Where In The World Are Sim & El? Funny You Should Ask...

Hello, and thanks for joining us today. As you know (since you are on this page), El and I have decided to get a head start on our retirement planning. In what we are hoping becomes an annual event, we have decided to rent an apartment for a couple of months to get the feel of living in a different city…in a different country. 

This past week we arrived in the city of Bari, the capital of the Puglia region of southern Italy. When looking at a map of Italy, this is the “heel of the boot” and Bari is a coastal city of 325,000+ halfway between the spur and the bottom of the heel. Over the years El and I had heard and read about this area that is off-the-radar of most American tourists. From the food to the weather, and though we don’t know many who have been here, those who have, give it a universal thumbs up. So we thought, why not make this our foray?

When I lived in Ukraine for 2+ years, El and I started this blog to communicate with each other and to update the immediate family on my daily life while we were apart. Once I got home from my Peace Corps service, I hadn’t much need to continue to update the blog- though it is all still out there. Generally, when we vacation I have been keeping a travel journal to write about the things we do and the places we go. The blog had always been more of an online diary focusing on my day-to-day life. From time to time I do find a need for having to go back to either one (journal or blog) and once I find what I came for, I do frequently read some of the entries that have the ability to bring floods of memories back in a matter of seconds. Very rarely do I reread an entry and say “wow, I don’t remember when I wrote that.”

So, there you have it, I think this trip/experience will be more about our day-to-day lives in a new place and much less about our travel experience which is why I am resurrecting the blog instead of going with the travel journal. 

Feel free to stop back if you like- or don’t, since this is a diary, not everyone will be interested in the things going on in it. However, I will make an attempt to update it as often as I can. Feel free to leave comments, ask questions, and we look forward to seeing you down the road.

Sim and El

this is the entirety of what we brought with us for 2 months, 2 carry-ons each and 1 checked bag between the two of us. i think i may have overpacked