Author: rr_admin

Ottawa

All packed and ready to go. It’s hard to say goodbye to family and friends. But in this age, you’re never really out of touch, for better or worse.

After a routine flight, we had a lengthy layover in Istanbul. Interesting airport, Istanbul – it’s open 24 hours and has flights departing throughout the night to unusual places, like Tbilisi and Yerevan and Rostov.

Exhausted by the overnight leg from Ottawa, we stretched out on the airport benches and slept like a pair of aging hobos.

Left Istanbul at 1:25 AM for Bangkok.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We witnessed a Dostoyevskian scene in the main departure hall: twenty or more young men, lined up two by two, each pair manacled together by clunky handcuffs, each man clutching an identical duty free bag like children heading for a sleepover. Strange and kind of unsettling.

Actually, this journey begins with many steps, but the most important one was selling our house. We aren’t going anywhere before we slim down our possessions to what can fit in a storage locker and disencumber ourselves of our primary residence. It took months of work to prepare our house for sale. And of course, the day finally arrived when…

We’ve been happy living in our townhouse overlooking the park and river for about nineteen years. Many happy memories were made here.

But all good things come to an end.

We both enjoy travelling. After years of two-week and three-week trips, we imagine what it would be like to leave everything behind and amble at our own pace from place to place. This plan has been in the works for years.