Martinique

December 8-10, 2017.

December 8.

This trip came about sometime in November, when my friend (the one who showed me around Israel) found super cheap tickets through Norwegian Air to Martinique in December.  Before we went to Israel we were talking down by the shore (that's the Jersey Shore) about a flight to Iceland for $99, and I wasn't willing to book.  She then found the tickets to Martinique after we got back, and told me flat-out that I was not going to balk this time.  The prices were far too good to beat, and I had never been to the Caribbean, so I paid up and marked my calendar.

I called off work, went to the train station to head to Manhattan, where we met up to head to JFK together.  We realized in Israel that we have very similar travel styles, though she's still more "adventurous" than I am in the sense that she's way more of a backpacker type than I am, though we still prefer culture to dealing with tourists and resorts (we are not resort people).  While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, in the course of reading this blog and any future posts I might make, you will definitely see that I do not like the resort/luxury lifestyle.  I'm not bitter about the luxury part, I just don't like the idea of resorts simply because the idea of "all-inclusive" does not appeal to me.  I don't want to just sit on a beach all day and not deal with anything else.  I could definitely spend all day at the beach, but I also want, and need, to experience culture.  It's imperative.  I can't just go to another country or another place with another culture and not see it or smell it.  If I ever do, I could never claim to have been to that place.  Like I took a work trip to Dallas once, and never left the Hilton.  So while I can say I flew to Dallas, maybe that I spent some time in Dallas, I've never actually been to Dallas.

Anyway, I got super excited about this trip because a. it was my first ever trip to the Caribbean, b. Martinique is a French island.  So it's literally like going to Europe, and I can work with that.

I was actually pretty impressed with Norwegian.  It's absolutely a budget airline and they remind you of that, but it's pretty comfortable for being one and they don't pretend to be something they're not.  I also appreciated the free WiFi on the plane, even if it just wasn't very good.  At least it was something.

Israel

October 16-20, 2017.

October 16.

One of the benefits to working for an Israeli company based in New York is that every once in a while, they give us trips overseas.  In this case, as our company celebrated 10 years, they offered everyone in the company the chance to go to Israel for a week (four days for those of us in the Customer Service department, because of course).  Being in Customer Service not all of us could go, but I was one of the first people to sign up because there is no way I'm turning down a free trip to another country.  No way.  And because I got promoted within the department, I was essentially guaranteed a spot on the trip, which was only made better by the fact that my new friend at the company also happens to be Israeli, and insisted I go where she goes, and because she's been to far more interesting places than I have, I wasn't turning that opportunity down.  Plus she's really cool and we've become really good friends outside of a work environment.  Which essentially turned into us doing our own thing instead of whatever it was the company had planned for us.

So I got to work early on Friday morning, my little suitcase behind me, as I took the bus in since there was no way I was paying for parking for four nights.

When we left work we had a shuttle bus waiting outside the office on 7th Ave to take us into Newark Airport, and my friend and I, being the seasoned travelers we are, split from the group once we led everyone through security and grabbed sushi and drinks while we waited for our 10 o'clock flight to board.

India 2017, part 4 - Rajasthan (and Mumbai)

Rajasthan and last day in Mumbai, August 12-15.
August 12.

We left early in the morning, a bit begrudgingly because Agra was by far our best experience in India up to that point.  The guide, the hotel, the city itself far surpassed our expectations.  But we had an itinerary to keep, so we headed off on the national highway towards Jaipur, a cultural and historical capital in Rajasthan, a few hundred miles to the southeast.  It seemed that the city of Agra itself was never-ending, and a few people kept asking when we'd end up on the highway.  My best friend's husband pointed out that we were on a highway.  It was just a national highway, and since the Agra-Jaipur road isn't as touristy as New Delhi-Agra, it wasn't a fancy Western-style highway like the one we'd been on on our way to Agra.  It was basically like driving through back roads, with no lane dividers, so you'd get experiences like this:

Yeah...

Seriously, roads in India technically have the same rules we do in the West (only they drive on the left side instead of the right, like in the UK), only they're really more "guidelines than actual rules", to quote Pirates of the Caribbean.  I really don't think I could ever complain about traffic in New York City or New Jersey ever again.

India 2017, part 3 - Agra

Agra, August 10-11, 2017

The night before we left for Agra, we found out that the Taj Mahal was closed on Fridays.  After going over the trip itinerary we found that our trip to the Taj Mahal was actually scheduled for Fridays.  Now, we may have have been able to forgive the planning for the Red Fort, even though it was only about a week before Independence Day (though they probably still should have known, or advised that it might be closed in the lead-up to the holiday), but it was pretty hard to forgive them for planning a trip to the Taj Mahal on a Friday, since it's always been closed on Fridays (being a Muslim monument and all).  My best friend and her husband were irate.  So we decided we'd go to the Taj Mahal on Thursday, the day we'd arrive, instead of Friday, because that was an impossibility, and you know, it's the Taj Mahal.  We went to bed early, planning for an early start to the day so we could get to Agra as soon as possible, and enjoy the Taj Mahal.

August 10.

India 2017, part 2 - New Delhi

New Delhi, August 7-9, 2017.

August 7.

We woke up early the next morning to head to the Pune airport to catch our flight to New Delhi, way up in the north.  It's about a 3-1/2-hour flight, spanning a couple hundred miles.  India doesn't look that big on a map, but it is quite large.  And I'm from the US, which is still larger.  I think the Europeans were probably a bit more shocked at the size, since Spain is about the size of Texas, and again, Americans have a much different concept on large-ness, since we really do have so. much. space. here that we don't even realize it most of the time.

Anyway, for reference:

Pune is just east of Mumbai, and New Delhi is in the state of Delhi right between the states of Haryana to the West and Uttar Pradesh to the East.

We landed in New Delhi, and the climate changed dramatically.  There was a perpetual gray haze (I actually typed out "graze" because I basically made up a word to describe what it was) with a stifling humidity, with temperatures in the mid-90s (low-40s if you're a Celsius person like most of the world).  Now, I love me some humidity.  Like, people actually make fun of me because of how much I love it.  And even I got to thinking the humidity in New Delhi was a bit much, and we got to stand around for an hour waiting for our tour bus to show up, only to have it be too small for all our luggage (we replaced it the next day).  The bus had air conditioning, and we were all happy campers.

I still love humidity though, and will still take August in New Delhi weather over freezing blizzards any day of the year.

What it looks like to fly from Pune to New Delhi.

India 2017, part 1 - Flight to Doha --> Pune

So it really has been over a year since I've posted anything on here.  Wow.  Okay.

Well, here's my attempt to resurrect this blog from the dead, and bring you something I finally feel like I'm qualified to do, since I left the country four times last year (2017) and I'm on my way to breaking that personal record this year (I think it's a personal record, at least it is pre-high school, where I switched countries so much people still don't believe me).  I'm going to turn this into a travel blog.  Woohoo!

I'm not setting out to make anything viral-worthy or anything like that, just write about the personal experiences I've had while leaving the country.  I feel like some people might actually want to read that, and if no one does, at least it'll just be for my own benefit, because hey, maybe one day I'll actually forget all this stuff or wish I still had that life again or something like that.  Living vicariously through my memories or something like that I guess.

So anyway.  I'm going to skip my trip to Spain in July, not because Spain is boring or anything, but because that was a whirlwind trip that was short for my standards (six days, one being spent traveling) and it was really a set up to the next trip.  India, three weeks later.  So to run this down, my favorite person in the whole wide world, otherwise known as my best friend whom I've known since I was thirteen, got married.  Making me feel like a loser in terms of life choices, but in all seriousness, she's my favorite person in the world and I love her to bits and I had to do everything I possibly could to share in her special day(s) so I went to Spain for a week for her Spanish wedding, and then three weeks later I was on another flight to India (by way of Doha, Qatar), to go to her Indian wedding, since she married an Indian guy.

So here goes.  I'm going to break this up into various parts, because it was a nearly-two-week trip filled with craziness and wonder that if I don't split it up I'll go crazy and you all who decide to read this are going to go crazy too.

Part one, of India 2017.  Flight to Doha, flight to Mumbai, and Pune.  August 3-6, 2017.