They say Aveiro is the Venice of Portugal.  Now, having never been to Venice I don’t know if that’s true, but just the same, Aveiro is unique and not like any other small city we’ve visited in Portugal.  Aveiro has lovely canals where the water travels through the historic center of the city.  Oh, and an added perk of visiting Aveiro… it’s on flat land. A far cry from the hills of Porto and Coimbra, another terrific day trip destination.

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.

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’ve crossed the Canadian border more times than I can remember, but never before have we been asked if we had weapons in the car.  And, it was the Canadian border patrol doing the asking, the US border patrol didn’t ask.  Sadly, I think it may be a sign of the times.  Aside from a few questions such as in which state do we live, where were we going and how long would we be there, along with a quick scan of our passports, crossing the border was a drive-through breeze.  It was just a matter of waiting our turn.

I went looking for a feel good story to write and here’s why I’m writing about The Camino, A Toddler & The Yellow Envelope.  Not your average post title, right?  But there’s a definite story behind the words.

When we owned our B&B in southern Oregon, the phenomenon of Airbnb was just burgeoning on to the hospitality scene, but we could see the writing on the wall.

It pretty much came down to a proverbial coin toss.  Do we spend a week in Dijon, or do we spend a week in nearby Beaune, which is where we had booked a bicycle tour through the Burgundy Vineyards.  In the end, Dijon won the toss.

Potsdam, Germany.  Melk, Austria.  Mondsee, Austria.  Have you heard of them?  They were not at all on our list of chosen destinations while traveling across Europe with Eurail.  And, yet, these unexpected treasures turned out to be three of our most memorable experiences.