Quick Update From Patagonia

Greetings from Argentina! We wanted to post a quick update to let everyone know that we’re heading off the grid for the next week or so as we begin a trek in Torres del Paine National Park here in southern Patagonia. We probably won’t be online again until we get to Ushuaia on 12/19, and maybe not even until we get to Buenos Aires on 12/22.

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Last Night I Dreamt of San Pedro (de Atacama)

It’s hard to believe it, but Laura and I have finally arrived in the sixth and final continent on our year-long adventure! (Sorry Jayson, no trip to Antarctica for us this time.) We still can’t quite wrap our heads around the fact that we’ll be home in a couple of months, but I have to admit it’s been fun making plans to see our family and friends at home in late January. We’re not quite ready to think about the practical realities we’ll have to deal with when we get back back – getting resettled at home (including re-introducing Nutmeg to chilly San Francisco), buying (or borrowing… hint, hint) a car, updating billing addresses and dealing with the piles of mail our parents have held for us, collecting and unpacking all the crap we’ve shipped home this year (scattered across three states), finding jobs (yikes!) – but I think we’ll be ready for real life again once January 19th rolls around.

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Pano-palooza #3 – The Italian Job

We’re still working on our last few photo albums from Italy – our little medical emergency in Spain was an annoying detour that threw us off our game a bit – and we still have some final thoughts and impressions to share about the eight weeks we spent eating and drinking our way through bell’Italia. In the meantime, I thought I’d share the latest batch of panoramic photos I stitched together.

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España, Good On Ya

Now that our appendectomy adventure is over (I’m knocking on wood now because technically one of us still has an as-yet-ungangrenous appendix), we thought it was about time to write about the non-medical-emergency parts of our month-long tour of Spain, also known as the Country That Never Met a Part of the Pig It Didn’t Want to Eat. This is my first trip to Spain, and for all intents and purposes, it’s Dustin’s too. (He was here briefly a few years ago, but in what now appears to be a prophetic case of bad luck, he came down with the flu shortly after arriving and spent the entire time in his hotel room.)

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Nobody Expects the Spanish Appendectomy!

Updated on Sunday, November 21, 2010 at 1:26PM by Dustin Frazier

We interrupt this already irregularly scheduled program for an even more irregular update. As you might be able to guess from the title of this entry, I had the distinct “pleasure” of having my appendix removed while Laura and I were traveling in southern Spain. It was a painful, stressful, frustrating, confusing, and at times downright scary experience, especially given that we don’t speak a lick of Spanish. As it turns out, though, it was also one of the most real experiences we’ve had while traveling this year, and it reminded us a thing or two about the unpredictability of life and importance of going with the flow, about the benefits of having an amazing travel companion, and most importantly, about the universal kindness of strangers. It was quite the detour on our year-long adventure.

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Felicitaciones, Clara y Eric!

We’ve been offline a few weeks due to a medical emergency here in Spain (not to worry, everything is fine now… we’ll post a full report here later today), but we’re back online and wanted to say “Congratulations!” to our friends and fellow globetrotters Clara and Eric, who just got engaged on Sunday. Quite randomly, we’ve now had the good fortune of meeting up with them four times in the last couple of months (in Cinque Terre and on a farm stay in Dozza, Italy, and in Sevilla and Granada in Spain), and we’ve really enjoyed swapping travel stories and hearing about their amazing adventures.

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Guest Blogger: The Steps of Positano

Editors’ Note: This guest blogger thing is starting to become a habit, one that Laura and I are quite happy to encourage! Less work for us. :) As most of you know by now, we spent a week along the Amalfi Coast of Italy with my parents, Laura’s parents, her sister, and her uncle back in September. That’s eight people from three families… sounds like the setup for a cheesy 80’s sitcom. We had an amazing time exploring the coast, and my Mom was kind enough to write a bit about our week together. Thanks, Mom! We also have more photos from Italy to share, so be sure to check out our Positano, Pompeii, Amalfi Coast, and Capri photo albums. Ciao!

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Big Night

So, we’ve been eating a lot in Italy – and not just the 32 pizzas Dustin wrote about in our last entry. Whether it’s homemade tagliatelle with a wild boar ragu… or a huge terra cotta crock containing every species of edible fish and crustacean just pulled from the sea that day… or fresh, homemade ravioli coated in butter and sage that literally melt in your mouth… or Dustin’s daily (and sometimes twice-daily) order of un gelato con cioccolato e bacio… or any of the other gustatory delights we’ve been lucky enough to sample in this country of food lovers, we have definitely made eating (and drinking) a primary focus of our time here on the boot. (If you don’t believe us, we have several pairs of pants that no longer fit that we’d be happy to show you. :)

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Pizza Slut(s)

In case you haven’t noticed, Laura and I (but mostly I) like keeping track of data. We list some arguably interesting statistics about our trip in the Fun Facts sidebar of this blog, and one of the stats that’s been there for a long time is “Feet of Subway sandwiches consumed”. During the first few months of our trip, it seemed like Subways were everywhere, and a Subway sandwich was often just the little taste of home that we craved. It was also a reasonably healthy (and cheap) option for a quick lunch or dinner in some places where salad wasn’t all that easy to find. Don’t get Laura started about the lack of mustard in the UK Subway shops, but overall, we heart Subway.

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Guest Blogger: The Navigators

Editors’ Note: We are very excited to publish our second guest blog entry! (And while we’re at it, we’d like to apologize to the esteemed authors of the *first* guest blog entry [“Israeli Sausage Toast”] for our general lameness in failing to follow it up with additional posts and pictures about our adventures in Israel. We really are working on those posts, S&I! Stay tuned!) But back to Italy… As most of you know by now, we recently spent a week in Tuscany with Laura’s mom (Mary), dad (John), sister (Teresa) and uncle (Buzz). Thanks to a lot of hard work and planning by Mary, we were able to spend the week in an old (as in, the 13th century!) villa outside of the sleepy town of Stigliano near Siena. It was a wonderful week full of amazing food and wine and beautiful countryside, but as you’ll see in Mary’s post below, it wasn’t entirely stress-free.

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