The Departure

We are wheels up, baby!!!

I’m writing this from 38,000 feet in the air, above the Atlantic Ocean, passing huge, fluffy towering clouds that look like they could be distant cities; clouds that look like drips of wet sand on the beach; clouds that are just wisps casting, comparatively, tiny shadows on the rippling sea below. We boarded our flight to Miami 4 hours late this morning-thank god I booked a long layover. 

While we wait in the Miami airport (not my fave so far! I’m sorry for anyone else who gets stuck in terminal F!) for our flight to London this evening, our home in Asheville sits empty and echo-y; everything we own tetrised into a storage unit in Charlotte. We’ve said all of our tearful “see ya laters”; I’ve wept in my living room… the parkway… my car. I can’t remember a week that I’ve cried more. Our bags are, unfortunately for my back, packed to the gills with everything we think we will need, we’ve taken the first of many flights, and yet, it still hasn’t sunk in. We’re just going away on a week long vacation, right? My guess is at week three we’ll have an “oooooh shit” moment and realize: this is it. This is our life for this brief, beautiful moment. Our homes are our 22 lb (we simply could not get it any lighter!) Cotopaxi bags on our our backs and, pretty much, the whole world is open to us. There’s a knot of something both thrilling and terrifying that tugs in my gut at that thought. What’s waiting for us? 

Tonight, or really tomorrow morning, we land in London. We have a hostel booked near Waterloo station, a few vague ideas of what we would like to do (markets! Stonehenge! Carnival! This clothing store that I’ve been drooling over for years!) and a flight booked to Spain on the 28th and that’s it. I’ve only ever had so little planned for one other trip in my life-my solo trip to Rome- and it was so liberating. I’m looking forward to letting London unfold for us without the preconceived notions of a city, or trip, that can come with rigid itineraries. I’m hoping to rediscover delight on this trip-and one of the best ways I’ve been able to find it, is by doing absolutely nothing. But, of course, I’m not a completely reformed schedule-loving control freak so if you have something you recommend, I’m all ears!

Thank you for joining me-us-on this journey and taking the time to read this silly little email. I know you’re busy and that your attention is being pulled in a million different directions. I’m honored that you’re taking the time out of your day to read about what we’re eating, feeling, and seeing a million miles away (although today, we’re more like 800 miles away, and I can tell ya we haven’t eaten anything good). I’m a pretty open book and I probably will remain that way in this newsletter. This newsletter is for you as much as it’s for me; I want to be able to keep everyone in our lives up to date while also processing and documenting this journey and what better way but to write? I hope it brings you joy and makes you feel connected to us, and to the pockets of the world we find ourselves in-and if you’re our mothers, I hope it brings you peace of mind that we’re totally fine and definitely not doing anything unsafe at all.

See you guys next week! Cheerio!

-Amelia