I’m just about to turn the calendar page and celebrate another birthday.  For the record, having a birthday in January is not exactly ideal. If you think about it, the calendar pages are pretty full in October, November, December and right in to the first day of January.  By the time my birthday rolls around in mid January, people are burned out.

We found our way from the Guimaraes train station to the historic city center only to discover hundreds of school children gathering in the center.  Of all the days we could have chosen to visit Guimaraes, we happened to pick the one day on which seemingly, there was a city-wide school field trip.

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Eve and all that it entails.  I’d much rather snuggle up for the evening with the one I love most, with a big bowl of popcorn, and watch a classic movie, such as the one I share every year at this time.  And, this year because I think we all need an extra hug, I’m including my absolute favorite version of Auld Lang Syne for your listening pleasure.  Cheers!

Each year for the past several years I’ve published a list of Christmas quotes; a list of inspiration if you will. It’s no surprise that I think the past couple of years, in particular, have found many of us in need of a little extra dose of holiday inspiration; something to help us find joy in the moment while we hold on to hope for the future. Maybe some sort of Christmas miracle?  Or, at the very least a beautiful Christmas melody to make us smile and cry with emotion at the same time.

Because Washington, DC is almost in our backyard and because it’s that festive time of year, we took ourselves on a fun holiday outing to the United States Botanic Garden.  But, wait!  What happened to the month of November? How did we get to December so quickly?  Is it just me?

Grateful -vs- Thankful (2018)

I wrote this little ditty nearly four years ago. It turns out that over the years this little grateful – vs – thankful tale attracts a great deal of traffic to our site, about this time, every year.  Which tells me I’m not alone in my thought process of trying to distinguish between the two.

It’s crazy, I know, to whine about bad travel days.  But the truth of the matter is some travel days can really suck big time. As much as we are grateful for the opportunity to travel, every now and then we’ll have to endure a miserably long day.  With convoluted flight routes to online booking woes, to turbulent flights, to cancelled connecting flights and stormy weather, some travel days are just really unnerving.  Some days I wonder why we put ourselves through it.  Why does anyone?

It’s a humbling experience to wait in the SEF Immigration office, in Porto, surrounded by dozens of people seeking immigration status for one reason or the other.  There are stories to be told.  Stories of personal choices, such as ours, and stories of trying to gain or maintain work or student visas, or perhaps even desperate stories of life saving pursuits of residency.  It’s humbling to have choices knowing that so many do not.

Have you ever thought about which is the lesser of two evils… the red-eye flight on which you spend 7 – 8 hours painfully exhausted but unable to sleep, or is it less evil to be wide awake and giving up an entire day to fly across the Atlantic Ocean or to some other long-distance destination?

We launched One Road at a Time on October 14, 2012 and as the calendar pages keep turning, we find ourselves approaching six years live and taking a few minutes to commemorate and reflect on the roads well-traveled.