*New Year's about 14 years ago.
I got ready to go to Prague ,we stopped to visit a good friend of my husband's who convinced us it will be a lot more fun to join him and his friends to a cabin in the mountains.It turned out it was not a cabin.It was a former stable with only one room, not in the mountains but on a hill and you would say so what but when it started raining mud was up to my knees.The food was a big pot of beans, the closest village was 60 km away.At 6am on January first I was sitting in my silk dress and muddy boots in the middle of a dirt road trying to get a ride anywhere.
*New Year's about 12 years ago .
My husband was working as a ski instructor so we could not go anywhere.He promised me a special ski trip.At 9am on January first my ligaments were broken on both knees.I lied to him about doing my warm up ,spent the next 6 weeks in a cast.
*North Manitou 3 days romantic getaway .We had Axel join us at the last moment.There were swarms of blood thirsty flies,we run away from the flies to a swamp with thousands of mosquitoes we found out Axel didn't camp before so we carried his gear,oddly enough he still could not walk.Axel was very very sick for 3 days ,we did what we could for him ,back in town we found out he had mono.
*Mackinaw Island 4 year wedding anniversary .We got there late.It was raining real bad ,we missed the "horse taxi" for our hotel so we had to wait for another horse.It was a half an hour drive in the woods behind a horse with diarrhea .no kidding here .pouring rain ,diarrhea and inside our room there was a talking fish.Like all lake rooms it smelled moldy and my allergies flared up so I coughed most of the night.We
left at 6am.
*Myrtle Beach summer of 2005.our child was small we stayed at a fancy brand new hotel,23rd floor or something like that.For 4 days I kept telling my husband I'm afraid the hotel will catch on fire.I even did a fire drill by myself with a heavy backpack one day.The same night at 10 pm the hotel had a fire.On our floor,the room next to us.We had to evacuate and we spent most of the night on the beach and sidewalk with another 200 people.The fire drill was useful ,I was the 5th one down with the baby but I had no skirt.
*Antalya ,Turkey summer of 1999. My first real contact with an oriental culture.People hired by restaurants would grab my hand and drag me inside, if we said no too forcefully they would be offended and swear at us.The temperature was constantly 40 to 50 degrees Celsius ,we left a restaurant in a hurry when my husband advised me not to drink coke in that heat, the waiter thought he's calling me fat so he decided to defend me.We also got kicked out from a store where I wanted to pay whatever the insane price was on a swimming suit instead of sitting down to drink tea and bargain with the seller which made him very very mad.The highlight of the trip was swimming in an open cave in the Mediterranean.
* Upper Peninsula Michigan .our child's third anniversary we spent it on the side of the freeway trying to get a tow truck for our broken car and a rental car .Nobody wanted to drive a rental car to our location even though we told them we are in 100 degrees heat with a 3 year old.we got a tow,we took the car to a service where they took it apart and literally 3 days later stuffed things back in.We lived in a rental car ,the kid thought it was hilarious and we had a friend coming over 300 miles with a rented tow.The damage done by the car service was way way greater than what was originally wrong with the car.
*Caving in Kentucky. My first and last trip with American cavers and my last caving trip.It was a 3 day underground working trip which meant a lot of measuring and writing down info for the cave's map which they didn't allow us to see.We were 4 of us who did not know each other previously.We arrived there in a summer storm and we asked the guy who drove to have us in the car until the storm passes .He refused and told us to get out and put our tent down.We did, by the time we were done, 7 min later ,the storm has passed most our stuff was wet.Next day I guess they decided to see what are we made of so they made fun of our french gear and started running trough the cave they knew by heart.We hardly kept pace with them me swearing most of the time.For the next two days we worked on a schedule and in line with our culture me and my husband jokingly bitched about everything but we got only stares back so we stopped.we do love caves and at one point we decided to rebel and went off on a sightseeing trip which was great.By this time our endurance built up and we were fine sleeping in wet sleeping bags .Out teammates got sick they were vomiting and popping ibuprofen and the guy traded us some grapes for a piece of our Italian salami.We got out tired but in good humor and we helped them carry gear on the way back.We had the weirdest breakfast in a coffee shop/bookstore/pottery shop where everybody was leaning a rifle against the chair.Good trip too bad for the paranoid ,muscle driven ,humourless company.
*Montreal,Canada New Year's .We drove in a snowstorm for 12 hours ,we got to our B&B and there was a misunderstanding with the reservation so we had to get the only thing available ,an apartment ,which left us broke.The next day we hit the slopes it was -27 Celsius.We went to an Italian restaurant in our ski pants ,they sat us by the bathroom door and tried to get rid of us fast.We ended up at a casino where my friend and my husband won a lot of money and from that day we went to the Italian restaurant every night,the food was great and they were oh so very kind.(Remember to order a good bottle of vine first if you want to be friends with your Italian speaking staff) the new year is a haze but I remember refusing to go to a Celine Dion concert ,a bottle of champagne we gave to a homeless guy who looked at it and burst: ohh ho,madame Clicquot ,merci! and ending up in a subterranean party.
*Nara,Japan 2008 "take more money than you think you'll need" it was good advice.Other than that the trip was fabulous and we were kindly returned the wallet stuffed with more money than we thought we needed , we lost on the first night there.
