'Staying Alive By Not Staying Still'
Today’s the day I make 70 years on this planet, and I’d never been inked.
Until now. It was time to get it done.
I chose a simple idea, a tribute to my original influencer, the great American bard, author of Leaves of Grass, Song of The Open Road, Walt Whitman.
I took four words from that latter poem, that paen to the glory of wanderlust that sums up what I do and focuses my aim as senior solo traveler better than anything else could.
“Forever alive, forever forward.”
Just a few days ago, I walked through the streets of Batumi, Georgia, second-largest city in this beautiful country, which straddles the eastern edge of Europe and western edge of Asia, an area of the world often called Eurasia.
Batumi boasts the beautiful Black Sea coastal resorts and the spectacular Caucasus mountains, the tallest mountains in Europe.
It was a quiet Sunday morning, my first full day in Batumi after a 5.5-hour excursion by train from Tbilisi the day before.
Ever want to give a new fellow traveler your contact info but don’t have a pencil, pen, or piece of paper to write on?
Then you grab your phone and put a note somewhere in there, and find out later you didn’t type it in correctly?
Try carrying your own personalized travel cards to hand out to whomever you meet.
People I talk to in my travels are often amazed when I tell them how I abandoned retirement life in Hawaii to live a nomadic life on the road.
“Why would you do that?” they ask. “Hawaii’s so beautiful!”
Gori, a Georgian city of about 45,000 people, capital of the Shida Katli district of Georgia, is probably best known for being the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.
Gori was important militarily as far back as the middle ages, and the remains of the 7th-century A.D. Gori fortress on a prominent hilltop in the city is a popular tourist attraction. Yet the city’s most well-known attraction is undoubtedly the Stalin Museum.
I reviewed a new travel book this week on amazon.con, “Go Now: Adventures and Advice Mostly About Travel, But Not Entirely” by Nick Zoa. Nick’s a friend of mine (one …
I’m a travel addict, I admit, but I also have a semi-secret side addiction.
I’m a taphophile. I like cemeteries.
My Dad suffered a lot of hard knocks in his life growing up in Paulsboro, N.J., but he never complained about his past. In fact, he rarely talked about it. All he did was work as hard as he could to make a better life for the future of his family.
I was reminded this week why I choose to live outside of the prime tourist locations in cities I visit.