It was my birthday yesterday. I didn’t leave my apartment at all. It was fine. If I was to plan a better birthday I might have gone out and bought myself presents. Actually, the best would have been going on the trip Mum and I planned to take to Campbell River, but things being as they are, this works too. I had some wine and smoked salmon. I did two online dance workouts, so I spent the later part of the day with sore legs. I watched some operas via the Metropolitan Opera. I drank some wine! Did I say that already?

(Note: I have turned on the opera for today, which is Das Rheingold, and even though I am not really following along and only giving it half my attention, the production is kind of blowing my mind. It’s crazy!)

I shared some photos on Facebook commenting on the contrast between my birthday last year and this year’s. I just remembered I wrote this just after midnight: I like to get in as much of my birthday as possible.

London was a special trip last year for my birthday (I plan to return sometime) and it marked the start of my year of travelling in 2019. I ended up not only going there, but also to Las Vegas for a weekend in September, and then China in October/November (as documented earlier in this blog). (As many many people have commented to me, I am very very lucky to have visited China when I did.)

Given all this travel in a relatively short time (for me), I was starting to feel traveled out before I even left for China. By the time I was getting back from China I was wondering to myself how long it would be before I got the travel bug back. I was exhausted from my trip, of course, but I was also tired of moving from place to place, and being in unfamiliar locations. The final straw was an eleven hour plane ride home and I was done. But, I am always “done” with travel at the end of the trip, so I don’t force myself to think about the next trip for a while. I had a loose plan to start planning my next trip around the end of November – just a couple weeks after I got back. And truthfully, this is often when I start getting excited to take another trip. But this time, it was too soon. I had gotten sick when I got back, and I had other things in my life I had to get caught up on.

I already had ideas for my next trip– the fun part of travelling for me is organizing it, and since I book far in advance, planning periods always overlap. My 2020 plan was to go to Europe – at least France and Italy, and back to England, for departure in May for 3 or 4 weeks. There are many works of art from my art history studies that I wish to look at in real life. Since I didn’t start booking in November, I decided to revisit in January. When January came and I had to submit my request for vacation days at work, May seemed too soon to be going– I didn’t even feel like booking the trip, never mind go on it. So I made my request for October instead – still a good time to visit Europe, and some time to replenish my travel savings account (not that I was going to worry about that if I really wanted to go).

Then I sort of forgot about it and sort of thought I’d think about booking things in April, if I wanted to. But now the world has shut down, so just as well I wasn’t in the right state of mind to commit to anything. Lucky, but also sad.

OK, but also, I’ve done a lot of travelling in the past few years, so really, I’m feeling pretty content about not going anywhere for a while. Here’s a list of my travels since 2012 for filler:

• Spain
• Vietnam/Cambodia/Thailand
• Oregon
• Across the Pacific on a cruise
• Spain again
• England
• Mexico
• England again
• Las Vegas
• China

So to sum up. I had a good birthday. No travel happening soon, obviously, but that’s OK.