More reasons we've moved to East Coast

It's not on account of the humidity (which has been tolerable, but still fairly bad) or the bugs (including the lovely greenheads) but on account of our families that we moved back to the East Coast. We touched on this briefly in posts about the birth of my nephew Jonah and our engagement, but we're really getting into the swing of things now with family. I think our family might be beginning to realize that we're not leaving, but I mean that in a good way.

We spent this past weekend in Vermont, ostensibly to house sit for my Aunt and Uncle, but there wasn't really anything or us to do while house sitting. We arrived to the perfect house sitting instructions: eat whatever we want from the garden, so Jaimee made lovely cream of broccoli soup and fresh salad:

We went to the Guilford 4th of July parade on Saturday, which they held a week early so as to not conflict with the parades and activities of neighboring towns. I took some pictures, which you can view on Facebook. (You should be able to view them even without a facebook account, but if you're reading this blog you really should be my facebook friend anyway.)

When my Aunt and Uncle returned from their trip to Cape Cod, we went to a neighborhood potluck which doubled as a surprise 70th Birthday Party for my Uncle Neil. Happy Birthday Neil! It's hard to believe you're 70. My Aunt Betsy got him a special cake with a tractor on it (the lady at the bakery was surprised to know that the special birthday boy was turning 70):

We had a lovely time in Vermont. My cousin and I put together my bike (thanks Bevan!) that I'd shipped from Seattle and we went for a nice ride on country back roads. And then with my other cousin we went on a driving tour of beautiful houses and gardens where he does landscaping and care taking. All in all, it was a very relaxing, enjoyable time, and it's weekends like this that are the reason we moved back.

From Vermont we cruised to Cape Cod for a day and a night to visit with Jaimee's mother and aunt (visiting from Idaho) and brother Nate who lives in Hyannis. We went to an awesome drive-on beach then hung out at the outdoor fire pit at Nate's house.

Tomorrow we move into our Sommerville sublet apartment. We'll be there for a month, so if anyone is in Boston, let us know and you can swing by for a visit. Although, not this weekend, as we'll be up in Catskill visiting my Aunt for July 4th.

What we might have done differently

Faithful reader Lane commented on our Places we loved post:

I hope you'll also post on what you would do differently if you had it to do again. Given the same time and budget you had, is there anywhere you wish you'd spent less time in order to spend more time somewhere else or go somewhere you didn't have time to go? Anything you'd do smarter? If you had an extra month or an extra 10K, what would you have added?

This is a great question, and a more positive spin than a post titled "Places we hated." I'll try and answer that question with a summary of where we went:

USA - We spent the first two months road tripping through the United States, staying in the following states: Washington (2 nights), Idaho (5), Oregon (4), California (16), Arizona (5), New Mexico (6), Texas (8), Louisiana (2), Alabama (1), North Carolina (4), Virginia (1), Maryland (1), New York (3), Vermont (3) and Massachusetts (9).

Even though road trips in the US are one of our favorite activities, in retrospect we probably could have condensed this into a shorter trip in order to spend more time internationally, especially since several of the places would have been accessible as shorter trips once back home. However, it's hard to think what we would have cut, as we enjoyed each place we stayed.

Australia - 28 days. This was a decent amount of time to spend in Australia, and renting a van for 21 of those days was a great, albeit expensive idea. The only thing we would have done differently is to only travel in one direction. We started in Brisbane, traveled north to the Whitsunday Islands then back south to Brisbane again before driving to Melbourne. Instead it would have been better to pick two starting points and travel between them, moving in one direction only so as to avoid backtracking.

New Zealand - 65 days. This was our longest stay outside of the US, and it was a great choice. WWOOFing worked great, having only one bad stay out of the five farms we worked at. We wouldn't really change anything about our NZ visit, as we feel like we saw a lot of the country and WWOOFing was a great way to save money.

Southeast Asia - We toured around Southeast Asia for roughly two months, staying in Singapore (3), Malaysia (14), Thailand (14), Laos (12) and Vietnam (14). Since SE Asia was very cheap, we could have easily spent more time here. Given more time, I'd spend an additional two weeks in Thailand and probably add Cambodia to the trip. I also wish we'd gone to Indonesia. Everything we've heard about Indonesia has been great, and we wish we'd made it there. Also, we covered the Northern half of Vietnam twice, and if we'd planned better we should have only moved in one direction, instead of entering in the middle, traveling north and then returning south again like we did.

India - 33 days. Trying to decide what we would have done differently in India is tough, as we had a great time and wouldn't really want to change what we did. We traveled from late March to late April which is during their hot season so the only thing I might have changed is to go earlier in the season. Planning differently, I would have spent more time in India to see more of the country and gone either in the Fall or Winter instead of the Spring. We loved Southern India though, especially Kerala and Goa and would happily revisit those areas again.

Egypt - 13 days. As we keep telling people, and is evident from our blog posts on Egypt, we didn't love it there. Doing it over again, I would not bother going to Luxor or Aswan. I'm glad I saw the Nile, but Luxor was not that great and Aswan was even worse. Sinai wasn't too bad and done differently, traveling overland through Jordan and Syria to Turkey from Sinai would be my preferred route, taking the time we spent in Luxor and spending it in Jordan and Syria instead.

Turkey - 12 days. Turkey is another place we would have loved to squeeze in more time. As noted, traveling overland from Egypt so as to visit Eastern Turkey and Cappadocia would have been preferred. As for what we saw in Turkey, I'm happy with our tour of the western coast, although we could have easily spent more time in Istanbul.

Greece - 13 days. We liked Greece, especially Crete, but in retrospect I think I would have traded a week in Greece for a week in Italy. The problem with Greece is getting around. If we could have gone straight from Turkey to Crete to Italy, that would have been ideal, but traveling by ferry you have to island-hop, which is fun to a certain extent, but also time consuming and expensive. We also didn't love Athens, and as far as larger cities go it wasn't our favorite.

Italy and Switzerland - two days each. This was the biggest shame of our trip, in that we didn't do justice to either country by only visiting Venice and Zurich. Time was more of a constraint than money; if we'd planned it out a little better by buying a rail pass and arranging couchsurfing in advance, I'm pretty sure both these countries can be done on the semi-cheap. We hit it right with the strong dollar versus the Euro, but we didn't have enough time to really dig into either country.

Iceland - four days. As noted in our Iceland posts, I'm very happy with our time in Iceland. We could have easily spent more time there, and driving the Ring Road would have been awesome if we had more time, but I don't have any regrets as to our visit there. In fact, to some extent, I'm glad we left something for another time as I can't wait to revisit.

What would we have changed about our route overall? I think adding Central and South America would have been really awesome, although it's a large enough region to stand alone as an awesome trip in its own right. Also, visiting more of Africa would have been nice, but again, a tour of Africa would also be a wonderful stand alone trip.

Knowing that our trip overall would be as cheap as it was, I would have left Seattle a few months earlier and pushed everything forward by a couple months so as to spend more time in Southeast Asia, India and Europe. We also planned on visiting Australia first so as to meet up with Jaimee's sister Michelle who was studying abroad in Brisbane, but without that constraint, I might even contemplate going around the world in the opposite direction, i.e., Europe first, then Turkey, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and finally Australia and New Zealand. Then we could have done WWOOFing in Ireland, Spain, France or Italy during late Spring/Summer and been in India by Fall/early Winter and then Southeast Asia in Winter and Spring. This would have put us in Australia and New Zealand during their Spring/Winter which might not be great, so maybe we would exchange Australia and New Zealand for a few countries in South America.

So many possibilities, I could write all day about potential trip itineraries and ideas. But again, I can't emphasize enough how much we loved what we did do and have very few regrets. It turned out great, although I'm sure I'll spend the rest of my life playing "what-ifs" with our trip.

An island vacation, an announcement and a wedding

Let's start with the announcement part first, as this is what I'm most excited about: Jaimee and I are now engaged! Yes, after spending 298 days on our trip, essentially together 24 hours a day, we have now decided to spend the rest of our lives together as well. Probably not constantly together like we have been the past year, but together nonetheless.

I proposed (and she said yes, by the way) while riding on the ferry from Vineyard Haven, Martha's Vineyard to Woods Hole, Cape Cod. It might seem anti-climactic to have traveled all the way around the world and come back to Massachusetts to propose, but that's how it worked out. We both love ferries - one of our first official dates was a ferry trip to Whidbey Island in Washington - so it seemed appropriate, even if it wasn't what you would call exotic. Here we are right after proposal:

From Martha's Vineyard

We were coming off a wonderful three days on Martha's Vineyard visiting with my Aunt and Uncle, Betsy and Neil. They rented a house on Chappaquiddick, a small island off the eastern side of Martha's Vineyard. Neither Jaimee nor I had been to Chappaquiddick (also called Chappy) before (although she'd been to Martha's Vineyard several times) so it was a great continuation of our trip, visiting places we'd never seen.

Chappy is, unfortunately, most famous for the "Chappaquiddick incident" involving Ted Kennedy in 1969 when he drove off a bridge and crashed his car in a river, killing the passenger riding with him. For some reason I pictured a huge tall bridge, but in fact the bridge was a tiny little overpass. My uncle Neil and I rode our bikes out to see Dyke bridge:

From Martha's Vineyard

Back in 1969 it apparently did not have any guard rails, but still, pretty interesting that such a little bridge could cause such a big accident. History lesson included, we had a wonderful time on Martha's Vineyard. We toured around the main island on our bikes as well, and actually had pretty decent weather for mid-June.

Next on our agenda was a wedding. We went up to Gloucester, Massachusetts for Jaimee's cousin's wedding. It was interesting to go to a wedding so soon after getting engaged as I looked at the wedding in a slightly different light, somewhat with an eye of what I might want to do or not do. This wedding was a blast (providing many more "dos" than "don'ts"), although it was possibly a bit fancier than I think Jaimee and I would plan. It was a lot of fun to meet many of Jaimee's relatives on her mom's side of the family, and with gorgeous sunny days we had fun exploring Gloucester and Rockport during the day before the actual ceremony and reception. The wedding was at the beautiful Ocean View Inn (where we also stayed for the nights before and after the wedding), situated, as you might guess, right on the water, which enabled us to go out and snap some family photos right along the water:

From Martha's Vineyard

The end of our week-long getaway was a stop back in Shrewsbury to have lunch with Jaimee's grandparents and then later dinner with Jaimee's father and step-mother in celebration of father's day. This was a great cap to the week, celebrating Father's Day with my new family-to-be. I'd actually never celebrated Father's Day before (a semi-long story which I don't need to get into on this blog) but I enjoyed starting what I hope to be a long tradition of many more to come. I'm happy to be marrying into Jaimee's wonderful family and I'm sure the two of us will continue to have more adventures in the years ahead.

The Best Welcome Home Ever

Way back in April (April 15th to be exact, because we'd just filed our tax return extensions), sitting in an Internet cafe in Hampi, India we wrote that we bought our tickets home to the United States. (Interestingly, we bought those Iceland stop-over tickets one day before the volcano Eyjafjallajokull started spewing ash all over Europe.) One of the reasons we wanted to come back when we did was because my sister and her wife were expecting a baby boy. It was my first nephew, and the first grand-child on my family's side. Although we knew Keturah was pregnant before we left, we were essentially gone for her entire pregnancy. We skyped with her and Suzanne when we could, but we knew that we wanted to return in time to welcome my nephew into the world in person.

The timing of our return could not have been better. We visited with Keturah and Suzanne on Friday, our first full day back, and got to see Keturah in her full pregnant state. Here we are in the baby room of their condo (notice us too in clothes that you might not have seen in a while):

From Homecoming

Then, Keturah gave gave birth to 9 lb. 1 oz. Jonah Gray Martin yesterday afternoon. We drove into Boston and were there in time to hold little Jonah a mere three hours after birth. I can't imagine how emotional it must have felt to Keturah and Suzanne, but it was definitely a special moment for me.

From Homecoming

I can already tell Jonah is a kid after my own heart because he had enough sense to be born on a day with free parking! Despite there being both a Red Sox game and a Celtics game (welcome to Boston!), we found free parking outside the hospital and visited for a while with Suzanne, Keturah, Suzanne's mother and little Jonah. Both Keturah and the baby are doing well, and should be going home tomorrow.

Other than the baby, our re-entry to the US has been pretty uneventful. We'd left our car here during our travels so today we dealt with car issues, which were fairly minor (the car actually started right up and was running fine, it just needed a fluid flush or two). But it was enough of a pain to make me wish for our carefree (and carfree) travel days. Note to potential around-the-world travelers: one of the best ways to save money would be to get rid of your car. Between the insurance we had to reinstate and the repairs we could have lived in India for two and a half weeks. Living in the US is not cheap, that's for sure.

But, we'll be using the car during our next few weeks as we travel around. Tomorrow we head to Martha's Vineyard for a couple nights to visit with my Aunt and Uncle who are vacationing down there. Jaimee and I pumped up the tires on a couple borrowed bikes and are excited to peddle around on the island.