happen.

I’m trying to use the next week to focus on learning and experiencing some new things, as well as getting out and seeing some of the Irish countryside around the house. Overall, I think we’ll look back and laugh at this time, and it will probably be some of the most memorable for our trip.

So overall, I don’t think I would recommend WWOOFing unless you are very comfortable living in situations outside your control on other peoples terms. I haven’t had a bad enough experience that I would rule out of doing more WWOOFing later in the trip, but I do think we’ll ask some more pointed questions and try to get a better feel for what our day to day life will be like wherever we go next. We’ll cover those questions in another post though…

-Jeff

Farmhouse Update: We moved out of the caravan (pictured) after 1 week. When some of the WWOOFers left, we have claimed a bedroom in the house- much better for the cold, wet, windy nights! Yes- the ocean is in the background of the photo, about … — Farmhouse Update: We moved out of the caravan (pictured) after 1 week. When some of the WWOOFers left, we have claimed a bedroom in the house- much better for the cold, wet, windy nights! Yes- the ocean is in the background of the photo, about a 15 minute walk from the house.

Irish Entertainment

August 22, 2016

We decided to have a big Friday night out in a little village named Ballydehob, near Schull where we are working. Ballydehob was having a week-long festival (I don’t remember what they were celebrating, but I think it was just another reason to have a pint). There were a few events happening at 7:30pm (Irish time) on Friday night that I was extremely curious about. All that was listed on the brochure that Jeff and I picked up were, ‘World Championship Turnip Racing, Slow Bicycle Race, Go Cart Race (bring your own), and Partner Wheelbarrow Race (adult and child divisions).’ My imagination ran wild. After asking our farm hosts what the wheelbarrow race was, they said, ‘the first person slams a pint at the pub, then jumps in a wheelbarrow and the partner pushes them.’ Jeff’s immediate response, ‘We can totally win this!’

We arrived in town at 7:30 with our fellow WWOOFers and there isn’t anything going on in town, or many people present. However, this seemed normal as town was only about 1 small city block long. We popped into a pub and had a pint and when we left an hour later events were happening in the street! Note: I'm pretty sure the whole town, and the next town over, were present for the festival.

Even growing up in small town USA can’t prepare you for the excitement of Turnip Racing…

We watched the Backwards Footrace, slow bicycle race (last one wins), dog race, and finally it was time for the wheelbarrow race! Jeff snagged an unclaimed wheelbarrow and me as his passenger. Turns out, I was the only female participant. I was already a little nervous because I have never been able to drink like an Irishman, and although I had pretty good practice in Houghton, that was a few years ago… Anyways, here were the rules given to us (there were no rules): you had to stop at each pub (WAIT! WHAT?!There’s more than 1 beer to chug???!!!) and the wheelbarrow pusher couldn’t help drink (apparently they take drinking and driving seriously here).

I was freaking out because I haven’t chugged more than 1 beer since I was trying to impress people in college, but Jeff was pretty confident since we had spent the whole week wheelbarrowing loads of garbage around the farm.

Here’s the proof. Please ignore me tossing beer over my shoulder. This seemed to be a strategic tactic that everyone used. It was crappy Miller anyway. There were 5 pubs to stop at and poor Jeff got a workout pushing me up the hill that main street was on.

We ended up with a bronze medal!!!!!! Just kidding, we did get third place, but they only gave trophies to the Turnip Race winners, and the first place for the wheelbarrow race won beer money. And they were only going to give that money to locals (fair enough). My favorite photo- not sure exactly what is going on here...

We celebrated our win by spending the next few hours in the pub listening to live music!!!!

We still aren’t sure what the festival was celebrating, but we did learn that the best way to live like a local is to jump right in (a wheelbarrow), and not be afraid of getting soaked with a wee bit of beer!

-Cara

We will post more about our farming experiences in a few days. We have done various jobs so far, but my favorite one was to build this enclosure for 6 ducks! Also, for those of you following us on Instagram- we have moved out of the caravan and into a room in the farmhouse.

Making it Count

August 21, 2016

Cara and I know we need to be frugal and make the money last if we want to go for the whole year, but we don’t want to just sit on our butts for a year either. Trying to balance the conflict of getting the experiences we want and not spending all our money in one quick swoop has been tricky, but I think we’re both happy with the choices we have made so far.

If there is something that one of us really wants to do, we do it. Period. There is no point in going on an adventure and not doing the things that will make it worthwhile. On opposite side, if we’re not crazy about going to do something that will cost us money, we usually decide against it. This is why we decided not to go into the Louvre while we were in Paris, even though it wasn’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things.

Another way we try to save money is going on free walking tours in the cities we visit. So far every city has had at least one company that puts these on, and then you just tip the guide whatever you think is reasonable when its over. We usually tip the equivalent of $5-10 each, which is a lot cheaper than any major tour company we’ve seen. We have recently tried downloading podcast walking tours, which are completely free and also seem to work well, although sometimes its nice to have the guide to ask your questions instead of google.

The other big way we try to save money is by not eating out for the majority of our meals. We also aren’t quite as active as we were in Virginia, so we’re trying to eat less, although that really hasn’t worked for the last month or so… Most places we try to stay we can cook for ourselves so we try to get some groceries and cook most of our meals ourselves. Even if we can’t cook for ourselves, we’ll try to get some salad and pre-cooked chicken at the grocery store or some sandwich stuff and have at least one meal a day on the cheap. If we can do this regularly, we really don’t feel bad about spending a decent amount for a nicer dinner once in a while.

One really big way we have saved money is by hardly drinking any alcohol. We weren’t big partiers anyway, and by cutting out most alcohol we really limit the amount we spend. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have any wine in France and or Scotch in Scotland, but we aren’t having big nights out at the bar.

We were super lucky to spend most of July at a friend of a friend’s house in England, so that saved us a ton of money in lodging. We’re also spending most of August in Ireland at a farm where we’ll be trading about 5 hours of work a day for room and board, so we’ll see how that goes. If it goes well, we’ll be trying to do this again during the trip in order to save some more money.

So what does this mean overall? If you remember our daily budget for the year is $135, and as of 8/9/16 we are at $95.98/day. This is actually falsely high, because I have updated our tracking sheet with the cost of all the flights we have purchased, which includes 3 future flights (we normally track the expense on the day that we fly, and count the flight into a country in that country’s total cost. If you eliminate those future flights, the total falls under $90/day.

Finance for a Round the World Trip

August 14, 2016

This time we want to talk about our budget and how well we’ve been sticking to it. When we started planning for the trip we struggled a lot with how much to budget and how strict we should try to make it. We decided we didn’t want a very strict budget because we wanted to be able to roll with the punches and have the flexibility to go do things and enjoy experiences as they came up, but we needed some plan in order to make sure we wouldn’t go broke in a month. We used a lot of guidebooks and other blogs/websites to gauge how much we might spend in a country, and so far, we have been under budget.

We booked all our flights for Europe and nearly all our lodging before we left the States, so we knew most of the costs in those areas. One thing that has helped us some with our budget was the Brexit vote, while most of the people we have met around Europe and in the UK aren’t very happy about it, it has dropped the Euro and the British Pound, so the currency conversion is a little more in our favor. Cara and I want to make this trip last as long as we can, and since we’re not used a lavish lifestyle, it’s pretty easy for us to do things on the cheap while we travel.

Using guidebooks (Lonely Planet, Frommers, etc.) can give you a good estimate of how much you’ll spend dining out, but that is still the expensive way to go. Cara and I do a lot of cooking for ourselves (and we’ll have another post on ways to save money), but we aren’t afraid to go out to eat some. We just try to limit the number of times that we do it, and if we go out somewhere a little nicer, we wait a little longer until we do it again. Since we don’t have a rigid budget on what we are spending each day, we can feel free to go out to eat and pay for some museums or tours all in the same day, we just know that the next day we need to do the free stuff and eat at our home base or pack food with us. We also haven’t made budgets for places where we have free lodging, like England and Ireland, as lodging is normally the largest expense and we aren’t worried about that there. We just track the day to day expenses and try to keep them low.

A good reference has been our daily average for the trip, which is automatically calculated in our expense spreadsheet. We also know that based on our starting budget of $50,000 and that we want to travel for a year, we can average ~$135 a day. The average has been in the $90s for most of the trip, although that will drop by the end of our time in Ireland as we won’t have paid for lodging for about 2 months (with a few nights of exceptions). We know that Europe is expensive overall, so we have tried hard here to cut costs. We also know that the next leg of our trip in Africa will be relatively expensive as we are planning on climbing Kilimanjaro and doing a safari, but as we plan on spending a couple months in southeast Asia after that, we should bring the cost down again. If we can get out of Africa with the whole trip average around the ~$135 mark, we’ll be in really good shape for the rest of the trip.

For the most part we have stuck to free tours and museums, but when one of us wants to see something or go somewhere, we go. This trip is all about experiences for us, so we’re not sitting on a couch just because that’s free. We are also looking for ways to save on things we want to do, so we’re always looking for a deal. Cara found us 9 day foreign visitor passes to the English Heritage run sites which includes Dover Castle (which was awesome) and Stonehenge, both of which we wanted to go to and if those are the only things we see, we’re still saving money over paying both admissions separately. We used it close to where we’re staying to visit a fort that we wouldn’t have otherwise, as well as some places on the western coast when we visited there. Keeping your eye out for deals is a great way to stay under budget.

Next time we’ll talk more about ways we have been saving money and still feeling like we’re getting the experiences we want.